Writing Update – July

Continuing with my new blogging plan I outlined here…

The Soldier and the Slave

So, needless to say, getting The Soldier and the Slave to published status has taken longer than I planned. I ended up making another full pass through the entire book again in order to improve a couple of areas that I wasn’t 100% happy with, and I’m now glad I did.

I now have the initial proof of the physical book in my hands, and it looks fantastic. Storn’s artwork (1, 2, 3, 4) really comes out nicely on the cover and everything is where it should be.

I’ve been debating about launching the book in mid-summer, which is not really the best time to push out a new novel. However, I hate to sit on this for any longer than I need to. There are a couple of things that still need to be done before I can release it, and I’m not necessarily going to get the needed time to do them in the next couple of weeks.

So here is the plan:

Sunday, August 14: I’m going to launch the Goodreads Giveaway of The Soldier and the Slave and open up pre-orders for the book.

Sunday, September 18: The Goodreads Giveaway ends. Pre-orders will continue for two weeks

Sunday, October 2: The pre-order period ends and the book goes on sale at the introductory sale price (higher than the pre-order price, but lower than the normal price).

Sunday, October 30: The normal price kicks in.

So if you want the best deal on the novel, pre-ordering will get you the lowest price. Buying it in the first four weeks after release will get you a good deal (but not as good as pre-ordering). And buying it after that will be normal price.

The Traitor and the Thief

Work is coming along nicely on The Traitor and the Thief. First draft is about 50% done at this point and I’m getting lots of good writing time in. I’m not going throw out any projected completion dates, because at this early point in the process it’s just a guess. However, if I manage to keep up the current pace, I can see the first draft completed well before the end of the year.

The Revenant and the Reaper

I’ve already planned out exactly how the entire trilogy is going to come out, so the structure of this one is solidly built. I’ve been jotting additional notes as I write The Traitor and the Thief so that I can jump right into this book as soon as I’m done book 2.

In fact, I’ve already got notes on a few scenes that I know will have to happen. I’m very excited by the entire trilogy and think this will be a great addition to the growing Undying Empire saga.

Short Stories

This month’s short story, Echoes, is already finished, so I’m ahead of the game right now on the blog. Next month’s short story is already structurally planned, and some initial writing is done.

Neither of the next two short stories will take place in the world of the Undying Empire. These are fun side diversions that allow me to explore other settings and situations that grab my imagination.

Tales of the Undying Empire

Along with the proof of The Soldier and the Slave, I also received proofs of the first three books in the Tales of the Undying Empire series. The new covers are great, and I’ve made a bunch of tweaks to the stories themselves to improve them in a bunch of minor ways.

If you’ve already read the first three books, don’t worry as there is nothing substantially different in these—you won’t be missing anything new. But both The Tower of Dust and The Severed Oath are technically new editions because of some stuff I had to change on the back-end publishing side of things.

One major change is that I’ve temporarily removed the books from all non-Amazon sources. This is because I’m going to be putting all four novels into the KDP Select program to see how this affects my sales. The product pages for these first three books will be updated by this time next week, and they will be available in the Kindle Unlimited program as well.

I want to be clear that this is an experiment. I’m going to try the program (it runs in 90-day increments) and see how things shape up. If it improves my sales, then I may stay in it for a while. I plan to comment on this in my monthly writing updates, so you can see how it’s affecting things.

Audio Books

The last thing I’m looking into is getting audio versions of my books out there. This is in the early stages, so I can’t give any time estimates to release at this point. I’m just letting everyone know that I’m working on this and it’s definitely going to happen. I’ll keep you updated as things solidify.

That’s it for this week. Come back next Sunday for my free short story, Echoes.