Good news everyone!

After battling real-life obligations and a traitorous immune system over the past few days, followed by some obscenity-laden “disagreements” with MS Word, the final manuscript of Shadows of the Underwizard is ready to go.

The print-on-demand (paperback) version will be slightly delayed due to some stupid formatting issues, and I am getting really antsy and might just release the e-book version first. I’ll be sure to let you know when and if that happens.

But on the e-book front, Amazon recently announced a new program where authors who agree to make their books exclusive to Amazon for 90 days at a time are placed in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (and can get a portion of a fund set aside for that purpose) along with other promotional tools like the ability to make your book free for a few days. I have mixed feelings about this due to the exclusivity stipulation, but I figure as a completely new work without any presence on other platforms to lose that it might be worth trying for the first 90 days. Also, I really don’t plan on doing much marketing until I have a sequel ready, so I’m not too concerned at the moment if it’s not available to the widest possible audience. Anyway, if by some off chance you own an e-reader that is not a Kindle and manage to find and want to buy my book, I apologize in advance.

Please keep in mind that this self-publishing thing is experimental from beginning to end for me. A few years ago I never would have even considered it, but the literary landscape is changing that fast. We’ll just have to see what happens!

 

Status Update

Things are moving along, if more slowly than I would have liked. But rest assured dear reader(s), this thing will be out before Christmas, I swear. (There will be a ton of Kindles bought this holiday season–who doesn’t want to tap that action?) I incorporated the latest round of beta (or is it more like gamma at this point?) reader feedback. Now I am using the text-to-speech feature of the Kindle to do a last listen-through, as often the ears will pick up something that the eyes have gotten accustomed to glossing over. I’m about 1/3 of the way through, and this method has already picked up a number of easily missed typos. The things I go through to create a professional product…

Anyway, as you can see from the cover already on the site, the book is titled Shadows of the Underwizard, and is the first part of new fantasy series called The Godhead Wars. If you are reading this near the time of posting, you probably already knew that.

Also, my patient ones, keep in mind that I am doing this concurrently with finals as a senior in an engineering program. It’s just my particular brand of madness, I suppose.

If you want hard-ish numbers I think the final manuscript will be ready by the end of the weekend. I would like to have the Kindle and paperback versions available at the same time, and it will take me a few days after that to receive the paperback proof. Other outlets will likely become available after Amazon.