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Archive for April, 2014

Miscellany

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I’m just going to announce a few things today:

 

???????????????????????????????????????“Becoming Lioness” is now free everywhere (yes, even Amazon). It contains an excerpt from THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, which will come out sometime this summer.

Red Wyreth Cover Small“Wyreth’s Flame”, with a substantial excerpt from THE BARD’S GIFT, is free everywhere but Amazon. If you’d like to help with that, feel free to report the lower price at Apple (or Barnes and Noble). The link is just below the product details on Amazon’s product page.

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image10567743And, finally, a bunch of great authors are doing a Mother’s Day Book Bash next week (May 5th thru the 12th). Among the other titles that will be a great bargain that week, my Chimeria Omnibus, containing both BLOOD WILL TELL and BLOOD IS THICKER, will be only 99 cents that week. There’ll be a bunch of other fun things during the week, too–excerpts, deleted scenes, character interviews. So come join the fun on Facebook.

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Revising Revisions

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on April 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

By far the longest part of writing is revisions. First drafts are allowed to be bad. Some would even say they’re supposed to be bad. Really, the first draft is just to get the story down. My rule on first drafts is never look back. There is only one direction–forward. If I go down a rabbit trail, well, I just cut that part in the next draft. There are going to be things I have to cut. There are going to be things I have to add–settings and emotions I skipped over in the first draft, foreshadowing of things I discovered as I went along. Sometimes, there are just going to be things I got wrong.

Sometimes, in the process, I create even more problems.

I’m currently working on what I hope will be the last revision of MAGIC AND POWER (working title). This one has taken a more circuitous path than usual. When I started it, I expected it to be a novella. Yeah. Right. It’s 95,000 words now and likely to get a bit longer. Not a novella. Some reworking was necessary when I realized that. The conflict that will sustain a novella isn’t necessarily big enough to make a novel work. So the political background of the love story had to grow and take a bigger role in the story.

I intended it to be a love story between just two characters–until a third character popped up and turned out to be a better match. My first love triangle. And, on the first and second pass, I botched it. Knowing which character was going to win in the end, I didn’t make the other enough of a possibility. In this revision, I need to make that character a plausible love interest–better, stronger, less desperate.

Not content with that, in the process of creating a little more tension with the other love interest, I messed him up too. I want him to have some goals and methods that are annoying to the main character, so that their attraction to each other is derailed a few times before things work out for them. I took it too far. Now he comes off as pushing too hard.

Sometimes the writing process is two steps forward and one step back. Oh well, as long as the momentum is still forward.

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Planning a Launch, Part 2

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on April 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

There’s one thing I’ve already started for the launch of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE this summer.

I put out a new version of “Becoming Lioness”, which is a short story set in the same world and sharing some characters with THE SHAMAN’S CURSE. In fact, “Becoming Lioness” is a somewhat stripped down (to make a tighter short story) version of something that will happen in the fourth (as yet untitled) book in the series. Which makes “Becoming Lioness” a perfect way to introduce readers to the series.

I changed the cover just a little. Actually, I just added a subtitle–A Dual Magics Story–to tie it in to the series.

???????????????????????????????????????The main change though is what comes after the end of the short story. The original edition of “Becoming Lioness” had an excerpt from BLOOD WILL TELL at the back. (Actually, the only review this story has gotten on Goodreads came from a reader who didn’t seem to notice the “Bonus Material” header. Her review was that the story was disjointed because it changed to a different character and a different story in the middle and then just ended. Yeah, that was the first chapter of a different book. Sometimes it’s really hard not to respond to bad reviews.)

The new version has the first two chapters of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE at the back. The plan is to make this story perma free. Experience with “Wyreth’s Flame” suggests that this is going to take a while to accomplish on Amazon, so an early start may not be a bad thing.

 

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Planning for a Launch

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on April 20, 2014| 2 Comments »

This is something I haven’t been very good at so far. In fact, up ’til now, I’ve usually published first and then scrambled to do something later. That doesn’t work so well. I need to do better.

As I look forward to the launch of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, book one of the DUAL MAGICS series, sometime this summer, it’s time to start thinking about this.

In Vatar’s world, there are two separate kinds of magic. In the semi-nomadic plains tribe, one kind of magic is acquired through initiation into one of the clans. In the coastal cities, an entirely different kind of magic is inherited through certain closely-guarded bloodlines. No one has ever been in possession of both kinds of magic. Until now.

Apart from polishing the manuscript, which I’m working on right now, the cover is the next thing I need to work on.

A lot of authors use a cover reveal to start generating interest. My cover art is still in process. I haven’t come up with a single image that really resonates for this story. It’s complicated because DUAL MAGICS will be a four-book series, eventually, and I’d really like to have some consistency in the covers. Some images that would work well for THE SHAMAN’S CURSE won’t extend to the other books in the series.

I also need to plan far enough ahead to have at least a few reviews soon after the story goes live. Maybe a blog tour. (This time, hopefully, my computer won’t go down in the middle of it.) Who knows? I might even try a Facebook Launch Party.

It’s a lot of work, and definitely something I need to get better at, soon.

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Reviews

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on April 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

One of the most important ways to sell books is reviews–honest reviews, not those unethical purchased reviews. In our digital age, they’re the word-of-mouth advertising that has always been the most valuable. Social confirmation that someone else read this and like it. Or hated it. Sometimes even those reviews can help.

But reviews can be hard to get. Even people who love a book just may not log on to Amazon or Goodreads to tell the world about it.

I’m trying something new (for me) with THE BARD’S GIFT.

TheBardsGiftCoverSmallIt’s up on Story Cartel now. For the next three weeks, you can download it for free in return for an honest review. Try it now. What have you got to lose?

I did get a very nice review of “Wyreth’s Flame” on Smashwords.

I’m also still working on getting “Wyreth’s Flame” free on Amazon. (It’s currently $0.99 there.)  To accomplish that, I need people to report lower prices on Barnes and Noble and the Apple iBookstore. There’s a really easy link right below the product details. This ebook also includes a hefty excerpt from THE BARD’S GIFT.

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Getting Unstuck

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 13, 2014| 2 Comments »

I’ve been a little bit stuck on my rewrite of THE IGNORED PROPHECY. Now, partly that’s been due to some real-life issues that are mostly beyond my immediate control. I’m working on the things I can change eventually, but everything just takes more time than I’d like. And, in the meantime, things are just going to be hard.

Among the things I have to learn to do better is marketing. It never was my best subject or something I’m very comfortable with. But it is a fact of life for a writer and if I don’t learn to do it at least adequately I’ll never make this work. I’m taking a flying leap on Story Cartel, hoping for some reviews of THE BARD’S GIFT. We’ll see how that works out.

I’m also still working on getting “Wyreth’s Flame” free on Amazon.

Red Wyreth Cover SmallIf anyone would like to help out by reporting the lower prices (free) on Barnes and Noble and Apple iBookstore, I’d appreciate it.

Now, this is bound to impact on my writing, but it wasn’t all that was going on and it took me a while to figure it out. I’m doing a rewrite of some of my earliest writing, going through chapter by chapter and trying to bring that story up to my current writing level. I underestimated how hard this was going to be. And what was holding me back was that I wasn’t satisfied with the result.

The first few chapters are pretty solid (aside from the problems inherent in starting a sequel), but I just wasn’t going deep enough in subsequent chapters. I’m going back to fix that. It just is a fact of life that every chapter is going to require more than one pass. I’d always known that. Where I went wrong was in thinking I could go straight through the manuscript (the way I do a second or third draft) and then do the next pass. That’s just not working. I have to do multiple passes on each chapter until I’m happy enough with the result to move on. Then, I’ll likely have to do still more revision passes, probably on the whole manuscript. Nobody said this was going to be easy, but I think the story is worth it.

Moral of the story: Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

 

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Wyreth’s Flame

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on April 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Red Wyreth Cover Small

It’s here!

Sometimes the gift of the right story to tell at the right time is a blessing. Sometimes it’s a curse. But the Norse gods don’t leave Astrid much choice, either way.
On the eve of a desperate battle, with her father lying mortally wounded, the gods give her a story about the first dragon to learn to breathe fire. As usual, the story doesn’t come with instructions. It’s up to Astrid to decide if the story is meant to calm the frightened children or encourage the dispirited men. Or if she just might be able to do both with the same story. All their lives may depend on her skill with a story.

Wyreth’s Flame is available on both Amazon and Smashwords. It’s free on Smashwords. I’ll have to wait until it gets out to Barnes and Noble before I can start the process of making it free on Amazon, too. In the meantime, it’s only $0.99.

You can add it to your to-read list on Goodreads too.

There’s a healthy extract of The Bard’s Gift (twelve chapters) included in the ebook.

TheBardsGiftCoverSmall

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The Stone of Valhalla

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , on April 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Welcome another author with a fun story involving Norse mythology. (Funny thing. The story of Fafnir makes an appearance in The Bard’s Gift, too.)

Welcome to The Stone of Valhalla Blog Tour!

A middle-grade fantasy-adventure by Mikey Brooks.

Don’t forget to check out the GIVEAWAY at the bottom this post

for a chance to WIN a $25 Amazon Gift card and other great prizes!

 

Fun Discoveries while Researching

A Guest Post by: Mikey Brooks

 

I discover fun and interesting things with each book I write. For The Stone of Valhalla I did a lot of research into old Norse mythology and legends. I wanted to base my “otherworld” off something that still had familiarity in ours. World building is really fun in the fact that you get to create everything from the ground up. You get to create their religion, their folk songs, their folklore, everything. I mostly turned to research to find names for characters and places but as I found a name, I found a story behind the name.

In The Stone of Valhalla a magical amulet is sot by many evil creatures trying to hone its power for their own purposes. It’s ruled by a harpy, then an evil wizard, then something just as terrifying. One of the masters of the amulet was a dragon. I found this really cool name Fáfnir and decided to use it for my dragon in the folklore of this “otherworld”. What I discovered was a fascinating story about a dragon named Fáfnir from old Norse legends. In the Norse legend Fáfnir was the son of the dwarf king that was transformed into a dragon because of his greed over gold and a magical ring. He was later slain by the hero in the Völsunga Saga. I took a few things from what I learned about Fáfnir and incorporated it into my book, twisting the story to fit my own. I find this to be the most thrilling part of writing. You never know what you’ll learn as you research for your book.

I am thrilled to announce the release of my newest middle-grade fantasy-adventure: The Stone of Valhalla. I hope you love this book as much as I do.

Cover

Synopsis:

Aaron was chosen to save their world, but it might come at the cost of losing his own.

Breaking into an old lady’s basement was supposed to reward 13-year-old Aaron with new friends. Instead he finds an enchanted amulet that transports him to another world—one at war with magic. Before he knows it, he is accused of witchcraft and invited to a bonfire—where he’s the main attraction. If that’s not bad enough, a goblin army shows up and toasts the town…literally. The good news: Aaron escapes being charbroiled. The bad news: the goblins are after him. They want his amulet and will stop at nothing to get it. Battling to find his way home, Aaron teams up with a not-so-magical-wizard and learns it’s his fate to destroy the amulet and save this new world. But is he willing to sacrifice his own?

Check out what these talented authors are saying about it:

“The Stone of Valhalla is one of those books that only comes along once in a great while. Brooks doesn’t just create a world, he puts you inside of it, allowing you to experience the wonder in a way that only he can. His characters are likable and fun. His twists leave you asking ‘Why?’ Treat yourself to an exciting adventure through a beautiful new land. Make new friends and be a part of the magic. This is a book that you will not be able to put down!”

—J.R. Simmons, author of Ragesong: Awakening.

“The Stone of Valhalla drew me in from the get-go. Aaron’s journey is reminiscent of Dorothy’s trek in The Wizard of Oz. Magic, sword fights, danger, and more danger, sprinkled with humor and unexpected twists. This is one of the ‘best’ fantasy adventures I’ve ever experienced!”

—BBH McChiller, author of The Monster Moon Series.

“The Stone of Valhalla is a riveting mystery revealing true friendship, loyalty and sacrifice. Brooks engages the curiosity of middle graders and older sleuths alike, until the very end. Fantastic!”

—L.R.W. Lee, author of The Andy Smithson series.

Where to Find The Stone of Valhalla:

Exclusive price for the eBook release is just $2.99! (List Price: $4.99)

And only $9.99 for the paperback! (List Price: $12.99)

On April 12th 2014 the price will return to the List Price

Kindle | Paperback

Another special offer:

During The Stone of Valhalla Blog Tour

Mikey’s other great middle-grade eBooks will also be set to the low price of just $0.99!

The Dream Keeper:

Kindle | Nook | Kobo

 

The Dreamstone:

Kindle | Nook | KoboLaunch

You’re Invited to PARTY!!

The online launch party will take place on Thursday, April 10th at 4pm (MST). The party will run for 2 hours and you’re invited to drop by anytime. The longer you stay the more chances you have of winning prizes! We have slew of eBooks to giveaway, as well as a Stone of Valhalla necklace AND a $25 Amazon gift card! It is hosted by LovingtheBookLaunchParty on Facebook. Just follow this link to join the event: http://goo.gl/Q2Fd3r.

What’s that? Another Party!

That’s right! If you’re local to Utah you don’t want to miss this kickin’ party. We are having a launch party to celebrate the release of this awesome new book. Of course there will be plenty of giveaways there too, but what’s even better are the guest authors! Just check out these fabulous names: J. Scott Savage, Chad Morris, Lisa Mangum, Jenni James, Ali Cross, and many more. The Launch Party is: Friday, April 11th from 6-9pm at the Viridian Center in West Jordan, Utah. Follow this link for a map: http://goo.gl/dqVc0u

 

About Mikey Brooks:

Mikey is a small child masquerading as an adult. On occasion you’ll catch him dancing the funky chicken, singing like a banshee, and pretending to have never grown up. He is the author/illustrator of several books including the best-selling ABC Adventures: Magical Creatures and Bean’s Dragons as well as the middle-grade fantasy-adventure series The Dream Keeper Chronicles. His art can be seen in many forms from picture books to full room murals. He loves to daydream with his three daughters and explore the worlds that only the imagination of children can create. Mikey has a BS degree in English from Utah State University and works fulltime as a freelance illustrator, cover designer, and author. As a member of the Emblazoners, he is one of many authors devoted to ‘writing stories on the hearts of children’. He is also one of the hosts of the Authors’ Think Tank Podcast. You can find more about him and his books at: http://www.insidemikeysworld.com/.

Giveaways

The Giveaways!

Enter the giveaway here to be entered to win one of the following prizes:

$25 Amazon Gift Card

The Stone of Valhalla Necklace

Autographed Paperback of The Stone of Valhalla

Autographed 11×17 Poster

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The Importance of Metadata

Posted in writing, tagged , , on April 2, 2014| Leave a Comment »

In today’s publishing metadata is very important. It controls where a book appears and whether it comes up as a suggestion for a customer who may be viewing a similar book and where a book appears in search results. For some niche markets, it controls whether the book even gets on the right list.

Unfortunately, meta data can sometimes seem like a black art–mysterious and incomprehensible. Thanks to Facebook (you really do never know where you’re going to find something useful), I’ve found at least one resource to help out a little.

Amazon does provide a list of keywords necessary to get into some of those subcategories on their system. Yay for that.

I’m trying to learn a lot more about metadata right now. I’ll be revisiting all of my published books and tweaking their keywords and descriptions. (Yes, keywords should be in the descriptions, too.)

Fortunate this is a marathon, not a sprint. That’s an encouraging thought.

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