A.C. Flory's Blog, page 117

Innerscape, Episode 2 – live and kicking. :)

Happy Monday, all.

Innerscape promotion – change of plan for Episode 2

Innerscape, Episode 2 goes live tomorrow – November 21, 2016 – and there will still be a competition, but it won’t be based around music. Instead, I’ll be offering one lucky person a $20 Amazon gift voucher as the prize for the next competition.

For those who missed my outraged tweets, I made a most unpleasant discovery when I logged on to Amazon.com to send David and Honie their prizes [for the Episode 1 competition]. Apparently, Australians cannot buy, or even gift, MP3 music albums from Amazon.com. I have absolutely no idea why my country faces such a restriction, but there it is. As a result, I had to do a last minute switcheroo and send the winners gift cards instead of the promised music.

In some ways, this snafu with Amazon may turn out to be a good thing; just because I love a certain kind of music doesn’t mean that everyone else is going to love the same music. A gift voucher, however, is a more flexible prize as the winner can choose their own reward.

I like the word ‘flexible’ so I’m going to try to be flexible in other ways as well. Starting with Episode 2, I’ll be posting the ‘Look Inside’ right in the blog to make it easier to read… and to tempt people to enter the competition. See how flexible I am?

One thing that hasn’t changed is the free download period. Episode 2 will be free for five days as well. At the end of that time it will revert to 0.99 cents until the last episode is published.

And now for some more music. This time, Heart of Courage from the Invincible album by Two Steps From Hell:

Have a great Sunday,

Meeks

Filed under: Innerscape, Music Tagged: amazon, Australia, Episode-1, gift-voucher, Innerscape, MP3, new-prize, restriction

Innerscape Music Competition for Episode 1 – The Winners!

Good evening World – the music competition for Innerscape Episode 1 is now closed, and the free download period is over as well. But the best is yet to come.

Trailer Music – the sneaky classics [2]

I began these posts by looking at my own journey towards Trailer Music, but I was a devotee already. The true surprise is that a whole generation of young gamers and Youtubers have learned to love classical musical without even knowing it. Hence the title of this post.

Of course, the young don’t call Trailer Music ‘classical’. No, to them this music is ‘epic’, ’emotional’, and ‘stirring’ but not at all highbrow. And let’s be honest, if I didn’t tell you that the following video clip is Trailer Music, would you know it’s not one of the ‘classics’?

Or what about this one?

Just for the record, Two Steps From Hell is a production company created by composers Thomas Bergersen and Nick Phoenix. People loved their music so much, they were eventually forced to publish their own albums. This is what I call music for the common man [and woman].

Trailer Music – the sneaky classics [1]

I’ve loved classical music all my life, and still do, but nowadays the music I listen to is all so-called Trailer Music. According to the entry in Wikipedia, Trailer Music is defined as:

‘…music [is] to complement, support and integrate the sales messaging of the mini-movie that is a film trailer.’

A little further down that Wiki article, you’ll find a list of Trailer Music production companies. Included in that list are three of my favourites:

Jo Blankenburg,
Two Steps From Hell, and
Audiomachine.

Those three also feature in my Innerscape music giveaway competition. You can find the list of composers and music in the FAQ here. But my love affair with Trailer Music did not begin with movies, it began with games.

Video games have always come with soundtracks and sound effects, but in some games, the music is more than good enough to stand on its own. Nobuo Uematsu is famous amongst gamers as the composer behind the Final Fantasy video game series, and that is where I became a fan too – playing Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Nevertheless, I did not become a devotee until I played Vagrant Story [another Square video game] and discovered the music of Hitoshi Sakimoto. The video clip is called Truth and it sets the mood for a particular part of the game story:

 

I have owned the soundtrack of Vagrant Story for over 16 years, and I still play it. In fact, it was and is one of my favourite pieces of music, ever.

Another firm favourite is the soundtrack from Final Fantasy XI [the MMO]. Bastok was my ‘home’ on the game, and I still adore the theme that went with it:

Believe it or not, I still get a happy feeling listening to this theme, and a part of me wishes I could go back. Anyway, this track and another favourite – the theme for Gustaberg – were both composed by Kumi Tanioka a lady composer.

Innerscape – Music competition for Episode 1 begins!

Good evening, good afternoon and good morning.

Froggie Fraud

There are some photos making the rounds at the moment that purport to show a group of 5 frogs [from different ‘families’?] hitching a ride on a small crocodile.

I simply could not imagine a croc standing still for such treatment, so I looked at the photos a little more closely. This is what I found:

Photo 1

This photo shows the frogs starting to climb up onto the croc’s back. Take a good look at the position of the leg circled in red. See how it’s tucked in, under the body? Now have a look at this:

Photo 3

Same frog, with its front left leg in exactly the same position – tucked in. Now what are the chances of a real, live frog moving from one spot to the next but remaining in the exact same position?

The clincher though, came when I was sent the URL of the originator of the photos: a design company called Design You Trust.

-grin- Design You Trust specialise in creating realistic looking images from…props. You can check out their website here:

http://designyoutrust.com/category/Animals/

Sherlock Holmes signing out.

Innerscape FAQ

I messed up yesterday’s post because of toothache, so here’s all the stuff I should have explained before showing the covers:

What is Innerscape?

Innerscape is one very long story serialised in 5 episodes. Hence the numbers on the covers:

What is the total Innerscape wordcount?

Total wordcount for all five episodes comes to 212,000 plus change. Divided by three, that would be 3 books of roughly 70,000 words each.

Why not just publish a trilogy?

Two reasons:

Science fiction is traditionally about 90,000 words in length so I’d feel as if I were short-changing readers,
The story simply refuses to fall into 3 neat piles. Instead, it evolved in 10 ‘parts’, 2 per episode.

How long is each episode?

The following shows the approximate wordcount for each episode:

Episode 1      48,000

Episode 2      35,000

Episode 3      40,000

Episode 4      30,000

Episode 5      57,000

Why publish Innerscape as a serial?

Each episode ends at a natural point in the story and is a novella in length; just right for a serial, just wrong for everything else.

[Note: According to Wiki, a novel is anything over 40,000 words, so technically episodes 1 and 5 are novels, but I’m not comfortable with that so I’m classifying them all as novellas]

How quickly will each episode be published?

I’d really like to publish episode 5 in time for Christmas, so that’s roughly one episode per week starting next Monday, 14th of November. The extra week is my margin for errors, emergencies and disasters.

During the week between episodes, I’ll be giving the next episode a final edit-and-polish as well as running the music competition for the previous episode.

What music competition?

I suck at promotion, especially promotion that promotes me or mine. I have tried, but this leopard is too old to change her spots now. So what was I to do?

In a light-bulb moment of truly epic proportions, I realised that while I couldn’t promote Innerscape per se, I could promote the music behind Innerscape. All the musicians and composers who inspired me while I was writing are Indies, like me, and I can sing their praises all day without feeling embarrassed at all.

Then I had another light-bulb moment: instead of wasting my money on paid advertising, why not spend my limited budget on giving the music away? All the music is available in digital format so there would be no extra postage costs and delivery could be almost instantaneous. Brilliant!

From there, the idea of giving the music away via a competition was a no-brainer. And if there were five episodes, it made sense to run five competitions… -face palm-

So, there will be five competitions. Each competition will start when the relevant episode goes live on Amazon. Each competition will then run for 5 days and the winner will be drawn before the next episode is published. That’s the plan.

What music will be given away?

The following is a list of composers and music to be given away:

Jo Blankenburg

Elysium
Vendetta
Levitation
Feather Dance

Two Steps from Hell

Colin Frake
Illusions
Sun
Miracles

Audio Machine

Tree of Life

Roger Subirana

XII

Ten albums, one for each Part of the story. That works out to be 2 albums given away for each episode.

And that means there will be two winners for each episode.:)

Will people have to buy the relevant episode to take part in the competition?

NO!!!! No need to buy anything at all.

So what will people have to do?

I want this to be a fun experience for everyone, including me, so each competition will be very simple:

I will publish an article for each episode.
In that article will be a question with multiple choice answers.
In that article, I will also post a link to the relevant ‘Look Inside’ feature on Amazon.
The correct answer to the competition question will be in the ‘Look Inside’ pages.
Simply type the answer in the comments section of the article and that’s it.

How many times can people compete?

Please! Only enter once per Episode. While I’d love to have a million entries, the thought of handwriting each correct entry and folding it fills me with horror. I do have to sleep, you know.

That said, please do enter each competition. And Regulars? That means you too. Please don’t feel as if you shouldn’t enter just because we’re friends. This is going to be a party and I want my friends there, sharing it with me. Okay?

How will winners be chosen?

Every correct answer [for that episode] will be:

written on a piece of paper
folded
thrown into a big mixing bowl
and TWO pieces of paper will be drawn from the bowl. The names on those pieces of paper will be published in a post and tweeted.

How will winners receive their prizes?

I can only afford digital albums so each winner will have a choice of downloading the album via:

iTunes, or
Amazon

That means they will have to provide me with an email address that iTunes and/or Amazon can use to deliver the music. I promise not to misuse the email address with spam.

Will people have to sign up for a newsletter?

NO!!!! I never read newsletters myself so I won’t ask anyone to sign up for mine. Besides, I don’t have one. If by some chance you are interested in knowing what I’m publishing, I would love it if you ‘followed’ me on Amazon.

By following me, or any other author on Amazon, you authorize Amazon to send you information about any upcoming events from that author. It’s like a really to-the-point, mini newsletter that you only receive when an author has a new book to promote.

How does the Amazon ‘Follow’ option work?

The Amazon follow option is shown as a big yellow button beneath the name/picture on my author ‘page’. This is what it looks like:

 

 

You can reach my author page by clicking on the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/A.C.-Flory/e/B00B1M04JI/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1478817747&sr=8-1

…or by finding one of my books and clicking on my name as the author [blue link]:

You will need to be signed in to your Amazon account to use the ‘follow’ feature.

Will Innerscape be given away for free?

YES!!! -cough-

Obviously, I would like as many people to read the story as possible, so each episode will be given away for free during the week in which it’s published [and promoted].

After the free period, each episode will revert to its launch price of $0.99.

Once all five episodes have been launched, the price per episode will rise to its normal price of $1.99.

I would love to keep Episode 1 free permanently, but Amazon only allows ‘permafree’ under certain circumstances, none of which I meet at the moment.

Okay, I think I’ve covered everything this time. It’s amazing how much better the brain works when it isn’t distracted by toothache!

cheers

Meeks

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed under: Innerscape Tagged: amazon, Audiomachine, competition, episodes, FAQ, free-music, iTunes, Jo-Blankenburg, novella, Roger-Subirana, science-fiction, serial, Two-Steps-From-Hell

Innerscape covers – still negotiable!

I have a toothache, again, and Donald Trump is sucking up all the oxygen, but things will be better tomorrow. Right?

In that spirit of blind optimism, here are the covers for the 5 Innerscape episodes. It’s too late to change the background image, but the title and tagline, etc are not set in concrete so please let me know what you think.

Okay, off to the dentist now. Would you believe this will be my third root canal treatment since June? Either the God of Teeth hates me, or the God of Dentists loves me.

Innerscape – beautiful one day, deadly the next

Just about to race off to work, but I’d really like your feedback on the tagline – too cheesy? Not science-fictiony enough? Or for my fellow Aussies – too much like the Queensland advert.?

And just a quick word about http://www.freeimages.com. This seems to be a great place to find free images. The one below is one of the ones I’ve found:

In case you’re wondering, it’s a stylized drawing of a circuit…for a computer.