Monday, March 21, 2016

What I accomplished this weekend

Originally this weekend I was going to work on the print copy of the new book (The King of Las Vegas - go buy one! hint hint! ;-) ) as well as the print copy of Reprise, the last Portals of Infinity book. How that last one fell through the cracks is beyond me, but it did.

Instead, I worked on the fence (because it was starting to fall apart). The fence around my house is a wooden one with those cedar slats like you see in the home depot/Lowes stores. It goes around the backyard, it's nothing fancy, and I have no idea when it was put up, all the houses in the neighborhood have the same thing. Of course setting 4x4's in concrete means rot, sooner if you don't do it right, but even if you do, eventually it has to be fixed. At this point I've fixed about half of the 4x4's, which is a pain. I can't get my neighbors to do the work, because in the past they were all way older than me, or no one was living there. Now, one is way older, the other is at work all the time. At least the new one on the one side has taken to doing work on their side, and THAT is very much appreciated.

So on Saturday, I had to fix a spot where three fence lines meet, and they meet at weird angles because of property line changes, my house was the last in the line of the type one developer built, so the next one, and the one behind me are different, and have different property setups. I had to remove ten to fifteen feet of each fence section, only two of which border my property (the other one borders the other two neighbors) dig up an old concrete footing, set in a new 4x4, replace all of the stuff I took down, and then I also set in too steel fence posts, in concrete, to give that corner additional bracing. Because I have a 120 lb GSD that likes to jump on the fence, and the neighbor behind me has an 80 lb mix that does a bit of that as well when they're running back and forth.

So I spent all day Saturday, getting materials, tearing down, cutting new materials to size, digging holes, building back up (with the post set in the proper place this time), mixing/pouring/setting concrete, then cleaning up all of the junk I had torn down.

I spent Sunday mostly goofing off, because I'm not as young as I used to be, and surprisingly quite a few joints are complaining about all of the work I did. You know, I don't mind getting old, I just hate feeling it :-P !

So tonight, after I get back from my bass lesson, I'll start on the paperback versions of the last two novels. Which leads to a question for any of you reading this. What size do you prefer paperbacks to be? I go with 6 x 9, because it keeps the costs down (you pay by the page on printing costs and I want to keep my prices low for you) and I've seen it used a lot. I've see some people doing 5.5 x 8.25 which ends up increasing page count by about 25 percent. If I did the paperback size you see in bookstores, then the price would be a lot higher. But just curious as to what preferences people have.

So, back to work!

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Where do you buy your reviews?

This is a question I'd really like to ask some of the other authors out there, where do you buy your reviews? Because I know what a professional review looks like, and I know when I see one written, but that reviewer has never reviewed anyone else, that it's a bought and paid for review.

Now that doesn't mean the book is bad, I've seen some with a lot of other reviews, and decent sales, so obviously the story is good, but the first batch of reviews, the ones that got people to actually give the story a chance, were obviously bought and paid for.

I'd love to know where they went and got their reviews, because to be honest, as everyone is doing it, and Amazon really doesn't do anything about it (except for the occasional thing every few years) I'm very tempted to do it myself. To date, I've never paid for a review, and for the few people I've given review copies to, I've always told them to note that the got the copy for free, for review purposes. I've always worked hard to be as upfront and ethical (and honest) as possible.

But ethics and honest doesn't sell books. And while I'm going okay, I sometimes wonder if I could be doing better. If I should cheat like the others are.


Sunday, March 13, 2016

The King of Las Vegas is available for Pre-order on Amazon




I actually got a link to amazon to work with blogger!

anyway, It's on Amazon and ready for pre-order, and goes live on the 18th, this Friday. Buy early and buy often! :-)

Friday, March 11, 2016

The Pre-Order page is now up for The King of Las Vegas!

Got the new book submitted to Amazon today, it's in Pre-Order mode right now, and will become available on the 18th of this month (3/18).

Go check it out!

http://www.amazon.com/King-Las-Vegas-John-Stry-ebook/dp/B01CV216KW/

Now I can get back to work on the POI book! :-)

Tuesday, March 08, 2016

Coming Soon...

Now I just need to write the blurb and get the manuscript back from my editor.
Aiming for a 3/18 release date right now.

This is the story of Rafael, an American College student, who during a vacation in India fell afoul of a Rakshasa. Many years later when he finally wins his freedom (and gets deported back to America), the question becomes: Where can a shape-shifting tiger-demon find acceptance in America?

Friday, March 04, 2016

Portals of Infinity, Book Seven

Well, I officially started writing book seven today. Now lets see how long it takes me to finish it! One chapter down.

Thursday, March 03, 2016

The King of Las Vegas should be up for sale soon!

So, the cover is currently being made for my next book: The King of Las Vegas.
This story is one from the 'Hammer Commission' universe, and it tells the story of how Rafael, the American College student turned Rakshasa during holiday in India came to be where he is today.

Once the cover is done I'll set it up on Amazon with a release date and everything. Just can't do that without a cover.

In other news Book 7 in the Portals of Infinity series is now underway, still cleaning up a few plot issues and I hope to start the first draft today or tomorrow.

-John

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Today is the Last Day of my Sale 2/25

Well, Today is the last day of my Sale. If you haven't looked, go look now.
If you've been thinking of buying, but held off. Well after midnight tonight the prices go back up.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Big Sale!! Starts Tomorrow (2/19)

This is my 'Post Valentine's Day Sale', because you were probably all too busy on Valentine's day, right?

Well, okay, the way my KU stuff is set up, couldn't start it until tomorrow (and I can't start Lost Souls until Saturday - weird 90 day boundary thing). But I know February is slow for a lot of people, and I figured this might be a good time to have a massive sale, maybe spark some interest in some new readers even!

So! All of my books are going on sale tomorrow! Most are 50 percent or more off, a couple are only 30 percent.

So, if you've ever thought of checking out some of my stories, this is the time to go have a look!

http://www.amazon.com/John-Van-Stry/e/B004U7JY8I/ (my author page on amazon)

http://vanstry.net/vanstry/  (my home page with links to all my books)

The Sale runs until the 26th.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Worth reading

I'm linking to the post below, because I really despise the publishers who do this kind of thing, and I think people should read it to understand that there is a huge bias in the publishing industry (which would never in a million years publish Portals of Infinity, because it has a guy doing actual guy things! Horror!)

Also because I'm a third of the way through the book, and it's pretty good so far. I can't believe they turfed it, because some junior editor somewhere didn't like the fact that the AI decides to wipe out humanity because after watching a reality star get an abortion, they realize that humanity may very well treat them the same way.

In any case, I'd say to check the post out, and give the sample of the book a look.

http://www.nickcolebooks.com/2016/02/09/banned-by-the-publisher/

Monday, February 08, 2016

King of Las Vegas nearing completion

The first draft of my next book: The King of Las Vegas, is almost done. Hopefully I'll finish it up tonight or tomorrow, down to about the last 3K words. Then it's off to the first re-write. I'm not sure exactly how big this one will be, right now I'm thinking it'll be about 70K words, but I'll have to see what the re-write does to it.

My goal is to be able to send this out to my editor next week, I'll probably commission the cover this Friday. Once that all goes out, I'll start working on the next book in the Portals of Infinity series.

As for the King of Las Vegas, this story takes place in the same world as 'The Hammer Commission', it's not a sequel however, this story is about how Rafael, the Rakshasa that rules Las Vegas came to be. There were definitely some challenges in writing this, which may be why it's taken longer to write than expected. I do hope that everyone enjoys it, once it's finished.

-John

Friday, February 05, 2016

Car Work (fun!)

So, the Forester (2006 xt) is fixed and back on the road.
A new battery (I tried Bosch this time) was $140. I could have brought the duralast POS back to Autozone, as it was still under warranty, but there was no way I was going to give durlast another chance to do even more damage to my car.
The new battery cable was $70, and the new terminal was another $15. (the battery ATE the positive cable, it spewed out so much acid, never seen the like in all my life).
Replacing the cable was a pain, I had to pull the intercooler off the motor to get to the terminals, and routing the cables was a hassle.
Then I had to clean the acid off of the tray, the tray tie downs, everything around the battery in the engine compartment, take the battery hold down cross bar, clean the acid off of that, clean the rust off, prime it and repaint it.
The only sealed battery you can by in california is apparently Optima, and well, they're garbage (I bought one once, used the warranty 3 times in one week, then said screw it and went to something else).
I also noticed that none of the name brands I'm used to could be found in my area. I don't know if that's because of some stupid cali law, or some other reason. But hopefully the Bosch will work (Sears didn't have any diehards at the local Sears for my car when I checked on line, which was strange).
So, the duralast is offically the most expensive battery I've ever had for my car, as it cost me $100 in repairs, a weeks downtime, while I waited for parts, and a lot of freaking work out in the cold.
So yeah, don't buy Duralast, they're freaking acid generators. Never saw so much acid build up on a battery in my entire life.

Next is to replace the headlight housings and then the shocks/struts as well as change the oil in the rear end. Hopefully it will then last for another 10 years.