Thursday, September 08, 2022

So Queen Elizabeth has passed.

I'm reminded of a story I heard more than a few years ago. I regret that I do not remember who told it. It was someone I knew in passing. His father, for all that he was an American, was a big fan of the Queen and sent her a Christmas card every year. This person that I knew had occasion to be at an 'official ceremony' in another country, that the Queen was attending.

When he was introduced, the Queen asked him about his father, to which he told her that he had died several years ago. She then replied with something along the line of 'Oh, we'd wondered why we'd stopped getting his card every year.'

That right there says a lot.

They were completely blown away by the simple fact that the Queen had noticed.

Oh, and they ended up on the Queen's Christmas card list after that.

Monday, July 25, 2022

A Brief Intermission

 Just letting you know that it probably won't be until September until I publish another book. There are a couple of reasons for this, of course, none of which fall under the category of 'Bad'.

The first is that I'd been planning to take about a month off after LiberyCon. Unfortunately, that got postponed a week, as I was behind schedule on getting 'No Place Like Home' out. I'd hoped to get away for a week or two, as in travel, but things are still messed up in a lot of the rest of the country and the last thing I wanted to have happen was to be forced into some pointless quarantine. Especially as the governor in one of those places is a couple asshat (and I'm not talking about California this time either). 

Of course I had a LOT of things at home that needed attention and I spent a couple of weeks wrenching on my motorcycles which have been poorly neglected for the last year. Then there were a lot of non-writing writing work that I wanted to get done, and a fair deal of it did get done. But there's still a lot more to do and thankfully I now have help with that.

There's also some stuff I had to do for Baen Books, in regards to the book I have coming out with them come December. 

Now, going forward, I want to get the sequel to that book done. Once that's done, it goes to Baen, so that will also slow down anything new coming out. I have a number of things in my head right now as well that I want to get down in some sort of outline form, because I've got a lot of things I want to write now. Some of it is POI, some of it is Valens, and some of it is completely new stuff. I'm hoping that will make everyone happy, including the WTM folks who can't figure out what to write unless they're ripping off me or my friends. 

I will be at FenCon in Dallas this September, though I don't know how long I'll be there on any individual day as I have Very Large Dogs and I can't just leave them in the house for long periods of time. But I will try to make the most of it.

So yes, unfortunately I may not have anything new out until September or October, but I am back to work. I really did need a break where I wasn't thinking about things writing and deadlines or the rest of that. It's been about five years since I've been able to do that. I did tell my Patrons on Patreon and SubscribeStar about it, but I hadn't mentioned elsewhere really, so I figured I'd put this out here.

Hope you're all doing well!

Sunday, June 26, 2022

 This is the next Mihalis book (number 3) in the Valens Heritage series (Number 5 for that)

Here's the Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B55DH116

 

And here's the cover:


 

Wednesday, March 09, 2022

Wives Tales Compilation in Paperback

 I know there were some folks who wanted this for this collection, so I finally took care of it. All four of the Wives Tales editions, which each contained a pair of shorts about each of Sean's wives, are now out in one book. 

It's only out as a paperback, because I figure most folks already have the ebooks as they were all sold pretty cheap. The paperback is $4.99 US - price varies in other countries though I kept the royalty to about 25 cents in every case. Sadly in some places (I'm looking at you Australia!) it costs a lot to publish a paperback, so the price is higher than I would have liked.

Here's the Amazon URL for the book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09V3Z8STD

So that's 9 stories, one for all seven wives, then two more about situations that people had been asking me about.

Sunday, February 20, 2022

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Tuesday, December 07, 2021

Why I'm not releasing to Audible anymore

 It's plain and simple: I make more money elsewhere.

Yes, even with losing the sales to hundreds of you, if not thousands, I still make MORE money selling on Bookfunnel than I do on audible, even though I sell less than a tenth as many.

Now THINK about that a moment....

I'm selling WAY less than I do on Bookfunnel. But I'm making more money. Why is that?

Maybe because Audible has been ripping me off for the last several years? After all they got CAUGHT doing it at least once, why would they change? 

So yeah, don't care. Done with Audible. The whole reason I didn't DO audiobooks for years was because of the people at Audible (and their customer service will tell you to fuck yourself - they're not nice people).

Saturday, December 04, 2021

Recent Releases

 First off, the latest book in the Valens Heritage series is now live:





https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MWMFQXS

 

 

 

 

 

 

There has been a lot of 'issues' with Amazon during the launch of this book, and as the post below mentions, if you want reliable notifications, join my mailing list.

Next up are two NEW audiobooks - and remember I do NOT put any new books up on Audible unless they're under an existing contract (so the Valens Heritage books will be there as they come out - but the rest will not).

The audiobook for Dan's Inferno, Book IV: Vengeance is now live and forsale! (Performed by Jessica Threet and Dan Wisniewski)
http://www.vanstry.net/stryvant/BUYDI4.html

Also the audiobook for book #7 of my Portals of Infinity Series is also now live (performed by Jessica Threet).
http://www.vanstry.net/vanstry/BUYPOI7.html

If you're interested in seeing which other books of mine are now in Audio format, go to my home page and click the link for 'Audiobooks' on the left hand side.
Van Stry:
http://www.vanstry.net/vanstry/

Stryvant:

http://www.vanstry.net/stryvant/ 

and remember! Sign up for my mailing list!

A reminder to sign up for my eMail List

 It is becoming clearer and clearer that Amazon is not sending out notifications of new works reliably or at ALL for certain authors (your humble narrator being one of them). The ONLY people who got notifications so far on my new Jan Stryvant Novel, were the ones on my list, or the ones who follow me online.

And I forgot to post about it here (because it was a Jan Stryvant book) because I was trying to get the word out everywhere else.

Folks - the facts of the matter are simple: If you want to read my books when they come out you MUST sign up for my mailing list or you won't know that they ARE out. Amazon wasn't showing this new book to ANYONE who didn't have the URL for over 24 hours (they claim their store is 'busted' but oddly enough only a couple of authors in the same genre were having this problem - funny that).

As for my mailing list: I will never share the details of it with anyone. It'd take a court order to get me to turn it over and even then, they're gonna have to talk to my lawyers first. I don't like spam either, so it only gets used for new releases, audiobook releases, and kickstarter announcements.


Here's the link: http://vanstry.net/vanstry/maillist.html

That works for me and my pen name.

Also, if there are other authors you like out there, you should get on their notification email list as well, or someone somewhere, who works at a big nameless corporation just might start deciding what you can or can not read.