Release date
for the next Reflections novel:
I'm incredibly happy to be able to announce a
release date and an official name for the next Reflections novel, the one that
had been code named 'TWB' up until now. Riven will go live July first and
will continue Alec and Adri's story, taking it in directions that were hinted
at in Forsaken along with introducing
some exciting new developments!
Riven
will have a retail price of $4.99 (or the local currency equivalent), but in an
effort to reward all of my faithful fans, I'll be setting the price to $3.99
for the first week it is out. That means that you can have Riven downloaded to your electronic device of choice in time for
the 4th of July (for those here in the States) and you'll pay the
same amount for it that you paid for Trapped
despite the fact that Riven is ~20%
longer.
In all honesty, the discounted price allows me to
kill a few birds with one stone. I've covered my reasoning in my blog post
entitled "The Business Side of Things". A lot of you won't care about
anything in that particular post, but for those who someday want to succeed as
an indie writer, or even just those of you who are interested in business,
there are some worthwhile bits in that post.
Before you all run off to read "The Business
Side of Things", please remember that nothing I'm saying in that post is
meant to detract at all from the fact that I really am trying to give back in a
small way at least to all of you fans that have done so much to help spread the
word about my writing.
Dean's
mailing list:
You're going to sense a recurring theme here, but
I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last five or six months about just
exactly how I can best move forward with the business side of my writing
career. Those of you who read the business post I'm referencing above will see
how my mailing list ties into all of that, but for those who don't care to read
that particular post, I just want to let you know that I've made some changes
to my mailing list.
I'm still committed to not spamming my mailing
list subscribers with a bunch of information that they don't care about, but
now when you sign up for my mailing list you'll get a Smashwords Coupon code
that will allow you to download a free copy of both Thawed Fortunes and Torn in
just about every electronic format known to mankind.
This means now that on most of the major retailers
that you can get the first two books in each of my series for free, which means
that I'm giving away almost $20 in free novels to anyone that has even the
slightest inclination to try out my stuff. Obviously, my hope is that this will
draw people into trying out both Broken and Frozen Prospects, and then going on
to read Torn and Thawed Fortunes before ultimately buying the rest of the books
in each series.
I'd love for any of you who haven't already signed
up for my mailing list to go ahead and do so now and for everyone to help
spread the word. More than anything else, my mailing list gives me a way to let
my readers know when a new book goes live.
Status
update:
Just in case any of you are curious, I thought I'd
take a minute and let you know what I've been working on. The beginning of
December was mostly about getting final edits and formatting done for Forsaken and Brittle Bonds. The middle and end of December was spent writing Riven, which I finished up on the first
of January. I then spent most of the rest of January writing Guadel #4, which
was the hardest book I've written yet.
It's hard to get into chapter and verse about why
this particular book was so difficult to write without getting into spoilers,
but essentially it boiled down to the fact that I made some implications about
Va'del's character in I'rone, and I
wasn't quite sure how I was going to make that happen. It wasn't until I was
more than halfway through writing my rough draft that I really knew how I was
going to get where I wanted to be for the closing scenes of this book. It will
be interesting to see what my advance readers, and then ultimately all of you,
think about this fourth book, but having made it through all of the blood,
sweat and tears, I think it's one of my strongest pieces of work yet.
February has been spent doing a first past editing
run of Riven (once Katie had finished reading it) and then in progressing the
various trade paperback editions of my work that have been giving me fits for
months now (more on that below).
Paperback
versions of Dean's work now available:
As of right now, Frozen Prospects and Thawed
Fortunes are both available on Amazon as trade paperbacks.
Links:
Brittle Bonds has been laid out and I'm currently
going through my quality control process to make sure that the final product is
up to snuff. I've got Splintered about
80% of the way through the layout steps and Forsaken is about 95% through
layout. On both of those, revised print quality covers are the next big step
before they go into quality control.
Broken and Torn (the consolidated novel) has a
finalized cover (which I'll be posting a picture of in the next little while)
and now is just waiting on a final editing pass before I order proofs and start
my quality control process.
Any
interest in an interview series?
There is a storyline in the 4th Guadel book that I
was originally planning on incorporating into the book, but which I ultimately
ended up leaving out because I couldn't get it to quite come together like it
needed to.
As I was thinking about that a few days after I
finished the rough draft, I decided that maybe the best way to get some of
those tidbits of information out would be to do an interview series where some
of my readers got a chance to ask questions, both before a book came out and
then again after the book came out.
What do you all think? A good idea? A waste of
everyone's time? If someone is interested in coming up with some questions
shoot me an e-mail and we can talk it through.
Forum Mods
One of the ideas that continues to bounce around
the back of my head is that of doing a forum for my readers. The biggest
benefit would be that it would provide a single place for fans of either series
to get together and talk about what they loved in each book.
Obviously the big downside would be that getting a
forum up and running would be a big undertaking given that I don't have any
experience in that kind of thing and then it would be an ongoing demand on my
time to moderate it.
Given that the writing is still a ways from paying
all of the bills, I have to continue to focus my time and efforts on getting
more books written, but I'm still interested in seeing if I can find a way to
see this happen.
I can not wait to read Riven! I have been waiting in anticipation for this book. I am glad dispite the fact that people have not caught on to the reflection series that you are still writing them. I cant wait to see what happens.
ReplyDeleteHi, Tara.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you're so excited about Riven. I think it's one of my best so far, so I'm pretty stoked to get it out there so you all can read it. It's with my second editor now, so things are progressing right along there :)
I hope that these last two posts didn't come off wrong. I'm really greatful to have the readers that I have. Some months we pay the bills with my writing and some months we live off of savings, so I can't complain too much, I'm just eagerly awaiting the time when the writing income consistently pays for all of the bills.
Regards,
Dean
Hello Dean.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering what is the order of the books for the series that goes with broken. Sorry to bother, but I'm really confused about the order. If you could please tell me the order that would be great and I will continue to buy and read each and every book of the series. Hope to hear from you soon.
Thank you.
Hi, Gabbie.
ReplyDeleteI was hoping that the changes to my blog would make it a little easier to see what the order of the series was, but I'm thinking that I'll need to go back to the drawing board.
I think I've answered your question in my response to your e-mail (sorry again that I've been a bit absent minded lately about getting responses out). I suggest Broken or Torn to start, and then Splintered, Intrustion, Trapped, Forsaken, Riven (coming out in Jul 1st) then Scent of Tears).
Thanks,
Dean