Jacob Stanley's Blog, page 2
January 31, 2017
Rebranding in Progress
Well, the books have been uploaded with new titles and covers to match. It’s basically the same old covers with a more subdued and tasteful font choice.
Amazon is very slow to update covers, so everything will be in flux for a while, with titles that don’t match the covers. It might take several days for everything to get sorted out. And the paperbacks will still have the old titles for at least a little while longer. Getting that changed is a more complex process because of ISBN rules.
As of now, I see this as an experiment. I may still change everything back within a week or two. I actually prefer the old titles. I’ve gotten used to thinking of the books a certain way, with certain names. It’s hard to make the adjustment. But titles and covers are not really an artistic choice. They’re meant to serve a totally practical purpose. They attract readers - hopefully the right readers who would enjoy the book you’re trying to peddle. These title’s, in theory, are a better fit for what the story I’m writing.
January 30, 2017
Titan's Song rebranding
After looking over my sales data I recently decided that it’s time to try a different naming scheme for the first four Titan’s Song books.
It’s becoming pretty clear that The title of the first book, “She Kills,” tends to bring in readers expecting a gritty realistic “slasher” type of horror story. My book isn’t really like that at all. I was heavily influenced by 1980s “splatterpunk” novels, so there are things in my books that will have some appeal for the sort of audience that buys the modern version of “extreme” horror, but there’s too much fantasy in the mix, and the tone isn’t exactly right.
So, with that in mind, I’ve come up with a whole new set of names for the first four books; names that should be a better match for the story I’ve been writing, and I’m in the process of redoing the covers right now.
I’ll post again when everything finishes updating on Amazon.
January 25, 2017
Oh Yeah... Some Free Stuff
I forgot to mention in the last post that She Kills and She Burns, the first two books in my Titan’s Song series are free for the next few days on Amazon, and I’ve also lowered the price of my omnibus, The She Chronicles, to $2.99 for the duration of the promo. So for anyone who hasn’t checked the series out yet, this is probably a good time.
Update on Works in Progress
I woke up this morning, had my coffee, and thought to myself, “You know, you should post on your blog more often. Maybe you could give everybody a quick update on your works in progress…”
It seemed like a good idea, so here I am… Where to begin? Well, so far this has been a pretty slow month for me on the writing front. Right now I’m dealing with several annoying non-writing related things, and they’ve cut my productivity in half. Unfortunately, it looks like these things will continue to be annoyances through the early part of next month.
I also hit some snags while putting the final touches on Titan’s Song book 6 which necessitated some story changes. Certain character storylines for that book unfortunately require fairly extensive redrafting from scratch. This won’t take that long to do once I have a chance to dig into it properly, so it’s not a huge disaster or anything, but it is slowing things down for the time being. Right now I’m in the process of trying to adjust my schedule so that I can get back into a good writing groove, and when that happens I should be able to finish it up fairly quickly.
One thing I’ve done recently to increase productivity overall is to start working on multiple projects at once. When I get stuck on one thing, I can move over to another and stay busy. It worked great for Issac Asimov, who wrote about 500 books over the course of his lifetime, and usually had four of five different books in various stages of completion at any given time. This approach is a bit of a double-edged sword because it might slow down the release of any given book, but in the long haul it should result in more releases per year, which is definitely the more important metric. We’ll see how it works out for me. Right now I’ve got four different things going, with most of my time focused on the Titan’s Song sequel.
The other things I’m working on include:
And I guess that about sums it up for this update. The current slowdown is a temporary situation, which should be resolved in short order, and in the meantime it’s giving me a chance to develop smarter habits and learn to make better use of my time.
Hopefully, I’ll be posting pretty soon to announce a new release, but that certainly won’t happen if I don’t get back to writing, so cheers to everyone, and I hope you all have a good week.
January 23, 2017
Horror Giveaway
Over the next few days I’ll be participating in a big instafreebie promotion, focusing specifically on horror books. There’s something like 30 or 40 books in the promotion, including my novelette In the Shade. Lots of really cool indie horror novelists are participating.
If you’re a horror fan, and you’re looking for something new to read, you should go here and check it out.
December 6, 2016
Land of Night Release Announcement
Today I’m happy to announce the release of the 5th book in my Titan’s Song series:** Land of Night.**
This book begins a whole new phase of the story which will continue to unfold over the course of the next several books. If this were a TV show, I would think of this book as the first episode of Season 2.
`
It's also the longest Titan's Song book yet. In comparison,
**She Kills**
, which was the longest of the first four episodes, is 170 pages in paperback form. Land of Night's paperback edition, which has roughly the same formatting, is 230 pages. The previous episodes were all novellas, but this one is basically a short novel.
Land of Night, like all previous Titan's Song books, is free to read on Kindle Unlimited.
In celebration of this new release,
[She Kills](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Y7ETLDC/)
is free today and tomorrow on Amazon. I know most of you guys have already read it, but for those who haven't this is a great chance to give the series a try and see what you think.
And I've also got something new. I recently wrote a horror Novelette titled:
**In The Shade, **
which connects in subtle ways to some of the lore in my Titan's Song books. I just released it on Amazon for 0.99 cents, but I'm giving it away to new subscribers to my mailing list using the Instafreebie service.
[You can subscribe to my newsletter and claim your copy here. ](https://www.instafreebie.com/free/QtRFl)
<pre>` Instafreebie is handy to use for this sort of thing because it makes it easy for people to pick different formats.
*
-Finally, to close this message, I thought I would give an update on the current progress of the next several books…
I’ve got quite a bit of additional Titan’s Song stuff already written. Those of you who read my blog know that my writing process is very organic, with only very minimal pre-planning, and that I tend to write my stories out of order.
It’s kind of a bizarre way to work. My books start as pieces and snippets scattered across the story timeline - fragments of scenes, bits of dialogue, random images and moments that pop up in my imagination. Then gradually, things start to congeal into a full-fledged story. Because of the way I work, things can get kind of confusing during the first draft, and sometimes I’ll finish the later portions of a story before I’ve fully developed the early portions.
That’s certainly been the case with this new set of Titan’s Song episodes. Even before I finished book 5, I had most of book 6 finished, and I have large portions of books 7 and 8 written as well. I’m not sure exactly how long it will take to get everything ready for public consumption, but I’ve been able to increase my writing and editing speed quite a bit lately, so I’m hoping to release the rest of this “season” at a pretty rapid clip. I had initially hoped to do the release like Netflix, and put up the whole season at once for binge purposes, but it didn’t quite work out.
I also have some other things in the works… Some of you may remember my Secret Souls series. I’ve currently pulled the first book from distribution while I work out a new title, a new cover, and a whole new branding scheme for the series. I’ll be putting it back up when I get the sequel ready. That may happen quite soon, depending on issues with the cover art and some minor edits I need to complete.
And I have a few other things… more short story and novelette ideas, and this urban fantasy thing I’ve been thinking about, and a horror novel that’s sort of like Evil Dead meets Friday the 13th meets John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness…
So many ideas so little time! But I plan to drastically increase my release output in the near future, so we’ll see how things pan out. Hopefully I’ll be writing tons of new release announcements like this one next year.
In the meantime, Happy Holidays to everyone, and I hope you all enjoy the new books.
Land of Night Release Announcement
This book begins a whole new phase of the story which will continue to unfold over the course of the next several books. If this were a TV show, I would think of this book as the first episode of Season 2.
It's also the longest Titan's Song book yet. The previous books were all novellas, but this one is basically a short novel. It introduces new characters and expands a lot on the lore of the story.
In celebration of this new release, She Kills, the first book in the series, is FREE today and tomorrow on Amazon.
May 12, 2016
Update on works in progress and some basic houskeeping stuff
I just spent about an hour updating my book page with the new releases and new book covers. The blog is still as clunky as ever, but it’s the best I can do for now.
Also, a bit of news… I have recently decided that future Titan’s Song books will all be considerably longer than the first four–probably about 2 or 3 times as long.
I’m going to stick with short or medium-sized novels from now on instead of novella episodes for that particular series. The omnibus has been a much bigger seller than any of the individual episodes, and this has made me realize that readers would like the series better if the books were a little longer. Book five is currently being written, and if it were going to be another novella, I’d be almost done with it, but it’ll take a little longer to get it up to novel length. Not much longer hopefully.
Also, I’m simultaneously working on Secret Souls book 2, which is nearing the halfway mark. A lot of readers haven’t been willing to check that series out. I think they worry that it’s a young adult series, which is an understandable reaction but not really accurate, a fact that will become very clear after the release of book 2. Admittedly, the books aren’t as heavily influenced by old-school splatterpunk as the Titan’s Song books, and the main character is a teenage boy, but what I’m aiming for is actually something more like Stephen King’s IT, or Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night. Basically it’s meant to be a horror story with a young protagonist, but it certainly isn’t aimed at children.
As for length, that particular series will probably continue to be novella episodes, at least for now. I may decide to switch to novels, but that will depend on how things go, and it probably wouldn’t happen until after the release of book 4.
Anyway, need to get back to writing and get these books done asap. Cheers everybody and have a good week.
