Book Four, writing continues

As of last night, book 4 passed the halfway point in the first draft. I'm still on schedule to deliver in March, but to be honest I had hoped to be to the 2/3rds point by now. However, work issues have gotten in the way with the day job (lots of unexpected OT), and I've been sick for the last two weeks on top of that.

This weekend was very productive, and I got almost back on track. As next weekend I'll be home for Valentines day, I'm not sure how productive the writing side of things will be, but I'm taking the Friday before off, and will try to make that a full writing day.

Book 4 doesn't have a title yet, I've always been bad about titles, not sure why, but I need to get rolling on that so I can contact Dane, my cover artist over at eBookLaunch.com so he can get started on it. I've been incredibly happy with his work, he's really excellent at the job.

Book 2 is in audiobook form now as well, on Amazon and ACX. Rob Shamblin, my narrator has also been great and done truly wonderful work. It's gotten to the point where I hear his voice in my head a lot when I'm writing several of the character's dialogues.

I'm hoping to return to full time writing here in the future, so I can go back to publishing every six weeks or so. I also want to announce that I am planning to spin Nikki's story (Will's sister) off into a series of its own. Ideally I'd like to alternate writing the stories, and there are a few other books on the line up I want to finish. The only way to do that and keep the POI series coming out at a regular interval to keep everyone happy, is to return to writing forty to sixty hours a week.

Plus writing full-time makes me happy, that so many people enjoy my stories as well is like winning the Olympics. Yes the pay isn't great, but the job satisfaction is immense.

-John

Notes from the Resistance

So, I thought I'd drop a line here to address a few things. The first is the next book in the POI series. That is still on target for March. I had hoped to be further along on it at this point, but I took a contract job out of state, and well, living out of an apartment away from home isn't always the most conducive to writing, and working days does cut into my writing time.

Also there was a lot of travel involved over the holidays. A -lot- of travel. That didn't help very much either.

Now, onto the next item I thought I'd address, and believe it or not I spent a lot of time trying to decide if I should address it. But, considering the double standard I've been seeing from a few people, I figured, why not? The issue of course is that in the current series (POI) the hero is involved rather seriously with more than one woman. And in the Hammer Commission the hero there has multiple wives.

Before I go into the why of it, I would like to point out that I also have written more than a few romances - paranormal romance to be more specific. Now, in that genre, it is almost required that when the end of the story comes around, the heroine has at least two husbands, sometimes more. It is one of the defining traits of the PNR genre.

But I don't see people complaining about that. Especially not any women.

In the Hammer Commission, the original story did not have the hero married, or even in a relationship. The problem was, the story wasn't working. Motivations for some of his actions, and some of the actions of others, just wasn't there. But I had an unfinished romance story laying around, one that was of a more traditional type, that I had put aside. In it, you had the typical the hot male that the average looking and very much in trouble damsel, would of course end up with. The shock factor (besides him being 'paranormal') was his relationship with a number of sisters. This is also another staple, the average woman wins the man from the number of 'super hot' females, finds true love, etc.

I realized one night that if I took that character, made a few changes, rewrote a few scenes, I could just drop almost all of what I'd written as background into the Hammer Commission and it would work. Not only would it work, but I'd have room for some fun sequels if I ever felt like it.

Now understand, the hero in that story is not comfortable with the situation. He feels guilty over having several wives, even though it wasn't his decision, it was theirs (and that is made pretty clear in the story). As someone who knows a lot about big cats (having owned more than a few) in the wild the male's territory usually overlaps that of several females. Usually completely. So for our sisters, the idea of sharing isn't exactly an offensive one. And if you've read the story, well you've hopefully understood that point. After all, they're 'monsters', right?

As for our hero in the POI series, well hell, look at Tiger Woods! That man had quite the stable, and his wife didn't do a damn thing about it, until it became public and she had her nose publicly rubbed in it. Rich, powerful, wealthy, and famous men almost always have a couple of women on the side. Rock Stars anyone? Or famous actors, athletes, politicians, any man with a lot of money, charisma, or power. The alpha dog gets all the women he wants, and they're not at all afraid to make a play for him. Otherwise we wouldn't have mistresses, groupies, and divorce. This has been going on since the beginning of time.

When the series starts out, Will has come into a lot of power and prestige. He's young, he hasn't been out of college for all that long when this happens, so of course it goes to his head. And for those of you who think it wouldn't happen, well let me tell you, it does. I know cause it happened to me, and I enjoyed the hell out of it until I got tired of it. You have to have noticed that by book three Will's womanizing has cut back quite a bit. Of course he's older now, and getting used to the trappings of power and prestige.

And don't think women don't do it too. Mama Cast used to knock them back after the shows, and she was no Kate Upton (though to be fair, Mama Cast had one hell of a voice, she is still one of my favorite female singers to this day - that woman could -sing-).

What's funniest about all of this to me, is that the stories were plotted out quite a few years apart from each other. Book one of POI was written three years before HC, even book two was 80 percent complete before then. So its not like I wrote one with a 'harem' and then wrote another one. POI sat around for years because I just wasn't sure it would sell, because I knew there were people who would be upset over Will being something of a horndog at first. My sister however said to publish, and I'm glad I did. 

Will is a pretty realistic character, I know there are folks out there who think he isn't, but I grew up around war vets, I was in the USAF, then I worked for a military aerospace company after that. I've spent many years of my life around people who did things, big things. Who acted first, talked second. Who did what needed to be done. I don't write wimpy politically correct heroes, because I'm not one of those people, and I've never seen any of those people accomplish much of anything, much less survive in dangerous or deadly situations. 

The joys of being an indy author, Part Next.

When you’re an independent eBook author, it is very true that you own all of your success. You did it, likely you did it with very little help. You also own all of your failures. Because you did those by yourself as well, and hopefully learned and moved on to become better.

But what they don’t tell you about, and you start to realize after you do more and more of it, is that it’s a lot of work. And no, I’m not talking about the writing either. You have to get covers, and while at first you might make your own, because of costs, unless you’re really talented, eventually you have to find someone else, tell them what you want to see, look at the work they produce, and perhaps ask for changes to be made.

Then there is editing. Other people (who you also pay) will help you with this, but you can never be one hundred percent sure about all of their edits, because grammar rules in English are not hard and fast. There are multiple rules, and many subjective things in it. I have seen people point to things that they claimed were bad grammar, but the fact was that they didn’t know grammar as well as they thought they did. (And some of those people can be the loudest critics).

Reviews, both good and bad, those can throw you for a loop. Especially as some of the bad ones can sometimes be so strange, you wonder if they even read the book that you wrote. While the good ones can just go to your head, which is never good.

Advertising! Ah yes, advertising, where you spend money in the hopes that you will target the right audience, but have no idea most of the time if your ad worked at all. And there are a lot of ways to advertise. And a lot of places. And guess who makes your ads? Does the art work? Finds the places to advertise? Does the leg work? Why you of course....

Price! Ah yes, what price? Let’s not forget that! Always a fun exercise to take part in.

Want to put your book in print? More work! Reformat everything, make a new cover, make a back cover! Write a blurb for the outside back cover! Worry about bleeds, fonts, embedded fonts, page counts, margins, page titles, over runs, graphics, proofs, sample print runs, price yet again! Oh yes price is more of a pain now!

Audio books are also an interesting experiment. So many things to decide on, and the websites are not always the most helpful in steering you through the maze of production, springing things on you with no warning that suddenly halt the process for a few days while you deal with an unexpected requirement that you weren’t warned about.

I have been lucky in that I found a good cover artist who does very good work. The same appears to be true of my voice actor / narrator, I got lucky and got a good one. But that ‘luck’ took work, lots of work, and lots of agonizing, researching, questioning, and polling. And it cost money. I think I’ve spent at least ten percent of the money I’ve made on all of the above things.

And this doesn’t even go into managing the accounts on the various booksellers and websites. Writing book blurbs. Managing my own website. A blog. A facebook account. Twitter!!!!! Sometimes I can work all day on being an author, and never ever get a single word written.

Yes, there is a lot of work involved in being a self published indy author. Even more so if you start becoming a successful one. And a lot of that work isn’t spent on writing.

And dammit! I want to be writing more!!!! 

Book 3: Of Temples and Trials goes on Sale Saturday!

I just published Portals of Infinity, Book 3: Of Temples and Trials on Amazon. The book should be available for purchase by Saturday evening, Pacific Standard Time (assuming no hiccups from the publishing programs at Amazon!)

Book 3 will only be available on Amazon for now, and I will be limited the other books in the series (Books 1 and 2) to Amazon for the foreseeable future as well. There are several reasons for this, but primarily 99 percent of my readers are on Amazon, and it makes things a lot easier (and cheaper) to only have to maintain in one place for now.

Thanks to all of you.

-John

Edit: The new book is up sooner than I expected, here's the link: 
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OVUMF9O

Portals of Infinity - Book One: Champion for Hire, Audio Book is almost finished!

The Audio Book version of Book One: Champion for Hire is nearing completion! Rob Shamblin, who is doing the narration has really been doing a wonderful job and is actually ahead of schedule.
Hopefully we'll have the audio version available well before Thanksgiving. As this is my first foray into the world of Audiobooks, I have no idea how long the process takes, once the narrative part is done. But Rob assured me it will be out before the holiday.

He really is very talented. Hope I can get him to do the next book as well!

Thinking of going exclusive to Amazon only

I've been thinking of going exclusive to Amazon only of late. The biggest reason why is that's where the vast majority of my sales are. Smashwords sells a few, itunes a couple, and Barnes and Noble only a few as well.
But if I go exclusive to Amazon I can get into some of the unlimited programs, which may help garner more sales. Which is the name of the game after all.

Thoughts?

Some people I just don't understand

So, I was reading a review for a scifi book, and the reviewer was going on in some detail as to the 'poor writing' of the story. Or at least what they considered poor writing. They mentioned at one point how most of the book (I think they said 80 percent) was about sex, and all nothing but sex. Which if it had been, it probably would have been a best seller, but I ended up wondering if they were reading the same book I was? Yeah, I think there were a couple of sex scenes in the book (mild I'd say by today's standards) and sex was alluded to more than once (as in people were sleeping together! The horror!)

But I really don't have any idea where the hell they came up with that idea. To be honest I think that they didn't read the book at all, or if they did, they read some of the book, and then tossed it and wrote their review. But I've seen this before, and I often wonder if they even really bought the book, or if they did buy it, if they just returned it (so they never really paid for it, but still get the tag saying they did) so they could just write a nasty review that has very little relation to the story.

I used to always give the 5 star reviews a bit of a careful view, because you'd wonder if friends or family wrote them. But these days, I'm starting to wonder about the negative reviews, because I'm starting to see negative reviews on books that have very little relationship to the story. They'll take an aspect of the story, slag it, and then claim that's going on throughout the book. Maybe it's just the latest form of trolling?

Book 3 is finished! Will be available soon.

Actually I finished it last weekend. At this point I'm waiting for feedback from my Beta readers, the cover to be delivered, and then a last pass for editing. So Portals of Infinity, Book Three: Of Temples and Trials will be available for sale within the next two weeks.

I'm sorry it wasn't available already, but taking the Oregon job pushed the book's completion back a good ten days. I don't have a release date on book four yet, but rest assured that there will be one.

A Question for my readers

I'd appreciate a response from those who read this.

Which do you prefer in a story?
a) 1st Person
b) 3rd Person
c) Doesn't matter.

I ask because while most of my stuff is 1st person, some of the stuff I'm looking at in the future maybe be 3rd person. And I was curious as to how my readers feel about that.

Thanks!
-John

POI Book 3: I still need a name...

Well book three is about two thirds complete at this point. I was hoping to have the first draft complete by Tuesday, but I don't think that's going to happen now as Tuesday is going to be a travel day. My target of releasing book 3 by Halloween is still on, I'm hoping to have the first draft done by the 10th, if not sooner.

I'm not sure yet how much about the story I want to reveal at this point, though a fair deal will take place on Saladin. Yes there are quite a few hanging threads left from book 2 that will eventually be dealt with, but I won't tell you exactly when. I do think a fair deal of them should be tied up by book 4. In general the overall arc is set, it just comes down to how many words it takes to get through certain story lines in the books.

The gap between book 3 and book 4 will be a larger one, mainly because of the Holidays and some traveling that I will have to do during that period, as well as wanting to spend some time with my family. I've been getting a few requests for another book in the Children of Steel universe, and there already is a bit of plot development sitting around. So I may do that up before book 4 of Portals Of Infinity comes out. But I don't think it will be too long a wait, right now I think March is the latest that book 4 will come out. Half of book 4 is already plotted out, I just need to commit it to paper.

And as I said in the headline, I still need a title for book 3. Sometimes titles are elusive for me and I need to finish the story before I can find it.

Paperback version of book 2 should be available in a little over a week.

The Audio Book version of book one should come out in November, and if the response is good book two will follow that.

And as always, thanks to all of you for buying and reading my stories.

I'm not Politically Correct and even my writing sometimes has typo's

I doubt this will come as much of a surprise to anyone who has read my books, but I'm not politically correct. The purpose of my writing is to try and have fun. The latest series of books (which is by no means finished btw) is fantasy, and it's just meant to be enjoyable. I find it interesting however that some people seem to take issue with certain aspects, as if looking to find deeper political meaning.

When I'm not laughing out loud at some of the better comments that is :-)

Now I will admit that there are parts of the story that are a bit involved and have some back story to them. Some might be a bit harder than others to decipher because I took the explanation of those things out, either because I thought it wasn't important, or some other reason. Though I did leave the hints about them in. I did see one person ask about why Will was chosen, and how that should have been made clearer, and that there should have been a lot more about that process and how maybe someone better than Will should (or could?) have been chosen.

From the author point of view (hey! that's me!) I wanted Will to be only slightly above average, and that comes from him having gone to college and gotten a degree. I wasn't looking for the bad ass special forces guy who can over power you with the strength of his scowl, or the super martial artist ninja type who can devastate whole towns with his amazing triganjinsuperspinjumpstrikekick, or even the super intellectual who not only knows all the answers, but drives around in a big blue box.

Getting more to the point, it is made clear (well at least I thought it was clear!) in several spots that the ability to jump through portals is rare, very rare, and perhaps inherited? Also at one point in Book One it is mentioned that he was run through a number of 'tests' before being 'chosen' for the particular job he ends up with. And that at least two previous people who were also tested didn't fair very well. Now as to what those tests were, I actually have a list of all the tests he was subjected to throughout the course of the story, there are nine of them. I won't post them here because I think they contain a bit too many spoilers for both present and future books in the series, however I suspect that one day they most likely will come up.

Remember what Stephanie says to Will near the end of Book One when they're out of earshot of their respective bosses. The Job isn't about being the best person, it's about being the right person.

As for some of the other comments, I guess some people have never been young and in love (or middle aged and in love!) maybe I come from a different generation (or world perhaps? Maybe that was a portal I fell through that day... hmmm) but there are many fun little games one plays with one's lover, they used to call it 'slap and tickle', and if after twenty years you're still playing it, obviously you picked the right person. Of course these little PDA's are different for everyone, people are of course all different and some are more physically demonstrative than others.

But pinching is evil? Really? Guess I was out when that memo was sent around! I wonder if it's still evil if the girl is doing the pinching? Any women out there want to comment? I had some old girlfriends that loved to pinch if you weren't paying attention.

And of course let's not forget that the stories are fantasy and they're written about a man, so yes, we see things from the man's point of view. Something which I feel has become rather rare in recent years. Not that I'm finding fault with the writers who primarily write female protagonists, I like a lot of those writers and their stories too. Why? Because they're fun! They entertain me! They entertain the reader! And that is my goal here as well, to entertain.

My hero isn't perfect and never will be. He sometimes may do bad things or the wrong thing. He will make mistakes probably as well. If he feels those he loves and cares about are threatened he may even get mean and nasty. The laws, customs, and practices in different realities and fantasy settings are not going to be the same as those here. Though perhaps if some people read a little history they might just realize that their complaint was pretty laughable on its face.

So yes, I'm not politically correct, and neither are my stories (though I do try to get those pesky typo's, honest!) My stories aren't meant to advance an agenda, they're meant to be enjoyed by the people who read them. That is my goal. Of course I'm not perfect either, but I do strive to stay on track and meet that prime goal of entertainment. If I can do that, if I can give people hours of entertainment, then I have accomplished the one thing that is important to me: I have made you smile.

Thanks for reading!
-John

'Portals of Infinity, Book Two: The God Game' is now up for Pre-orders

The next book in the Portals of Infinity series is now available for Pre-Order on both Amazon and Smashwords (Barnes & Noble doesn't do pre-order yet). The release date is September 10th, which is next Wednesday.

Book three is almost half way complete, I'd hoped to be past the halfway point today, but I ended up having to do author stuff other than writing. So I'll probably end up writing over the weekend to catch back up. Book three doesn't have a name yet (or a cover), and right now release is targeted for the end of October. I hope that's not being too ambitious!

Also, Book One is now available in print, from Createspace (https://www.createspace.com/4984522)
It will be be available through Amazon in a few days, it just takes a while for it to filter through the website.

Now it's back to work...