Benjamin Medrano's Blog, page 61

Pre-Order Spells of Old

I put up Spells of Old for pre-order. I want to note that the release date is not accurate. I set it as far out as I was allowed to, and as soon as I have the final version will set it to a much closer date. Promise. Also, the description is something I threw together quickly, so don’t read too much into it, hmm?

I also decided to put up the handful of art pieces I’ve commissioned on their own page Here. There isn’t much to them, but I thought people might be interested in seeing what I had.

...

Mailing List

Okay, so I got the Mailing List set up. On Monday the 20th, I’m going to send the entire prologue to anyone signed up to the mailing list. I intend to release the first three chapters of Spells of Old in this manner before it’s actually released, giving people a peek of what’s to come. I also may choose ARC readers from those on the list to talk to and send early copies of books in exchange for reviews, whether good or bad.

Also, I intend to, at most, send out an email every other week. The b...

Changing Site

So, no doubt some of you have noticed that the site address changed. I upgraded to a non-free account, in part in preparation for creating a mailing list. I’m probably going to update the theme and such in the near future, but I’m not doing anything right this moment. Also, having to avoid the urge to dive into the story and start fixing parts of Spells of Old…I want to fix it now, but I need to wait for people to finish. >_<

Edit: So, not changing the theme until I have more art. One of those...

<

First Draft & Snippet

So, the first of my readers got through Spells of Old! He loved it, and enjoyed a lot of it. There are a few chapters he mentioned stopped abruptly, which I need to fix, and I’ll likely have to add a chapter of daily goings-on in the dungeon to help flesh out a few relationships, but that’s something I can easily handle. Waiting on the other two before going to town on it. I also have one part I’ve decided desperately needs to be revised, due to Bad Math on my part.

Second, after some conside...

A Question, and Random Musings

So, I’m looking at setting up a mailing list. The author’s I’ve been talking to highly recommend it, so I’ll be doing so in the near future. However, a question came up in my mind, mostly for those who might sign up for them. Assuming I sent out an email every other week or so, what would you like to see in a mailing list?

Obviously I’d inform people when a book went up for pre-order or was released. I expect that’s simply normal. The question is what else people would like to see. I might oc...

Draft Completed

I just finished the first draft of Spells of Old. Over the last three days I produced nearly 14,000 words, to give the first draft just over 119,000 words. Honestly, I’ve got the shakes at the moment, because I just got sucked in. There are so many points I’m not entirely happy with, but…but it’s done for now. I’m going to take a couple of days off, and once my first readers are done, I’m going in and fixing it. This is insane to me. But I’m done for now.

In Halls of Power I get to resolve ev...

Editing

So, a few minutes ago I got a question on editing, and why I go through the stages I do before sending a book to an editor. I’m basing this off New York Book Editors, who’re a reputable group that I first considered before finding my current editor. Most of the publicly available editors have prices near these prices, I should add, unless they’re relatively unknown or new, and those are a crapshoot. There are three types of editing that I’m going to go over, not all of them.

Comprehensive Edi...

March 12th Update

Today Spells of Old starts at a bit over 105,000 words. Based on where I am in the story, the first draft will be done this week. To remind people how I work, this means that once the first draft is done, I share it with friends who go through, pointing out egregious spelling and grammar issues, but who primarily focus on weaknesses in the story. Once they’ve gone through it, I go through, reading everything and fleshing things out/rewriting parts. Then my readers go through again, looking fo...

Audiobook Update!

So, I just got done listening to the first 15 minutes of Ancient Ruins from the producer, and I loved it. The narrator did an excellent job, and I have to take my hat off to her. I approved things, and presumably the producer will go to full production at this point. From all the estimates I’ve seen, this means that Ancient Ruins will be about a 12.5 hour long audiobook. Since I personally have only listened to about 10 minutes of an audiobook before, I’m not sure how long this is by comparis...

Blunt Honesty

When I published Ancient Ruins, I was hoping to sell 15-20 copies in the first month it was out. Every person I’d seen talk about self-publishing said that that was considered a very good start, and that many people didn’t sell any copies for over a month unless they had a following online. I had almost nothing. What I had was moldering text that I hadn’t published a word of, and virtually no expectations for Ancient Ruins.

I’m an insecure person. I often think my writing is…pretty bad, to be...