Hey y’all!
I have a couple things for y’all. First, as many of you know, I have no control over the pricing of my audiobooks. Amazon (aka Audible) completely controls that. I can give a very limited number away, which I have, but that is it. That being said, I do know of a very large pile of completely free audiobooks for you to check out. Audible has made a number of children’s and young adult books free for the duration of the school closings in the USA. I have verified that at least some other countries can access this, so hopefully, all of you can. None of my books are in this, which is a shame because I would have allowed it if they asked, but there are some good titles in there such as Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children. You can find them all here: https://stories.audible.com I have no connection to this sale, nor any control over it. That is something Audible is doing of their own accord, which is wonderful! So enjoy! The second thing I wish to tell you is that the first major rework of Mantidom Book Three: Checkpoint is complete! That means in a couple weeks it will be going out to prereaders. This, of course, means I will be looking for pre-readers. Let me be clear about something. These are not review copies. They are not ARCs. If you volunteer to be a pre-reader you will be getting a rough draft. Every single time I do this at least one person thinks they are getting an ARC and just wants to leave a review based on this early version. That is not what these are. They are full of typos, plot holes, and the like. With each new book I release, a small team (15 or so) of readers volunteer to read the book through in advance and help find the plot holes, and the like that prevent it from being the best it can be. These readers get free copies of the finished ebook when it comes out if they were active in the review process. This is a very long book; I estimate it will be around six hundred pages in print when the paperback comes out. If you volunteer to pre-read it will be a lot to work through. If you cannot read such a book in a couple-few weeks, I would ask that you do not volunteer. Having read books one and two is not required, but it will make things easier on you as book three is not intended as a standalone. So, think about it and watch my Facebook page for details on how to volunteer. That is all for now. I hope y’all are staying safe in these most interesting times! The problem with writing long books is that when you go back to the beginning of them, you have to remember that what you just lived through has not happened yet. I am sure many of you just read that sentence and are confused. So let me explain.
Say you have two characters in a story, let’s say Reuben and Sue. In chapter one they do not know each other at all. They have never met, but since your book is very long and spans years, by the end of the book they are happily married and expecting a child. That is all good, and if you write romance, even expected. Now, you have finished the first draft. You have felt all the feels, walked all the paths and been through all the conflicts with Rueben and Sue. You were there at their first kiss. You know every argument they ever had. After all you as the writer were both parties in those events. Now, you go back to chapter one and they are strangers. You have to make them act like strangers. It is like invalidating a lifetime of memories to start again. It is so hard not to slip up and have them act just a bit too familiar. This is why I employ a team of pre-readers (aka beta readers) for every book. I send them copies of the book before it goes to my professional editor. Fresh eyes looking at the text can spot these inconsistencies that creep in. Things other than simple typos. For example, I just edited a chapter where two characters swapped names mid-way through. Ops. And on that topic watch for a future email as I just finished the first draft of book three of the Mantidom series. At 160k words, it is the longest book in the series so far. It may end up being my longest book, but not by much. I know from past years past that many of my subscribers celebrate Christmas. Some of you do it because you are Christians, some because your family always has, and some because it is a cultural holiday or tradition.
And of course, some of you do not celebrate it at all for one reason or another. That is of course the expected outcome of having readers around the world that have found some measure of entertainment in my tales. Whichever of those categories you fall into, I wanted to take a brief moment to say that I hope the rest of the year is joy filled and that your 2020 is the most excellent of years. Being that we here in the Trigili Compound do celebrate Christmas, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas (or Merry Random Day In December if you prefer) and a most wonderful new year. Thanks for being such great readers! I am at my desk thinking about things and stuff when my outdoor cameras start going off. So I open the live view, expecting to see deer, and see a man walking around from house to house looking in windows with a flashlight. My cameras are all in infrared mode because it is well past sunset so could not tell much about him (got a good shot of his face on my Ring though) So I grab my jacket and go outside to see what is up. I really was not expecting any trouble, but I just wanted anyone snooping around to know they were being watched. Had I expected trouble I would have had my wife on the phone with 911. Turns out it was a FedEx guy lost and trying to read house numbers. So I go back inside and then I hear police sirens. I am like "someone called the cops on the poor guy." Sure enough, a cop car came up the street calling out something completely inaudible with lights and sirens going full tilt. My son came upstairs at this point and was like "maybe it is a parade" and I was like "One cop car a parade does not make." I started to head out to see if I could tell the cop all things were fine when a fire truck came with its lights going full blast. Turns out it WAS a parade. Santa was on the firetruck! I guess whatever the cop called out had to do with Santa. We will never know! I just thought you might enjoy this little glimpse of life here at the Trigili Compound. I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, whichever holidays you celebrate. As for me and my house, we will be rocking around the Christmas tree I am sure. Hey everyone! If you are seeing this, then you are on the new web site! I am finally updating my website’s software, hosting, and the like for the first time in over a decade. The old site worked well, but as the years went on, it got harder to maintain, not to mention keeping up with security and everything else the modern web demands. But that should now be behind us for the next few years at least. The big problem is that I will probably spend the next several months chasing down dead links and the like as we transition fully to this new platform. So, poke around, check things out and let me know any typos or dusty corners you find that need attention. Over the next week or two I hope to get the site mainly complete. I would guess I have “enough” up for now though, so I am off to have my second Thanksgiving dinner. Gobble Gobble! |
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August 2020
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