October Status Update and A Darkness Mirrored Cover Reveal

It's been approximately two months since my last status update (I only seem to manage to get them out every other month during my 'off' month when I'm editing and formatting rather than writing nine+ hours a day like I am during my 'on' month).

In the last update I talked about the next Eldon Murphy book (A Darkness Mirrored), which is scheduled to go live on November 8th, which is now less than three weeks away. I'm happy to announce that A Darkness Mirrored has finished up the editing and formatting process and the cover has been finalized.

That's great for two reasons, firstly because that means I've been able to load it up to iTunes, where it is now available for pre-order. Secondly because that means I can do a cover reveal!

The Setup:
Geoffrey has been called a lot of things: warrior, werewolf killer, slave, lover…vampire…soulless. They are all the truth. He's killed hundreds, possibly even thousands of people without a single regret, but that's only part of the truth.

This is the story of the one and only person who called Geoffrey father, the story of an orphan that Geoffrey took in and raised, the girl who would become the woman that he would sacrifice everything for.

This is Lucy's story.

Again, I simply can't express how pleased I am with how this book turned out. I loved how well Broken and Torn fit together, but I never would have expected that I would be able to make two books written ten years apart articulate together with such strength. The Greater Darkness is a pretty good book, and A Darkness Mirrored is a pretty good book, but taken together I think they really shine.

As I've been doing for the few new releases, I'll be discounting A Darkness Mirrored down from $4.99 to $3.99 for the first week, so if you're an iTunes customer go out and purchase your pre-order copy. If you buy your books from Amazon or somewhere else, you'll want to make sure you set a reminder on your phone or double-check that you've signed up for the Eldon Murphy mailing list at eldonwrites.blogspot.com.

The next bit of news is that the first full Dark Reflections novel (Disillusioned) is currently out to my advance readers. Once I hear back from them, Disillusioned will just need a blurb and a cover and then it will be ready to be loaded up for preorders.

When I write it all out like that it sounds like Disillusioned is just around the corner and I halfway want to push forward the release date for it, but I've decided to go ahead and schedule Disillusioned for a January 23rd release date so as to avoid the kinds of delays that I ran into with Shattered Ties.

In other news, I've done my first pass of the second Dark Reflections novel and I've sent it on to Katie to do a read through and let me know what she thinks of it. Still early days there, but everything is still on track from a scheduling perspective and I'm happy with how it's turned out. I started Dark Reflections with two main goals in mind. The first goal, that of showing just how broad of an impact one of the key characters from Reflections actually had on the world, is advanced by nearly every page of every Dark Reflections story. The other goal is still going to require at least one more book (and honestly it will probably end up requiring two more books), but this second Dark Reflections novel establishes massive chunks of the foundation I'm going to need in order to make that piece of the master plan happen. Even better, this book (Adri's book as I'm calling it) has opened my eyes to something major that I think needs to happen in the main Reflections story arc.

Sorry, I'm not going to give away any more hints, but I think it's going to really ratchet up the tension in the series.

The last thing that I should probably cover off in this update is the fact that I've finished the rough draft for the next Reflections book. This one is going to be focused on Jasmin, Ben, and Geoffrey (from the Reflections story arc I've written as Eldon Murphy).

It's hard to explain how nervous I was about actually going ahead and merging these two storylines, and that was complicated by the fact that I'm having a hard time generally speaking when it comes to deciding exactly what order the post-Riven storylines needs to be written in.  I knew I couldn't do Ash, Kristen and Isaac's story yet, and I was pretty sure that I couldn't take you all off with Jess and Wyatt.

Rachel's story is another that I think is going to need to come a few books down the road because there are several things that need to take place with everyone else before you'll all be ready to really understand some of what Rachel is going through.

In the end I used some fuzzy logic to narrow things down a bit further and decided that Jasmin and Ben needed the next chapter of their story told. Originally Jasmin and Ben's book was supposed to be just them and Geoffrey, but as I started writing it I kept worrying that the storyline was too thin. I added in another storyline, essentially a third point of view, partially because I was worried that I didn't have enough material in this particular story, and partially because there is a certain individual from A Darkness Mirrored that I really wanted to get back to. I wrote a chapter or two of that third point of view, and then got so caught up with what was happening with Geoffrey, Jasmin and Ben that almost before I knew it I was only a chapter or two from the end of the book and I still hadn't fleshed out the third point of view.

Given that the Geoffrey, Jasmin, Ben piece of the book was up in the 90,000+ word range, I went back and stripped out the third viewpoint and finished off the book. I won't be reading back through this particular book until sometime in December, so I don't have a final opinion on certain aspects of it, but I can say that this one introduces a few more breadcrumbs as far as some of the things behind the scenes that are driving the overall story arc. They are incredibly subtle, but offhand I can remember three separate hints that I included in this one and they lead to some pretty huge revelations in some of the upcoming books.

October is now halfway over and I need to give some more thought as to which book to write next. That's a question that's still a little up in the air, but I'm super excited to be able to get through all of the editing, formatting, print layout and the like so that I can get back to writing again sometime in the next week or two.

August Update

We're coming up on nearly a year of me writing full-time, which seemed like something that deserved a blog post, along with the semi-regular update that I'm past due getting out.

Since I quit the day job I've written seven books and published five books. I had two books partly finished before I quit, which means I've currently got 4 more books that are in my production pipeline and which will be published in the next six to eight months.

The first of those is the fourth Guadel Chronicles Book (Shattered Ties), which will be available at the temporarily discounted price of $3.99 (or your local equivalent) starting on the first of September.

The next book, which I'm hoping to get out in November is another Eldon Murphy Reflections (Geoffrey) book, this one featuring the daughter that nobody…well almost nobody, knew that he had. In the tradition of my Eldon Murphy books, this one will be a little more edgy than what I usually put in my Alec and Adri Reflections books. Nothing too bad still, more PG-13 heavy than PG-13 lite, but I still would rather warn people than have something catch them by surprise. In good news, I've already sent this one out to one of my awesome UK fans, Claire, to take a first look at it and she loved it. (Thanks Claire.)

The next book that will be released is my first Dark Reflections full novel, which will be told primarily from the point of view of Alec. I'm hoping for this one to go live sometime in December, after which the second Dark Reflections book (featuring Adri) should be released in Feb 2014.

From a purely business perspective it could be argued that I'm being really stupid to write anything other than Alec and Adri books right now. Trapped, Intrusion, and the Greater Darkness haven't sold anywhere nearly as well as the Alec and Adri books.

All I can figure is that a lot of readers see names other than Alec and Adri's in the blurbs and choose to skip those particular stories, which is a shame because I've received really good feedback on some of those stories and ultimately they are a big part of what goes into making the Reflections universe—Alec and Adri's story—more full and complex.

I'm probably preaching to the choir as it's mostly my most hardcore fans that are going to end up reading this, but I do hope that you'll pick up the new releases even when they aren't directly Alec and Adri books.

On several levels I feel like I had to write these two Dark Reflections book before I could continue on with Alec and Adri, just like I have to flesh out Geoffrey's story a little more before I can continue on with Jasmin and Ben's story.

Dark Reflections gives me a chance to explore other sides to characters we already know and love as well as showing the humanity of some of our favorite villains. Dark Reflections is an alternate timeline, a parallel universe, but it's tightly intertwined with the core Reflections story and it's going to offer a level of depth that I simply couldn't pull off any other way.

Dark Reflections is a story of what could have happened. It's a grimmer place than the Reflections timeline, but not everything is terrible. Like anything else it's a balance of good and bad, but more than anything else, it shows just how much impact the actions, even just the existence, of one person can have.

I can't tell you for sure yet what chapter of the story I'll pick up next. August is an 'off month' meaning that instead of writing I'm desperately trying to get through editing passes of the next Eldon Murphy book, the first Dark Reflections novel, and tie up loose ends for the release of Shattered Ties. If I have a few extra minutes in there I've got a whole slew of print books that need finished up, and a few other assorted projects.

In some ways the sheer breadth of the options I have to choose from is intimidating, especially as the separate storylines start to interact more with each other, but it's also incredibly exciting. I really think that this story is going to be something special. I'm not a good enough writer to write it all yet, but I can see how to get there and I do get a little better with each book.

I don't know if my books will ever have a movie made about them, or if millions of people will read these stories. It's possible that they will never make the kind of splash that I'd love to see them make, but regardless of how well or poorly they ultimately end up doing from a sales perspective, I really am grateful to have you all along for the ride, I'll try my absolute hardest to deliver on the potential of these books, both the Reflections series and the places I'm hoping to be able to go with Jain and Va'del's world.

Thanks again,

--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

March Status Update

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 4^th 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:

Frozen Prospects

Thawed Fortunes

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.

If any of you have experience setting up and/or running a forum I'd love to hear from you. It's possible that we can work something out where I can make it worth your while to help me get the forum up…