Alex Avrio's Blog, page 3
March 27, 2015
New Dreaming Demon Cover Revealed
We were so pleased with the new cover for the Alchemist's Box that we've decided to refresh the cover of the Dreaming Demon, and get one professionally designed. We used the same artist from Fiverr again, and in less than a week we have a new cover. So without further ado, here it is... 
I think it looks more professional and eye-catching than the previous one, and still conveys the menace and atmosphere of the story, so we'll put it live on Amazon and Smashwords and see whether it gives sales a boost.
I think it looks more professional and eye-catching than the previous one, and still conveys the menace and atmosphere of the story, so we'll put it live on Amazon and Smashwords and see whether it gives sales a boost.
March 15, 2015
Book Covers poll - choose your favourite!
My last post in January mentioned Alex's new project and now in the middle of March, I can report that she has completed 65000 words of this novel. She's aiming for a full length of 80-90000 words, so she's well on the way to having the first draft of this novel complete in 3 months, which is an impressive feat. This book now has a title, "The Alchemist's Box," and will be the first book of the Merchant Blades series. I'll post a brief synopsis soon, but the main reason for this post is to showcase some book cover's that we've commissioned from artists on the Fiverr website. We requested designs from two artists, and below I can reveal the completed covers. We'd love you to vote on which cover you like best, and feel free to leave comments about which you like the best, as they are both very different styles, and we're quite happy with both designs and struggling to decide which one to go with when we launch the book. 
Cover 1 
Cover 2
Cover 1 Cover 2
January 25, 2015
January 25th, 2015
It's been a while since the last blog post, and there's been plenty going on. The Tomb of Menkare, the first book of the Miss Silk series is a good 80% complete, with just the end game in each of the three timelines to be completed. However, Alex has been over in Athens visiting her family, and during this time she has been trying an experiment. Having read that many authors who go down the self-published route can write around 5000 words a day, allowing them to pump several books out a year, she wanted to investigate whether she could get close to this figure. Currently, on Miss Silk, Alex can write between 1000 and 2000 words a day. This is a respectable figure, but one of the reasons that it's not possible to do more is that the story is quite complex, following characters in three different timelines, each of which are relevant to the others. Constructing a coherent story therefore requires plenty of careful thought to ensure the narrative is internally consistent, and that the stories all weave together as they should. Alex has so far tended towards writing complex stories of this sort, and things that start out simple invariably end up with several layers. So, the new trial project while she's been in Greece was to try writing a simple, linear quest-type story, and to see whether keeping things simple allows her to progress her writing more quickly. Obviously, the thing we'll need to be careful about is that making a simpler story doesn't reduce the quality of the writing, as we don't want readers to feel they've been short-changed. Something else we'll be investigating with this project is that, up to now, Alex has always created a fairly well worked first draft that will need fewer revisions. With this new trial project, she has not been polishing the first draft, but writing an unrefined first draft that may require more work later to flesh out the details of the world and the characters. This allows for more rapid writing of the first draft, but whether this turns out to be a quicker overall process when it comes to reworking the second draft remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, there are many distractions in Athens, with family commitments constantly breaking into writing time, which have prevented her from ever having a full day to write to see how much she can achieve in this new writing model. However, she has discovered another secret weapon, a timer, which she sets for 30 minute sessions, and sees how many words she can get done in this time. This has been quite successful, and she has managed to complete the first 16000 words of the first novel in this new Merchant Blades series.
So, the plan on her return is to focus the Miss Silk novel towards the traditional publishing model i.e. when she gets back we'll prepare a synopsis and cover letter and start sending this off to agents and publishers who accept direct submissions. The next task will be to finish the first complete draft of Miss Silk, and when this is done, we'll switch to finishing the Merchant Blades novel, which we plan to self-publish as an e-book. Hopefully by the end of 2015 Alex will have two completed novels, and be well on the way to finishing the second Merchant Blades novel, as the self-publishing model that seems to be most successful is to have at least two books in a series ready for publishing, so that you can run a free promotion on the first book in the series, and hope that people like it enough to pay for the second novel in the series. We'll also need to do all of the other tasks associated with creating a high quality book for self-publishing, such as finding an editor, and commissioning some professional cover artwork, which are two areas which we will again be exploring for the first time. So, the bottom line is that 2015 will be an extremely busy, and also a crucially important year in Alex's quest to get her first full length novel(s) published.
Unfortunately, there are many distractions in Athens, with family commitments constantly breaking into writing time, which have prevented her from ever having a full day to write to see how much she can achieve in this new writing model. However, she has discovered another secret weapon, a timer, which she sets for 30 minute sessions, and sees how many words she can get done in this time. This has been quite successful, and she has managed to complete the first 16000 words of the first novel in this new Merchant Blades series.
So, the plan on her return is to focus the Miss Silk novel towards the traditional publishing model i.e. when she gets back we'll prepare a synopsis and cover letter and start sending this off to agents and publishers who accept direct submissions. The next task will be to finish the first complete draft of Miss Silk, and when this is done, we'll switch to finishing the Merchant Blades novel, which we plan to self-publish as an e-book. Hopefully by the end of 2015 Alex will have two completed novels, and be well on the way to finishing the second Merchant Blades novel, as the self-publishing model that seems to be most successful is to have at least two books in a series ready for publishing, so that you can run a free promotion on the first book in the series, and hope that people like it enough to pay for the second novel in the series. We'll also need to do all of the other tasks associated with creating a high quality book for self-publishing, such as finding an editor, and commissioning some professional cover artwork, which are two areas which we will again be exploring for the first time. So, the bottom line is that 2015 will be an extremely busy, and also a crucially important year in Alex's quest to get her first full length novel(s) published.
September 21, 2014
Reviews, Progress, and Critiques - Duncan
So, we've had our first review up on the independent book review blog site Beauty in Ruins. Fortunately, the reviewer liked the book, so we're very happy. We've been very busy with domestic and family commitments recently, so we haven't had much opportunity to do much more promotion for the Dreaming Demon, but hopefully things are settling down a little now, and we can get back into full swing. In the meantime, Alex has been doing a grand job with progressing her first full novel, with the working title of "Miss Silk and the Tomb of Menkare." We're targeting around 80,000 words for the first book in the series, and she's now written 85,000 words, with around two or three chapters to go. Some of the scenes that she's written already will be going in the second book of the series, but I think we're on track to have a first draft of the first novel completed in the next 6 to 8 weeks, if not before.
It's always useful to get feedback on your work from folk who aren't related to you, and the first chapter of the novel has now completed its first run through the Critters website. We got eight really useful critiques, and encouragingly, some people loved every word, although most gave some really interesting suggestions and comments which will be taken into account in the second draft and can only make it stronger. As we speak Alex is implementing some changes to chapter 1, and we'll then be submitting the whole novel chapter by chapter for critiquing. Any other volunteers to be beta readers and provide honest, constructive feedback would also be welcome, so please let us know if you;d be interested in helping out in this way.
It's always useful to get feedback on your work from folk who aren't related to you, and the first chapter of the novel has now completed its first run through the Critters website. We got eight really useful critiques, and encouragingly, some people loved every word, although most gave some really interesting suggestions and comments which will be taken into account in the second draft and can only make it stronger. As we speak Alex is implementing some changes to chapter 1, and we'll then be submitting the whole novel chapter by chapter for critiquing. Any other volunteers to be beta readers and provide honest, constructive feedback would also be welcome, so please let us know if you;d be interested in helping out in this way.
August 9, 2014
The Immediate Aftermath
We've been a bit quiet on here since the Dreaming Demon published, so I thought I'd give a quick update on what's been going on since that momentous day. We've had some encouraging results, and sold some copies! We've also had some nice positive reviews on Amazon.co.uk and a couple on Amazon.com. We've noticeably had much more success on Amazon than on Smashwords, and several times the Dreaming Demon has entered the top 100 of the Amazon.co.uk Dark Fantasy best sellers list, peaking at around number 60. Not bad for a first release. After an initial flurry of sales, things have settled down to a steady level.
We've then been looking into publicity options. We've had a guest post on the Dark Phantom blog, and posted links on as many blogs, forums and websites who are happy to take authors posting publicity material - many places don't like this as they fear their forums will become overloaded with people trying to plug their own work, which I guess is fair enough. This means you've got to tread carefully, and not just post things willy-nilly, as the last thing you want to do is annoy your potential customers.
Many of the free publicity options available seem to only allow you to publicise a book when it's in a free offer period. We've been wrestling with whether this is a good plan or not. The main argument for running a free promotional period seems to be that if people like your free work, they might go and buy some of your other work. This is especially valuable if you have a series, where it makes sense that if you can grab reader's attention with the first book, they're likely to look for the next instalment and be prepared to pay. However, if you only have one book out, is this a worthwhile plan? Having read blogs of people who have gone down this road, it does seem to translate into several hundred downloads, which does get you visibility, and may pull in some more Amazon reviews. Whether that will translate into sales after the end of the promotional period remains to be determined. So, the question is, do we go for a free promotion now, or wait for the full novel to be completed (hopefully sometime early in 2015) to have something to feed off the promotion. We've also been trying to support other Indie authors who are in similar positions, by downloading or buying their novellas and doing what we can to help publicise their work if we like it. This is also a good way to connect with other authors and try to learn what has worked for them publicity-wise, and hopefully we'll start to integrate into the Indie author network that's out there.
The other thing we've been up to is working on getting our ratio up on www.critters.org. This is a great place to get feedback on your work from fellow authors, and we've put the first chapter up for review on there, which should be going live next week. Part of the deal with Critters is that you don't get your work sent out until you've critiqued a certain number of other folk's stories yourself. So my bus commute has been invaluable in allowing me reading time for the critters stories. I've found that the reading is the easy bit, but putting together a useful critique of a story takes quite some time, especially as you need to be diplomatic with your wording. Writes tend to be quite insecure about their work, and you want to help people make their work better, but not to make them despair and give up! Now we're looking forward to seeing what other authors think of the first chapter of the new novel, with the working title "Miss Silk and the Tomb of Menkare".
We've then been looking into publicity options. We've had a guest post on the Dark Phantom blog, and posted links on as many blogs, forums and websites who are happy to take authors posting publicity material - many places don't like this as they fear their forums will become overloaded with people trying to plug their own work, which I guess is fair enough. This means you've got to tread carefully, and not just post things willy-nilly, as the last thing you want to do is annoy your potential customers.
Many of the free publicity options available seem to only allow you to publicise a book when it's in a free offer period. We've been wrestling with whether this is a good plan or not. The main argument for running a free promotional period seems to be that if people like your free work, they might go and buy some of your other work. This is especially valuable if you have a series, where it makes sense that if you can grab reader's attention with the first book, they're likely to look for the next instalment and be prepared to pay. However, if you only have one book out, is this a worthwhile plan? Having read blogs of people who have gone down this road, it does seem to translate into several hundred downloads, which does get you visibility, and may pull in some more Amazon reviews. Whether that will translate into sales after the end of the promotional period remains to be determined. So, the question is, do we go for a free promotion now, or wait for the full novel to be completed (hopefully sometime early in 2015) to have something to feed off the promotion. We've also been trying to support other Indie authors who are in similar positions, by downloading or buying their novellas and doing what we can to help publicise their work if we like it. This is also a good way to connect with other authors and try to learn what has worked for them publicity-wise, and hopefully we'll start to integrate into the Indie author network that's out there.
The other thing we've been up to is working on getting our ratio up on www.critters.org. This is a great place to get feedback on your work from fellow authors, and we've put the first chapter up for review on there, which should be going live next week. Part of the deal with Critters is that you don't get your work sent out until you've critiqued a certain number of other folk's stories yourself. So my bus commute has been invaluable in allowing me reading time for the critters stories. I've found that the reading is the easy bit, but putting together a useful critique of a story takes quite some time, especially as you need to be diplomatic with your wording. Writes tend to be quite insecure about their work, and you want to help people make their work better, but not to make them despair and give up! Now we're looking forward to seeing what other authors think of the first chapter of the new novel, with the working title "Miss Silk and the Tomb of Menkare".
