Andrew Gates's Blog, page 11
June 3, 2018
I Love Space Battles
Space battles are the coolest.
My favorite space battle is featured in a comic book. It was part of the Star Wars: Legacy comic series where Admiral Gar Stazi of the Galactic Alliance Remnant teams up with the deposed Emperor Roan Fel’s fleet and out-matches the enemy through brilliant strategy. Reading this comic, it was my first real exposure to how fun it could be to read military space strategy. That’s probably why I still look at it so fondly.
When it comes to space battle strategy though, the book series that comes to many people’s mind is often the Ender’s Game series. There are some awesome, amazing space battles in that series with brilliantly smart and compelling strategy. There are excellent battles throughout, but the final battle of the first book is one of the best. It’s a blast to read and the movie adaption of that scene is also incredibly riveting.
I really like a good space battle. The problem is, there are so many poorly-done space battles out there and in my opinion, a good space battle is difficult to find. A good space battle should be about the strategy, about the how they defeat the enemy with the resources they have at their disposal. A good space battle makes the battle a battle of minds, not a battle of guns.
Strategy is about how to save resources until the opportune moment, how to change the field of up and down in a void where orientation is nothing more than a hindrance, how to assess what the enemy has or doesn’t have and how to take advantage of weaknesses, all spontaneous and in the moment. It’s not about flying X-Wings into the Death Star’s trench at the opportune time because you happen to come by secret data telling you just how to kill it. That is compelling, sure, but it’s not strategy. It’s just a mission plan. That’s it.
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Hive, the upcoming fourth book in the Color of Water and Sky series, has a couple of space battles in it. There will be three to be exact. And today, I just finished writing the second one, which happens about 1/3 way into the book.
In case you haven’t been able to tell, man, do I love a good space battle. That’s why it’s been such a blast to write this chapter. I’ll write it, then go do something else and another scene of the battle comes in my head, so I’ll go back and add that in, then go out and do something else and the process continues. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up adding a few more pages to what is already a 5,800+ word chapter. It’s so fun to think of how these grand, massive battles will fit together. And the scope of space battles can be just enormous!
When I first plotted out the story for Hive, the moments that stuck with me the most were the space battles. Finally getting a couple of those scenes down, I realize I need to write more stuff like this. I enjoy it so much!
To conclude this day of space battles, I played some space missions in the game Star Wars: Battlefront II on Xbox. It’s been a day filled with space battles and when Hive finally comes out, I hope you all enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.
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May 29, 2018
Veznek Now Out and Selling + Work Resumed on Hive
Veznek is now out and selling! I’ve had a pretty strong week sales-wise, with a sale nearly every day since several days before Veznek‘s release.
With a higher price-point for Veznek on Kindle (the price is $3.99, as opposed to $2.99 for Cassidy and Kholvaria and $1.49 for Iris), I do have some worries that the high price may deter customers, but overall I think if they have made it this far into the series, customers will be willing to make that purchase. It is a small price increase to continue with the series. Not to mention, a $3.99 price point is actually fairly common across Amazon Kindle, so it’s not an unreasonable or uncommon price by any means. It’s just high compared to everything else I have out.
The pro with the higher price is, well, rather obvious: I get more $$ per sale! And while this might seem like a big “duuuh” to you, it was not as obvious to me right away. As I’ve tracked my Kindle sales throughout the years, I’ve developed a certain expectation about how much revenue I take home per sale. I still haven’t quite adjusted to this dramatic change, so when I look at units sold and compare that to revenue, I’m still a bit surprised (in a good way).
In other news, now that Veznek is out on the market, I’ve started my work once again on Hive, the upcoming fourth book in The Color of Water and Sky series. I did some work on Hive a few months back, but put it on hold to finalize Veznek. Now that I’ve returned to Hive again, I’d forgotten how far along I was! The Hive draft is currently 47,067 words long and I’m coming up on about the 1/3 point in the story! At this rate, I may have Hive done sooner than expected.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, feel free to pick up your copy of Veznek today and don’t forget to leave a review!
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May 23, 2018
Veznek Paperback Now Available for Purchase on Amazon
Exciting news!
Forget about pre-orders! I have a surprise! The paperback version of Veznek is NOW AVAILABLE for purchase on Amazon.com! You can find the link to purchase HERE
This is not the first time paperback has become available before Kindle. This has happened before with some of my other releases and I did anticipate that this might happen again in one of my previous posts.
If you’re looking to buy the Kindle edition, that still comes out May 25th, undeterred. But for those of you holding out for paperback, wait no longer!
Veznek is selling for $16.95, the same price as Iris. The paperback also includes a brief preview of the book Cassidy at the end.
To purchase your paperback copy of Veznek, click HERE now!
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May 17, 2018
Veznek Final Drafts Submitted
It was a late night last night… but alas, the day is here!
I’ve finally gone through all the edits my beta-readers have made and applied all the changes. Last night I sent my paperback copy out for approval and this morning I submitted my final Kindle copy.
This is great news! It feels excellent having this massive project finally finished with. I have the confidence that everything is now on course and proceeding as planned for the final week before release.
In previous years, I’ve approved the distribution of the paperback version as soon as I deemed it to be in good order. The result has meant that in the past my paperback version has sometimes come out before the Kindle version. We will see if that is the case again this year, though I expect they will come out around the same time.
On that point, I finally have a pre-order! Yes, you read that right, ONE pre-order.
I’m not sure why people are so hesitant to pre-order their copies of Veznek. This was not the case with Kholvaria, where I had many pre-orders for that release. Perhaps people are waiting for the official release? Perhaps people are turned off by the increase in price?
Whatever the reason, I hope my fans know that pre-order sales help me a lot and I would love it if you could pre-order your copy! When you pre-order a book, Amazon counts that as a sale on the day of release, meaning authors can potentially have astronomical spikes in sales on a certain day, which increases that book’s chances of showing up in searches on Amazon’s algorithm. And, for the reader, it means you get the book right at midnight before anyone else. So that’s kind of cool too, right?
In any case, Avengers: Infinity War is a great movie and you should all see it, assuming you’re caught up with your Marvel stuff.
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May 9, 2018
Beta-Copies Nearly All Finished
As the deadline draws nearer to the release of Veznek, final preparations are being made. A big step, of course, it to carefully read through beta-copies. For those who don’t know, beta-copies are rough physical copies of the book. I sent out several beta-copies to readers recently, and most (including myself) have finished reading them. In fact, I only have one reader to go! That means, once the last reader finishes, I can make my final edits.
After the edits are made, it’s off to the printer and simultaneously off to the formatter to fix up the Kindle edition and make it look nice.
With one beta-reader remaining to get back to me, I am confident that I can hit the May 25th deadline without issue. Now all I have to do is get sales.
The only problem… there aren’t any pre-orders!
Veznek has been available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle for several weeks now, and yet for some reason I have not had a single pre-order sale yet. I can’t figure out why. Perhaps it’s the increase in price (Kholvaria was $2.99, but Veznek is $3.99) or perhaps it’s the lack of publicity (though I did just as much publicity for Kholvaria).
I even ran a promotion last week, where I made Cassidy free for a limited time, but that promotion failed miserably. I only moved less than 30 copies of Cassidy this time around. The last time I ran a free promotion of Cassidy, I moved hundreds.
My old tricks aren’t working and I don’t know why. But this teaches me that I must adapt if I am to make a considerable impact with this book’s launch. I still have a few days to prepare and I have enough time to try different strategies to pull attention to my series prior to the new book’s release.
In any case, nothing can be done without getting these edits done. Pre-orders or not, nothing matters if I can’t deliver a product. So the beta-copies remain my top priority for now.
The good news is, beta-copies are going fine.
Rest assured: you can look forward to getting your copy of Veznek on time. Whether or not I make a lot of money on release day is a different question.
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April 27, 2018
Veznek Now Available for Pre-Order on Kindle
It’s up! As beta-copies begin distribution this week, Veznek is now available for pre-order on Amazon Kindle. The release date is set for May 25th, 2018.
When Kholvaria first came out, one reviewer wrote that they liked that the book was released less than a year after the first one. Well, keeping that trend going, Veznek happens to come out two days short of a year after Kholvaria, so technically I’m still getting out in under a year.
To view the link, click here: LINK FOR PREORDER
In preparation for the book’s launch, I’ve already begun combing through the print edition, looking for errors or things to change. I have spotted a few already. As always, some chapters have been better edited than others.
After editing the beta copies and incorporating the changes, there are two more steps I’ll need to do before release. 1) I’ll need to order a second set of copies to verify that the changes look good. 2) I’ll need to format the Kindle edition to look good and ready to go. That’s a job I usually hire a contractor for.
Both of these tasks will need to be done by May 21st for me to hit the May 25th release date. The good news is: I have lots of time. The bad news is: you all have to wait nearly a whole month!
To pre-order your copy of Veznek today, click here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CP6C69Q?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660
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April 25, 2018
Veznek Beta Copies are in!
Veznek beta-copies are in!
This is great news. Editing a paperback version of the book is an essential part of the job. This allows me to make sure the nitty-gritty things in regards to formatting and general appearance pan out as I intended.
I just got my copies and I already notice some issues. For one, the page numbers are wrong on the table of contents. For two, there should be a blank page between the final part of the story and the back-matter content. And most importantly, the book is literally the wrong size! It’s way too big.
All that in just a few brief seconds.
These are just a few examples of why thoroughly analyzing a beta-copy is so important. The next step is to get these out to other people and have multiple eyes on the book at once.
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As always, the book looks great in person and I can’t wait to take it out in public in all its glossy-cover glory.
One thing I like to do when I’m editing these beta-copies is to take it to a public bar somewhere and camp out and hammer out most of the book at once. I’ve done that in the past for both of my previous entries into the series.
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So far I’ve taken by books out for Mexican and seafood. Where will my next stop be? Barbecue? English pub? Chinese? German?
If you have any recommendations, I’m all ears. Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments!
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April 18, 2018
Veznek Cover Art Reveal
Veznek is near completion and that means… it’s time for cover art reveal!
Artwork was once again done by Sarah Anderson, who did the last three covers too.
First, we have the front cover/Kindle cover. You can see Vigilant Behemoth blowing up above the Earth in the foreground, with the ominous face of Kho Veznek imposed in the background.
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This book comes in at 621 pages, putting it closer to the length of Iris. That means we get another beautiful beefy spine to play with. Take a look at the artwork for the paperback below.
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The next step is to get beta-copies out and edit the paper copies. I’m very excited to reach this point. I can assure you there will be a lot of progress made in a short amount time very soon.
As always, keep checking on this blog for more updates.
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April 14, 2018
Potential Blurb for Veznek
For those of you who follow this page regularly, you know that I like to post my first-drafts of blurbs here for critiques and feedback. Well, that time has come again. Without further ado, take a look at the blurb below. I would love any feedback and edits you can offer!
Kholvaria has been attacked. Its greatest city destroyed.
A cloud of debris now covers the void once filled by Vigilant Behemoth. In the wake of this unexpected assault, the Chiefdom’s leadership is promptly evacuated to a fallback shelter beneath the surface.
But the horrors of the Behemoth’s destruction cannot be forgotten. Here in the grimy confines beneath the Earth, Kho Veznek, second in command of the Chiefdom, will stop at nothing to claim vengeance on those responsible for his city’s destruction… even if that means going through his own people to do it.
As tensions mount between the ranks of humans and Kholvari alike, the fate of the world comes to its ultimate tipping point.
Author’s Warning: This novel contains scenes of graphic sexual trauma and physical torture and is intended for mature audiences. Reader discretion is advised.
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April 4, 2018
Veznek’s Final Edit
Veznek will be completed very soon.
I still have to wait for a few notes on the last couple of chapters from one person, but right now I’m going through and editing the entire book all at once (save for those chapters). This will be my final edit through until I order my print editions. Then I’ll do one last edit of the print copies.
Reading the book through like this is exciting! I haven’t read the whole thing from beginning to end all at once like this before. I’d forgotten how much more concise this story is compared to the others in the series. It flows quickly and lots more stuff happens.
It’s funny – there are some chapters I must’ve read dozens of times and other chapters that I don’t think I’ve read since I wrote them (those, by the way, are my favorites to read).
This book has a bit of everything: action, adventure, intrigue, but mostly… villains. The bad guys take the main stage in this one. Even the title, Veznek, refers to a villain. I don’t know about you, but I think that villains are fun and a big part of what makes this book so cool is that it’s centered more on the villains than the heroes (though I do see this maybe causing bit of pushback from some people looking for a more conventional story (though if people were looking for a conventional story, I guess they wouldn’t have read this far into the series, would they?).).
Since progress is coming along pretty quickly, Veznek might be able to release before May. We will see, but I’m optimistic. I will keep you updated with more release date information as I know it.
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