State of the CW

No Host today. I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row. Incidentally, I have discovered that JUST LIKE WHEN I PUBLISHED TFT, I've managed to schedule a release for the BUSIEST FUCKING NIGHT OF THE MONTH.

Valentine's day is the 14th. Release date for Gray Fox is the fifteenth. I SUCK at schedules.

That said...so far, everything is on track.

Also, I'm releasing a new short into the wild tomorrow. It's a nasty-good little horror piece in the same universe and vein as Taker. And by "tomorrow" I mean I've uploaded it already and it should be live sometime before midnight. Tomorrow, however (IF everything goes right) will be the day it is free for all uh...well, I was going to say "takers" but given the context of the story that'd be kind of creepy.

The cover art is a slightly modified version of a very old picture I did. If you've been with me since 07 you might recognize the piece.

In other, more selfish news: I GOT GIMP TO WORK RIGHT!!!

Okay, so about two years ago my old computer, the one with Photoshop on it, died a horrible fucking death. I was able to get all of my old stuff off of it, including music and old pictures, but my version of Photoshop went down with the ship.

Photoshop=oxygen. And I have been coasting ever since, first on temporary trial copies of Photoshop, and then on a very mangled partnership between Gimp and Photoshop Elements.

Surprisingly this partnership has worked very well. Gimp does a few things differently than PS, and I actually prefer most of its versions of the actions over Photoshop's. The two things it couldn't do well (dodge/burn and the Liquify filter, AKA the I-fucked-up-this-face-how-do-I-fix-it filter) Elements does perfectly. But I hated every minute of this because I could not make GIMP custom brushes paint in any color other than black, and Photoshop elements didn't SEEM to have all the fun brush settings that the real thing has. I was stuck. Trapped.

Until three days ago. When I figured out how to do that.

Apparently you have to flatten the brush image in GIMP using the very fucking specific control hidden under two different menus, otherwise your brush is just plain fucked. As for Photoshop, the angle/roundness settings, the opacity settings, and everything else I was just dying for, those were all hidden under another set of menus, and in the case of the angle/roundness setting, which I REALLY wanted, there was no indication that the little brush icon was hiding a drop down menu. None whatsoever.

BUT! THE GOOD NEWS! KIDS! IT WORKS! IT WORKS! AND NOW I DO NOT HAVE TO SPEND SIX HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS to get the real program again! It is a small stupid thing but I am PROUD of myself, loyal blog-readers. I am so. fucking. proud. I can paint leaves again! Using methods that work! And I can do screwball things with abstract brushes that are oh, so very much fun.

Other than that...well, you should probably know my personal challenge goal was to sell 50 copies of anything this month and thus break 200 books sold. Yes, I broke 150 last month--I believe we ended January with 155 copies of everything sold (Starbleached, naturally, sat in the seventies) Right now we are sitting at 160. That's 40 copies to go.

So if there is a book of mine? And you think you maybe sort of kind of might maybe want to read it? Please go buy a copy. (Unless you are waiting on an e-pub. Everything currently on Amazon, and I do mean everything, is going on Barnes and Noble in March. Except for Blue Ghosts because it is already there) Breaking the 200 mark in this short and dysmal month would be like, the best birthday present ever.

(...my b-day is the 27th. Which is also how old I'll be. I'm almost a dino, folks.)

Now I have to go bite the bullet and go to work on a friday. I hate weekends. There's no me time anymore.

GRAY FOX--COVER REVEAL!

It's DONE, guys! And OH MY GOD it looks good to me:

Sample of the story can be found over here, and remember, you can get a copy of the previous book, Blue Ghosts, by going to this site and using this promo code: TU68W

State of the CW

So. Mission Earth flogging WILL continue tomorrow (oh god) but we need to take a break for a moment and discuss the boring stuff. Or whatever.

First up: God, you guys are awesome. The response to Starbleached has been better than I expected. Not hugely wonderful OMG I CANNOT BELEIVE THIS I have hope now awesome, but I know that, as of right now? Half of my regular readers have a copy. That is kick ass. Please tell me how you feel about it. Also? The books sold, not the books bought during the freebie peroid, the books I have actually gotten money for, account for, like, a third of that. And if you do not have a copy, go get one. I plan on continuing that story, I am SO INCREDIBLY PROUD of that story, please please please please PLEASE let me share the awesomeness of that story with you.

Okay. Next up: Blue Ghosts is the next lil book in line. This is an Exiles story. What is Exiles? The Exiles are Faerie creatures trapped on Earth. Yes, kids. Paranormal romance involving Faeries and ghosts and the Lexington, one of the coolest locations in Corpus Christi. Casey Winter and Marco Creed investigate a ghost. Who may not be a ghost. It's complicated. And it's due out in October! It picks up where Silver Bullet left off.

Also, November/December (depending on wheither or not I take a months break from this self-imposed publishing schedule) will also pick up from where a Silver Bullet story left off. As in, minutes after it ended.  And because I know that very few of you have read Silver Bullet, much as it pains me to do it, Silver Bullet is free on Smashwords until October 13th. Code is GX35X
  
As for how I'm doing...I am not doing good. 

I am hugely, monumentally, cataclysmically depressed. Which is not good when you have a history of S/I issues. I am dealing, my friends. I am dealing. But it is hard. This month (as mentioned in the Mission Earth flog where I kind of got personal issues all over our happy fun times) does not make it easy. But the hardest part has been accepting something really, really hard.

I'm not writing this part now because I want to flail and moan and cry. I'm writing it because I believe that it needs to be written. Because it's a part of a story that hasn't ended yet. But I want this to be here, where everybody can see it, so that in a year, or two or ten, when this is over, I can point over here and say, this is where I was going, this is where I ended up.

I'm putting a cut here, because once again I'm about to get personal stuff all over the fun place.So once more, here's the unfunny cut kitty:

If you don't want to get sad and depressed, ignore the cut and watch the kitty.

Book Bitch: Mission Earth 1 and Prophesy

Alright, first up:

Both Starbleached and Silver Bullet are free until tomorrow. The code for Silver Bullet is EE66Z and the code for Starbleached is ST83W . Make me feel happy today and pick up a copy. (Also Blue Ghosts, the lil' book for next month, picks up where Silver Bullet left off. So you just might wanna, ya know?)





NEXT! We are mixing things up today. Because I am doing my first indie book review! AND! I'm going to continue going through Mission Earth, because the sooner I am done the sooner I can do something else. So the next point on our itinerary today is INDIE BOOK REVIEW!!! YAY! Some poor brave soul offered up their book to my bitchery. And it was a pretty decent book too:

Book: Prophesy (Ghost Wars Saga)
Author: Justin Wilkerson

The good: Think Honor Harrington with the Belgariad thrown in for spice. All the space-war porn you can stomach, the story follows the newly crowned king Cuzak and his traitor brother while they battle it out for the crown of Specter.

Also? They're ghosts. No, like literally. Ghosts. The premise is intriguing, the plot is fast paced (with the exception of an info-dumping Princess Bride style prologue that could easily go bye-bye) and there's a couple concepts (such as the ghosts getting two consecutive lives. They totally get a Mulligan, guys) that are pretty damn cool.

The bad: Okay, I'm not going to go ape on spelling and grammar. It's an indie book. Most of us are on our own because, guys? Freelance Editors cost a lot of money and (more importantly) most of 'em are full of shit. There's a few good ones that I know of, but the first (and last) time I ever paid for editing, he made my book read like it was written by William Shatner. Suffice to say the book has a few issues and leave it at that.

More problematic are the names of people, locations and fauna. It is established early on that 1. this is an alien race that live for thousands of years. They have ducks. They have a King Rembrandt. They call Mars "Mars". I think the issue is with the prologue. It goes so far out of its way to establish the alien nature of this race that having names I recognize gives me whiplash. I have the biggest issue with the Scottish surname of a VERY major character. I just don't buy that the Scottish naming rules would evolve in a culture that 1. doesn't share the language, the culture, or the baggage and 2. is implied by that oh-so-problematic prologue to be at least several hundred, if not a thousand, years in the past.

The bitch: My reaction to this book was a little on the meh side. You know how I said it was like Honor Harrington? It is VERY like Honor Harrington. Like I had the thought process hey, I understand this because it has appeared in every Honorverse book ever, I wonder if the author knows this? pretty frequently. And sadly, the constant reminders of Honorverse did not exactly come off well for this book. Unlike Honor, though, we're not given a lot of time early in the book to get to like the characters. We don't get to see the brothers interact before they split off, we don't get to see what frustrates the King(s) or Queen(s). We're thrown straight into war-porn, which is alright if that's your thing, but it ain't quite mine.

All that said, I LOVE the concept of ghost-world. When Mars was thrown into the mix I literally thought OMG WE WILL HAVE THE GHOSTS OF MARS. I don't think I can in all honesty say CHECK THIS BOOK OUT IT IS AWESOME, but I can say that if Honorverse and hard-core sf warfare is your thing, Prophesy might be one hell of a fun time-sink.

It sure as fucking hell is better than Mission Earth.

Oh fuck, that means I have to go back into Mission Earth, doesn't it? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUK!!!!

(PS. if you have an indie book you want me to review, or you are an indie writer, post suggestions over here and I will get to it eventually.)

BOOK BITCH MISSION EARTH JESUS CHRIST THIS BOOK SUCKS.

I'm not even going to fucking bother numbering the chapters anymore. Between the "parts" and the fact that the chapters are often two or three pages long (NOT NEARLY ENOUGH, RON) I don't think you or I or anyone cares enough to give a fuck.

Next chapter:

Lombar Hisst and Soltan Gris are watching "the freak parade" through one way glass. Ajustable one way glass. I guess this was high SF back in 1984. Apparently the CIA (Coordinated Intelligance Apparatus. Remember, kids, this is SATIRE) takes criminals and turns them into circus freaks. Either figuratively--via implied torture training to make them fancy juggliers (crusty jugglers /Hot Fuzz flashback) or literally, through cellular manipulation. Selling these is one way they get money. God, Voltan must SUCK for grants. Haven't they heard of crowd funding? Anyway...

Dr. Crobe does the cellular manipulation. He is a greasy cardboard cutout Hubbardesque villian and He Will Get His. The trainer, however, is the Countess Krak. She carries a whip, and we are all going to pretend that her name is a reference to that, and not her ass, k? The Countess Krak is a terrible human being, Soltan Gris assures us. She trained children to rob banks via unknown methods that Soltan Gris knows involves torture. He does everything except accuse her of tormenting puppies. And then he points out that she is fucking gorgeous, but if you approach her, you lose a hand.

Also? She's nude except for a coat and a pair of shoes.

Nude female=evil. Evil female=sexualized. Good female=virginal LADY of perfection. L. Ron Hubbard, ladies and gentlemen: paragon of progressive thought.

Lombar wants both Crobe and Krak to train Jettero. However, because Mission Earth must fail, they're to do a shitty job of it. And then this happens:

Lombar turned to the Countess Krak. "And as for you, you perverted whore," he snapped her within an inch of him, "off the high tower you go if you teach this agent one single word, one single trick of espionage!"

1. I totally thought Lombar had broken the Countess in half the first time I read that
2. Again: Ron the progressive feminist I do not think so. And I don't give a fuck that this was written in 1984.
3. Jet seems to be doing a pretty good job at this espionage thing on his own. He's already got Soltan underestimating him, and that's 90% of the job right there.

NEXT. CHAPTER.

Soltan Gris goes back to Spiteos and discovers Jettero and the evil murder evil evil guards sitting together drinking Perrier and eating junk food. Jett, ladies and gents, has tamed his guards. JET HAS TAMED THE EVIL CRIMINAL GUARDS TO BRING HIM PERRIER AND SWEET ROLLS.

SPACE ELVIS TRIUMPHS AGAIN!

Also, Soltan got a promotion, so he has to buy drinks for everyone in the nearest night club. Remember this. It is an important plot point in the next several chapters.

NEXT CHAPTER

Soltan reminds us that the Countess Krak, that statuesque but evil evil beauty, is evil murder evil evil and they have to introduce Jettero Heller, Space Elvis to her so she can fail at teaching him how to be a spy.

Do you really need me to spell out what happens between these two?

NEXT CHAPTER (yes. Hubbard devoted an entire chapter to WALKING TO AN APPOINTMENT. This truly "bristles with excitement on every page!")

The Countess Krak is whipping her staff. Remember: Nude save for leather coat and shoes, and she is whipping people.
...

Way to let your bondage out, Ron.

HOWEVER, She is abusing her staff because she was sent a...sigh...Lepertige (LEOPARD. TIGER.) to train, and it had been declawed. And she is pissed as hell because DECLAWING CATS IS WRONG (actually, I agree with her on this. How would you like YOUR fingers amputated or paralyzed just because somebody can't keep you off the drapes?) She tells the staff if they ever give her another wounded animal, she will have it kill them. Then they leave and we go from this:

 Straight to this:

 She gets this deadly, wounded wild animal--newly shipped to her, so that it has no reason to trust her whatsoever--to put its maimed and bleeding paw in her hand so she can examine it. Then she orders its claws regrown and tells the scumbags who work for her to leave it the fuck alone.

Oh, my God, guys. We are so very, very, very fucked.

TOMORROW: SPACE ELVIS MEETS THE COUNTESS KRAK!

Starbleached is live on Smashwords! AND FREE!!

It is now official! Starbleached is now live!

Most of you will know I've been promising this book for free for the last couple weeks or so, and that I wanted to offer it for free for the weekend of 9/8-9. Well, that plan has changed a bit.

It's free now. Via coupon, of course. And it will be free (via coupon) through the 10th.

Coupon code is ST83W

Go and get it, boys and girls! 

 

Info hub for Sci-fi Book of Mystery+COVER!!!

Okay, I'm going to be spreading a lot of stuff around for the next couple of days, and it's all going to come back here. So first...

Cover art is done! Version with title will be posted on the first, and OMG It looks so kickass. I wish it weren't mine, so I wouldn't feel bad for thinking it looks good (or so that I could read this story without wanting to punt it across the room. Editing is clean, but I stopped enjoying it about two read-throughs ago)

Editing is done! WHOO! FREAKING! WHOO! It is probably not good enough, as I am on my lonesome with this, but it is nice to finally read through and go ten pages without needing to change something. THIS IS NOT BOASTING. This is feeling as if the train has finally stopped moving and I can get off now.

SO. INFO. Which ya'll are probably tired of hearing about!

We (being me) will now be working on the coding for the book. I will post a 4000+ word sample, the finished, titled cover and the title (of course) on September 1st. (LABOR DAY! IEEEEE!)

The book will go live on or around 9/7.

Also on 9/7, I will post a coupon code set up for the following day, Saturday 9/8. It will let ya'll get the Sci-Fi Book of Mystery for free. As I said earlier, you'll need a Smashwords account to make it work. If you don't have one already, go there, sign up, it's just like getting an Amazon account except they're a lot friendlier to authors and they only sell books.

The coupon will ONLY work for the 8th. First, because I am poor and I do need money. Second, because Amazon has bizzare policies about offering stuff for free on other sites and I'd like to duck dealing with that as long as I can.

Now, you don't have to get the book from Smashwords. It will be avaliable through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iBooks, a couple other places about a week or so after it goes live on Smashwords. But the coupon won't work on those sites.

So if you remember nothing else from this post, remember: Saturday the 8th, Smashwords, coupon code, free book.

ALSO-ALSO! If you bought and read Silver Bullet, and liked the first story, there's a sample of the next Exiles story in the Sci-Fi book of mystery. Another reason to check it out!

Alright. I'm done. It's off to work I go...

Calling it

The problem with editing stuff is, first I write the story that I want to read. And then I read it, and read it, and read it, and read it, until the words start spurting out of my ears. Most of what I've done the last couple of days has been purely cosmetic stuff.

I just wish there was a way to read this story without knowing how it ended. Because I really like this story. A lot.

But unless the test reader (read as: parental unit bribed with dish washing and sushi) finds something horrendously out of whack, I think I'm as close to done as I can get. Because, you know, you're never really done. You just get frustrated to death.

Artwork next. Which should be fun. I think I'm going to try a couple new techniques on this one, stuff I haven't really done much with before.

So remember, dudes and dudettes, title, sample, and (if I can do it that fast) cover art on the first, and the book will be posted either the first or second weekend (First if nothing goes wrong, second if something does) in September. I'm going to set things up so that the free book thing will be on a Saturday, and give you guys a lot of time to pick up a copy.

Have a good weekend, guys!

Sci-Fi Book of Mystery Update

I've made a pretty important decision regarding this book. Namely...I know everybody who is buying my other book is either a blog reader or my mom. (Hi Mom! Have you read it yet?) which means that I can't exactly do promotions for the book (IE offer it for free, offer discounts, ect) without making it unfair to you guys. Because you are loyal and wonderful human beings and you gave me money for Silver Bullet.

So ya'll are going to get the Sci-Fi Book of Mystery for free.

Now, because I am poor (and also because Amazon is an overbearing monopoly and will screw with your pricing on its website if you do special stuff anywhere else, and requires you to publish there and only there if you want to do special stuff through them) it won't be for the entire world, and it'll only be for one day. It's a reward for you guys. Here's how it's going to work:

1. You will need a Smashwords account, if you don't already have one. Do it. Smashwords is a good company, they sell every format you can think of, including printable plain text, and I get a bigger royalty cut if you buy it through them.

2. The book will go live. Probably near the end of the first week of September. I do not know exactly when, as it usually takes a day for them to process the book itself.

3. Smashwords has a coupon system.  I will post the code here. It'll be for the first full day after the book goes live, from midnight to midnight. I'll give you lots of warning. If you want to read The Sci-Fi Book of Mystery (Title pending) you'll go to Smashwords, pick up the book, enter the coupon, and then start reading.

I'd do it through Amazon, but the number of hoops I have to jump through to offer a book for free are numerous and not fun.


Why do I want to do this? Well...the best way to do promotions is to put stuff on sale. Which I'm not going to do, when I know the people who've supported me the most have already bought the thing for full price. It's not fair to ya'll. You get a free book, I get a free conscience for later promotions. Everybody is happy. Right? Right.

So remember, kids. Read my blog. Get free stuff.