What to write next...

I wasn't anticipating that I'd make another post this month, but a question has come up for which I'd love to have input from all of you.

Apologies in advance, this post is a bit raw. I didn't ask Katie to edit it for me, so the odd typo or two might slip by me.

It's starting to feel to me like the book I write in May will be a Dark Reflections novel. There are some things coming up in the next few Reflections novels after Riven that need the storyline from Dark Reflections to be fully appreciated.

The artist in me is saying 'full speed ahead,' but the business person in me is a little nervous about writing this Dark Reflections novel.

I've only sold about 1/3rd as many copies of Trapped as of Forsaken over the last four months, so it would appear that people are much less interested in stories that aren't part of the central Alec and Adri arc.

Given that I need to write several standalone books that will focus primarily on Rachel, Jess, and Jasmin, I'm potentially setting myself up to do a lot of work that not very many people will be interested in reading (especially when you add in Geoffrey's books, which also haven't been as well received).

Being an indie writer means that I have to balance the art against the business, so I'm curious what you all think.  Would you be interested in a Dark Reflections novel where Alec and Adri don't know each other yet? Alec's dad is still alive, as is Adri's dad and sister and Alec and Adri don't know each other yet.

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Thanks,

Dean

End of April Status Update

It's hard to believe that April is already nearly over. This month was a 'down' month for me meaning that I haven't written any new fiction. Instead my time has been spent editing and wrestling with books that needed put into paperback.

Honestly those are some of my least favorite parts about being an indie writer, so I'm trying to make sure that I don't let those activities take over all of my time. The plan this year is to spend alternate months writing and fill in with all of the other housekeeping chores that need done since I have such a backlog of housekeeping tasks. January was dedicated to Shattered Ties (Guadel #4) and March was spent writing the sequel to The Greater Darkness (this book doesn't have a name yet, although I'm thinking of something like 'Reflected Darkness'), so it's just about time to sit down and start up another book.

The bad news is that I'm not yet sure which thread of the overarching story to pick up next, but the good news is that I feel like I've managed to get quite a bit accomplished over the last little while:

New Fiction:
Riven is fully edited and I've gotten responses back from all of my beta readers. That means it just needs a cover and then I'll spend a couple of days getting everything formatted for the various e-book retailers.

Shattered Ties is with my editor, RJ Locksley, for the next round of major editing.

Trade Paperback:
The first three Guadel Chronicles books are now available in trade paperback.

I've reformatted Broken and Torn yet again (this makes 3-4 times for each of them), but now they just need a wraparound cover.

Splintered, Intrusion, Scent of Tears and Trapped are all fully laid out, so they just need revised covers and then I'll order physical proofs.

Forsaken is about 90% of the way done from an interior standpoint, so another few hours ought to see it to a point where it also just needs a cover before proofs can be ordered.

Lastly, I've done a bit of work on my blog that I hope will work as intended. I've added a 'coming soon' block on the right side so that it's easy to quickly find out when a given book is scheduled to be released. With any luck that should help make sure that you all get a chance to get new releases during the first week when the price will be slightly cheaper. I've also re-worked the list of my books that was previously on the right side of the blog. It's still on the right side, just below the 'coming soon' panel, but now the list has a single entry per book which links to a separate page for each title. It's a little cleaner than the way I had it before, but more importantly, I've put the books up in order by series. I've had a number of e-mails lately from people who weren't sure what order to read the books in, so hopefully this change will help make that a little clearer.

Between now and the end of the month I'm also hoping to upload revised versions of nearly all my books up to the various retailers. These new versions will fix some errata that I found in the course of prepping each book for trade paperback, but they will also be modified slightly so that the reading order of the series is more obvious.

I'm excited to get back to writing fiction in May and I'm extremely happy with how Riven has turned out. My beta readers have been even more excited than usual after reading Riven and I can't wait until all of the remaining details are squared away so that all of you can finally read it.

Thanks,

Dean

A Kind Review

Julia from over at At As You Wish Reviews put up a very generous review of Broken that I've been meaning to link to for months. It's worth checking out her blog, just based on the fact that she loved Broken so much we know that she's got pretty good taste :)

Here's a link to the review.

A Big Apology

A Big Apology!

I'd like to apologize to anyone that signed up for may mailing list over the last few weeks who was expecting some kind of e-mail telling them how to get their free copy of Torn and Thawed Fortunes, but who didn't get any kind of e-mail.

I used a tightly restricted (I'm the only one that can send messages to the group or see the e-mails of the people who've signed up) version group inside of Google Groups to administer my mailing list.

Months ago I started playing around with the idea of using the welcome message inside of Google Groups to provide people who signed up to the mailing list with a coupon code to Smashwords that would allow them to download free copies of both books in whatever format the preferred. I made a note to remind myself to fully test the functionality, but somewhere along the way I lost track of that part of my to-do list and I failed to make sure that the welcome message acted as I'd expected it to.

I've added an instruction page on my blog now explaining to people that they'll need to create/login to their Google Groups account to access the coupon code, but in the meantime I've sent out an e-mail to the entire mailing list providing them with the coupon codes.

Sorry for the mix-up and a big thanks to Kaniah for pointing out to me that the mailing list wasn't quite working as intended.

Hopefully I'll have another status update sometime this month once I've polished off a few other tasks.

Regards,

Dean