An Ending

My favorite part of writing is seeing a story come together. It's almost like building something with blocks. You start out with an idea, but it isn't until you actually start building your structure that you realize all of the details that you didn't have quite right, that you hadn't thought through yet.

There's something incredibly magical about taking facets of a particular story and putting them together in ways that you didn't expect to when you started out. I'm constantly amazed at the way that things will just click into place almost without any help from me. Things that I put in without really thinking about them at the time turn out to be pivotal later on it the series.

That means that my writing process is a little bit of an exercise of faith each time. I always know at least a little bit of what needs to happen in a given book, but so much of it just happens during the course of actually sitting down to write.

Usually there are two big milestones to any book. The first is when I know how I want the book to end and the second is when I know how I'm going to get from wherever I am to that ending. Once I know those two things then finishing the book is mostly just a matter of putting in the time to get all of the words down on paper.

Last night I figured out how I'm going to end Alec and Adri's story. I don't know exactly how I'm going to get there still, but I know how the series is going to end; and that's incredibly liberating.

I sat down for half an hour or so last night when the idea first came to me and sketched out the essentials; who would be involved, what new characters need to be introduced before it could happen and some key changes that will need to take place in a couple of existing characters.

It wasn't until I finished getting that all down that I realized something else.

For most of the last twenty years I've had another story rattling around in the back of my head. It's a Wheel of Time style epic fantasy set in the same world as the Guadel Chronicles, and there are some overarching themes that I always planned on working into the story there. Oddly enough, the ending of the Reflections series will have some of the very same themes, just done in a different way.

I really wish I could tell you all more, but I'd probably better just leave it right there for now. I don't think this was just coincidence though. It feels a bit like I've got a story that I'm supposed to tell, and that it's determined to make sure that it's told regardless of anything else.

Riven Cover Reveal...sort of

Katie has finished the cover for Riven, but this time we've done things smart and we did the print cover from the start rather than starting with an e-book cover and then coming back later and redoing everything so that we could release a print version.

The trickiest part this time around has been trying to settle on an border that we felt like dealt with the transition between the left side of the girl's face and the spine of the book. I'm in the process of ordering print proofs for our final four versions, which will probably be what decides things for us, but I thought that all of you might want to see what we've got so far.

(Remember the printing process results in .125 inches being cut off from all four sides, so the border you see here will be half the size on the actual printed books.)

I think that Katie and I are leaning to #1 for the print version and the gold border from #3 for the e-book, but I'd love to hear what you think.

The blurb on this one may not be what I end up using when all is said and done, but it gives you a bit of a feel for what's in store :)

Dean

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

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…