Proof readers... I thought I had one...

I have an editor who I pay to proof read and copy edit.
And still some people continue to say I need one.

So either the one I have isn't doing a good job, or some people don't know grammar as well as they think they do.

Not really sure which the case is, but it's only a couple of people complaining, so I don't think it's worth going back through the books and re-editing them right now. But it does drive me a bit crazy, I know my books are not littered with errors, there's probably less than 5 or 6 in a book, if that many. But I guess one mistake every 10K words is too many for some people?

Between editing and cover art, I have to sell 250 copies of a book before I start to make any money (and all of my books are pirated within 48 hours of publishing, I'm very popular with people who spend two grand on a computer, but can't spend 3 or 4 bucks for a book that takes me 8 weeks to write), so spending even -more- money on an editor to catch a few more mistakes? I'm not sure it's worth the money.

Big Cats do not have slit pupils ('cats' eyes)

If your artwork or comic has say, tigers and lions with 'cats' eyes, you know the slit pupils that small cats have, well then I'm probably not going to look at anymore of your work. Because you didn't take the time to ever once in your life to look at a tiger or a lion. Because you would have seen then that they have round pupils. Like people do.

These are also the kinds of 'little' mistakes that I see others make in other things, (and that I try very  hard to avoid making myself) that show you really just couldn't be bothered. I mean it's one thing if you make an occasional mistake here or there, but when you mess up a fundamental, and you mess it up constantly, well, you lose me. And probably a lot of other people as well.

Be mean to Will month

So June looks like it is going to be national 'Be Mean to Will' month.

Let's get started, shall we?

Interregnum is now live on Amazon!

Here's the link to the book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YIP44D2

The Sequel to Children of Steel is Posting to Amazon

The sequel to Children of Steel is complete, the title is Interregnum, and I will be posting it to Amazon for sale in a few hours. So it should be on sale sometime early tomorrow morning (Saturday).

Here's the cover:

The cover for this one was done by Rozga (http://rozga.weebly.com/) That is what the Astra looks like minus the cargo containers that it usually hauls.

Patreon - I now have an account

If you look to the right of this page, you  will see that I now have a patreon account.

The primary reason for the account, is the same as for most of the others that people have out there: To help me cover my bills and allow me to write full-time.

Being an artist or a writer is a difficult job: You don't get a regular paycheck, and your pay varies significantly from month to month. Book sales are cyclic, and you always know that some months are going to be slow. So hence the Patreon account. Basically by contributing you are making it easier for me to be creative and write. To devote more time to creating more of the stories you like and want to read, so I don't have to take consulting side jobs to cover expenses, during which I'm often so busy that I rarely can spare the time to write anything.

I have set up a few rewards for people who donate more than just a few dollars, to show them that I appreciate their contribution. Of course being new to this I'm still looking at the page and wondering if I should make any further changes, so suggestions are welcome.

-John

INTERREGNUM the sequel to Children of Steel

The sequel to Children of Steel is finished, mostly. I need to send it to my editor, and I will send out copies to my Beta readers, just to be sure that there aren't any issues that I may have missed.
Barring any unforeseen issues, it will be available on Amazon before the end of the month.

There is a sequel to this story, that I plan on writing eventually, it is sort of a convergence of several of the threads of the 'universe' that cross each other at one point. How soon I get around to writing that story will depend somewhat on how well this story does. The better it does, the sooner I can justify writing the sequel.

I will now be starting book five in the Portals of Infinity series, as I'm getting a lot of requests for that, and that series right now is selling extremely well. So I owe it to the people reading it, to get out the next installment in a timely fashion.

Children of Steel Sequel, progress report

So, the sequel to Children of Steel​ is almost done. Got 5K written yesterday and now I just need to rewrite one scene, tie two parts together and that's it for the first draft.

After that, do the first re-write and edit, send a few copies out to some beta readers, come up with a title (!), then send it to my copy editor, and start on the cover. So it should be done by the end of the month. I hope to get it out by the end of May.

Lost Souls will also be coming out soon, I need to do a quick rewrite on that, and send it to my editor, and get a cover done. Lost Souls is a fantasy story, more of a Young Adult (YA) type. It will probably come out in early June.

Status on the next book

I'm currently working on the next novel in the 'Children of Steel' universe (I really need a better name for that universe, but that was the name of the first book I wrote in it). This book will be a sequel to that first book, picking up about where Children of Steel left off.

Right now I'm about 50K words into the first draft, it will not be as long as the first book (which was over 170K!), though if it does well in the market, there will be more released in that 'universe'.

This is a bit of a risk for me, but I have gotten quite a few requests for a sequel, so I decided to take the time to honor them, and see if there was enough of a demand to write a line of stories there, as well as the current POI series. As I hope to publish in a few more weeks, I will just have to wait and see.

As for the next Portals of Infinity book in the series, right now I have the basic plot and the title:  Demigods and Deities. (Yes, sometimes I do come up with a title before I start a book!) I will be starting work on Book Five as soon as I finish the current COS story and send it off to my proofreader. My target date for publication on Book Five is currently set for the end of June.

And no, the title does not mean this story will have something to do with the old D&D book with a similar name.

Moving to my books Amazon exclusively

I've decided to move all of my writings to Amazon exclusively.
Why? Well simply put, I now sell 99.9% of my work on Amazon. I sold one book so far this year (under my name) on B&N, and one on iTunes. But I sold over 10K on Amazon.

Moving a book to being exclusive to Amazon also allows me to sign that book up for the Kindle unlimited, and while I make a lower return in the way of royalties from those books, I still get a respectable return from that sales channel. So it really just comes down to simple economics, and as this is my sole source of income, it is important to do what I can to increase the return on my writing efforts.

As for the printed versions of my works, those will still be available through multiple channels, as this only applies to my eBooks.

Thanks,
-John

Portals of Infinity, Book Four: The Sea of Grass is now available on Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VNNV0VQ

The next book may be a few days late

Everyone,

Due to a sudden and unexpected death, (My father passed on the 19th), the release of book four will be delayed by at least a few days. I need to finish the final re-write and send it to my proof reader still. The cover however is finished, I just received it today. I will try to post it here later, or on the POI facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/PortalsofInfinity?ref=aymt_homepage_panel).