David R. Michael's Blog, page 8

Four Crows Landing Store

 
Over the past couple weeks I’ve been adding a simple bookstore to the Four Crows Landing Web page.
 
Four Crows Landing Store
 
Eventually, all of my printed books and ebooks will be available there. Right now, though, it’s just a handful. I’ve been adding a few per week, as I get time, and I will continue to do that.
 
The Four Crows Landing Store allows me to do a couple things I’ve been wanting to do. First, I can offer bookstores and other retailers a way to purchase printed books with a discount for quantity (40% discount on orders of 10 or more books).
 
And, secondly, I can offer a special deal to regular readers: If you purchase the printed version of a book from the Four Crows Landing Store, you will receive the ebook version for free.
 
-David
 
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I HaZ LogOExcerpts Should Include a BlurbI Like Publishing

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, October 8, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


GoSH2
Brainstorming.


1049




Tuesday


GoSH2


883




Wednesday








Thursday


GoSH2


508




Friday


GoSH2


1558




Saturday








Sunday


















Total



3998




YTD Total Words: 108872
GoSH2 Project Total: 6776
 
Reading List

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, October 1, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


GoSH2


1527




Tuesday


GoSH2


144




Wednesday


GoSH2


556




Thursday








Friday


GoSH2


551




Saturday








Sunday


















Total



2778




YTD Total Words: 104874
GoSH2 Project Total: 2778
 
Reading List

Altar of Eden by James Rollins.

 
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Devils, Donuts & Dark Vengeance – Ebooks for Halloween!

 
“Sweet Tooth” – A horror short story.
 
Ted Millet, divorced and broke and tired of getting up at 2 am, shows up for work anyway at the Jenny-Buns Donut Shop. If he doesn’t make the donuts, no one else will. This morning, though, he has a new customer waiting for him that makes his ex-wife seem almost human. (3100-word short story)
 
NOTE: “Sweet Tooth” is included in Demon Candy (below)
 




“Sweet Tooth” Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble)


$.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$.99




 

 
Demon Candy – Four linked stories of Hell, and Life, and Life in Hell. Illustrated with paintings by Don Michael, Jr.
 
“Summer Breeze” – The demon Jike decides he needs a change.
 
“Inferno” – Undead hellcat Canto gets a night out on campus of lust and gluttony and the other deadly sins.
 
“Sweet Tooth” – Donut baker Ted Millet, divorced and broke, has a new customer that makes his ex-wife seem almost human.
 
And in the novella “Afterimage” Emily M-Something March, dead and damned for thirty years, finds herself back in her home town with a fifty-foot demon looking for her.
 




Demon Candy Edition


Price




Trade paperback (Amazon)


$11.95




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$3.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble)


$3.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$3.99




 

 

The Summoning Fire – A novel of vengeance in Hell on Earth.
 
All Reese Howard has left is pain. Pain and a pump-action shotgun.
 
Sam, her lover, is dead. The half-devil crime boss known only as the Old Man killed Sam right in front of Reese. A blood sacrifice to fuel his latest powerplay in Hell on Earth.
 
Reese hopes the Old Man made a mistake, leaving her alive. But she doubts it. He knows she’s coming. The bastard has to know.
 
Whatever the Old Man knows or doesn’t know, Reese plans to make him pay.
 
And she plans to die trying.
 




The Summoning Fire Edition


Price




Trade paperback (Amazon)


$12.95




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$5.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble)


$5.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$5.99




 

 
The World Wears Thin – A collection of eight Sci-Fi and Horror stories, with illustrations by Don Michael, Jr.
 
“Until Death Do Us Part” – Ross and Marjorie grow old together in undead retirement.
 
“Baptism” – Drunk on mojitos, high on love, and smelling of sex on the beach, Myra Acevedo went swimming and drowned. Then she became the end of the world.
 
“A Fine Mess” – Kenneth hunts edible Strings in the Frayed remnants of the vegetation of the world.
 
“Curtain Call” – The White Hot Hemisphere Community Theater Company chose Shakespeare’s Hamlet for their first production after the cataclysm–and possibly their last before the end of the world.
 
PLUS 4 MORE!
 




The World Wears Thin Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$3.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble)


$3.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$3.99




 
Related Posts:
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, September 24, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


GoSH2 outlined chapter 4, 5.







Tuesday


GoSH2 outlined chapter 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.







Wednesday


GoSH2 outlined chapter 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.







Thursday


GoSH2 outlined chapter 17.
GoSH2 brainstorming and reconsidering.







Friday


GoSH2 outlined chapter 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23.
GoSH2 outline complete!







Saturday








Sunday


















Total








YTD Total Words: 102096
 
Reading List

The Book of Spies by Gayle Lynds.

 
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My Longest Outline Ever

 
I just completed the initial draft of my outline for GoSH2, the sequel to New Fairy Moon. At just over 11K words, this is the longest outline I’ve ever written. So far, both GoSH books have had longer outlines than I generally create. Which is kinda funny, since I plan for the GoSH books to be about 70K words when finished, significantly shorter than the Gunwitch novels (100K-ish) whose outlines are around 5K words.
 
I don’t really understand it. I’ve talked about this before, last November. Still not sure what the difference is.
 
If GoSH2 has the same outline-to-completed-word-count ration as GoSH1, it’ll weigh in about 90K words when completed. Which is OK, I guess. My daughter is actually all for that. She wants the books to be longer.
 
I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out. Hopefully, before Thanksgiving.
 
I plan to start writing GoSH2 from this somewhat oversized outline next week. More news as it happens.
 
Have a good weekend!
 
-David
 
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The Yawning Chasm of the Middle

 
That’s why I outline my novels before I start writing them: Between the beginning and the end yawns the bottomless chasm of the middle, which must be filled–or at least bridged.
 
So I create a high-level, light-and-airy structure that uses what I know of the beginning and ending as its foundation.
 
Something like this:
 

Bristol Clifton Suspension Bridge
Photograph by this guy
 
If it weren’t for those scary middles, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time outlining. Short stories, for example, generally don’t have a huge, devouring chasm of a middle. So I just come up with the story touchstones I want to hit, and launch.
 
I’m currently outlining my next project, GoSH2, a sequel to New Fairy Moon. And, as you might have already guessed, I’m outlining my way through the middle right now.
 
I’ll see you on the other side! Hopefully.
 
-David
 
PS I should almost create a new blog topic: “David Whines About Writing Novel Middles”
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, September 17, 2012.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2


1512




Tuesday


Gunwitch2


1476




Wednesday


Gunwitch2 – FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE
GoSH2 Brainstorming


568




Thursday


GoSH2 brainstorming







Friday


GoSH2 brainstorming
Outlined GoSH2 chapter 1, 2, 3.







Saturday


GoSH2 brainstorming







Sunday


















Total



3556




YTD Total: 102096
Gunwitch2 Final Total: 104349
 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday


Updated “Sweet Tooth” ebook for KDP, PubIt, SW.




Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday


Updated “Nostalgia” ebook for KDP, PubIt, SW.




Sunday


Updated “Baptism” ebook for KDP, PubIt, SW.




 
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My Evolving Passive Marketing

 
I released my first ebook, “Nostalgia”, two years ago last week. If you compare that ebook to my more recent releases, like Dragons of the Stars and New Fairy Moon, you’ll see a lot of differences. I’ve simplified and standardized my formatting of the body text. I’ve standardized the copyright notice and how I include the cover image in the ebook document. And, most recently, I’ve changed how I use the “About the Author” section.
 
“Nostalgia” was my first indie published ebook, so there were not any other titles to list. But for each ebook I released after that, I added existing titles (with links) to the “About the Author” section. I took the simplest approach possible, and simply listed all my available books in each release. The list got longer and longer and became more unwieldy. At first this was because I created links based on the service/vendor I was uploading the ebook to. The Amazon KDP version of the document had Amazon links. The Barnes & Noble PubIt version had links to Barnes & Noble. And the Smashwords version had links to Smashwords.
 
Besides the list of links getting long, I eventually realized that listing everything was not always appropriate. For example, I didn’t list The Summoning Fire (dark urban fantasy with lots of violence and adult content) in the back of The Girl Who Ran With Horses (tween-teen coming of age contemporary fantasy). That one was obvious. Most of the other ebooks, though, I listed everything on the hope that maybe someone would actually see something they wanted to try.
 
In late 2011, with the release of a few more single stories, like “Waking Up Can Kill You Some Days” (A Gray Angel Story) and “When Writers Attack”, I went a step further. I started adding excerpts from novels that seemed related. “Waking Up Can Kill You Some Days”, for example, has an excerpt from Gunwitch: A Tale of the King’s Coven (on the premise that although one is contemporary fantasy and the other is flintlock fantasy, they both feature a woman with magic and a gun).
 
I stopped including excerpts, though, when I realized that, in more than one case, the novel excerpt was longer than the featured short story. Just seemed odd.
 
So, starting with the release of New Fairy Moon in May, I do it this way: I include one or two (no more) “Also by David” books at the end of the ebook. I include a large-ish thumbnail image of the ebook cover and the backcover description of the book. New Fairy Moon, predictably, gave The Girl Who Ran With Horses as its “also by”, as does Running Free & Stevie Gets Back in the Saddle. Last week, I updated “Sweet Tooth” to list only Demon Candy and The Summoning Fire.
 
I like the simplicity of this approach. No bulky excerpt text. No links (that some vendors don’t appreciate). Just a thumbnail of the cover and the description of the book.
 
I’ll be updating all of my older ebooks this way, including “Nostalgia”, over the next few months. And, come next year and a few more novel releases, I may update them again, to promote the newer novels (for example, New Fairy Moon will want to promote its sequels as well as The Girl Who Ran With Horses).
 
-David
 
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Days of Planning, Writing & Editing

 
I’ve started brainstorming in earnest for my next project, the first of several planned sequels to New Fairy Moon. The project name is, somewhat predictably, GoSH2.
 
Starting this new project made me wonder how much time I spent planning, writing and editing other books. Here are the stats for Gunwitch: A Tale of the King’s Coven.
 
Days spent planning: 17
 
Days spent writing it: 54
 
Days spent editing it: 34 (includes copyediting)
 
Total days: 105
 
Total finished word count: 103,000
 

And here are the stats for New Fairy Moon:
 
Days spent planning: 15
 
Days spent writing: 45
 
Days spent editing: 37 (includes copyediting)
 
Total days: 97
 
Total finished word count: 67,000

 
I can see how the higher per-day quotas I followed for Gunwitch made a big difference in how many total days were spent. Because New Fairy Moon is 1/3 smaller than Gunwitch, but took nearly as many days to write.
 
Which probably means I should up my per-day quotas again.
 
-David
 
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