Damon Alan's Blog, page 7

New Cover coming for Serum

Sometime tonight Amazon should be updating Serum to the new cover. The last of my novels to get a new cover, it’s nice to finally have it done.

Slayer will need one at some point, but it’s not exactly a big seller. I suppose the literary agents are right, Dark Fantasy is in decline.

Regardless, here it is, Serum 2.0

 

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New newsletter signup.

So I’m working on this whole author thing. There’s a lot to it, in case you didn’t know, not just writing books. Here are just a few of the things you need to do.

Write a book. I said it wasn’t just this, but this is pretty much the focus.
If you’re an Indie author like me, you’ll need to learn how to publish it on the sites you publish with. For me that’s Createspace and Amazon.
You’ll have to figure out who you’re going to publish with.
You’ll need a website. Preferably with your pen name as your URL, such as www.damonalan.com
You’ll need a social media presence. It should be an author page on Facebook, which I did slightly wrong, as I made a page for my book series. But I will always use it as my author page, now that I know better.
You’ll need to either figure out how Twitter works, or you’ll need to connect your Twitter and Facebook so that posts on FB make it out as tweets. That’s what I did.
If you plan on marketing, you’ll need to figure out the 1,001 things involved with that. Book sales, freebies, blog sites, KDP promotions, advertising, promoting posts on Facebook, Google Adwords, etc.
Speaking of 1,001 things, you’ll probably need, not necessarily want, a mailing list. Turns out that even if you’re a fairly private type like I am, you’ll need this. I’m just getting mine seriously going now. I signed up with a Google service at first, but it’s not versatile enough for me. So I signed up with Mailchimp. Which means whatever I had with Google is gone, but since I couldn’t see it, I don’t know what I lost. Mailchimp helps me keep track of my sign-ups, and helps me not be spammy by keeping track of when I send what.

With that in mind, if you did sign up for my mailing list, please do so again. The form looks exactly the same, but now you’ll be taken care of by a service that will make not annoying anyone very much easier.

I appreciate your email address, I will never sell it, and I value your privacy as much as my own. I will only send something out whenever there is a new book coming out or I’m marking something down to $.99 for a weekend.

Speaking of which, both The Anvil of Dust and Stars and Serum will be $.99 over the weekend of Jun 2-4. Get them while the getting is good.

I just realized that I didn’t update my blog on book 4

Book 4’s cover that is.

Here is the new one:

Book 5 is currently being edited, in case you were wondering. To me editing is harder than writing, it’s very mentally draining. I’m knocking through about 4 chapters a day.

 

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House closing

Today, finally, after numerous delays and more ridiculous paperwork requests than a Freedom of Information Act request, we are closing on our house.

I’m hoping several things occur from this event.

We relax. My wife is up for promotion at work and buying a house at the same time. She’s so high strung right now she’d snap if I plucked her. So no plucking.
Writing begins again in earnest. Nothing kills the creative spirit quite like paperwork. I believe, once we’re settled in and the mortgage payment is on autopilot from the bank, we’ll have the opposite of paperwork. Which means more time to be in the writing mode. When life is on automatic is when the mind is freest to roam.
I get the basement made into the coolest non-commercial neighborhood bar around. Pinball machines, theater, karaoke… Relaxation and fun are important things to a long healthy life.
We live those long healthy lives. With a 15 year mortgage, we can reasonably expect this place to be paid off comfortably early. That’s a lot of time for family bonding, seeing the world, and writing those books.
Financial security. The housing market in this area is INSANE. It’s definitely a sellers market, and I know that changes with economic events. But the housing shortage here is huge, and we were quite lucky that the owner of the house we’re renting (and love) wants to sell. He wants to sell it because… you guessed it… he’s sick of the paperwork. Bureaucracy and government regulation kills small business. This is the only time I can remember this ever working in my favor. I expect after 15 years this house will be worth a lot more than we paid for it, even with inflation factored in. Short of societal collapse, this seems a prudent investment.

So in 4 hours we sign, hand over a check, and then start landscaping. The house has been a rental for 8 years, so has some of the issues that come from that. But we will fix it all. Because we love this place so much, we are buying it.

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New Cover for Book 3.

Here it is. I’m quite satisfied with the new looks. These covers are providing a consistency across the series, one that I’ll maintain now that I’ve set the standard I want.

Book 3:

The new cover:

The old cover:

The original cover for book 3 was better than the covers for books 1 & 2, but if you’ll notice there was an inconsistency in the size of the title fonts, the blurb fonts, and even the author. Me.

New Covers for Books 1 & 2.

I didn’t feel that the covers for my first two books were doing justice to them. Especially the 2nd one. So I’ve redone them.

These are the covers for book 1.

 

The new cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old cover. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the covers for book 2.

 

The new cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The old cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m told that decisions regarding books are 70% based on the cover design. I’m hoping that with this upgrade, more people will dive into the contents. Because I want to share this story. Feel free to let me know what you think.

 

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The technologies that drive our future.

This year has been fantastic for technology that makes the coming century look bright for us humans.

Several different laboratories from Germany to the UK, from the USA to China have verified there is a thrust output from the EM Drive. A reactionless drive that seems to violate the known laws of physics. Known being the key word, because we clearly know so little. The Large Hadron Collider, for example, just discovered 5 new particles they need to explain. What do I see in this? The promise of my own Millennium Falcon if aging is brought under control before I buy the farm.

The really cool thing is I expect these EM Drives being tested are the equivalent of the first steam driven cars in the late 1800s. A hundred years from now we’ll probably have the equivalent of Indy car reactionless drives.

A video explaining the EM Drive.

The next really cool technology this year is the development of DNA repair processes, something that will be critical to long term space travel. The radiation of deep space will eat us alive if we’re out there too long, unless we can repair the damage as it occurs. The Apollo astronauts noticed this radiation as flashes in their eyes as cosmic rays penetrated their retinas. So not only do we have the engines to get us to Jupiter in a reasonable time, we have the drug/medical technology to keep us healthy on our way there and once we’re in the radiation filled environment of Jupiter itself.

Information on DNA Repair.

The third really cool announcement is from Lockheed Martin, which has said that they are 10 years away from producing a new type of fusion power plant that is revolutionary. Revolutionary in that it can sustain immense reaction pressures as well as not take up much space. I’d say that’s a critical design standard for spacecraft, because you’re going to want the lightest, most compact, most powerful reactor you can get to power your EM Drives and magnetic field generators that reduce your radiation dosage.

A reactor to free our future.

That’s what I have for you today. Just hope that the ingredients for real space travel, the kind that conquers our Solar System, is possible.

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New cover for short story

Tonight I worked on a cover for my first Dark Seas short story. Valor at Hamor.

It’s about a grappler crew from the Samville, unable to escape with the rest of the fleet when Sarah Dayson calls for retreat.

The story is partly written, I’m not sure how long it will be yet. When it’s done, I’ll put it up on Amazon.

 

Grappler Samville 22

That’s a rough representation of what I think a grappler would look like. Basically just a small gunboat. Imagine the PT boat in WWII.

Hamor, as you can see, is burning. It has been saturation nuked. The Hive have won. All that’s left for the crew of Samville 22 is to die with dignity.

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Short Stories Released

I have two new short stories that are available on Amazon. Well, one new, one previously published. The new one is KDP so if you have Kindle Unlimited, you’ll have free access to it. The other, the previously published version, is not eligible for KDP. Soooo, it’s $.99, which is as cheap as I can make it.

 

First is a previously published story, published in The Bulletin back in September in their annual fiction issue. The covers on both stories are not as in depth as the ones for the novels, but it is a short story. The idea of taking dozens of hours to cover it with fantastic art didn’t appeal to me. So I put material on that made a statement regarding the content of the story. I’m still working to get this piece into KDP Select.

 

 

 

 

 

I present Milked, a story about a human captured during a war between an alien species and humanity. He finds his captors to be likeable enough, and they do treat him well. Fact is, he grows to like them better than us. My wife is slightly grossed out by this piece, be careful if you’re sensitive. She’s an RN, and if I can ping her sense of ick, I feel I’ve been successful. It’s not gross for gore reasons, but for social behavioral reasons.

This one is $1.29 or free to Kindle Unlimited users.

 

 

 

Later I’ll be adding a story called The Anachron. It’s a look into the mind of a minor Greek deity, and how she saves us from the machinations of those who would try to rule every aspect of our lives. Right now that story is submitted to Isaac Asimov’s Sci-Fi Magazine, and if they decline it I’ll put it up on Amazon right away. If they accept it, then I’ll put it up on Amazon after their limited rights expire.

The plan at the moment is to write quite a few short stories in the Dark Seas universe as well. There are so many stories to tell. What goes through the mind of someone infected by the Hive? Show the actions the dying take in a space battle. What if you’re the sole survivor on a crippled ship? What do you do when the only way to deny an enemy their goal is to kill your own? Many more options exist, and I plan to regularly write some of them. I currently have one well under way called Valor.

 

The Depths of War just passed 62,000 words. Sales of my books have been reasonably good, at least enough to make me happy with the progress. My goal, as an author, is to have people excited about my next story, or my next book. With each release, I feel that getting more and more real.

 

Please enjoy the short stories. I enjoyed writing them.

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Working on a video

I’m working on a video for the Dark Seas series.

And, I’m working on the sound first. I composed (using that term loosely) this short audio clip tonight, of a cello playing solo.

The video will be a dark scene if it happens, with small fighters rushing away from the Michael Stennis on an attack mission.

This is the first audio track (subject to rewriting and editing).

The second audio track would be different fighter/bomber pilots speaking on the radio as they race toward their target.

You’ll see them from the front at first, the Stennis disappearing rapidly into the darkness behind them. Shortly after that, they’ll pop away to their destination. Then you’ll be behind the fighters, as they race toward their targets and drop missiles. Then you’ll follow the missile camera as it races into the target and detonates.

“Stennis, this is Fighter One-Two, scratch one Komi cruiser. I repeat, target down.”

http://www.damonalan.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Dark-Seas.mp3

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