It's Late...

I updated, as in re-edited, three of the books that I published in 2011 and 2012. My first three actually. COS and DM I did a while ago (a few weeks) and reloaded the ebook versions with the corrections, mostly grammar and spelling stuff. Dialene I did Saturday night, because I was looking at it and I was like, "Oh wow, I need to fix this!" It had been a while since I'd last read it (years in fact).

So, for the last several hours, I've been taking all of the changes, first from COS, and then from Dialene, and applying them to the print versions. This can be a royal pain to do, because I have to keep the page numbers the same, otherwise the covers will need editing, and I really don't want to do that. With COS, which is like 350 pages, it was a long job. Dialene is a lot shorter, and should be easier.
So of course, it wasn't. There was some weird bug in there with the way the section breaks were formatted, and it turns out there was another problem with the headers that I'd never even noticed, not even in the paperback versions I have. That's how subtle it was.

And of course a pain, took me like 2 hours to fix it.

DM I will do the updated grammar correction upload to the print version on Tuesday most likely. Tomorrow I am pretty sure I won't have the time.

COS book 3 has been in my mind lately, because book 1 sales have lately been picking up. As I said before, if book 2 sales follow through, book 3 will get written. The thing right now that I need to do in my spare time, when I get some of it back, is to check the list of plot points from the old outline and update/finish it. The book is going to be complicated, because it will have 3 (count 'em - three) main point of view characters, and it will be told in First Person Singular. So everything you change chapters, you're going to be changing viewpoints and jumping into someone else's head.

I'm not going to even mention the minor characters whose heads you will be spending a little time in.

The thing about book 3 is that there are three different people's stories coming together in it. Raj's, Balizar/Jotun's, and Samantha's. Sam never had a book of her own, but she is a key player in the story.

In my never ending quest to put food on the table, I may be picking up a contract job here next month. I'm waiting to hear back from the job, I've worked with some of the people there before, so it looks like a good possibility. This would slow me down from my goal of publishing six books this year (and which I'm in danger of missing right now, so I need to step up the work), but it would allow me to do some of the pondering I need to do on some of the story lines. I do think aiming for six novels this year may have been a bit ambitious, but it's good to have goals when you're self-employed.

I don't have a title for the current project yet, it's a sequel to the hammer commission and I'm 25K words into it. I have to go 'back' and write the bad guy's parts tomorrow, as I have to get him all nailed down on his part of the story, then I can pick back up on the protagonist's part, as their story lines are about to cross.

The next book will be a POI book. I'm actually thinking of writing one about Nikki, then the 8th one about Will. She (Nikki) is actually a rather busy person, seeing as she works for a very busy goddess who is always wheeling and dealing and who has a lot going on. While Will is something of an idealist, and maybe even a bit of a romantic (and still a touch naive), Nikki is very pragmatic and jaded.
And a bit of a hard ass.

I still have that other shrean novel out there to finish, but honestly, I'm thinking of just putting it out under a pen name, and turning it into a shifter PNR novel. I'll tell my fans and readers about it, so they can check it out if they wish, but I think it's different enough from the other stuff I write that I should make a clearer delineation between it and my usual stories. A different byline I think would make that fairly clear.

Anyway, it's after 1am, tomorrow is a workday, and the people tearing up the street in front of the house start at 7, so I really need to get to bed.
Good night,
-John

To whoever thinks that people always scream: Please Stop

Really, enough with all the screams. Most people, do not scream, most men do not scream, and while I'm not positive, I suspect a lot of women don't scream. Children scream, wimps scream, pussies scream. The average person does NOT, especially not every time something happens, and even if they did the first time, they're not going to do it every single time.
Adding screams in to 'heighten' the action? Yeah, that tells me your movie / anime sucks. That you don't know what you're doing, and shouldn't be doing it. And brave or fearless explorers? Heroes? No, those people don't scream constantly.

They just don't.

So please, quit it with all the screaming. You make me think I'm watching a movie about little girls, little wimpy girls (as again, I think most little girls probably don't scream all that much either). Screaming is what spoiled brats do for attention. Not adults.

Wow, Sales on Children of Steel are suddenly picking up...

This is both interesting, and cool. It's mostly Kindle Unlimited readers, but still, it's a considerable amount. Especially as the book came out 5 years ago (March of 2011). If this keeps up, and if I see enough of the sales carry through to Interregnum, I'll definitely be putting book three back on the schedule.

Why does Amazon allow 1 & 2 star reviews on my books by non-verified customers?

I only ask this because I gave a 2 star review to something I received for my birthday, bought via Amazon.
And they deleted it.

Spilling the beans, on Children of Steel

Okay, was writing on someone else's blog today and I decided I would finally spill the beans on the major trope buried in Children of Steel that NO ONE ever seems to get. Even the people at TV tropes, where this book has a page, have never gotten it.

So yes, COS is about the future, a future in which we have genetically engineered second class citizens based on animals. They exist because of labor shortages: basically people don't want to work because the standard of living of sitting on your ass at home has gotten good enough that you don't have to (sound familiar btw? Remember this book was written originally in 1990 - and no, that's not the buried trope). I wrote this book long before I had ever even heard of 'furry' or 'furry fandom' btw, it was more in the vein of Cordwainer Smith and his 'animal people'. Though as someone who owned and trained wild cats, and was up on what a lot of Geneticists were doing, and who was following the human genome project, there were some fertile ideas there.

Now, I have gone and dropped hints everywhere, especially in later books in that world, as to why things were the way they were. Multiple races in order to make it harder for them to have things in common to unite against humans. No human 'supermen' because of fears that they would take over (and you wouldn't be able to easily find them), and a few other reasons as to why they were made the way the were. There is even some discussion as to if they are engineered to have certain behaviors, which can be used against them, one way or another, or to control them.

But the one that I thought was the most obvious and which was alluded to constantly but which everyone seems to miss, is based on this old quote:

"Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man." -Aristotle

That is the major background 'trope' in the whole series, it forms so much of the stories, the society, and it is even reflected in the title, which comes from the song 'Types' by Living Color. It is mentioned, more than once, that the government comes in and provides all schooling for the 'animen' for the formative years of their lives. They are taught and trained where they are to be, and what they are to be. 

And I must admit that I am incredibly shocked that so many people have missed this. Especially when countries like France have recently embraced this philosophy by mandating government pre-schools for children. Much of our own school system here in the USA have been taken over by a particular political group who are using them to instill certain beliefs and behaviors in students today, which we are now reaping the harvest of, when we see all this micro-aggression bs, and the movement to stamp out free speech coming from our schools today.

Then again, maybe that is why so many of you are missing it, because you're actually living it.

I find it interesting though, that a book I started writing in 1990, which I published in 2011, is still dead on, on politics and what is happening with society, twenty plus years later.

QuQu's Watching: The Decline of Science Fiction Literature

An interesting commentary. I have another theory as well as to why scifi is declining, but this is definitely a part of it.

Good Morning Sacramento

So, a friend said, 'you should go on Good Morning Sacramento,' and I was thinking they wouldn't be interested in me, but he said his wife had been on several times for her business, and he told me to write Cody on the show.

So I did.

And he said to come on down!

So here's me on TV this morning:

http://gooddaysacramento.cbslocal.com/video/3403774-author-john-van-stry/

Honestly, it was a lot of fun, Cody was a great guy, Melissa was also really nice. Best of all I didn't make an idiot of myself. The sound guy who set me up (I'm sorry I forgot his name) was great and even the security guard out front was really cool.

It was interesting watching them all work, it's a busy place and there is a lot going on, and to be able to go from work one moment, to chatting with an guest before he goes on, and then back to work without missing a beat is an impressive skill. It's always nice watching professionals work.

And yes, the green room was actually green.

-John

So the new book is doing well, it was at #5 in Myths & Legends for a few days, but has slipped back to #6 this morning. So that means if you haven't bought it yet, buy it now! :-) And if you have, well, buy a copy for the family, the wife, the kids, the neighbors next store, and that kid walking down the street! ;-)

Anyways, I just want to thank you all for buying my book and supporting me, I appreciate it!

Here's the link: (Blogger is being a pain today, so no embedded pics)
http://amzn.to/1W8LViG

Yea! After three days, they finally fixed it.

And of course I'm in the top 100 of three categories, as expected.
Thanks everyone!

This time it's Amazon issues

Sometimes I can't win for losing. The new book is selling well, it's ranked about 3400 overall on Amazon right now and will hopefully continue to get lower numbers. BUT Amazon is NOT ranking the book in it's categories. When it fell below 4000 it should have shown up in the top 100 of all of it's categories. BUT they're not ranking it.

Why? No idea. So I sent them an email at 6am
Then at 12 noon
then again at 3:30.

Nothing. Without it getting ranked, it won't show up in the top 100 lists, which or any other lists, which is the Amazon promotion that gets other people, who haven't read my stuff to read it. It is a key part of the Amazon sales demographic. And Amazon isn't doing it for me, and they're not fixing it. This will kill the entire launch if not fixed soon.

I am so screwed. Again. Obviously the universe doesn't want me to be an author anymore.

Edit:

Here's a picture of the relevant stuff to show that yes, I did it right:

Portals of Infinity: Kaiju (Book 7) is now available on Amazon

It went live very late last night and is now available:

Portals of Infinity: Kaiju

Cover for POI: Kaiju

Here's the cover, expect to see the book up for sale by tomorrow: