Benjamin Medrano's Blog, page 63

Bookbinding

So, my wife decided to try her hand at hand-binding a copy of Ancient Ruins. She just finished stitching the pages together, and the picture looked wonderful, so I thought I’d share it here.

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February 26th Update

This past week went especially well for writing. Spells of Old hit 75,000 words last night, and is progressing well. Hopefully I can keep up the momentum that hit me yesterday, which will help me finish it faster.

In other news, I’m deliberating changing fonts from Arial to Garamond, in part because it’s easier to tell a capital I from a lowercase L, so Ilmas’ name doesn’t look somewhat like Llama or the like. If I do, Garamond is a slightly smaller text, so I’d increase the font size by one...

Social Media

So quite bluntly, I don’t have any. Facebook, Twitter, any of that? I don’t use it at all. This blog is the absolute closest that I have, and for the foreseeable future is the only one that I will have.

The reasons why may seem kind of odd, but it’s also fairly simple. I’m a fairly private person, and even saying what I have in my profile and author’s note has been difficult at times. I don’t want to share everything I’m doing, which makes things…interesting.

I just wanted to let you know, so...

What do you like?

I had Vyce ask me yesterday what other books and stories I’ve written, and where to find them. The short answer is that none of them are what I consider in a state I’d be comfortable sharing them. But I have some that I can dust off and potentially get to a point that I can allow them to be seen.

However, the question also made me wonder…what is it that people liked about Ancient Ruins? I’m looking at not just old stories, or Spells of Old and Halls of Power. I have the trilogy of Ancient Dre...

Audiobook Update

So, I’ve come to an agreement with the producer that approached me. Once again, I’m not saying who the producer is yet, but we’ve signed contracts via ACX, and will be producing an audiobook of Ancient Ruins. I particularly love the narrator’s portrayal of Lily in the test we ran, and am looking forward to seeing how she does when she isn’t coming at the story cold.

As we have no clue what problems will come up, I won’t say how long it will be before the audiobook is available, but it should...

Editing

So, Spells of Old may be slightly delayed from being released at the point I had hoped. This comes for several reasons.

First, the mistakes people have found in Ancient Ruins have…irritated me, to put it mildly. The most recent one with me messing up the Constella family name is just another straw on the camel’s back of frustration with myself. With Ancient Ruins, I couldn’t afford to get it professionally edited. Most of the estimates I’ve seen would have run me more than $1,000 to get it ed...

February 19th Update

Spells of Old is sitting at approximately 59,000 words. This makes it currently about half the length of Ancient Ruins, but I want to stress that the story will be as long as it takes to tell the current story arc. I’m not sure how long it’s going to be in the end, but at this point in the story winter is starting to descend, which will allow each side much-needed time to adjust and make plans…which is good and bad for all of them.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend, and that you are do...

Computer Games

I was asked if I was going to play the new Mass Effect, and what games I like. So, I’m going to answer here and separate this out into three sections. The genres of games I like, games which influenced me a lot, and games which I currently have and play.

Genres

First-Person/Third Person Shooters: I love the stories of so many of these games…but severe motion sickness sends me to the restroom. This is the primary reason why I will not be playing Mass Effect Andromeda. This unfortunately extend...

A Question For Others

Each time I’ve posted on the blog, it’s been on a subject that’s been rambling through my brain, or a specific update. It feels ever so faintly awkward to me, so I figured I’d ask people who come here, what do you want to hear from me about?

I’m a gamer, so I could go over the gaming stuff I like. I could post some of the stuff that I’ve created, too. I can discuss where the motivation for particular characters came from, or any of dozens of subjects. I just don’t know what you, as readers, w...

Sale Incoming!

So starting on Saturday the 18th, and going through Saturday the 25th, Ancient Ruins will be on sale for $0.99.  I was actually planning to do this for the first week after releasing my book, but Amazon doesn’t allow you to put up a discounted price for the first 30 days.

But that said, back to writing! I passed 55,000 words yesterday.