Doug Dandridge's Blog, page 15

The Deep Dark Well Reaches 5K Sales. A Tale of Self-Publishing.

 

This week I reached  a number of milestones.  Exodus: Empies at War: Book 3 went over 10K sales, a year after it was released.   Book 1 of the Exodus series went over 18K, a year and a half after its release.  Book 2 went over 14K sales.  Several other books went over some level of thousands sold.  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1 went over 4K sales, while overall I have gone over 84K sales of ebooks and paperbacks, mostly ebooks if truth be told.  This all happened in the last week, in a weird juxtaposition of things coming together.  But to this author The Deep Dark Well going over 5K was the most significant.  The Deep Dark Well started the whole thing off with a giveaway of over 4K books.  Two months later Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1 was released and took off.  The Deep Dark Well was my first book released on Amazon.  It was also the first book I submitted to major publishers and actually received personal rejections for, somewhat of a victory in and of itself.

So what is so significant about this one book that is not even in my most popular series going over 5,000 sales in a little under two and half years?  Because, even though it is not a top seller, even for this one author, it has been steadily selling books every month.  Fifty so far his month, sixty-five last, seventy-four the month before.  If this had been a traditionally published book of the old model, with sales numbers like that through a worldwide distribution network, it would no longer be on the shelves.  But the wonderful thing about the new self-publishing model is that books stay on the digital bookshelves forever.  With no sales, or twenty thousand sales, New York Times Best Seller or unknown, it doesn’t matter.  The book will stay there forever (or at least until civilization falls), allowing people to browse the electronic stacks and find the book.  The Deep Dark Well did not put a lot of money in my pocket last month, and probably won’t this month.  Still, last month it earned about $130 that it otherwise wouldn’t if it wasn’t available.  Not enough to pay rent, or even utilities, but enough to see some movies and eat out.  And it looks to continue to sell some books each month for years to come.

I have several books that are approaching the 300 sales mark.  One book, The Hunger, just went over 300, which again is not much to brag about.  But even with slight sales, those books, which are all highly rated in the few reviews they have, continue to sit on the electronic shelves, hopefully to one day take off.  If they never do, if they continue to sell two to ten books a month, it is still income from my work.

Overall, this is very good news for authors.  I remember years ago when an author friend of mine, who was a midlist writer, was complaining about how none of her past work was still available.  This traditionally has been the steady income stream of midlist writers.  And was taken away from them by the economics of limited space in the bookstore.  She has since bought the rights back for all of her books, and has published them as ebooks.  So now, in the electronic publishing age, we can all keep our past work on the shelves, continuing to sell a few here or there.  They never go out of print.

Filed under: eBooks, Fantasy, Future Prediciton, Kindle, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Websites, Writing Tagged: electronic bookshelf, Exodus: Empires at War, midlist, sales, The Deep Dark Well

Legion I: Lords of Fire (The Shattering).

 

I met Van Allen Plexico originally on the Space Opera page on Facebook, or was that the Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans page, both of which he frequents.  He has also started another page, Pulp Cosmic.  Drop in and get to know him.  So his name was familiar to me when I saw him on a panel at Dragon*Con, with his books, many self or small press published, on the table in front of him.  After returning from Dragon*Con I purchased his book, Legion I: Lords of Fire (The Shattering) for my kindle.  Now, I had read many other self published or small press science fiction books that were really unsatisfying, to say the least.  I loved this book from the beginning, in which…  Well, no I won’t spoil it, except to say it starts off with intrigue at the highest level of the Empire.  I give this book five stars (and in fact I just did on Amazon.  Sorry to have taken so long.)

Now, this is not military science fiction.  It is more like pulp and fantasy mixed with scifi.  It doesn’t go into rich detail about the tech.  You know it’s there and that it works, and that’s all it needs.  Of more importance is the intrigue going on between the church and the Empire, and the manifestations of the returning gods.  Odds are that my readers and fans will like this book too, since they also seem to be fans of Star Wars, Star Trek and others.  It’s definitely worth the $3.99 investment, and it proves why this guy has been voted Pulp Author of the Year not once, but twice.  Van also appears at many conventions through the year, and will be at the Alabama Phoenix Festival at the end of this month, as well as Dragon*Con at the end of August, and is always willing to sign his books.  I will see him at the Alabama Phoenix Festival, and if anyone in the area wants to meet me as well, here’s your chance.

To get Legion I: Lords of Fire click the link.  He has two other books in the series, and hopefully more to come.

Filed under: Uncategorized

How I Did a Giveaway on Amazon.

Today was the last day of my five day giveaway on Amazon.   This is the 8th giveaway I have done since September of 2012, when I gave away 4,035 copies of The Deep Dark Well, which has gone on to sell 4,961 copies since.  More importantly, I believe it jump started the sales of my Exodus:Empires at War series.   With a little over seven more hours to go in this giveaway I have passed out 4,537 copies, mostly through Amazon US.   If I can get a thousand sales of each of the other five Exodus books each (so far) the giveaway will have more than served its purpose.  The total number of books I have given away is more than sixteen thousand, and I have sold over 78,000 books.  To me this has been a major part of my sales strategy.  Now, I can’t guarantee the results I have achieved.  In fact, not all the giveaways have been that helpful.  I gave away 1,242 copies of my vampire book, The Hunger, and then only sold 296 copies, despite people who have read the book telling me how good it is.  Giveaways are not always the answer, but they can be helpful.  Now, what I am about to talk about goes for Amazon Free Days, which requires putting the book on KDP Select.  There is another way to make books free on Amazon, Permifree, so to speak.  To do this you have to have the book published on multiple platforms, and then make it free on one of those platforms.  If you report it yourself to Amazon they will make it free on their catalogue as well.  This is not the way I have done it.  Instead, I go with the five free days they give each book in a 90 day period.

First, I schedule the book on Amazon through the Bookshelf and Reports page.  I want to make sure the book is going to be free on those days before I put in the time and effort on the other steps.  I try to schedule it more than two weeks ahead of time, because some of the publicizing steps require two weeks lead time to set up.  Now, once the book is scheduled I go to a site like Author’s Marketing Club and go to their free sign up page.  This lists about sixteen or so pages that will post, blog or tweet a freebee, including AMC’s own page.  It normally takes less than an entire evening to sign up on all these sites.   Since some of the pages require two weeks lead time, this is the reason for the more than two week scheduling lead time.  Most will allow you to schedule just a couple of days ahead, while there have been some that would only allow scheduling on the first morning of the giveaway.  Some thoughts about budgets.  Some sites have a guaranteed feature that can cost from ten to forty dollars.  This time I spent about forty bucks for all the guaranteed placements I wanted.  That part set, I move on.

I next look for pages on Facebook that will allow posting freebees.  There are quite a few, and I didn’t really bother with them this time around, but I still recommend doing it if you have the time.  You need to look on the pages’ About section and get an idea if they allow people to post their own promotions.  Some do, some make you request that they post.   But either way, it’s more publicity.  It is not recommended to post without permission, as they can pull the post down.   I also like to blog about the giveaway about a week ahead of time, and post that blog on pages of people who might be interested in the genre I am writing about.  Now to Twitter.  I tweet about the upcoming giveaway for about a week ahead of time, then tweet on the days of the promo with a link to the book in the message.  Using a program like Hootsuite can allow you to set up messages for days at a time.  Another good practice is to join an indie author”s page or site that has an active membership that tweets.  You tweet theirs, they tweet yours, and the tweet gets out to a lot more followers.  But the important thing is to start tweeting theirs well ahead of the promotion so you can build up some good will and get the return tweets.  I use the Independent Author’s Network, which has a lot of good author’s who are willing to reciprocate.  Using the groups hashtag (#whatever) will make sure all the members on twitter get your message.  Other hashtags, like #amreadng, #scifi #fantasy, etc, can expand your reach to people who are looking for those hashtags.

Finally, the first morning of the giveway, I tweet to these people, which can add to the number of retweets.  At last check, all of these accepted my message, though I can’t guarantee that any retweeted it.

@BookGoodies

@kindlenews

@kindlefantasies

@DigitalBkToday

@Bookyrnextread

@kindleebooks

@kindleebook

@kindle_eBooks_

@Kindlestuff

@ZilchEbooks

@KindleBookKing

@KindleFreeBook

@Kindlefreebooke

@freekindlebook

@free_kindle

@FreeReadFeed

@4FreeKindleBook

@FreeKindleStuff

@KindleUpdates

@Booksontheknob

@Kindle_promo

@IndAuthorSucess

@KindleDaily

@DailyBook4Free

@FreeKindBooks

@IndieKindle

And ther you have everything I do for a free book promotion.  Again, I can’t guarantee it will work, but it has worked for me.

Filed under: Agents, Conferences, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Kindle, Magic, Military, Multiverse, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Past, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Tropes, Typos, Websites, Writing Tagged: Amazon, Author Marketing Club, Hootsuite, Independent Author Network, kindle promotions, Kindle Reports, tweet, Twitter

Guest Post With Kevin Ikenberry

 

Today I am hosting a guest post by my friend and colleague Keven Ikenberry.  I met Kevin at the Superstars Writing Seminar in Colorado Springs this year.  He is a serving Army Officer (Major) in Space Command, and a very interesting guy.  Above is a link to his book on Amazon.

 

Why did you decide to write science fiction?

When I started writing for publication in 2009, I gravitated to science fiction for two reasons.  First, it’s what I read the most of growing up.  I grew up with Star Wars.  I think I saw it in the theater six or seven times.  From there came The Black Hole, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Battlestar Galactica, and the Star Trek movies.  It was a good time to be a kid!  I also remember that my dad had Asimov and Clarke on the shelves in his office.  Science fiction was all around, and being an impressionable kid, it had long reaching effects that dovetail into the second reason.  Before I returned to active duty, I worked in aerospace science education for more than a decade.  I was fortunate enough to work with the U. S. Space Camp program in Huntsville, Alabama as a variety of positions before working with the Challenge Center for Space Science Education at two of their Challenger Learning Centers.  Using simulation to educate campers and participants at all levels was something that came naturally.

In 2009, I reached a point with my job where I was comfortable asking my commander if I could take a course in creative writing.  To be fair, I have a minor in English from my college days and with a Master’s degree it wasn’t something I needed to do.  But, something was nagging at me and I took the course.  The very first assignment came back with a note from the instructor – “Why aren’t you published?”  I did not have an answer, so I began writing, in earnest, for publication at that point.  I’ve written some romance and horror, but I tend to gravitate to science fiction because of all those reasons and the simple fact that I love it.

Who are your influences within the field?

I’ve already mentioned Asimov and Clarke, but of the two I found Clarke’s softer, human take on science fiction both easier to read and more enjoyable.  I read most all of Clarke’s work through the 80s and 90s, and had the opportunity to read Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Ben Bova.  David Brin, Gregory Benford, Jack McDevitt, John Scalzi, John Ringo, David Farland, Eric Flint and a host of others fill my shelves.  I recently met Hugh Howey as well, and his influence as a self-publisher is really pushing me along.

My biggest influence in the field is Robert Heinlein.  I read Starship Troopers in college, and I maintain a dog-eared and worn out copy on my shelf.  When I taught ROTC, I recommended it to every single cadet.  As a young officer, there were many things that I learned from that book (and others that followed) that I did not learn as a cadet.  To me, Heinlein’s work is timeless in that he faithfully wrote his characters into their worlds.  Sometimes I struggle with how a person would react in the future.  Reading the works of those who have mastered that is as much a learning experience as it is a good read.

I get a lot of influence from outside of the traditional science fiction field as well.  Stephen King’s Dark Tower series remains one of my favorites.  I am a huge fan of Elmore Leonard, too.  I’m drawn to stories, not so much the characters or the settings.  Both King and Leonard are masters of pulling a reader into a story without a lot of fanfare or fuss.  I enjoy that.

I understand you are a serving officer in the United States Army.  How has this helped your development as a writer in science fiction?

Great stories come from great experiences.  The military has been a major part of my life for the last twenty-plus years.  I have had many opportunities and done a lot of things that find their way into my writing.  Being able to take those experiences and tell a good story from them have really helped my writing.  It’s one thing to be able to tell a story to a group of peers who understand all of the subtle nuances and acronyms without explanation.  it’s something totally different to try and tell that same story (or the relevant pieces of it that work with the overall plot) in a matter that a reader without any military experience will understand without having to stop and Google something.  Doing so has had a huge impact on my writing, and with all of the experiences I’ve had, it’s something I can hopefully deliver to a reader.

Tell us a little bit about your current book, Runs In The Family.

Runs In The Family is the story of Mairin Shields, an outcast at the prestigious Eden Academy.  Without a civil service assignment and physically unfit for military service, Mairin is going nowhere fast.   When a convincing recruiter offers her genetic perfection for participation in a classified experiment, she goes to war, or so she thinks.

Without transport to the fight, Mairin meets and falls in love with Tallenaara, a beautiful Styrahi architect whose mission and past will come to haunt both of them.  When the enemy mounts a massive attack that threatens Earth’s allies, Mairin finds herself leading inexperienced troops under an incompetent commander against a shadowy enemy whose tactics are hauntingly familiar. Winning the war could cost her more than her life.  Faced with the most difficult choice of her young life, Mairin can only watch as her world spins out of control.

There’s something for everyone in this book, romance, intrigue, and a lot of combat action.  The book is available on Amazon, iTunes, Nook, and Kobo for ebook options, and paperback is through Amazon only.

My Amazon page is at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00ASFBXT4

  What are your plans for future books?

I am waiting to hear from a potential publisher for my next book, Walkabout which follows in the same universe as Runs In The Family, but about one hundred years in the future.  The genetic process that Mairin underwent has become a full-fledged cloning process, but there are issues.  A test subject will not have any idea about their identity and must recover that over the course of a year.  If they fail to, they are euthanized.  Walkabout follows one such subject and his journey across the Earth to remember who he was and determine if the future he awoke to is worth saving.

I’m also editing two books I wrote after recovering from surgery last year.  One is a story of a salvage gone wrong and the other is a science fiction romance.  I hope to have both edited this year as well as another collection of short stories.  So far, 2014 has been a busy year.  I hope to keep that string of releases going.

Kevin’s Book can be found at Amazon:  Runs in the Family

 

 

Filed under: Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Conferences, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Kindle, Military, Movies, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Past, Plotting, Quantum Physics, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, Titles, Tropes, Websites, Writing Tagged: Guest Post, Independent Author, Indie Author, Kevin Ikenberry, Runs In The Family, Superstars Writing Seminar

Exodus 1 is Free, and 6 Is on the Horizon.

 

Exodus 1 will be free from 04/25-04/29/2014.  Also, Exodus: Empires of War: Book 6: The Day of Battle, will be released on 04/27/2014.  And now, the extended blurb for 1:

The Exodus series has to date sold over 58,000 copies, and has over 550 worldwide reviews on Amazon, with a 4.4 star average rating.  Books three through five have made it to number one in Military Science Fiction and Space Opera on Amazon UK, and has hit the top ten in those categories in the US, book 3 actually hitting number two in both categories.  Book 6 is coming out on April 27th, and in celebration I am giving away book 1 from April 25th through 29th.

Humankind was forced to flee when the mighty Ca’cadasan Empire, which had been in the business of conquest for thousands of years, came calling on one of humanity’s new interstellar colonies.  The humans killed a Ca’cadasan warrior after surrender, the heir of the Emperor, and sealed the fate of humanity.  The six Exodus ships were launched in an attempt to get some of the human species to safety.   Each contained fifty thousand colonists in cryostasis, along with a sampling of human creativity and the genetic heritage of several worlds, as well as the sum total knowledge of the species.   One ship was known to escape, while four were destroyed.  No one knew what happened to number five, with the possible exception of it crew.  Exodus III, the known survivor, voyages a thousand years and ten thousand light years, to find a new home in the Perseus arm.  A new colony is started in the Supersystem, a cluster of eight stars in orbit around a black hole.  Over the next thousand years the human species wars with the many alien species of the region, growing in power and technology as they expand to become the preeminent power in the region.  The pride of the Empire is the Fleet, an organization that has never lost a war.

On the thousand year anniversary of the New Terran Empire, most are thinking of the yearlong celebration that would take place among the ten thousand occupied planets of the polity.  The Emperor has other things on his mind, as his prophetic dreams are telling him that the old enemy is coming.  Soon, unknown ships of a vaguely familiar design are seen scouting Imperial Space.  The Emperor is on a crusade to expand the military, but meets stiff resistance from Parliament, and alien powers that see the buildup as a sign of future human agression.  And the century long engineering project, the Donut, an enormous circular station in orbit around the black hole, is coming online, producing the first wormholes that will eventually link the Empire.

Sean Ogden Lee Romanov, the third son of the Emperor, is a serving naval officer on a battleship, with no aspirations to sit on the throne.  Extremely intelligent, the young man is at best a mediocre officer, but is determined to make the Fleet his career.  But a tidal wave is coming over the horizon that will change everything.  Dreams will be shattered, lives lost, and billions displaced as the consummate Empire builders come calling.  And soon war will erupt like the Perseus arm has never before seen, as mighty amateur fights the consummate professionals of the Fleet, in a battle of extermination that neither can afford to lose.

So if you haven’t read this series, get in at the bottom with book 1 at http://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Empires-Book-Doug-Dandridge-ebook/dp/B009TZSBJO

 

Filed under: Acceleration, Alien Invasion, Antimatter, Armor, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, History, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Movies, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, Past, Plotting, Robots, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Space Navy, Space Program, Wormholes, Writing Tagged: Amazon UK, Doug Dandridge, Empire, Exodus, Exodus series, Exodus; Empires at War: Book 1, Kindle Freebee, Kindle Promotion, The Exodus series

Exodus 6 is a week away, and free promotion of Exodus 1.

 

As stated in my last post, a very big weekend is coming up for the Exodus: Empires at War series.   For those who have not read the series, there are currently five books out, and they have sold over 58,000 copies between them.  Not in the range of David Weber, but pretty damned good for something I have had to self promote.  There are over 550 reviews worldwide, mostly on Amazon US and UK, and an overall rating of 4.4 stars.  They have been compared to Weber, Ringo and others, and I have developed a very loyal fan base that includes physicists, mathematicians, ex and current military, and even an astronaut, as well as science fiction fans old and young.   I am very proud of the series.  Could it be better?  Most definitely.  One improvement could be the covers, and I have gone ahead and made that improvement on book one.

On April 25th through 29th Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1, will be available for free download on Amazon.  I made up a new cover for the book, something I think is more colorful and attractive.  For those who haven’t read this series, this is the chance to get in on the ground floor for free.

On April 27th the 6th book of the series, The Day of Battle, will be released.  I will be uploading the book to Amazon on the evening of the 26th, and it will probably be available by 2 or 3 AM eastern time.  I couldn’t imagine this before it happened, but there were some fans who actually stayed up late to snag the book as soon as they could.   Unlike the last volume, this novel will follow the main storyline.  It will be the most action packed book of the series though.  Some people liked the ground action, so there is plenty of ground action, including a tank battle and several spaceship and station boarding battles.  And most said they wanted more space battles.  I think there are over a dozen, from several page shorts to a massive action at the climax.  I think it is the best book of the series.  Of course, I don’t get to make that determination.  That’s for the fans.  I can only hope that the people who read this book like it as much as its predecessors.  And now for an excerpt:

 

“They’re heading this way, sir,” said Lieutenant SG Lasardo, the Tactical Officer of the destroyer, and a man who von Rittersdorf had handpicked for the position.   “No surprise there.”

“Nope,” replied the Captain, looking at the tactical display that showed the overwhelming force coming toward him.  “No surprise.”

And why the hell did I have to tell the Commodore that this was a good idea.  His was the only hyper VII capable ship in the escort, and the only ship likely to get away if they ran.  The three hyper VI destroyers might make it, while the VI light cruiser wouldn’t have much of a chance.  He was in charge by dint of being a squadron commander, though the rest of his squadron was with the Commodore.  That, and the fact that his ship was equipped with a wormhole com.  I wish I had some of the other stuff he Commodore’s ship has, he thought, knowing that such would not be wasted on a mere destroyer.

“Get me the Commodore on the com,” he told his Com Officer.  It’s about time to make sure everyone is on the same page.

*     *     *

The Commodore stared at the holo, watching the movement of every ship in hyper V.  Her own command was superimposed on that holo, sitting in normal space, coasting at point two c to the point of entry, while the timer ticked down.  Everything was set into motion.  Her force was tracking the enemy both through their hyperdrive emissions as received in normal space, and the tracking information of von Rittersdorf’s vessel coming through the wormhole.  She had unprecedented tracking capabilities, and hopefully weapons that were beyond the wildest dreams of the Cacas, especially in a knife fight like she was developing.

“All stations report readiness status green,” said the Com Officer, looking back at the Commodore.

Mei looked over at the com station, noting the holo of an officer above the board, the Com Officer on one of the battle stations sitting over a thousand light years away, orbiting the Supersystem black hole.

“The stations are reporting that they have fifty missiles in each tube,” said the Com Officer.  “They’ll be up to max velocity in one point three minutes.”

“What about the PBs?” asked Mei.

The Com Officer went to her board for a moment, then looked back.  “All particle beams are fully up and ready.”

“Let the force know we will go on the mark.  Philippi and Dauphin will follow our lead.  Targets are designated as…”  The Commodore pointed to the target icons on the holo and assigned them to her vessels.  “We jump in forty-three seconds.”

The Commodore stared at the holo, watching as the icons of her force, eleven battle cruisers, four heavy cruisers and fourteen destroyers, closed to superimposition with the enemy force.

“Jumping, now,” called out the Navigation Officer, looking over at the Helmsman.

The lights on the bridge dimmed for a moment as all available power was transferred to the hyperdrive projectors without tapping into the battery backups.  With the transfer came the nausea, for most only a second or so.  And then the stars of space were replaced by the red backdrop of hyperspace splattered with the tiny black dots of the distant gravity wells that were stars.

The tactical holo updated with real time information in less than a second.  Before the next second ticked off every ship had opened fire, well before the enemy could react.

*     *     *

“The enemy ships are opening fire,” called out the Tactical Officer, as hundreds of red icons appeared on the tactical holo.

“How are they getting so many missiles into space?” asked the Task Force Commander.

“Their commercial vessels are also sending missiles our way,” said the Tactical Officer.  “From their velocity I would guess they don’t have acceleration tubes.  I don’t think they will be much of a threat.”

The Task Force Leader sat back in his chair and grinned.  The enemy was getting desperate.  But desperation would not save them.

“We have translations,” yelled out the Sensor Officer.

“Where,” yelled the Task Force Leader, coming out of his seat.

“Right on top of us,” yelled the officer, as the icons of enemy vessels appeared on the tactical plot.

Something flared impossibly bright on one of the viewers, which stepped down the intensity in an instant.  Two of the icons on the tactical were blinking, one of his battleships, and a scout ship of the enemy.  The biggest problem with the icons was they were right on top of each other.  Which meant an enemy scout ship had translated right into the path of a battleship, if not directly inside of it.

A side viewer showed the debris of a twenty-five million ton battleship fading from hyper in a series of catastrophic translations.  Not that it mattered to any of the crew of that ship, who were most decidedly dead.  And then the flagship shook from the hits of an impossibly powerful particle beam, while damage klaxons went off and the lights dimmed again.

*     *     *

Mei Lei grimaced as the enemy force appeared on the viewer.  Not just because they outmassed her force.  She was very close to the enemy task force, a lot closer than most captains would be comfortable with.  Something flared on the screen, and she grimaced again as she watched one of her destroyers come out of hyper halfway inside an enemy battleship.  Both ships fell apart from the combined forces of objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time, and the difference in velocities and vectors that tore at them.

In the cold calculations of war of attrition, she should have been happy with that result, trading two hundred tons of warship and two hundred and fifty lives for twenty-five million tons and many thousands of the enemy.  But all she could think about were the brave men and women of that ship who hadn’t even had time to realize they were doomed.

“Firing,” yelled out the Tactical Officer, and the ship bucked as she fired all weapons at the nearest enemy vessel, a battleship.

All of the vessels in her force opened up with lasers and particle beams, tossing missiles at the same time, giving the enemy some extra targets to deal with.  All but three of the ships were equipped with standard weapons loadouts for their classes.  Jean de Arc and her two sisters had the normal loadout, with the exception of the two wormhole weapons’ ports each carried.

The three battle cruisers each let loose with a pair of massive particle weapons, the pairs of beams all striking a different battleship.  The enemy ships were moving at point three five c, while the human vessels were moving at an almost parallel vector to the Cacas at point two c.  The beams were from accelerators much larger than the battle cruisers would have been capable of carrying without dispensing with most of their other weapons.  Those accelerators were actually over a thousand light years away, on purpose built battle stations in orbit around the Supersystem central black hole.  Each accelerator massed over four million tons, half the mass of the ships they were feeding.  Protons, or in this case, antiprotons, were accelerated up to point nine nine nine nine c, and fed through the wormhole to the projectors of the battle cruisers.

A ton a second of ultrafast particles fired from the two projectors on each ship, while the battle cruisers engaged their grabbers at full power to compensate for the recoil.  All three eight point five million ton ships actually lost forward velocity in the classic action-reaction formula.

Jean de Arc’s twin particle beams ripped into the side of one of the battleships, antimatter exploding as it powered into the material of the hull.  The enemy ships hadn’t deployed cold plasma fields, and their electromag fields were not at full strength.  Huge pieces of hull blew off into space and translated away, while the beam dug deeper into the vessel.  There were seven seconds of firing time for each beam, which was about what the opening distance and the time the material of the beam could exist in hyperspace would allow anyway.

Smaller explosions sparked on the surface of many more enemy ships, and Mei knew that more deadly interior explosions were also rocking those vessels.  All of the warships carried quantum teleportation devices, and were taking their best shot at sending more of the deadly substance into the enemy vessels.  The loss of weapons fire and targeting of many of those vessels showed that the strategy was working.

Two battle cruisers and a heavy cruiser were gushing atmosphere, and one of the battle cruisers blew up in a flash and disappeared.  Several destroyers were also taking a pounding while they continued to take the nearest enemy ships under fire.  Enemy missiles were closing at relatively slow velocity, most to be taken out by defensive fire, though several got through to blast gigatons of explosive power into the hulls of light vessels.  The defensive fire of the Ca’cadasan ships was proving too much for the human missiles, which, with a few exceptions, were being blown out of space.

At seven seconds the particle beam fired died, and the Commodore sweated for the thirty seconds it took to move the wormhole at the other end to access the next weapons system.  Two savaged enemy battleships continued on, one so badly damaged that it was not able to alter its vector of velocity.  And one ship flashed into catastrophic translation, gone.

“First missile due in twelve seconds,” stated the Com Officer, as the Tactical Officer gave a thumbs up to the Commodore, indicated that the hole had been mated at the other end.

“Light them up, Tac,” ordered the Commodore.  The officer smiled back, looked back to his board, and started sending firing solutions to the first missiles to come through.

 

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Refuge: The Journey, Part 3. And Exodus 6 is coming.

As stated in the last post, I wrote Refuge: Doppleganger trying to stick to the follow a few characters format, unlike the original Refuge novels.  And again it was rejected, with comments about how I was just rehashing the same old stuff that had been done before.  Look, I had steam trains, steam pistols, and airborne infantry, as well as squadrons of dragons.  I think I could almost pass it off as a steampunk, novel, maybe.  It was anything but rehashing the same old stuff.  But I came out of that experience knowing that the only way I was going to get this idea across was to go back to the beginning.  So I came up with the idea of telling the story of how humans came from our world to this one.  And since Kurt was an immortal character, there from the beginning, he would be the main character of the novel.  Of course, I ended up putting in a lot of characters, again churning out a Harry Turtledove kind of book.  In 2009 I started on the worldbuilding for Exodus, and in 2010, while working for the State of Florida full time, I completed a two hundred thousand word novel each in the Exodus and Refuge Universes.  I also wrote Daemon, Afterlife, and We Are Death Come For You that year.  The last three novels were to be for submission to agents and publishers, but Exodus and Refuge were written to either be self published, or sold after I had been traditionally published.  I knew at two hundred thousand words both were too long for first novels.  When I went the self publishing route in 2012 I decided that both books would be published independently, but still felt they were both too long.  The solution?  Split them into two novels each, which required putting in a section at the end the first installments of both novels to make up a climatic end.  This caused some people to think that the first installments, especially Exodus, were merely extended introductions, and there might be some truth to that assertion.

I put out both Exodus and Refuge out in 2012.  Late summer for Refuge, fall for Exodus.  I thought Exodus was a good story, one that reminded me of the old time space opera I loved, but with the technical detail I wished they had.  I hoped it might do well, but didn’t really expect much of it.  Refuge though.  Refuge was the book I had been developing for over a decade.  It was, in my opinion, the more imaginative of the two.  I thought it was more of a risk, since it crossed genres, with elements of fantasy and military techno thriller.  I was sure it was going to be the series that would allow me to become a full time writer.  It sold well enough, and people snapped the first book up when I offered it was a freebee.   And then Exodus took off, much to my surprise, before I could even do a promotion.  Since those first two books of each series I have put out three more Exodus books, and only one new Refuge.   I thought maybe people who liked one would like the other, since I love all the fantastic genres, science fiction, fantasy, even horror.   Turns out that some people love scifi and can’t stand fantasy.  I have one fan who loves Refuge, thinks its one of the greatest series ever, but hates Exodus, which she calls techno geek.

I still have hopes for Refuge, that eventually enough people will read it and love it.  Right now Exodus is still my bread and butter.  Exodus has sold 55,000+ copies over five volumes, while Reufge had sold just over 10,000+ in four volumes.   This year I will try and put out three more Exodus books, and one from Refuge.  I feel that I have an obligation to at least conclude the first part of that series for the people who read it.  I really hate it when authors give up on a series that I love, just because not enough other people do.  I know in the economics of the business that is the proper thing to do.  It is not what I will do.  Refuge will get at least five books before I put it to rest, not including Doppleganger.  Then I will put the series to rest for a  time, always hoping to revisit it.

In other news, Exodus 6 is written and through the first revision.  I am planning on releasing the novel on April 27th, two days after I put book 1, with a new cover, on promotion for five free days.  Anyone who has not read Exodus, this is your chance to get the first book for free.  And two days later the series will grow to six, which means a lot of reading ahead.

 

 

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Refuge: The Journey. Part II.

The next several years I tried my hand at writing short stories and sending them to what magazines were then in operation.  I also wrote Diamonds in the Sand, the first novel of mine that had any merit.  I have self-published it, and have received some good reviews, if not great sales.  I toyed with some other projects, a couple of nonfictions, a murder mystery, a horror novel, basically many projects that came to nothing.  The only one I completed was a novel called The Chronicles of Conner McMennamin: The Eirish Flight, planned as the first of a trilogy.  I may come back to it someday, when I have time.   The first chapter was read by some professionals and pronounced worthy.  In 2003 I got divorced and was really devastated.  I thought life was over, and retreated to Tallahassee, where I had spent a decade before moving to Alabama for graduate school.  I thought I could spend all of that angst and depression in my writing.  I was able to finish one novel using the Hemmingway method of writing, meaning daily work while heavily sedated on alcohol.  That novel was The Deep Dark Well.  But mostly I didn’t do much for that first year as a divorced male.  Until I straightened my life out and quit drinking, something my doctor had been recommending for the year, due to its effect on my diabetes.

After The Deep Dark Well I wrote The Shadows of the Multiverse, and then decided I needed to do another fantasy novel.  I really didn’t care which genre broke me into publishing.   I wanted to get published, thinking that after I had become a success I could switch to whatever genre I wished.  So I decided to revisit Refuge, only this time I would take a different approach.  Instead of an epic on the scale of Robert Jordan, I would concentrate on fewer characters and a single storyline, more of a traditional novel.  The Immortal Emperor Kurt von Mannerheim, introduced in the earlier Refuge novel, would be the protagonist.  My spiritual path had diverged from Christianity, and I had developed the mindset that all religious traditions had worth.  So in this version of Refuge, all followers of any of Earths religions would get the same benefits and adverse effects as Christians.  I did more world building, keeping the original maps with some changes, and added another couple hundred thousand words of background and description.  More drawings, this time of the capital city of Ataponia, of the major rooms of the palace, the armor of the soldiers, as many details as I could think of.  I changed some of the technology, adding steam engines to airships and naval vessels, kept the pantheon of Gods intact, and wrote the novel.  This was more of a Howard, in the tradition of Howard and Burroughs.  I was very happy with it, and sent it off to the three publishers that took unsolicited manuscripts, Baen, Tor and Daw.

I received two form rejections and one personal one.  Now, I had received two detailed personal rejections on The Deep Dark Well, and one on The Shadows of the Multiverse, so I thought I was making progress.  All of those personal rejections had talked about how good the stories and characters were, ending in that dreaded phrase, ‘not for our market’.  This rejection only talked about how it was obvious that this book was just like so many other fantasies they saw that used Elves, Orcs, Trolls and such.  And my thought was, they just don’t get it.  I had even talked about how the humans had used those terms for the natives of the planet because it fit their archetypes.  I would hold onto that thought when I came back to Refuge in later years.  So I put Refuge back on hold and started work on something else, determine to one day give the idea another try. I didn’t know at the time what changes I would make, only that there would be some.

Next Segment: Refuge: The Arrival.

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Refuge: The Journey. Part I.

Recently I was asked on this blog why Refuge: Doppleganger is so disconnected in time from the rest of the Refuge series.  I have been asked this question before, and thought this was a good time to answer it, and at the same time tell the story of my early writing career, and how it did not go as planned.

In 1996 I was discharged from the University of Alabama Clinical Psychology Program, just short of going on internship and getting my PhD.  I only needed that internship and to complete my dissertation, and I would be able to add the honorific Dr to the front of my name.  Unfortunately, that didn’t work out.  At the time I put all the blame on them, and have since come to realize that I definitely had a part in it.  Newly married and looking for work, I was able to get a job at the Tuscaloosa Drug Treatment Center, a methadone clinic, as a counselor.  One day the clinical director, who was also the only other therapist at the center, told me I was spending too much time with clients, and should just show them videos while catching up on my paperwork.  I told her that she might have a better handle on things if she did, in fact, do therapy.  I was fired that day.  Ouch.

So I went home, really pissed at the University of Alabama, the Tuscaloosa Drug Treatment Center and the field of mental health in general.  I sat down at my home computer, opened up a word doc, and proceeded to write an expose’ about the whole ‘damned crooked enterprise’ as I thought of it at the time.  In two weeks I wrote eighty thousand words, and had my first book.  Another two weeks to polish it up and I sent it to agents in the Writer’s Marketplace.  I didn’t get much interest, which I now see as a good thing, as that book, even with names changed, might have hurt a lot of people.  But the seed was sown.  I had proven that I could write a book.  In fact, it had proven much easier than I had thought.  I had always wanted to write a book, and here I had done it.  So I immediately started on my first work of fiction, an alternate history titled The Convoy.  Now The Convoy was very well researched, tightly plotted, and totally awful.  The dialogue was the worst part.  Years later I looked over the manuscript, hoping to self-publish it, and decided it would take more work than writing two new books.  I finished the novel and sent it off to a major publisher, expecting to get a fat check in the mail within a month.  A year later I got my rejection letter on this turkey.

For my second work of fiction, I decided to write an epic fantasy.  But not just any fantasy.  After getting married, I was exposed to church again, and the concept of witnessing and saving souls.  So I wanted to write a fantasy that promoted Christianity. I came up with the idea of Earth humans whose ancestors had been transported to another dimension, a world of magic.  The idea was that all of the myths, legends and archetypes of our world would exist in this world, Refuge.  And that people who still followed the old Earth religion of Christianity would be immune to the truly awful effects of magic, though they would also be deprived of the benefits.  I could go into all the authors who influenced the development of this world, but suffice it to say that the major influences were Tolkien, Turtledove, Howard and Robert Adams and his Horseclans novels.  I decided that the different races would not be good or evil in and of themselves, but could go to either extreme through their own decisions.

The hero of the novel was an Orc named Morgathius, who, though a Christian, and so supposedly unable to use magic, was also the Orc of the Millennia, the most powerful natural magician of his people.  I had planned for him to become the new Messiah of this world.  The novel was titled The Cross, The Quest and The Sword.  The plot revolved around Morgathius going on a quest to the Valley of the Gods, a location on the Kraslas continent guarded by thousands of undead, mummies, ghouls and zombies.  Instead of a small party like most such stories, an entire brigade of IFN (Imperium of Free Nations) cavalry would ride through the wilderness, supported by airships, and explore the valley, looking for the sword, a God artifact of Arathonia.  The novel was in the form of an epic with many characters, switching scenes from the quest to the many battles going on in the escalating war between good and evil, between the IFN and the Nazi Empire of Tarakesh.

That novel topped out at 269,000 words.  At the time I didn’t understand that most publishers really didn’t want anything over 120K words.  I decided to send this one to an agent, and searched the classified section of Writer’s Digest to find one interested in taking on new clients.  Now, I can’t way that all agents advertising in Writer’s Digest are crooked, but the one I contacted sure was.  He first suggested that I use a book doctor he recommended, at the cost of over a thousand dollars.   I balked at this, and he said he couldn’t represent me, but suggested another agent in California, Royal Gillette.  Remember that name.  If this man ever contacts you, run, as fast as you can.  But at the time I thought I had hit the big time.  That this book would hit the bestseller lists.  I had already done quite a bit of world building.  Pantheons of Gods, maps, histories, magic systems, you name it.  If you look on my website, http://dougdandridge.net , you will see many of the original maps I drew for the novel, including continents and hemispheres.  I wrote a million words of background and descriptions in Treepad.  And I started to work on the second novel of the series, The Ravening Blade.  This was the book where my Orc hero was to make the ultimate sacrifice and become the Messiah.

My agent sent me letters, talked to me on the phone, and basically stroked my ego.  I was told a good tale, about how they were dissecting my novel page by page, sending samples to large publishers, and preparing the product for a major push.  Then came the scam, though I couldn’t see it at the time for what it was.  I was told it would take it three thousand dollars to make the presentation, but the agency could only come up with a little over $2,500.  I volunteered the rest, sure that it would be a good investment.  Two weeks later I received a letter from the parent agency of Mr. Gillette, informing me that they were moving operations from California to New York, and would be communicating to clients with their contact information shortly.  That was the last thing I ever heard of them, and a search for the agency yielded no results.  I was soured to the whole idea of submitting to agents, and would not do so again for over a decade.  And the idea of Refuge died, at least for the moment.

Next Segment:  The Return to Refuge.

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An Evening With Eric Flint

Most of the readers of this blog know that I attended the Superstars Writing Conference in Colorado Springs back at the beginning of February.  Superstars is put on by writers Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, and draws several other big name authors as presenters.  One of the highlights of the Conference is the VIP dinner on Friday night.  At the dinner the participants sit with one of the presenters through the meal where they can talk and ask questions.  Kevin had said online that any of the presenters would be a good choice, and after the first few days of the conference I would have to agree.  However, I had my sights set on one particular guest for the meal.  Kevin would have been a very good choice, but I had already spent time talking with him, and had lunch with Rebecca on one of the conference days.  The other author whose work I was very familiar with was Eric Flint, long time writer for Baen and the brains behind the 1632 series of alternate history books, also known as the Ring of Fire series.   If you’re not familiar with this series, it’s worth a look.  Eric developed it from a tale about a small town in West Virginia going back in time to Germany in 1632.  To those not familiar with this period of time, this was the Protestant Reformation, and the war between Protestants and Catholics that killed from between one quarter and a third of the German population.  The Germanies were a number of kingdoms, principalities, duchies and so forth, and more often than not the armies of either side were as likely to prey on their own co-religionists as the other side.  Flint brilliantly placed his story in this backdrop of warfare and intrigue, when Cardinal Richelieu of France and the Pope were major players, along with King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.   And a bunch of engineers, former military men and librarians from rural America change the technology of the era.

There were three reasons I wanted to talk with Eric.  One, because I love the series.  I haven’t read all of them yet, but I’m definitely working on it.  Also in that he wrote alternative history, a subgenre I have always loved and eventually want to work in.  And third, because he works for Baen, one of the most progressive of the traditional publishers, and one I would love to work for.  Eric turned out to be a most gracious host, giving each of us a choice of signed books and including everyone in the conversation.  I learned a lot about the publishing industry, about collaboration, from the king of that art, and about Baen books.  At times the conversation went into military history, a subject several of us were well verse in.  And I was able to bounce some ideas off of Eric, mostly just the basics, to see what might be a good choice for a submission to Baen.  It turns out that Eric has a degree in history, something that seemed pretty useless for most of his life while he worked as a machinist in factories, but has come in handy in his current profession.  At the end of the meal Eric gave each of us his card, and the invitation to contact him in the future if we had further questions.  A true case of paying it forward, just like the other presenters were doing.  The evening went by too quickly.  I really can’t wait for next year’s Superstars.  There was also the trip to Garden of the Gods with Kevin, the previously mentioned lunch with Rebecca, an conversation with James Aremis Owen one night in a quiet corner of the lobby.  It was a great experience through and through, and one I would recommend to any author out there who wants to learn about the publishing industry while networking with some  great people.  Till next year.

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