Christopher Dunbar's Blog: Morrigan's Blog, page 8

ApolloCon, Contests, and Short-Stories

Wow… lots of stuff going on right now. First, ApolloCon starts today and goes through Sunday. We will be there, so stop by. For more information about ApolloCon, click here.

ApolloCon Contest

In honor of ApolloCon, Heather and I will be giving away two ARCs of Dark Alliance, Morrigan's Brood Book III. For those unaware, ARC stands for Advanced Read Copy. These are pre-released books sent out to reviewers. The ARCs have not yet been copyedited or proofread. Still, winners will get a sneak peak at the new novel, which will be released September 1. If you win and you don't already have Morrigan's Brood or Crone of War, Morrigan's Brood Book II, well, we will throw those in as well. All books will be signed by us, the authors.



The contest starts today and goes until 5:00 PM CDT Monday. The winners will be drawn and announced Monday evening. This contest is open to our on-line friends and fans as well as to those interested parties who enter at our booth at ApolloCon. If you want to enter, just send me an email.

Goodreads Free Giveaway

We just added a free giveaway for Dark Alliance on Goodreads. The contest should span from July 1 through September 1, the release date for the novel. Those wishing to enter can visit Goodreads. Don't forget to buy $1.99 eBooks of Morrigan's Brood and Crone of War from there. We actually get more money if you buy from Goodreads than if you purchase from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Madness & Reckoning, Stories of the Morrigan's Brood Series

Our eBook is finally uploaded to Kindle, Nook, and Goodreads. While we intended this to be free, both Kindle and Nook required a minimum price of $0.99. Look… we wrote this for you for fun, not to make money. If you want to get it for free, go to Goodreads. Of course if you really want to part with your hard-earned (or ill-gotten) money, you *can* buy it from Kindle or Nook… Your choice.

Thank you all for your continued support!

A Brief Synopsis of our Short Stories

As I am finishing up my (Christopher) final rewrite of our second short-story, Morrigan's Brood: Reckoning, I thought I would share a taste of what Heather and I put together. Of course, this will be challenging, as I do not wish to spoil the outcome of Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War for those who have not yet finished the book. Dare I walk the thin line between spoiling and enticing? Yes, I dare. Now, where to begin…

Historian's Note

As an aside for the historians out there… we know lots of cool stuff in history happened within that 237 years between Crone of War and Dark Alliance that we could have written about. However, Heather and I found the backdrop of the period when Karl der Große / Carolus Magnus / Karolus Magnus / Charles I / Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Romanorum / Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 CE to be excellent for our storytelling. Historically speaking, we have the re-emergence of Rome as a center of ecclesiastic power in defiance of the Byzantine Empire based in Constantinople, we have a Frankish King being given the mantle of Roman Emperor, and we have a new Emperor who doesn't wish to be considered the Pope's lackey. What a tumultuous period for storytelling!

Anyway, after finishing the trilogy of Dark Alliance, Curse of Venus, and Shards of Light, Heather and I thought it would be a hoot to write some short-stories which take place in this 237 year period. Madness and Reckoning are two of those stories. Both of these stories provide additional back-story for some of our main characters to help our readers get to know them better, as well as to explain how they might have changed between Crone of War and Dark Alliance. Let's look at each story individually…

Morrigan's Brood: Madness

"Madness" takes place about a year or so after the end of Crone of War, but some 236 years before the start of Dark Alliance. The main characters include Mandubratius, whose given name is Awvarwy (as many of you should know already), Tertia Amata Antonia (Amata), and Legate Patroclus Statilius Messalinus (the Legate or Patroclus). Mandubratius is insane (some of you are probably thinking "Duh", but no really… in-sane), and no one knows how to cure him. Insanity is apparently not common amongst Lamia. In the power vacuum that ensues from his absence, Amata and Patroclus must try to keep the Lamia senate from erupting into outright civil war until somebody can find a cure for Mandubratius, or until Mandubratius himself can discover hidden truths from within his own, demented mind.

This short story is available on our blog today, and it will be released as a free eBook in a few weeks from now.

Morrigan's Brood: Reckoning

After the events conclude in Crone of War, our intrepid heroes go their separate ways; some go to Bath in Briton, and some go back to the stronghold of the Deargh Du in Ard Macha. Sáerlaith, leader of the Deargh Du council, has a mission for Marcus Galerius Primus Helvetticus (Marcus) and Maél Muire Ní Conghal Uí Máine (now known as Máire, or sometimes jokingly as Maél Morrigan): kill those who wish to return to the old ways of bigotry and isolation. Easy, right? After all, it is Morrigan's will. However, every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as our heroes will soon discover.

I am nearly finished with my rewrite pass of the manuscript. After I finish, Heather will give her final rewrite, and then I will send the manuscript off to our proofreader, Jill. So, hopefully within two weeks, we will be able to release both short-stories as an eBook.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this little journey through the short stories. If you really like this kind of background information, I may do a little write up about Dark Alliance in a week or two, just to whet your appetites. Until then, help maintain the balance!

Morrigan's Brood and MB: Crone of War eBooks now available

I am happy to announce that Morrigan's Brood and Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War are now available as eBooks. As of now, the Nook version of Morrigan's Brood is for sale on the Barnes & Noble website, and both books are on sale on the Amazon.com website. All of these eBooks list for $1.99. Crone of War should be posted for sale soon on B&N. I have also listed the Nook version of both eBooks on Goodreads. I will be working to get these books on the iBookstore and Sony platforms, but that will take some time.

Enjoy!

Morrigan's Brood eBooks available soon, and Crone of War eBooks in progress

In case you have not been following up with me (Chris) in Facebook, I have been converting the print books for Morrigan's Brood and Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War into eBooks. My goals are to publish primarily in PubIT (Nook), Kindle, iTunes, and Sony directly, though I am also hunting out other sites, such as Goodreads and Smashwords to host the eBooks. As of this morning, I had received an email from Barnes & Noble that the Nook version of Morrigan's Brood would go on sale within 24 hours for $1.99 USD to a world audience. The Kindle version should not be far off.



I haven't done the iTunes or Sony versions yet, since, frankly, I got bored. So, to keep myself entertained, I decided to get Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War ready to be converted into an eBook. While I do have a subscription to inDesign (much cheaper for short runs of work subscribing than buying outright), much work still needs to be done in Word to prepare the book for conversion.

For instance, I had to remove footers, standardize styles (I have graphical ellipses between scenes, and I had to create a separate style so those centered and otherwise behaved properly), add section titles, convert chapter and section titles to headings (so the automated table of contents generator would pick them out), remove alternating even/odd pages, and other things. Now, I am in inDesign creating multiple documents for copying over sections of text and graphics from the Word document. For instance, I created an indd (inDesign Document) for the About the Author text, and then I copied and pasted in only the title and text from that page. When I am done, every chapter and every section (title, copyright, acknowledgement, etc. pages) will have its own indd.

Once I have all of these indds, I will create a book (indb) file and associate the indd files in the desired order. This way, my eBook will be divided with pagebreaks for each section; in addition, this will create a PDF-style table of contents. My error before was to first start by copying the entire book from Word into one inDesign document, but that process eliminated page breaks and the TOC. To remedy, I copied and pasted in Windows Explorer the single indd into multiple indds, and then I went into each indd and removed everything but the intended content for that section (about, acknowledgements, etc.). Unfortunately, as I recently discovered, the file sizes of those documents are roughtly the same… despite deleting the unwanted content, the data still remains part of the file. I know this because when I created the indd files for Crone of War, I only pulled what I needed for each indd, and the file sizes are much smaller.

My goal by the end of this week is to have both Morrigan's Brood and Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War published in at least four device formats each. I could probably have created the eBooks without inDesign (Smashwords, Nook, and Kindle allow uploads as Word documents and then they convert it for you), but this way, I am reasonably sure of the outcome and that I have some control over what that outcome looks like. I am no expert in inDesign, but this has been a wonderful learning experience.

If you have questions about inDesign or anything else related to writing, publishing, or to the Morrigan's Brood Series, please comment, and I will try to respond.

Thanks to our Friends and Fans!

Trials and eBook-lations

Wow, has this been a learning experience! A show of hands – who has put their own eBooks together (versus paying someone to do it for you)? My hand can now join yours. Oh joy! Thus far, I have "successfully" created eBook files for Morrigan's Brood on the Nook and Kindle platforms. I have uploaded both files, and I am waiting for their review process to progress. Hopefully, this means that those of you with Nooks and Kindles can read Morrigan's Brood by the end of this week!



For those of you who have been through this before, I am sure you know how not easy this is… Well, it is pretty straight forward, but when you are learning it for the first time, it feels like walking through quicksand. The second wasn't nearly as difficult. The repetitive part for me is filling out the same information, over and over again, on MyIdentifiers.com, for each ISBN for each format I am launching for each book.

inDesign has turned out to be a good program to use. It took me a while to figure out that I couldn't just copy and paste a Word document into inDesign, or open an ePub file directly. Then I learned that everything would get crunched up if I converted a single, massive inDesign Document to an ePub file. The solution was to break it up into multiple Documents and then combine the documents to one Book, which would build in section breaks and a table of contents. Now that I have the hang of this software, when I am ready to make eBooks for Crone of War, it shouldn't take me nearly as long. I am getting to like inDesign. With its subscription pricing, it has actually become affordable for us to use, versus buying it outright.

I will announce on this blog when these eBook versions become available. Until then, I should have other news about other stuff going on, as well as the latest Trials and eBook-lations I experience getting these eBooks to market.

Thanks to our friends and fans!

eBooks Coming Soon and other news

Well, I (Chris) have been working behind the scenes getting ready to release eBooks for both Morrigan's Brood and Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War. I am in the process of acquiring eBook publishing software, and I have been setting up accounts with various eBook distributors, such as PubIT (B&N), Kindle (Amazon), Sony, iTunes, Smashwords, and Goodreads, to name a few. We have also acquired a bundle of ISBNs, so hopefully the file conversion process doesn't take me too long. I have already converted Morrigan's Brood to HTML, so eBook shouldn't be far off. Perhaps in a week or two, both books will be available in your favorite eBook format.

ApolloCon 2011

Another Houston-area fantasy festival is coming up, and we will be there! While not nearly as large as Comicpalooza, ApolloCon has its following, and has much to offer fantasy and sci-fi goers. Heather and I will have two tables, though not the elaborate set up we had at Comicpalooza. Still, I might wear my kilt Saturday… might. ApolloCon will be held June 24-26, 2011 at the DoubleTree Hotel Houston Intercontinental Airport at 15747 John F. Kennedy Blvd. Houston, TX. Their website is: http://www.apollocon.org/

Contest Winners

A brief note… I sent out all prizes today, so hopefully by next Friday, everyone should have their books in hand. Once again, congratulations, and I hope you enjoy your reading experience!

Book Writing and Other Stuff

It looks like we might have some more interviews and possibly reviews ahead. Well, we do have a video review of our chapter book, which we hand out for free at events we attend, by Jennifer Barendt, AKA Gynie, which she posted on YouTube. We will let you know when the other stuff will be published.

Heather and I are also continuing our writing efforts on books 6 and 7; book 8 we have tabled for now, but it is about 33% written. Most of our recent efforts have been on 6 and 7.

Thank you to our friends and fans!!!

Come on! Have you done the drawing yet?!?! Yes we have…

And the winners of signed copies of Morrigan's Brood and Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War are:

Talia Peschke

Pierce Tomas

Kara Hash

Congratulations to our winners! Our next drawing will coincide with ApolloCon2011, which is coming up sooner than we expect.

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. Keep watching this blog, as this is how we announce our drawings (oh, and Facebook as well).

Cheers!

Have we done the contest yet?

No, not yet, so there is still time to enter. If you have not entered already, send an email to Christopher Dunbar. What might you win if you enter? One set of three of Morrigan's Brood and Morrigan's Brood: Crone of War, signed by the authors. How much does it cost? The effort to send us an email. How long do you have? Oh, a few more hours… let's say 9:00 PM CDT, so a little over 5 hours. I will write new contestants names onto tickets and the place those tickets with the ones filled out at Comicpalooza. I will announce the winners on this blog after the drawing tonight, and then I will attempt to contact winners starting tomorrow.

Good luck!

Welcome Newcomers from Comicpalooza!!!!!

Comicpalooza 2011; Houston, Texas

Wow! First, thanks to all of our friends, fans, and new friends and fans who either stopped by our booth or attended one of our panels!!!!! We hope you had as much fun as we did (and of course learned something of value for your writing or publishing situation). I (Chris) have not been on my home computer much this weekend, so I have not had the opportunity, until now, to update our blog. For some reason, I can't seem to figure out how to do it on my Blackberry; perhaps I need an iPhone, or maybe a gene re-sequencer to make me a slim, 15-year-old kid again, then I could figure out how to do it. *** Oh… there is also information about a contest below***

OK, what fun stuff do we have? If we shoved paper products in your face, such as bookmarks, posters, etc. and so forth, at Comicpalooza, you might be curious as to who the heck we are and why we think we can write something you would like to read. Fair question. To answer your question, we have cleverly placed tidbits about us and about our writing all over the net. Plus, we have listed lots of links to these sites, as well as to our friends; the are all along the right column of our blog… lots of links. If you would like to swap links on our blogroll list, please email me at chris_dunbar@triscellepublishing.com.

Let's see… we also have free reads from our first three novels in our Box.net applet, plus we have our presentation from our panel on how to start a publishing company. You might also notice something called Morrigan's Brood: Madness on one of the tabs at the top. This is the first short-story we wrote, and it takes place between the end of book 2 and the beginning of book 3.

Contest

In our haste to get things ready for this massive convention, we neglected to announce a new contest, which we hold for each event we attend. Many who visited us at Comicpalooza asked about the box with a hole in it and the words "Free (to enter) Contest". Well, if you are new to us, we like to give opportunities to those interested in reading our works the chance to win free copies of our work in a free drawing. The prize is a set of books 1 and 2 signed by the authors. If you win but already have book 1, we can work out a compromise. We are also paying for shipping, so that at least is something winners don't have to worry about.

If you would like to enter, please email chris_dunbar@triscellepublishing.com and ask to be entered. Given it is 10:32 PM CDT, we will be holding the drawing Wednesday night, so please have your entries in by 9:00 PM CDT this Wednesday. We will announce winners on our blog Wednesday night, and then for those who do not respond, I will contact them. Good luck!

Other stuff

Well, we have ApolloCon coming up, a book signing to be scheduled at the Magick Cauldron, a book release September 1 of Dark Alliance, Morrigan's Brood Book III, and other stuff. I also think, based on the interaction we had with many of you during our panels, that we will set something up to address your questions about writing or publishing; nothing has been formalized yet, but since many of you seemed interested in hearing more, we thought we would make ourselves available. Either Heather or I will announce something when we are ready for those kinds of discussions.

Bed time

There is much more I would like to say, as Comicpalooza for us was our best event so far, and we met so many interesting and entertaining people this weekend. We had lots of fun, and we hope you did as well! Before I completely crash from exhaustion, I will close by saying…

Thank you friends and fans, new and old, of us, the authors of the Morrigan's Brood Series!!!! THANK YOU!!!

Where Have We Been? Where are we going?

The answer to that is running around like two chickens with our heads cut off in a state of pandalierium. Rather, it is a state that is reminiscent of a lady in a muumuu with pink curlers in her hair. Yeah, you know her…. the one who shows up in a muumuu or her robe and slippies at the liberry demanding summer reading program prizes for her massive brood of 18 children; the number of children varies depending on how good the prizes are that year. The very one our characters will refuse to attack because … well, they have their limits.

Yeah, I know you're wondering where this came from and where is that crazy Heather going with this.

Usually lack of sleep means an upcoming festival, con, or celebration. Well, at the moment we're sandwiched between two.

Anyways, last weekend we were at Scarborough Faire at Tyler and Lisa Spence's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and a lovely day if you're into humidity. However, we did love seeing our friends become husband and wife, and we bumped into other friends, our editor, Sally Aalderink, who is one of the villagers at Scarborough Faire (her son Ian is also a villager, though we only caught his back from a distance), and Kyle and Marita Beth Caruthers, who run East Wind Games and Pendragon Costumes at the Faire. Merriment and camaraderie was had by all!

This weekend is Comicpalooza. We'll be in Artists Alley (booth AA5) near people who are better known than us. We are excited and beyond thrilled to be in a few panels as well.

5/27/11

Tips and Tricks for writing your own novel – 3-4 PM rm 310 A

5/28/11

Morrigan's Brood: Introduction 4 to 5 PM rm 320 E

5/29/11

How to Start your own publishing company – 10-11 AM rm 320 E

Sci-fi What Fantasy Who 1- 2 PM rm 320 E

Otherwise, we'll be at our booth, and if we're not there, you'll get to chat up our awesome friends, Crystal and Mark (who work with Heather at the liberry). We will have our usual freebies (bookmarks, postcards, and whatnot) and not-freebies (books), but this weekend, we will have some bonus items for sale: signed Khanada Taylor artwork from our first book and The Dawnstone Tales by Ruth Hays!

Hope to see you at the Con (it will be on… and yes, a lack of sleep brought on that horrible joke).