Teaser Tuesday 12/4/2012: The Apocalypse Troll

So at the moment I’m reading a book by David Weber with the somewhat unfortunate title The Apocalypse Troll, which always makes me snicker a little, perhaps because of Dennis the Vizsla’s run-in with Obvious Troll a few years ago. (However, the Troll in this book is not obvious. At least, not once it stops firing nukes at the U.S. Navy.)

Teaser Tuesday: 8/14/2012

This week’s Teaser Tuesday is from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary:  Part 2 by M.R. James.  James was writing stories of ghosts (and the occasional eldritch abomination) around the turn of the previous century, and has been cited as an influence by (among others) H.P. Lovecraft.  He also, as previously alluded, figures prominently in one of the Merrily Watkins books, which is what prompted me to pick up his stories.  The Kindle editions of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary are currently available for the quite reasonable price of $0.00.

“Shards” Available for Kindle and Nook

My new fantasy novel Shards is now available from the Kindle Store (or, if you’re in the UK, the UK Kindle Store) and the Nook Store at Barnes & Noble for $2.99 US (or the equivalent)!  A print edition will be coming eventually, but first I need to finish editing (i.e., rewriting) the concluding book, The War of the Ravels, which I expect to have done some time next year.  Sorry to leave everyone hanging, but I promise not to take as long as George R.R. Martin does between installments of “A Song of Ice and Fire”!

Final “Shards” Cover

Here it is!

I changed the text from red to black and added a couple more layers of outlining around it.  It also looks good in monochrome, e.g., on an old-school Kindle:

I’m about halfway through formatting the book for the Kindle; watch this space for updates!

“Shards” Cover Art

Well I selected my cover art for “Shards” already — sometimes you find an image and it just clicks!  This artwork is “Inhale Exhale — The 7th Hour”, by Emilie Leger.  (Check her page for more great art, one of which is likely to eventually become the cover of “The War of the Ravels”. For those who are allergic to Facebook, she also has a page at deviantART.)

I am looking at four options for the title and author name text, in horizontal and vertical permutations.  I am leaning toward the vertical ones, but haven’t decided which I like best. (Well actually I’m sitting down, but you know what I mean.)

Option 1	Option 2
Option 3	Option 4

As always, thoughts and comments are welcome!

Finished!

Well, for the one or two readers (both of whom are most likely in the UK) who are still waiting for the follow-up to Dragon Stones (which was once upon a time the #1 best seller on the Kindle fantasy lists in the UK), it is finally finished!  The new book, Shards, is part one of a two-part fantasy series, and clocks in at about 111,000 words.  For those who are keeping track, that’s somewhat shorter than A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder or Dragon Stones, but longer than Night Watchman or Long Before Dawn.  Why release it as two books instead of one?  Well …

Attack of the Kindle Cases: Part 3

After using the New Yorker Kindle case for a while, I noticed that M-Edge had started advertising that soon you would be able to create custom covers using your own pictures and photographs. Hmm, what would make a good Kindle cover for me? Hmm …

Evolution

Yes, I’m still here! I’ve been reworking my fantasy novel Shards, AKA “The Big Book”, since mid-December. At this point I should have Part One available within a few months, to be followed (in another ten or twelve months, based on how long it has taken me to rework Part One and on the fact that Part Two is longer).

Why is it taking me so long to finish editing Shards Part One, you ask? Well, I finished Shards quite a while ago (“quite a while” being at least a decade) and when I finally went back to edit it … well, when you go back and read something that you wrote that long ago, what immediately strikes you is that it’s terrible. That’s what happens to me, anyway.

Here’s Where The Story Ends

Most of the readers of this blog are probably aware of my other, much-more-popular-than-this-one blog, Dennis’s Diary of Destruction, which features the antics and adventures of three dogs, an evil cat, ninja hedgehogs, a sarcastic field mouse, a stoner ex-DEA drug-sniffing dog, and various other bit players. When I discovered that Dragon Stones had hit the best-seller list on the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store, I put Dennis’s blog on hiatus so I could concentrate on finishing my next fantasy novel (which is not a sequel to Dragon Stones — but, due to popular demand, such a sequel will be coming eventually). This decision produced much sadness amongst Dennis’s nice readers. Fortunately, one of them, Mango Relentlessly Huge, has most thoughtfully provided an ending to my book so that I can get back to Dennis’s Diary that much faster. So here, for your reading pleasure, is the final chapter of my next novel, as written by Mango the mastiff. Enjoy!

But They Love Me In The U.K.

So last week I got a message from Amazon.co.uk that they were going to be depositing a royalty payment into my account. I wasn’t really aware that I had been making any sales in the UK, so I went to take a look at my Kindle e-book reports and was startled to find that I had sold hundreds of copies of Dragon Stones the week before. Then I visited the Dragon Stones product page, and was even more startled to see this: