Eric Kent Edstrom's Blog, page 18

Enjoying some pre-Christmas time with my folks in the frozen Wisconsin northwoods….

Enjoying some pre-Christmas time with my folks in the frozen Wisconsin northwoods. Where the pace of life is slow and the internet is slower.

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Announcing: The Undermountain Omnibus

I’m thrilled to announce that an omnibus edition of The Undermountain Saga is now available as Kindle ebook. You can get all three novels (Undermountain, Afterlife, and Starkiller) for less than the price of two of them. Basically, you save $5.

Buy it on Amazon.

Starkiller is Out!

I’m thrilled to announce that the final book in The Undermountain Saga is out!

Click here for the complete rundown.

Book Milestone: Off to Editor

Yesterday I emailed my editor the manuscript for the third (and final) book in The Undermountain Saga. This is a huge milestone and means I’ve only got a few more revision passes to do before the book will be ready for sale.

In the meantime I’m working on the second Sal Van Sleen story. I had to scrap a big portion of it because frankly it sucked. I love the basic idea for it, but I feel that everything I wrote to this point was kind of boring stuff. I need to start the story at a different spot.

 

Giveaway Winners

Congratulations to Jeremy, Pamela, Ronald, Huawei, and Jason for winning paperback copies of Shadow of the Oak in my Goodreads giveaway. The books are in the mail!

My New $46 Standing Desk

If you’ve ever | read | anything | on | the internet or watched the news, you have probably seen something about standing desks.

A standing desk is a desk you stand up at instead of slouching in front of in a chair.

Some studies have come out recently saying that despite your 30 minutes of daily excercise, you will die a horrible death because you sit at a computer all day and then go home and lounge in front of the TV.

Who knows if it’s true? For my part, I know I feel icky after a day of sitting in front of the computer. I decided to try the standing desk idea. But since I didn’t know if I’d be able to stand it (pun intended), I decided to try it on the cheap.

Turns out, my cheap solution will likely be my only solution because it’s great!

This is my standing desk setup.

For the past year, my work desk has been a Galant table ($210) from Ikea. I didn’t include its price in my calculation because I already had it. The Galant has adjustable height legs. Though not essential, it is a useful feature for tweaking the height.

The Ikea Galant table with adjustable height legs. Mine has a very dark, wood top.

For good ergonomics, I had to get my screens and keyboard at the appropriate height. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t bending my neck or leaning over to type. I did some measurements, held my keyboard in the air, and wrote down some numbers. Since I didn’t know what platforms I would find, I gave myself a range of heights and widths and headed off on my quest.

My first (and last) stop was Walmart. I had low hopes as I snooped around their furniture aisle. I didn’t see anything even remotely suitable, and I was about to give up when I found the Mainstays End Table ($13). These tables are almost 20 inches high, which was at the low end of my height range, but they were cheap and matched the surface color of my existing Ikea table. I have a big iMac and a second screen, so I got two of them. The reason I almost missed them was that Walmart did not have any assembled ones on display.

Here are my two End Tables supporting my iMac and Cinema Display

I was thinking about getting a third end table for my keyboard, but there wouldn’t be room for my mouse, water bottle, and assorted junk I need handy. Fortunately, right next to the end tables was the box for the Mainstays Coffee Table ($19).

 

For a coffee table, it’s actually pretty small, less than three feet long. It turns out that it has the perfect surface area for my work surface. Also, it’s the perfect height for my keyboard at 15.75″ high. (For reference, I’m six feet tall. A nice thing about the Galant desk is that its legs are adjustable, so this set up could be made to work for shorter or taller people.)

You can see here that it holds my keyboard, mouse, and other stuff quite nicely.

There is a reason why the Mainstay tables are cheap. They are kind of junky. But assembly wasn’t very difficult, requiring a screwdriver, a hammer, and about and hour to put together all three tables. They look pretty nice and are sturdy enough for the job.

So there it is! I’ve spent the day in front of this new setup and and so far so good. The nice thing is that I can convert this back to a seated arrangement in about two minutes. I’ll post a follow up after I’ve used it for a while.

 

About the Rumors that I’m Writing a Play . . .

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, mostly because I didn’t have too much to report. I turned the beta copies of Book 3 over to readers a couple weeks back, so I’m waiting to get all of them back before returning to revisions. Based on the feedback so far, I don’t expect too much in the way of rewriting.

In the meantime I’ve been working on the second Sal Van Sleen book and resting my brain. Today I realized that SVS 2 is likely going to be a much longer project than the first one, which was just 20k words. I’m quite excited by the plot I’m cooking up, but it is requiring me to write a play.

Yes. Write a play. Because in the book, there is a play. And since I’m writing the book, I have to write the play.

The amazing thing is that I’m really loving the play and I just might do a novelization of it once this book is done.

I have another novella mostly finished in first draft. I like how it ends, but I don’t quite like the middle third. I’ve been letting it simmer. I may trunk it, or I may crack the code on it and finish it.

All of this is to say that stories are coming, whether you want them or not.

Paperback Giveaway: Shadow of the Oak

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Shadow of the Oak
by Eric Edstrom

Giveaway ends October 19, 2012.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

Cover Reveal (again): Shadow of the Oak

One of the great things about indie publishing is the ability to change the cover of a book after it’s been published. I had a cover, I didn’t like it. I had a second cover, I didn’t like it.

Cover number three is here! I think this one will stick. Drumroll please . . .

New Release: Shadow of the Oak

My new novella is now available on Amazon and soon on B&N and Kobo.

Shadow of the Oak is a YA urban fantasy with shades of horror and a lot of humor.

And don’t forget to enter my contest to win an audiobook of Undermountain!