K.M. Alexander's Blog, page 99

E-reader is now a real word

Mark your e-calendars, the Oxford English Dictionary has added e-reader as an official word!

e-reader, n.

A person who reads electronic text; spec. a reader of an electronic version of a book, newspaper, etc., esp. as distinguished from a reader of the paper version.
A hand-held electronic device used for reading e-books or other text in digital form, esp. one intended primarily for this use; (also occas.) an application designed for this purpose.

Other recent additions: big data, crowdsourcing, mouseover, and redirect. See what else is new this quarter over at the OED’s blog.

Arya & The Hound

Love this piece draw by illustrator Willie Real of Arya Stark and The Hound from George R. R. Martin‘s “Song of Ice and Fire” series. It was to adorable not to share. I figure if you read my blog you’re probably a reader of GRRMs work as well, and if you’re not you should be.

 

PwC Projects Consumer eBook Market Surpassing Print by 2017

Laura Hazard Owen posted a fascinating article on paidContent a few days ago that began to generate a lot of buzz. Auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released a report yesterday that projected that the U.S. consumer ebook market will be bigger than the print book market by 2017. Let’s review that again. B-I-G-G-E-R. That’s… er, big news.

2017 isn’t far off and these projections, are in line with other reporting firms. (Laura Hazard Owen gets into it in her article, check it out.) This follows a trend were seeing all over. According to research firm Pew Internet, we’re seeing a huge spike in mobile-only users. (17% of adults) It makes sense that these same users would be consuming all sorts of media—even books—on their mobile devices.

Not that it isn’t already, but if these numbers are even remotely accurate the publishing space is going to get very interesting over the next five years. It’s crazy times we write in.

My Beta Reader’s Comments on “The Stars Were Right”

I wanted to share some comments I have received from my beta readers roaders regarding my upcoming novel “The Stars Were Right.” Some of this is NSFW so consider yourself warned. Want to read a bit yourself? Check out the free excerpt! Anyway… to the comments:

Totally blown away.

I didn’t put that sucker down for 6 hours.

finished! i really enjoyed it!

Sadly, I can’t literally visit the world you’ve created, but reading about it is the next best thing.

this is like a real book.

i must of liked it more than I realized because I want to read more.

AAA+++. Would stay up all night reading it again. And again.

I love it! There’s some really fucking awesome concepts here, KMA.

THIS IS YOUR FUCKING JAM RIGHT HERE.

This was a fantastic read. I thoroughly enjoyed myself from beginning to end.

Now am on pins and needles awaiting Old Broken Road! No pressure though ;)

The reaction from my readers to Stars has been far and away the best I have received from my beta readers. I can’t wait until release and it’s available for everyone!

Artist Llael McDonald on regrets…

My wife sent this to me this morning. It was too good not to share. When artist Llael McDonald was asked if she’s had any regrets she answered:

“Yes, being an artist. Honestly sometimes I wish I just had no creative drive and was happy with a nine to five. Life’s hard as an artist. You battle with being taken seriously by family members and friends and you battle with money problems and creative blocks. Your work is never done and your mind is always switched on.”

Ain’t that the truth, thankfully, most of my friends and family take me seriously, but man, sometimes it’d be nice just to relaaaax.

“Old Broken Road” finished, new projects begun!

Some pretty exciting news on the project front! As of Friday I finished the first rough-draft of Old Broken Road my latest manuscript! OBR is the sequel to my upcoming novel The Stars Were Right (follow the link to read an excerpt) and I couldn’t be more excited.

After I returned from my trip to Norway last year I was struggling with what to start next after finishing Stars. Eventually I realized I had to start the next tale in the world of the Territories and thus “Old Broken Road” was born, it’s story needed to be told. The rough draft was just shy of 75k words but it’ll be well over 80k after I go back and massage everything into place. (It’s already grown by 2k and I have only gone back over a third of it.) As far as publication, it’s still a ways out, I’ll need to go over it a few times, and then hand it off to my army of beta readers to get some feedback, then it goes off for editing, all this before I decide how to approach publication. Still, it feels good to have made progress. Remember Rule #2: Finish What You Start.

All in all it took a little under five-months from start to finish. Stars was born in about seven, so it’s nice to see I am getting faster. It’s a testament to proper planning I suppose. As I mentioned in my last post, I find myself heavily influenced by visuals so if you’re interested I do have a Pinterest Board full of images that have helped inspire “Old Broken Road.” You can check it out here.

There is no rest of the wicked, and I have more stories I want to tell, so I have also started moving forward with my next project. Currently code-named “Deep” until I can find a better title for it. (Titles always take me a while.) I have a board for Deep as well, it’s wildly different from the world of Stars and OBR, but I wanted to try something new. This project will be heavily rooted in sci-fi, in a genre I am calling “submarine-punk,” until I can find a better term for it. Looking forward to really jumping into that.

Okay, back to work! Stay tuned!

Pinterest Inspiration Boards

I have been trying to figure out how I as an author can effectively use Pinterest and then it hit me: why not use it as a place to keep all the images that have helped inspire me? So I did! Right now I’ve set up three boards full of random bits of imagery and I’ll continue to add more as I keep writing and starting new projects. Check them out:

The Stars Were Right – This is my most recent finished project and will be available very soon! (Find out more and read an excerpt at thestarswereright.com!)

Old Broken Road – My current project and the sequel to The Stars Were Right. There’s a bit of a western flair to this and I am pleased to see how much this board reflects that tone.

The Territories – This is my catch-all board, stuff that isn’t specific to either title but still fits within the world that both Stars and OBR are set within: strange people, creatures, styles, and places.

So yeah! That’s them! How about you? Do you have a blog, Pinterest board, or a collection of images that inspires your writing? Leave the link in the comments I’d love to take a look!

Read an excerpt from “The Stars Were Right!”

Some big news today! In advance of my book release I have relaunched my site, and along side that I also launched a new subdomain for The Stars Were Right. Included with that launch I have also released the prologue as an excerpt for you to check out! Mobile versions will eventually be coming but for now, turn your computer’s browsers to: kmalexander.com and thestarswereright.com!

Again, huuuuge thanks to Jon Contino for his work on the cover and for doing such an awesome job with the cover and my name. The man is a miracle worker with letters.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Brandon Sanderson’s 2012 Lectures on Writing

A good friend of mine sent me this link a while back, I might have mentioned it on twitter, but  it was too good not to share here. If you’re not aware, Brandon Sanderson is the successor to Robert Jordan, the author who was selected by Jordan’s widow to finish his epic “Wheel of Time” series (which I haven’t read but I know people love.)

He gave these lectures at BYU and they are chock full of some really good info. I’ll embed the first class below, but do yourself a favor and spend some time watching all of them. If you can’t spare the time to watch the audio has also been made available to download.

The rest after the bump…