A Status Update and Other Tidbits

Three posts in one day is a new record for me (it’s only been possible because I’ve been off on vacation from the day job this week).

As you’ll have seen from the last two posts, Intrusion is live and Frozen Prospects is now available as an audio book.  Those two tidbits were worthy of their own posts, but I also wanted to highlight a couple of other items.

First, Broken is now free on Amazon.  That means you can get it at zero cost on Amazon, iTunes, Smashwords, Kobo, Diesel, and Sony. B&N is still $.99 because I don’t have a great way to make it free there.

Amazon’s algorithms have recommended it tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times to people, and tens of thousands of them are downloading it (It’s been in and out of the top 100 free books list on Amazon all week).  That’s particularly exciting to me because each of those downloads is a potential new fan and by now you know just how much I love the thought of being able to share Alec and Adri’s world with new people.  Now’s a great time for you to mention Broken to friends, family and complete strangers who happen to mention that they like YA Paranormal novels.  They can try it out with zero risk and every download helps push it up in the rankings such that Amazon is more likely to continue to recommend it to new readers.

Of course all of that goes for iTunes and the rest.  All indications are that Broken continues to do well at iTunes especially and as I write this it’s currently sitting at #107 out of all the free books there.  These are particularly exciting times for me for reasons which I’ll elaborate on more in the next few weeks.

Second, everything I just said about Broken is pretty much true about Frozen Prospects as well.  It’s been free for several months now everywhere but Barnes and Noble, and has likewise been downloaded thousands, if not tens of thousands of times.  I’ve been a bit hesitant to recommend Reflections to fans of The Guadel Chronicles and vice versa, but have recently had some readers reach out and tell me that they loved both series (thanks Claire), so I’m officially nudging all of you to try out whichever of the series you haven’t tried yet.  They are a bit different, so no guaranties, but they are both the kind of stuff that I like to read, so hopefully you’ll have an enjoyable experience.

Third, Splintered is now live on iTunes-apologies to everyone there for the delay.  It’s on my to-do list to look at the possibility of going direct there so as to eliminate the lag, but my to-do list is currently got a lot of other things on it as well.  As always you can purchase from Smashwords and sideload it onto your devices if the wait ever becomes too much.

Fourth, I’m getting quite a bit of questions (understandably so) about what comes next in either Reflections or The Guadel Chronicles, so I wanted to give you all a bit of a view into what I’m working on right now and what order I think I’ll get to the other projects presently on my docket.  I’m currently trying to finish off the audio books for Torn and Broken.  Once that is done, I’ll roll into trying to get Frozen Prospects into paperback and then I’ll proceed with getting my other novels into print.  To be honest, I’d much rather spend my time working on something new, but I’ve decided to prioritize print and audio for two reasons.  Many of you are reaching out and asking if you can get one of my novels in something other than e-book form, and exploiting these rights will provide another set of income streams which will put me that much closer to being able to do this full time while still being able to provide for my family.

While all of that is going on, Katie will be working on covers for two more books which are currently in the rough draft stage, and they’ll be going out to my editors and advanced readers.  One of those is another Reflections book that takes place just after Intrusion, but which focuses more on two new characters who will become more important later on in the series.  The other is set in the Reflections universe, but features a completely new cast of characters.  More to come on that one later as we get closer to having it done.

Once the audio and print versions of everything are done then the next project will be the third Guadel Chronicles book followed by another Reflections book which will pick the core Alec and Adri story back up.

That’s a large enough bundle of projects that for now I can’t give anyone any kind of firm release date for much of any of it.  Especially because I think I’ll probably sneak a couple of short stories in the mix somewhere and I’m currently in talks with someone to co-author a novel in a new universe.  I can tell you however that this will all go much more quickly than it has of late for a number of reasons, so don’t despair.

Lastly, (fifth) I’ve now put up suggested reading order diagrams for The Guadel Chronicles, and Reflections/Dark Reflections.  Hopefully that clarifies things for everyone.  I’ve come to realize that I’ve been a bit deficient, especially for Reflections, when it comes to delivering a clear message of what goes together and what order to read the various stories in.

As always, thanks for all you do to help get the word out-either actively through blogging, tweeting, recommending the series, or passively by buying the stories so that the retailers continue to recommend them to new readers.  There is quite a bit of fun still to come!

-Dean