What's new?

Hello all. I've been a bit preoccupied by the Portland Wizard World Comic Con, and then life itself, which also tends to take over. Especially for new(ish) moms.  The Wizard King has had its release and it is being received very well. I hope it continues! I have a few projects on the fire including book 3 of the Trilogy of Tinna; Tinna's Reign, which is being padded out and revised before I send it to be edited.

The third and final cover by Abigail Larson. :)

The second project i'm working on, but is at present only about a 1/4 written is the House of Black. It is a story of a little witch by the name of Kimber and her battle to save her sisters and her house from attack by an ancient enemy.

Long before the days of old,

When ic-ed skies bore naught but cold,

When crops did wither and war did rage,

Were born the saviours of this age.

Tamed the land, the beasts, the dead

Did light and dark and vibrant red.

Holders of the mother’s gift

From despair they did us lift.

But virtue ruled with golden mane

And enemies the three were named.

Driven into secrecy,

Were the mother’s gifted three.

Hunted by their very own,

The Gifted now must live unknown.

Gilded swords were raised to fight,

To end the Black, the Red, the White.

And finally, it's so new I haven't even begun to work on the cover, I am working on 'Wolven' -- which is not about werewolves, and also dabbling into the idea of another book for the Wizard King world.

Fresh off the press... again. :)

Softcover and hardcover of book 2, Tinna's Might. Cover by Abigail Larson.

They're finally here... the 'printing proofs' I've been waiting for. The soft-cover and the hardback. These are already available through Barnes & Noble and Amazon; however at B & N, the hardcover comes at a significant discount ($27 normally, $20 on B&N).

The prints look good, I'm busy skimming through them for issues, but they seem to be in order so far.  The covers are so beautiful.  They came from separate printers so there is a small variation in the tones between the two, but it looks nice regardless.

The book has also just been approved for Smashwords' premium catalog, which means that it will be available as an eBook on a variety of channels including iBooks/Apple, Sony, B&N Nook, and more. I also set it up as a Kindle book on Amazon. The eBook is $3.99. At present it's only posted on Amazon as a Kindle book and on Smashwords.com, but it will begin to appear on the other sites at length.

Pre-release on Smashwords - Hard-copy in progress

The front cover by Abigail Larson

Tinna's Might has been uploaded to Smashwords ahead of the release on Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and other booksellers).  So if you want an early preview, you can go to the book's Smashwords Page and download your copy today.

Book Two of the Trilogy of Tinna will be available in hard-cover, soft-cover and eBook. Links will be provided as soon as they become available.   Check them out today! :)

Good news it is!

Another beautiful cover by Abigail Larson.

Tinna's Might is completed. At last! I'm very excited.  Editor Ien Nivens of http://www.literacracy.com/ did a wonderful job of hacking, slashing, cutting, molding and shaping this book, and put a tremendous amount of effort into convincing me what changes were necessary in order to make this book better.

The next step is a final read-through, which should be quick. After all those changes and croppings and moving of things, punctuation occasionally gets lost or cut, sentences are left hanging; those things need to be fixed along the way so the product comes out looking marginally professional.

I have and always will insist that editing one's work, even if it's for submission to a brick and mortar publisher, is imperative.  It's just the professional thing to do. And yes, hiring an editor can be costly, but there are people out there like Ien, who offer creative and fair alternatives in order to knock your book into shape, and help promote it to boot. So I'm just saying to all my fellow writer friends, look up Ien, do what you must to make your book professional; out of respect to your readers.

So we've hammered out a suitable copy, which I will post below. This time this book will be available as hard cover, soft cover and ebook.  The hard-copies will be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers in a little over a month.  The ebook will be published for sale soon.

I will add that I decided to forego the illustrations. As one of my most enthusiastic readers and friends pointed out to me recently, "I don't like illustrations. It deprives me of the opportunity to imagine the appearance characters on my own--and that's one of the best parts of the reading experience."  I can't argue with that.  I will instead post the completed illustrations on this blog periodically for those who might wish to see them.

A screen capture of the book copy.

First copy, fresh off the press....

It's done. The new cover for Tinna's Promise is in place at last. There are a few details that need mopping up around the interwebs, of which a few I can take care of myself. A few of the digital e-book sites still have the old cover on them; I'm not sure how to go about changing that information on each site, but at least the big guys are switched over; Amazon, Barns & Noble, etc. My Search-Inside option on Amazon is in the process of change as well... I'm hoping in the next few months, this lovely cover will be the one presented on all available sales sites.

Miss Abigail Larson, artiste extraordinaire, did a lovely job. She put up with quibbling from TWO people about this and about that... change this detail here, change this detail there.... Poor thing! She bore it with grace and produced a beautiful cover that we are all proud of.

Abigail's style is has a soft, subtle edge of the dreary and dark in it. Her other artwork is beautifully gloomy; but in creating the less gloomy subject matter on my covers, she does not lose her sense of stark beauty and whimsy. It takes skill to create something for someone's vision, and to still have it be uniquely yours. She accomplished that incredibly well. She really managed to maintain her unique style, but also respect what we were asking for. She's has off-the-charts talent, and I foresee great things for this artist. Here are her two primary websites:

Abigail Larson's DeviantArt page.
Abigail Larson's Main Website

She has completed the cover for Tinna's Might (which is STUNNING) and she is currently working on the cover for yes... Book THREE. I am on the edge of my seat to see what she does with the concept we put together, we asked her to just run with it this time, there are no constraints of existing story to keep her reined in--so this cover will be beautiful, I know. I haven't written a jot of book three yet, but I'll be starting fairly soon, after the editing process is finished for book two.

Editors, like everyone else in this economy are hurting; and one ad brought me over 80 responses from editors. Yipes. Anyway... I'll keep you apprised of the progress of book two, but in the meantime, click through to Amazon or B&N and grab yourself a copy of Tinna's Promise with this beautiful artwork on the cover!

Thank you Abigail!