EXPLORERS Available At Last!

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It was May of last year that I posted that my short story "A Mournful Rustling" had been accepted by Dead Robots' Society for inclusion in their  anthology. Well, Explorers: Beyond the Horizon is available at last! The collection features characters forever changed by their discovery of lands and worlds beyond their own. Whether it’s by charting new stars, trekking across fantastical realms, sailing new oceans, or traversing the wild and unknown spaces between dimensions, readers will find the unimaginable in the pages of Explorers. Authors contributing work to the anthology are:



J. Daniel Sawyer
Jeff Brackett
Lauren M. Roy
Colum Paget
Vincent Morgan
Ira Nayman
Jocelyn Adams
Court Ellyn
Jesse J. Summerson
Andrew Hawnt
Mark Mellon
Laura Givens
James Ebersole
Kurt H. Hyatt
Daniel Latham

So far, the anthology is available at the following venues:

CreateSpace

Amazon Print

Amazon Kindle

Barnes & Noble Nook

Smashwords

Now, the interesting part is, if you purchase a print version of this book from Amazon or CreateSpace and email a copy of the receipt  show(at)deadrobotssociety(dot)com, they will send you the ebook for FREE.

I'm so excited to see how this project turned out. I've been waiting on pins and needs since December 2010, when the call for submissions was extended. The results should arrive in my mailbox soon.

So, cheers! And happy reading!

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I'm a Guest Blogger!

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Well, it's now official. I am a guest blogger for The Bearded Scribe. For the record, I do not have a beard, but apparently Joshua Mercier does. He and I met via LegendFire, when he became a member there and he then proceeded to ask me if he could interview me. Remember that one a few weeks back?

Anyway, I'm getting to return the favor by offering book reviews for The Bearded Scribe. My first humble offering is a review of the graphic novel version of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn. The blog features frequent Book Spotlights by other reviewers as well, along with posts focusing on reading and writing the fantasy genre. Hop on over there and check it out!

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Novel vs. Novella: A Question of Time

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So Blood of the Falcon has been out for a month or nearly and checking the Kindle sells daily has resulted in my overwhelming astonishment. The actual numbers are not the point; the point is that a novel so fat that it has to be broken into two volumes keeps selling steadily, when a skinny, convenient, fast read like Mists of Blackfen Bog stagnates at tiny numbers. In comparison, I've marketed Falcons far less than Mists and the novel's sells keep rising.

Now, I have discussed this question with a writing friend and we cannot come to a satisfying reason why, in our fast-paced culture in which people with shortening attention spans are expecting quick results, that short stories and novellas would be largely ignored while novels, that take up so much more time, energy and devotion to reach the end, would continue to sell like hot cakes. The best I can come up with is that readers who are following this trend are those bookworms who prefer long-term commitment to a character and a situation rather than a one-night stand with a briefer story. Any other theories out there?

From a writer's standpoint, then, considering all the numbers, is it more worth my own time and energy writing full-length novels rather than novellas? Novellas are hard to sell, few markets exist that accept them. Yet fewer publishers take chances on unknown novelists. So the results will most likely end up in a self-publishing venture.Which leads me back around to while novels sell better, I can have more novellas out on the market in far less time, but if few are buying them (aka reading them), why bother? As you can see, I'm torn. Any opinions or encouragement or personal experience to share?
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Blood of the Falcon Is Published At Last!

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After what feels like a billion years of toil, the first novel in my Falcons series is now, at last, for realz, available for sale. Crazy, saying that at last.

So here's the scoop so far. The print version is available at CreateSpace right now. It will take a few days for it to be listed on Amazon. The Kindle version is not yet uploaded, but hopefully tomorrow or the next day it will be. Crossing fingers on that score.

Now, for future reference, all you people who plan on self-pubbing your novels: CreateSpace has a page limit of something like 844 pages (may even be less than that). My novel was like 30 pages over the limit, so I had to publish it in two volumes.

So there's less confusion, even the Kindle version will come out in two volumes. Be watching, b/c Volume 1 will be free for a run of five days coming up soon.

Here are the links to each volume's CreateSpace page:
Volume 1
Volume 2

Don't let the prices scare you. These are big books. 9.21x6.12 in size and together, they probably weigh 7 lbs. I'm very pleased I got to price them at a realistic price, instead of having to jack it up to $20 a piece, like I feared.

In any case, the Kindle version will be only .99 cents per volume (at least for now). When they become available, I will certainly post about it.

Now that the business stuff is out of the way, I'm going to do a happy dance and pop open the champagne. Cheers!

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Interviewed!

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A few weeks ago LegendFire received a new member who called himself by the mysterious username "The Bearded Scribe." Because it is my job to keep an eye on new members, mildly stalking them, if you will, until they prove themselves benevolent, I checked out the links that the Bearded Scribe posted and engaged him in conversation (it may sound creepy, but I'm Momma Bear where our members are concerned). Lo, and behold! Who would have guessed that my investigation would lead to a valuable network with a fellow fantasy author and an interview and guest bloggerhood?

The Bearded Scribe is a relatively new blog at Blogger that will focus on speculative fiction, writing it and reviewing it. If you're curious, check out my interview there. It's lengthy, but it provides a thorough overview. A little about writing, a little about administrating LF.

About that guest bloggerhood bit. I'm flattered and astonished. I always wondered how that happened, and now I know. Not sure when I'll be posting there, or about what, but I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers!

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My Babies Have Come Home!

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The proofs for Falcons came in five days before I was expecting them. It's like Christmas around here, folks. I figured that holding a physical copy of my novel would feel good. But I didn't expect a high quite like this. Twelve years of labor, worry, tears and doubts are about to come to a close, and it feels amazing. While I've spent the last couple of days tweaking the layout, I would often pause and just pick up one volume or the other and flip through it, sighing or smiling.

One more set of proofs to order, then final release...

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Itchy Fingers

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Like the title says, my fingers are starting to itch. The last proofread on Falcons is complete, the covers are designed, the maps are tidied up, and the whole package has been uploaded at CreateSpace and approved. I ordered the proofs today. The estimated arrival in my mailbox is Friday, May 4! What? That's over a week away! Way too long. I can't stand it. I want those copies in my grubby paws yesterday! Ah, waiting. Why must it hurt so?

In the meantime, here is a sampling of cover art:

copyright 2012 by Court Ellyn

Not exactly happy with the muddiness of the falcon pic, but hey, it's a start. Brighten up that puppy and all should be well. Volume 2 gets cerulean fonts and pics. Cerulean ... a very important color on the battlefield, as readers will discover, so that color on at least one of the covers was a fun detail to play with. Set side by side, the two books will make an eye-catching pair on the shelf. Nice.

So, what's left? A bit of formatting once I'm sure about my margins, then final approval and release. Mid-May ought to see it happen. *crossing itchy fingers*

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