Posted in Keepers, The Shadow Men, Whispers of the Dead, Writing, Zombie Holidays
Keepers Week 8 & Release Dates
Well it has been a busy and interesting week for me writing wise. Keepers continues to move along at a good pace. I have now written more words in two months on Keepers than I did all of last year on the Steampunk novel. I am well over the halfway mark and should be done close to the end of April. I will then go ahead with my plan and set it aside to finish my Dark Lands Trilogy.
Having made the decision to go ahead and self publish I spent a lot of time this week doing research and figuring out my next steps. I also commissioned a cover for book one, The Shadow Men. Sometimes things happen for a good reason and my cover design ended up working out way better than I ever imagined. I did not end up going with my first choice of cover artists. Mainly because my first choice didn’t believe in answering emails. So I threw it out onto Twitter that I needed a cover designer and one of my writer friends sent me a name (thanks Alanna).
The designer Michael Hart worked his ass off for me to get the cover right and I am over the moon at the final result. This was the good news. Then the bad news hit. I had decided I didn’t want to take the time to format my own books for all of the epub bookstores. I teach during the day and write at night. Throwing that hat on also didn’t seem like something I wanted to tackle. Again, I went with a recommendation. Looked at his work and was thrilled. So were a lot of other people and he is backed up until June. I booked him anyway.
This delays the release of the first book by about two months. I know I could probably do it myself and get it out faster. I know it would be a whole lot less expensive to go that route also. I just don’t want to spend the time. Plus, I want it to look professional. So I will wait. I did get an email which said there was a chance I could get bumped into May but I am just going to assume it will be June.
On the other hand my collection of zombie dad shorts is a whole different ball game. Since we are only talking 30,000 to 40,000 words I am going to tackle the formatting on that one. I asked Michael to do a cover for me and I am now cranking out new stories. My plan is to write 6 or 7 new ones and have it out in May.
This will then be followed by a June release of The Shadow Men and an October release of book 2 which will have a new title. Finally, the last book will come out in December (much to the relief of my early readers who are digging the books because they feared it was never going to get written). I am investing some money in art and formatting but hope I will be able to make it up with sales.
I also have the small task of writing the third book. I will start this immediately after finishing Keepers. Once the third book is finished and edited I will go back and do my rewrites on Keepers. If I keep a fairly consistent writing pace, I should be able to finish the third book in 3 months (this is what it took me to finish the first two). This will leave me five months for rewrites.
I have never been more nervous. I am not ashamed to admit putting these books out there like this scares me. I am taking a chance. They might not sell. Even worse they may not be as good as I think they are and they will damage any future releases I want to do. Sometimes, though, you have to take a chance. Only time will tell how it works out.
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Art by Jason Freeny
