Tag Archives: self-publishing

Early results for Empire of Chains.

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It’s been two weeks now since I’ve released Empire of Chains. Overall, I’m happy with the results. I haven’t been setting the world on fire with my sales, but I’ve made some sales. I’m having more success with Kindle Unlimited.

A lot of this is a learning process. I’m happy where I am, but I’d still like to improve things. Not sure how that will happen. A lot of it is trial and error. You can do all kinds of research on the self-publishing business, but once you publish your first book, it’s a different beast altogether.

I’m enjoying it, though. Since I’m not in dire financial need of income from self-publishing at the moment, I can work on it without obsessing too much.

That being said, I am obsessing quite a bit.

Empire of Chains is officially released!

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Today marks the release of Empire of Chains. This is a day I’ve been looking forward to, and dreading, for a long time. This book has been with me in many forms since I was 15 years old (I’m now 27, for the record). When I first wrote this book (and series), it was not very good, and that’s a nice way of putting it.

But in the 12 years since, I have grown as a writer. I’ve written other stories, but this one has always held a special place in my heart. A lot of the initial setting details and the main characters have remained mostly the same, but pretty much everything else in the series is much different from what I originally wrote.

And much better, I should add.

Originally, I wrote a cliche-riddled story about heroes going on a quest to defeat a dark lord. Since then, that story has evolved. There’s still a quest, but it’s not as much of a focus. There’s still a dark lord figure, but he’s not really a dark lord. In fact, from his perspective, he’s a hero. He does terrible things, but they’re all in the name of creating a better future.

You’re probably wondering why you should read this. First and foremost, it’s classic fantasy updated for modern audiences. As a reader, I enjoy the feel of series like The Wheel of Time and authors like Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson, especially, takes a lot of the common fantasy tropes and puts his own spin on them. That’s what I like to do in my books as well. I want to write the kind of stories that made me fall in love with fantasy in the first place, but I also want to make them feel new and fresh. I like stories with a lot of action and magic, and with characters who I can root for. If you’re looking for Grimdark, I’m probably not the author for you. I do include some dark elements in my work, and there is a fair amount of death in my stories, but I’d say I write more PG-13 fantasy.

There’s some mild language, fade-to-black sex scenes, and a fair amount of violence. But I think anyone from about age 12 and up can read my books (possibly even younger depending on the maturity and reading level of the child in question).

This is deliberate on my part because I also write young adult and middle grade fantasy. I don’t currently have any in the works, but I do love writing for those age groups, and I wouldn’t want my younger readers to read my other books and find they’re not appropriate for their age group.

In this regard, I’d say my target audience is a lot like Brandon Sanderson’s in terms of age and interests. I’m not claiming to be Brandon Sanderson. Id love to be held in the same regard someday, but right now, I’m just another self-published writer trying to find his way in a crowded field.

I hope you’ll take the chance on my series, and if you enjoy it, please do leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Also tell your friends and family. Word of mouth is the self-published author’s best friend, whether that’s telling someone in person or leaving reviews online.

Sunweaver Book 3 is finished.

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I have now completed the first draft of my entire Sunweaver series. That’s on top of having my entire World in Chains series written. That means that my readers can expect both series over the course of the next year, once I edit and get cover art.

I had an 8,000 word sprint today to finish Sunlord, the third book in the trilogy. It had one of my favorite action sequences yet to conclude the book, and the book is pretty action-packed throughout. I’m excited to get to work on editing it, though that will likely wait awhile because I still have to edit the last three books of World in Chains.

I will probably take a short break from writing. I usually do that after finishing a book to give me just a little time for the creative juices to recharge. I’m not sure which project will be the next one. I may do a few trial runs with my various ideas and see which one grabs me the most.

The God War is one of my series, and I have written the first draft of the first book. I’m anticipating it being three books long, just like Sunweaver, so that may be where I go next. But I also have another series I’ve started that I’m really excited about. It’s so tough to make these decisions sometimes.

An Update: Sunweaver Book 3, World in Chains edits, and some random thoughts on writing huge epics.

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I’m 71,000 words into the final book of my Sunweaver trilogy. Things are really shaping up nicely as I approach the end. I expect the book to be somewhere between 100,000 words and 110,000 words, making it roughly the same length as the first two in the series.

I’m also busy editing Book 2 of World in Chains. I hope I can get that one in good enough shape to have it out toward the end of the summer or in the early fall. I’ve written the entire series, which is what I plan to do for all my series at the moment.

I may come to a point where I have a series that’s too long for that method to work. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I have Wheel of Time style epics swimming around. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to writing them, and when I do, they might be shorter series to begin with. I don’t get quite as epic in my word count as some epic fantasy authors. The longest of any of my books is the first draft of World in Chains book 4, which stands at about 170,000 words. That’s nothing compared to one of Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books.

Within the next week, I should begin the cover art process for Empire of Chains. Hopefully that all goes smoothly, and I have the cover ready by the end of the month. In the meantime, I will likely run through the book a couple more times to check for any typos that have eluded me this long.

Why I stopped outlining.

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In the plotter vs. “pantser” (one who writes by the seat of their pants) debate, I used to be firmly on the plotter side. I’m generally a structured person, or at least more structured than a lot of creative types. I’m an Electrical Engineering student in addition to being a writer, so I use a lot of my left brain.

Because of that, I always thought I should outline my books. At times, this has worked for me, but I’ve discovered more and more that I get my best ideas as I’m in the flow of the story. Outlining is an entirely different process. I don’t quite feel the story the same way, and my ideas are less inventive.

This becomes especially clear when I write series. The farther I get into writing a series, the more likely I am to deviate from my original outline. I got to the point where I was doing this so much that I decided I should just throw out the outline altogether.

However, that might be too extreme of a response. I don’t quite make up everything as I go. I form a mental outline. I know where I want to get, but if I discover something more interesting along the way, I’m perfectly happy to alter my mental plans.

This can lead to some inconsistencies between books, and that’s part of the reason I’ve decided that I will generally write an entire series before publishing any of it. That way, if I introduce something important in book 3 or 4, I can go back and throw in some hints toward it in book 1. A lot of planners are able to do this kind of thing because they outline the entire series in advance. I’ve tried, and it simply doesn’t work like that for me.

When I was considering trade publishing, I always had issues with throwing away the outline because trade publishing tends to work differently. You rarely write the entire series before publishing any of it. I know Michael J. Sullivan (author of the very good Riyria Revelations, Riyria Chronicles, and Legends of the First Empire series) does this. But he did start out self-publishing.

Now that I’ve decided to go with self-publishing, I can write my series however I want, and writing them this way helps me to give you a plot with a lot more interesting twists and turns.

That’s not to say I throw away the outline completely. I’ve been known to outline a few chapters ahead of where I am. That can help me write more quickly during my writing sessions because I’m not figuring out what’s going to happen next. More often, my mental outline is good enough to carry me through, and I’m able to figure out the details as I write.

The key thing as a writer is finding a process that works for you. This process works for me right now. In the future, I may decide to go back to outlining. I don’t think you should ever get stuck thinking there’s only one way to write that works for you. Writing is a continual process of experimentation, and every story is going to have different needs.

Self-Publishing and Reading Habits

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When I first decided to get serious about writing, I got serious about reading. I looked for all the best that fantasy and science fiction had to offer. At first, this was entirely in the realm of trade publishing. I didn’t think there was anything worthwhile apart from that, or I thought it would be too difficult to find it. But since I’ve become more involved in the SFF community online, I’ve found quite a few self-published novels that I’ve enjoyed.

Now, as I’m embarking on my own self-publishing career, I’m wondering just how much I should read of self-published vs. trade-published books. I find a lot of books I enjoy in both arenas, and some I don’t.

I’m considering reading a lot of the novels by my fellow Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off entrants. I’m not sure how well I can commit to that, however. So far this year, I’ve read only 24 books, and some of them have been quite short.

I used to be a much more voracious reader, but now that I have my own writing career and Engineering school to keep me occupied, I’m not finding as much time to read. That brings me to the following question: Should I focus on all the trade-published fantasy series I want to read, or should I focus on giving my fellow Indies a chance?

I don’t know the answer. In the end, I think it comes down to reading the books that interest me most without paying any attention to how they were published.

Those are my thoughts. What do you think?

As a side note, my website may not be working correctly at the moment. I changed my domain name when I upgraded my WordPress account. They said it may take up to 72 hours before my site functions perfectly.

I submitted to the SPFBO today.

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For those who aren’t familiar with the acronym, that stands for the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. It’s a contest run by fantasy author Mark Lawrence, and it’s in its third year. I’ve read a few of the books from the last year, and I’ve been generally impressed. Now I’m hoping I can have some success with my own work.

Speaking of which, I have my release scheduled for June 30th. That’s the day you can get your hands on Empire of Chains. I will have the Kindle version ready by then for sure, and hopefully my cover art will be in place. If it isn’t, you might have to wait a while yet on a paperback version.

I’m both excited and terrified. This is a path I never would have imagined myself taking a few years ago. But it feels like the right path for me now. It may not yield immediate success, but I’m okay with that. I will not stop writing.

Fireweaver is finished.

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Today, I finished the first draft of Fireweaver, the second book in my Sunweaver series. That’s two books down and one more to go. This series will probably come out once I get my entire World in Chains series out to readers, so it’s still a while down the road before it will be ready for readers’ eyes.

I had a big push these last two days, writing over 11,000 words over the two days combined. That often happens to me when I get close to the end of the book. I become so excited about what I’m writing, and the words simply flow.

This one has a few rough spots that I need to smooth out when it comes to revisions. I won’t deny that. But for the moment, my revision efforts will be focused mostly on The Shadowed Land, book 2 in World of Chains. I expect to start writing the last book in the Sunweaver trilogy soon.

I’ve discovered that the best writing method for me is to write an entire series before moving forward with it. I tend to write without a definite plan in mind, so there are sometimes inconsistencies between books that I have to iron out before I can publish.

 

In other news, it should be less than two months before I get my cover art for Empire of Chains, the first book of World in Chains. I’m not sure about the timetable for the rest of the series just yet, but Empire of Chains is still on track for this summer.

Finding the Write Balance (that is not a typo).

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I’m planning on releasing my first book this summer. That’s a big milestone I’ve been building up to for a long time. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve written and discarded on the way to this, and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve changed my mind about going through with self-publishing.

But now I am going through with it, and I want to achieve at least a moderate level of success. That means making back the money I’ve put in at first and then earning more farther down the road, once I have more books out.

That brings me to my greatest dilemma. I have a lot going on in my life. I’m going to engineering school, I’m working, I’m trying to get things ready to move, and I’m trying to launch my writing career. On top of all that, I suffer from bipolar disorder and anxiety. There’s only so much stress I can put on myself before it becomes potentially dangerous.

When I look at a lot of self-published authors, I see that they’re putting out three or four books a year (sometimes even more). I’d love to be able to write on that kind of schedule. I’m a very productive writer when I’m actually writing, but I am not able to write every day due to my many other commitments. As such, I think I can put out one book a year, maybe two (but I’m not going to hold myself to that).

I’m trying to keep any kind of time pressure of myself. It will only push me beyond safe levels of stress and likely result in an inferior novel. So I’m going to set my goal at getting one book out a year. Since I have already written the first drafts of all the books in World of Chains, I anticipate the schedule being a bit quicker at first.

It may work out well enough that I can spend more time writing once school is over. I still have 2.5 years to go (including this semester). Of course, that’s assuming I don’t decide to continue my studies in graduate school.

I will try my best to get new material out there quickly because I know I like that kind of productivity as a reader, but I’m not going to promise any set number of books per year apart from the one I think I can do without putting too much pressure on myself. Beyond that, it will depend on how much time I find to write between my other commitments.

That being said, I still anticipate a summer release for Empire of Chains. If all goes well with editing, I hope to have the second book in the series, The Shadowed Land, out sometime around Christmas, but we’ll see how things shape up.

I do want to keep everyone updated on what’s going on with my writing. One of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, is great about doing that, and I find his way of approaching his writing career is inspiring to me. Obviously, I’m going a different route with self-publishing, but I still think I can approach my career in roughly the same way.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to get more details soon on the release for Empire of Chains. I won’t really know until I have the cover art finalized, which won’t happen until June at the earliest.

Indie Book Review: Mist Falcon by Ryan J. Doughan

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It’s been a while since I’ve done any book reviews here, but I thought I’d start that up again. I actually read this one a while back and really enjoyed it.

Here’s what I wrote on Goodreads:

Took a chance on this one because I know the author on Twitter (but not in real life). It had generally good reviews, though not a lot of them, so I was a little skeptical going in.

As it turns out, I had no reason to be skeptical. It’s not a perfect book (occasional awkward sentences and minor editing issues), but these issues never pulled me out of the story.

I connected with Aiden and Willem right away. It took me a bit longer to connect with Tako, but his story has a lot of potential to become very interesting in subsequent installments. Rem and Lem were a lot of fun.

The best thing about this book was the action, especially toward the end of the book. I had that frantic feeling reading the last thirty percent. When I get that feeling, I know a book is good.

If I had to take a guess, I’d say fans of Weeks and Sanderson would find a lot to enjoy in this story.

Rating: 9/10

 

 

I’ll see if I can add a bit to the review here. I feel like the biggest strength in this book was the pacing. It rarely let up, and that made it an enjoyable read for me. The characters weren’t the most complex or interesting I’ve ever seen, but I felt like rooting for them, and that’s the biggest thing an author has to do for me to enjoy a book.

If you’re looking to give a self-published author a chance, this book is good option. I feel like it hasn’t been noticed as much as some other self-published titles, and I think that should change.