Steven E. Wedel's Blog, page 4

3 New Covers

In my monthly newsletter that went out yesterday I revealed three new covers for upcoming books. Today, I want to share them, with a bit of description, on my blog.

The Broken Man

The Travels of Jacob Wolf #1

A jilted lover is ready to throw his life away at the first opportunity of heroism to show the girl who broke his heart that he could amount to something. It’s up to an ex-slave bounty hunter to show young Jacob Wolf that there’s more to live for than a glorious death.

This is ...

Late May Update

So, I’m officially retired as a teacher. It’s been a week out of the classroom so far. I thought I’d have a lot more written by now, but I’ve mostly been working on formatting The Saga of Tarod the Nine-Fingered, which is up for pre-order now. Amazon’s KDP won’t allow pre-orders for paperbacks, but the places served by Draft2Digital have the paperback. The e-book is available everywhere, and I’m thrilled to report that Ken O’Brien is on board to narrate the audio book (he’s done several of my pa...

Foray Into Fantasy

The first novel I finished writing was The Prometheus Syndrome, a horror novel you can buy here (it was not my first published novel). My second finished book was another horror novel called The Living Dark that has never seen the light of day. For my third novel, I decided to write a sword-and-sorcery fantasy that had the pulpy feel and action of Robert E. Howard’s yarns mixed with the epic story arc of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories.

The Saga of Tarod the Nine-Fingered was cl...

OWFI Recap 2023

It had been more than 10 years since I last attended the annual Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. conference. The main reason was cost and return on investment. I’ve always been poor, and when I did attend OWFI in the past I seldom felt like I learned enough to justify the expense. So, I had no intention of going this year.

Then Vickey Malone Kennedy contacted me and asked me to b a contest judge. I’ve done this at least twice in the past. I was reluctant, but since I never grade schoolwork a...

Retiring from Education

It is with a heavy heart, and nervousness over the future, that I’m announcing my retirement from public education.

I have been a teacher for 17 years. It has brought me great joy, a sense of purpose, a feeling of satisfaction, some awards, and many great friends. It also contributed to me missing a fair amount of my own kids’ growing up because I couldn’t … or wouldn’t … pull back from the school kids to attend to my own, something for which I am deeply regretful.

I was 39 years old when ...

SEO for Fiction Authors

Search engine optimization. It’s something I only heard about a few months ago when, of course, I realized I wasn’t doing it and need to. So I’ve been looking into what it is and how it helps authors. Here’s some stuff I’ve learned.

First, what is search engine optimization (SEO for short)? SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website or content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This can involve various tactics such as keyword research, on-page optimization, and ...

7 Mistakes Authors Make

Here are seven common mistakes or obstacles that can keep people from achieving success as fiction writers:

Not writing regularly: Many aspiring authors struggle to make progress on their writing projects because they don’t write regularly enough. Consistent writing is key to developing the skills and discipline necessary to complete a full-length work of fiction.Not reading enough: To write well, it’s important to read widely and deeply in the genre you’re interested in. Reading helps w...

March Report Card

March is over. It was a long, strange month, with some ups and down in terms of my writing goals. I never actually set out my goals for the month, so I’m going to detail some things that happened, then give an update on the missed goals from last month.

Most importantly, my new novel Yes or No launched. Doing book launches is new to me, and this one lacked the fanfare of most launches, but I did run a pre-order for about a month beforehand. It came out on March 13 and sales were … better than...

Yes or No Launch

It’s 3:09 a.m. on Sunday, the last day of spring break. The last night I can stay up late like this. I dread going back to the school, back to the students who don’t want to learn, and back to a life where I can’t work on books all day. But it is what it is.

I’m really writing this to thank the readers who bought a copy of my novel Yes or No during its first week of life. The launch isn’t something that will finance my life, but it is, by far, the best book launch I’ve done so far.

Most s...

Yes or No

Today is my new book’s birthday!

My latest novel, Yes or No, is one I’m kinda proud of. It’s a literary novel about a man in his 50s who is confined to a nursing home and suffering from COPD. Daniel’s led a hard life that’s included prisons and rehabs and loss. One day a woman named Alicia come in and says she thinks she’s the daughter Daniel believed his high school girlfriend aborted when her family moved away to hide the pregnancy in the 1980s.

At that time, Daniel gave Penny a note wh...