Dean Murray's Blog, page 18

New Dark Reflections Short Story "True Believer" is Live!

It's been a hectic three and a half weeks since my last post, so I've got a few things to update everyone on.  First, I've finished the rough draft of the third book in the Guadel Chronicles.  So far it weighs in at a little over 73,000 words.  By comparison Broken was nearly 128,000 words, Torn was about 89,000 words, Frozen Prospects was just under 65,000 and Thawed Fortunes is a tad over 75,000 words.  If you disregard about 5,000 words which I wrote months ago before I got busy with all of the audio book work, I wrote this most recent book over 17 working days across 21 calendar days.
I do outline before I pick up a book, but I never know exactly how all of the pieces are going to play out when I start so it's always a little bit of a leap of faith every time I start a new book.  We'll see what I think when I go back and start through my editing passes on Guadel #3, but so far I'm reasonably happy, with how everything turned out, and I've worked through a couple of points in my head that were outstanding question marks as far as how I was going to go about doing book #4.  For now I've set Guadel #3 aside; I'll need a month or so of space before I can go back and have a hope of being objective when I start editing.
Last week I finished reading through 'Lone Wolf' for the first time since I finished up the rough draft.  It weighs in at a tad over 50,000 words (I think Splintered was about 40,000 words if I remember correctly), so it's a relatively quick read, but I'm likewise happy with how it turned out overall up to this point.  I think I probably will end up adding in at least one more scene before all is said and done.  It would give me a way to demonstrate a little more of my female lead's strength and would mix the settings up a little, but I'll need to think it over a little bit before I open the manuscript back up and start making changes to it.  It always seems like those types of changes are some of the most challenging to write because you have to make sure that as you transition to the new scene that you don't lose anything else that you needed and that you don't duplicate something that you've already got in there.  As you can tell, I'm on the fence a little bit, so in the end I'll probably just wait to see what Katie thinks before I go and make changes.
My 'other' Reflections novel is still out to editing, to be followed by beta readers and then by another round of proofing, but I've pretty much decided to release this one under a pen name.  I'm not going to keep it a secret from you guys here on this blog, but this one is a bit darker than the other stuff that I've done in the Reflections world so far and I don't want it to catch anyone by surprise.  I guess I'd say Reflections so far has been PG-13 lite, while this other book is PG-13 still but on the heavier end of the scale.  I'll keep you all posted as it gets closer to a release date so that you can each decide whether or not you're interested in reading it.  It won't feature Alec or Adri, instead introducing a number of new characters, one of which will make a brief appearance in the next Alec and Adri book (big hint, the character in question is a pretty central individual as far as some of the later novels go, but I'd better not say anything else because I'm not quite sure still how quickly I'll develop this character).
I lost a hard drive in my desktop a few days before I finished up Guadel #3, which was incredibly frustrating in that it means that I'm working on my laptop instead (much, much, slower), but I was able to avoid being forced to entirely stop working because I use  Dropbox  and  Did my announcement that True Believer was live in the headline keep you reading until now?  I didn't actually set out to write the post that way, but all of the other things that have been happening just kind of bubbled up to the top of the post.  Without further ado, True Believer is now live.

Here's the Setup:Thrust into a supernatural world populated by shape shifters, werewolves, and even darker things, Adam no longer knows who he can trust.
Alec Graves saved his life and thereby earned his service, but Adam continues to worry that Alec is no better than the things he claims to be fighting.
Adam’s been assigned his next job.  Alec claims that the target is a ruthless group of vampires, but Adam isn’t so sure such a thing really exists.  He’s either about to gun down a bunch of innocents or walk alone into the home turf of a group of creatures that could easily rip him in half.
Neither option seems particularly smart, but Adam’s not entirely sure Alec’s minions are going to let him pass on this assignment.True Believer is another Dark Reflections short story and you can currently get it on:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
B&N
Smashwords


Still to come will be Apple, Kobo, Sony and Diesel.  I'm still planning on going direct to Kobo and Apple at some point in the near future, but my understanding is that going direct to Kobo isn't going to work very well for short stories, and I'll need to have an Apple computer to go direct to Apple.  I'm working on that last bit, but it's probably going to take a while before that happens.  I'll definitely be pushing to check that off though before I put up Guadel #3 and the next Alec and Adri story.

The Guadel Chronicles #3 has been started!

Honestly I can’t believe another two plus weeks have already passed!  I’ve got a few updates; the first of which is that Torn is now available as an audio book!  You can get it from Amazon, Audible or iTunes.

Torn is narrated by Clifton Satterfield and I have to say that not only is he extremely talented, he was also a real pleasure to work with.  I’m very happy with the way that Torn turned out and am looking forward to seeing the Broken audio book go live in the near future.

I’ll probably be pausing the commission of additional audio books for a little while.  I’m anxious to eventually see all of my work available as an audio book; but despite the fact that the narrators are doing all of the heavy lifting, it still ends up being a pretty hefty time commitment for me to review and approve the audio files.  If Broken, Torn, and Frozen Prospects all sell well as audio books, I’ll push getting additional audio books out higher up the priority list.

Anyone that has happened to click on the Frozen Prospects product link here on the blog will have noticed that it’s now available at some new retailers (XinXii, Vook & DriveThruFiction).  Somehow I thought I’d pretty much exhausted the places that I could easily get to as an Indie author, but it turns out I was incredibly wrong and I couldn’t be happier.  I’ve got a list of eight more retailers to go out and investigate, which is incredibly exciting to me because each book at each retailer represents another hook out there by which I can hopefully bring in more readers.  Unfortunately I’m seeing that getting all 15 of my titles up at each retailer is going to require a sizable chunk of time.

In other news, it looks like Broken has now dropped out of the top 200 free books at iTunes.  It’s been a great ride, literally for weeks and weeks; and while I would have loved to see it continue to stay up there for months to come, I’m really gratefully to all of you who helped keep it there for so long.  As I’m writing this Broken is still number 36 in the top free Children’s Fiction, and Torn and Splintered have bounced in and out of the top 200 paid Children’s Fiction.  Splintered is currently #128.  Again, thank you to everyone that has helped spread the word about Va’del & Jain or Alec & Adri.  My being able to ‘write’ full time is mostly due to you all telling friends and family and I’m overwhelmed at having this chance.

It’s now become clear that if I’m not careful, I could spend all or nearly all of my time doing stuff that needs done but which isn’t the creative writing that my current fans are after and which they rightly deserve.  Because of that realization, I’ve pressed forward with book 3 of the Guadel Chronicles and have decided that all the rest of the stuff on my to-do list each day will simply have to wait until I’ve managed to get my daily quota of writing in.  I’ll leave an hour or so each evening to progress the non-writing side of things (like capitalizing on new retail channels, progressing the print copies of Frozen Prospects and Thawed Fortunes, and edits of the next two Reflections books (neither of which are Alec and Adri stories specifically-sorry, I really am hurrying every chance I get)), but please be patient it if takes me a bit longer than normal to get back to your e-mails.

Katie might kick me for saying this, and there is more than a little risk that we aren’t going to be able to hit this, but she and I have a goal of getting out True Believer, both of the Reflections novels, Guadel Chronicles #3 and the next Alec and Adri book in time for Christmas.  It’s going to be tight, especially if I let myself get very distracted with some of these other projects, but we’re going to try very hard to meet that goal as we know there are thousands of you out there already waiting with hundreds more coming onboard each month, and we’d like to be able to progress both of our major series such that you can relax with some of your favorite characters over the holidays.

As always thank you for all you do to help spread the word and for joining us on this adventure!

-Dean

Torn Audio Book at a Discounted Price

It looks like Audible has chosen to include Torn in the 1,000+ titles available this week at a discount (down to $5.95 from ~$18.00)

A great present for that person in your life who commutes :)

http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?asin=B00902GRL0

Thanks,

-Dean

Audio Book Sale!

A longer post will be coming sometime next week (I meant to get it out this week, but have been buried in audio files for Broken).
In the meantime, I just wanted to let you all know that there is a big sale going on at Audible.com.  They’ve got roughly a thousand titles discounted to $5.95, and audible members get an extra 30% off of that price.  It doesn’t look like Torn is going to be one of the ones that is discounted, but Frozen Prospects is http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?asin=B008ND3JD6.
The sale only lasts a week (through Sept 2nd).
More news soon!
-Dean

Writing Full Time!

This is a post that has been a long time coming.  I’m happy to announce that I’ll be pursuing writing full time.  Quitting the day job is a bit of a scary step, when you come right down to it; but ultimately no matter what you do, there is an element of risk.  The best part about writing is that while I’m not necessarily in more control of things, I’m betting on myself, and I’m betting on all of you.  That is a bet I’m willing to take.  Hopefully time will prove it out as being a smart bet, but barring some kind of major emergency Katie and I have agreed that I’ll be focused on writing for at least the next year and a half.  If things continue to improve at the same rate they have been, the odds are decent that I’ll be able to continue to do this full time long past that deadline.

For all of you, that is important because it means that I should be cranking out books at around four times the rate I would have done otherwise.  I’ve largely been getting up ‘backlist’ titles for the last year and a half, and as we’ve gotten closer and closer to getting all of the backlist up, it’s been weighing on my mind that you’d all have to wait longer and longer in order to get each new installment.  This change should help address that issue and hopefully means that I’ll be able to get new books out every few months.  It may take a while to get the pipeline filled back up (I’m still working on print and audio right now), but that is the pace that I’m hoping to hit.

I continue to be really grateful to all of you that help spread the word about my stories.  Contrary to what some would have you believe, it’s always been word of mouth that has moved books.  I’ll continue to write the best stories I can.  Hopefully with more practice I’ll get even better, but it’s all of you that help bring new fans onboard.  Please know that it is greatly appreciated!

Other miscellaneous updates:
The audio book for Torn is done and is undergoing final quality checks by the nice people at ACX.  It should start showing up on Audible, Amazon and iTunes sometime in the next week or two.

Katie and I have submitted the various files to get Frozen Prospects out as a print edition.  I expect we’re still weeks out from having the final product just the way we want it (it’s our first go at this).  Still, I think most of the work is done at this point and the rest of the novels should go much more quickly.

I’ll continue to check in here every week or two as various projects wrap up and go live.  The next Dark Reflections short story is really, really close to going live.  We’ve got a cover done, and now it’s just a matter of getting feedback from various beta readers.  So there’s still a little while before it will go live, but most of the effort has been invested now.  It’s feeling like definite progress.

As always-thanks.

-Dean

A Status Update and Other Tidbits

Three posts in one day is a new record for me (it’s only been possible because I’ve been off on vacation from the day job this week).

As you’ll have seen from the last two posts, Intrusion is live and Frozen Prospects is now available as an audio book.  Those two tidbits were worthy of their own posts, but I also wanted to highlight a couple of other items.

First, Broken is now free on Amazon.  That means you can get it at zero cost on Amazon, iTunes, Smashwords, Kobo, Diesel, and Sony. B&N is still $.99 because I don’t have a great way to make it free there.

Amazon’s algorithms have recommended it tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times to people, and tens of thousands of them are downloading it (It’s been in and out of the top 100 free books list on Amazon all week).  That’s particularly exciting to me because each of those downloads is a potential new fan and by now you know just how much I love the thought of being able to share Alec and Adri’s world with new people.  Now’s a great time for you to mention Broken to friends, family and complete strangers who happen to mention that they like YA Paranormal novels.  They can try it out with zero risk and every download helps push it up in the rankings such that Amazon is more likely to continue to recommend it to new readers.

Of course all of that goes for iTunes and the rest.  All indications are that Broken continues to do well at iTunes especially and as I write this it’s currently sitting at #107 out of all the free books there.  These are particularly exciting times for me for reasons which I’ll elaborate on more in the next few weeks.

Second, everything I just said about Broken is pretty much true about Frozen Prospects as well.  It’s been free for several months now everywhere but Barnes and Noble, and has likewise been downloaded thousands, if not tens of thousands of times.  I’ve been a bit hesitant to recommend Reflections to fans of The Guadel Chronicles and vice versa, but have recently had some readers reach out and tell me that they loved both series (thanks Claire), so I’m officially nudging all of you to try out whichever of the series you haven’t tried yet.  They are a bit different, so no guaranties, but they are both the kind of stuff that I like to read, so hopefully you’ll have an enjoyable experience.

Third, Splintered is now live on iTunes-apologies to everyone there for the delay.  It’s on my to-do list to look at the possibility of going direct there so as to eliminate the lag, but my to-do list is currently got a lot of other things on it as well.  As always you can purchase from Smashwords and sideload it onto your devices if the wait ever becomes too much.

Fourth, I’m getting quite a bit of questions (understandably so) about what comes next in either Reflections or The Guadel Chronicles, so I wanted to give you all a bit of a view into what I’m working on right now and what order I think I’ll get to the other projects presently on my docket.  I’m currently trying to finish off the audio books for Torn and Broken.  Once that is done, I’ll roll into trying to get Frozen Prospects into paperback and then I’ll proceed with getting my other novels into print.  To be honest, I’d much rather spend my time working on something new, but I’ve decided to prioritize print and audio for two reasons.  Many of you are reaching out and asking if you can get one of my novels in something other than e-book form, and exploiting these rights will provide another set of income streams which will put me that much closer to being able to do this full time while still being able to provide for my family.

While all of that is going on, Katie will be working on covers for two more books which are currently in the rough draft stage, and they’ll be going out to my editors and advanced readers.  One of those is another Reflections book that takes place just after Intrusion, but which focuses more on two new characters who will become more important later on in the series.  The other is set in the Reflections universe, but features a completely new cast of characters.  More to come on that one later as we get closer to having it done.

Once the audio and print versions of everything are done then the next project will be the third Guadel Chronicles book followed by another Reflections book which will pick the core Alec and Adri story back up.

That’s a large enough bundle of projects that for now I can’t give anyone any kind of firm release date for much of any of it.  Especially because I think I’ll probably sneak a couple of short stories in the mix somewhere and I’m currently in talks with someone to co-author a novel in a new universe.  I can tell you however that this will all go much more quickly than it has of late for a number of reasons, so don’t despair.

Lastly, (fifth) I’ve now put up suggested reading order diagrams for The Guadel Chronicles, and Reflections/Dark Reflections.  Hopefully that clarifies things for everyone.  I’ve come to realize that I’ve been a bit deficient, especially for Reflections, when it comes to delivering a clear message of what goes together and what order to read the various stories in.

As always, thanks for all you do to help get the word out-either actively through blogging, tweeting, recommending the series, or passively by buying the stories so that the retailers continue to recommend them to new readers.  There is quite a bit of fun still to come!

-Dean

Dean’s First Audio Book (Frozen Prospects)

The title of this post pretty much gives it all away, but I’m happy to announce that Frozen Prospects is now available as an audio book on Audible, Amazon and iTunes.  I had the pleasure of working with the talented Jack Chekijian on this particular audio book and he very kindly showed me the ropes on a project that ended up taking a lot more work than I’d realized it would at the outset.

Work has proceeded more or less in parallel on audio books for Broken and Torn, both of which should be finished up in the next couple of months so that you’ll have a full range of Dean Murray gateway drugs to give as Christmas presents to friends and family who prefer to listen to their stories :)

Here’s the Setup for any of you that haven’t read Frozen Prospects yet:
The invitation to join the secretive Guadel should have been the fulfillment of dreams Va'del didn't even realize he had. When his sponsors are killed in an ambush a short time later, he instead finds his probationary status revoked, and becomes a pawn between various factions inside the Guadel ruling body.


Jain's never known any life but that of a Guadel in training. She'd thought herself reconciled to the idea of a loveless marriage for the good of her people, but meeting Va'del changes everything. Their growing attraction flies against hundreds of years of precedent, but as wide-spread attacks threaten their world, the Guadel have no choice but to use even Jain and Va'del in their fight for survival.

Here are the links:
Audible
Amazon
iTunes

Thanks for stopping by to see what’s happening in this particular corner of the web.

-Dean

Intrusion is Live!

This post is more than a little late, but I just wanted to let you all know that Intrusion is officially live.

Here’s the setup:
Jess awoke to a world she doesn’t really understand, hounded by impulses that are quite literally more than any human could be expected to control.


It’s painfully evident that her friends and family are doing everything they can to help her regain her footing, but she can’t help resenting the fact that none of them lost as deeply as she lost in their last confrontation with the Coun’hij.


More than anything she wants to turn to Alec for help. The alpha of the pack should be a constant source of strength and reassurance, but in his own way he’s nearly as damaged as she is. What’s worse, a new threat has just arrived in Sanctuary and Jess is starting to wonder if Alec will sacrifice her as the weakest link in a crippled pack.

Those of you who’d signed up for my mailing list before Intrusion went live all got coupon codes to go get free copies of it, I’rone and Handoff as a thank you.  A few people that I saw actively promoting Reflections on Twitter got sneak previews of Intrusion a couple of days before it went live-also as a thank you for their efforts to help spread the word.

I can’t guarantee that I’ll always manage to get the thanks out to everyone who deserves it, and in fact I can guarantee that there are many, many of you out there helping spread the word in ways that I’ll never see, but I’ll continue to try and provide little perks here and there where I can.

Here are the links for the various places you can purchase Intrusion, apologies to all of the Apple, Kobo, Sony and Diesel users out there.  Unfortunately the aggregator I’m using to get books onto those sites takes a little while to get them pushed up to those particular retail stores.

As always, thank you everyone that tells a friend about Reflections or the Guadel Chronicles.  Your efforts are appreciated.

-Dean

AmazonBarnes & NobleSmashwords

Intrusion Cover Reveal!

Katie has finished up the cover for the next installment in the Reflections Series and I have to say I think it's absolutely the best one she's done yet.  It always amazes me how she can take a bunch of different stock photos and combine them into something so incredible.
Without further ado...
I don't want to spoil anything, but I will tell you all that this is a short story told from Jessica's perspective.
There are a couple of finishing touches that need squared away before Intrusion will go live on the usual retail sites, but I hope very much to have it up fairly soon.
Apologies for the wait, but some of you may be excited to hear that it's at least partially occasioned by the fact that we've been hard at work on getting audio books produced for Broken, Torn, and Frozen Prospects.  I'll post a bit more about that as we get close to those projects wrapping up.
One last thing, if you haven't signed up for my mailing list please consider doing so the next mailing is going to be really exciting!
Thanks,
Dean

Splintered is Live!

Just a quick update to let all of you know that the next book in the Reflections series is now live!
The setup:Most girls would have killed to be in Adri's shoes, in fact several people think that's exactly what she did. Of course life with a pack of shape shifters isn't quite what she expected. The time with Alec is great, but now that the rival pack is out of the picture, Alec's wolves are all starting to turn on each other, and Adri is finding there is less and less she can do to help hold the pack together.

Alec's determination to keep her at arm's length physically is just as frustrating as always, but his ongoing refusal to explain the larger world the pack is operating in is starting to become more than just something that keeps Adri up at night. It's starting to look like something that could get them all killed.
As of right now you can get Splintered on:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Splintered-Reflections-ebook/dp/B007R8PZAS/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1333594836&sr=8-2-spellBarnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1109923957?ean=2940014195621Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/113289
Smashwords will eventually push it out to Sony, Apple, etc. but that will take a few weeks.
I've dropped the price of Broken to $.99 on Amazon/B&N and free on Smashwords in association with Splintered going live, so now is a great time for people that haven't tried the series to give it a shot.  I have a bit of hope that Amazon will price match to free at some point in the next few weeks.  If that happens I'll post a brief update so that you can share the good news with friends and family who you think might like the series, but who haven't been willing to take a chance on it yet.
Thanks for all you do to help spread the word about Alec and Adri as well as Va'del and Jain.  I hope you all enjoy Splintered as much as I enjoyed writing it.  Don't forget to sign up for my mailing list if you haven't already.  I've got a treat on the way for everyone on the list.
Thanks,
Dean