Alia Luria's Blog, page 4

Read Chapter One, Editing News and Giveaway

I hope everyone had a great week this week! Mine was exhausting, as I finished up the final edit for Compendium, posted Chapter One for everyone to enjoy, kicked off the Goodreads Giveaway, and made progress on several other fronts as well. The featured image for this post is an artsy Waterlogue version of my first draft of Compendiumprinted out and ready for ravaging, er, editing I mean. It’s hard to believe that I have been through four version and almost an additional year’s worth of work since then. I’m starting to get nostalgic, and the book isn’t even out yet! Anyway, onto the news.

Chapter One Excerpt: For those who would like to read Chapter One of Compendium, it is now available on alialuria.com to read for free, in its finally edited (but not proofed) version. You can find it on the book page for Compendium or get to it directly by clicking here.

Copy Edit: I spent a good number of my evenings (who are we kidding, nights) going through Compendium and doing a final edit. As of Wednesday, it has been turned back to Angela for proofing. Once that proof read is done and any fixes incorporated, I will be ready to submit Compendium in ebook form to Amazon, Publishers Weekly, and any bloggers requesting the ebook for review. I will also be able to prepare the final print interior and order print proofs for Compendium. I am very excited to hold it in my hands and make sure the cover lines up properly and the formatting is correct. Once the print version is proofed, I will be ordering advance copies for Goodreads Giveaway winners and any bloggers who have requested a review copy.

Goodreads Giveaway: Speaking of the Goodreads Giveaway, I’m excited to announce that Compendium was requested over 550 times in the first twenty-four hours (this is better than all but two other Goodreads Giveaways launching on the same day). As of day three, we are currently at 790 requests. There is still plenty of time to enter, so if you are Goodreads users, click here to request a free autographed copy of Compendium arriving a month before the public release date. I wish I could provide a copy for everyone who entered, but unfortunately, even at author my rate, that would be prohibitively expensive for me. I am always willing to provide a copy to those willing to read it and provide honest reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, so please get in touch via the links on my press page if you are interested in reviewing Compendium. Please also note that I have opened the Goodreads Giveaway to residents of Canada and Great Britain in addition to the United States. I love international readers, so I hope at least a few international readers win!

Updates for the Week of Feb. 16

This week, I have been writhing in pain, first from some sort of stomach virus and then from a migraine that may have been brought on by dehydration from the stomach virus. Either way, it has not been pleasant. Nonetheless, we are still making forward momentum on the release of Compendium. Without further whining, here are this week’s updates:

Copy Edit: I received Compendium back from editor, Angela Brown, just today. She’s done a very thorough job, and I’m very impressed. It will probably take me about a week to go through and make all of her suggested changes. At that point, I will turn it back to her for a final proofing, and Compendium will be finalized! This means that I will start to post excerpts of the final novel here on this site and begin submitting it for reviews, so stay tuned!

Blog Tour: Candace Robinson at CBB Book Promotions has been working hard to get my blog tour organized and launched. The banner above is for the sign-up process for the blog tour. I am nervous but excited and hope that she gets a good response from bloggers. If you are interested in doing a Compendium book review, interview or excerpt for your blog, please go on over and sign up here. She has been a delight to work with, and I’m excited for the blog tour to get here! It’s officially scheduled from May 4th to the 15th, and I will post stops and further information as I get it.

COMPENDIUM Available for Preorder!

Releases on May 5, 2015!

I have pretty much announced this everywhere but here, so I’m glad to announce thatCOMPENDIUM is finally available for preorder! It goes into copyediting in 5 days with editor Angela Brown. You can order it in paperback from my site alialuria.comas well as ebook at Amazon. If you are international, it’s available on Amazon UK, CA, AU, MX, ES, IT, NL, DE, IN, and others.

If you are a kindle owner, a prime member, or a kindle unlimited subscriber, you can download and rea...

Thoughts on The Bone Clocks

I hesitate to call this a book review, so I will just characterize it as my thoughts after reading David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks. This is one of the books on my MFA reading list, but I won’t actually be doing a close reading essay on this book. It did help me consider David Mitchell’s strengths and weakness. That said, if you haven’t read The Bone Clocks but you do plan to read it and don’t want the story spoiled, you may want to skip this post.

The only other book that I have read of Mitch...

Close Reading 1 of 12 (Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin)

Note: This is a blog post based on my initial thoughts after readingLeft Hand of Darkness and is not the actual close reading essay for my MFA.

As part of theMFA coursework, we are required to close read twelve separate books and write a short essay analyzing the craft of the books in a way that can help us with our own writing. My first close reading was ofLeft Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin. One of the challenges of writing science fiction and fantasy novels is how can an author conv...

England, Dec. 29, 2014 – Jan. 12, 2015

For my full collection of England photos, check my Flickr account!

Filed under: Travel Tagged: England, harry potter studio tour, London, photography, pictures, stratford-upon-avon, travel, wroxton

Hello London

I have finally returned from my relatively extended stay in England. I first visited London for some sight-seeing. On January 3rd, I took the “Hogwarts Express” to Wroxton Abbey for my first residency in the Fairleigh Dickinson MFA program. I have been uploading all of my photos to Flickr, but for some reason, the mobile app seems to be uploading them randomly instead of in order. I will have to organize the album by date once I get everything uploaded.

I waffled between doing a text post and...

Final Book Cover for Compendium!

AlthoughCompendiumis still in edits, my partner has finalized the book cover design, both front and back. She’s actually finalized the book cover for the next book as well, but I haven’t written it yet, so that makes it hard to do the back blurb. I suppose that just means that I have to get my butt in gear. If it’s too small to read in the image, the blurb text reads:

On the heavily forested planet of Lumin, the network has slept, dormant, for over six hundred cycles. Only a select few remembe...

T Minus Ten Days and Counting…

So, the last seven days have been all hustle and bustle. Although the MFA residency doesn’t start until January 3rd, I will be traveling to London early to enjoy some much-needed relaxation time. We have, in fact, already secured our tickets to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, the Tower of London, the New Year’s Eve fireworks and made other tentative plans as well (such as nerding out in front of the Sherlock staple Speedy’s and consuming a full English breakfast).

Preparations are underway for n...

Long Lost Update

I know I start every blog post this way, but it’s been a while since I posted! Work has been screamingly busy, and I have been exhausted. I was fully and completely prepared to participate in NaNoWriMo 2014, but sadly, I only wrote 237 words total in November. Pathetic. That said, at least I can say that I have started writing OCULARIS (or OCULARIUM – still haven’t quite decided).

Editing has also been going more slowly than contemplated on COMPENDIUM, primarily because the folks who have been...