My entire YA sci-fi post apocalyptic trilogy is free on Kindle July 23-25

Pretty straightforward post today. Semper, Forsada, and Freda are all free to download from the Amazon Kindle store July 23-25. My hope is that you will

• tell a bunch of friends!
• download them
• read them!
• rate them on Goodreads and/or Amazon

I also deeply, sincerely hope that you enjoy them.

That's it.

Why would I offer them free? I'd like to say that, like Bread & Puppet, I am a proponent of free art, but really I just want more people to read my stories. I like writing, and I like it when people like what I've written. I plan on writing more, and I hope people who read these books will look forward to the new stories I write. That's really it.

The free book deal is featured on Free Kindle Books & Tips July 23. Specifically here.

Free YA sci-fi books for Kindle

The third book in my YA post apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy, Freda, is free for Kindle at Amazon June 25 through 29. If you didn't know what to do for my birthday on Friday the 26th, then downloading the book, telling everyone you know, and reviewing it on Amazon would be fab.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/Freda-III-Eden-Peter-Dudley-ebook/dp/B00O9GAGXM/





More Free Books
The first two volumes in the trilogy, Semper and Forsada, will be free July 23-25.

Rereading a book I wrote four years ago, and a bear

Something drew me to open up the first chapter of Semper and reread it this morning. Having just completed writing the trilogy (which is discounted/free this week), I thought it would be fun to revisit the chapter that began the story.

Did I stay true to the original characters as I first introduced them? Did the first chapter, written four years ago, properly set up the full story of the trilogy?

I think so, if I can be my own judge. In fact, I did better than I expected.

In that first chapter, Dane at one point thinks to himself,

I do not want to be the one that brings home the epidemic that destroys all of civilization.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that one sentence holds a tremendous amount of both foreshadowing and irony.

Also, that first chapter ends with a question that is never explicitly answered but which is the perfect first question in a discussion guide for the series.

Maybe it's just that I was looking for connections as I read. Or maybe those connections were already in my subconscious, even before I'd detailed the quarter million words in the story. Or maybe it's just luck or coincidence. In any case, it's satisfying.

FREDA will be free on Kindle November 1 through 5. The first two books, Semper and Forsada, are just 99 cents to celebrate completion of the trilogy.

And here is a picture of a bear I took, not far from the actual physical location where that first chapter occurs.

Free and discounted books. What could be better?

I've just published Freda, the third book in my New Eden series. Early comments suggest this book might be the best of the three, which is gratifying for sure.

To celebrate this launch, I've discounted the first two in the series to just 99 cents for the next couple of weeks, and Freda itself will be free for Kindle November 1 through November 5. Here's how to get the books during this time:

ON KINDLE
All three are available on Amazon at the discounted price.

• SEMPER for 99 cents through November 5
• FORSADA for 99 cents through November 5
• FREDA for $2.99 but will be free November 1-5

ON OTHER E-READERS

Semper and Forsada are also available on other platforms. The price is $2.99, but you can use the coupon codes below to get them for 99 cents through November 5. These coupons work at Smashwords, but I'm not sure they work at places like Barnes & Noble, the iTunes store, or Powell's.

• SEMPER - use coupon code AW86A for 99c price
• FORSADA - use coupon code NE63V for 99c price
• FREDA - email me if you want a format other than Kindle. We can work something out.

I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please let me know. A rating and/or review on Goodreads always makes my day.

My new book has a print version and a cover

A trilogy is not an easy thing to create. This one took nearly five years, from first inkling of an idea to the proof copy of the third book in my hands. And that was after a good ten years writing novels that probably won't ever get published, publishing short stories, winning (and judging) flash fiction contests, writing a sports column, and a half decade working at a writers conference. So just getting to Sunset draws us to the lake took years, I guess. Then, nearly five more years to get to this point.

Two books published (not including this one). The third on the verge.

Below is the cover, another beautiful rendition by Wendy Russ. You can read the back cover copy if you click on the image and load it up big.

The book will be available in early October. If you want to be notified the day it's out, go and join my email list.

Let me know what you think in the comments, or on Twitter at @dudleypj.

Trilogy end game, and a huge THANK YOU to all you readers

In late 2009 I began the first plotting of the story that would become Semper, which I finished in mid 2011 and published in 2012. I followed it up with Forsada, published in 2013. Now, 18 months later, I am gathering feedback from beta readers for the final book in the trilogy, which I hope to launch in September.

All told, I will have worked on this trilogy for just under four years. Other than raising my children, I can't think of any other project that's taken me longer. (My wife, I am sure, could think of many around the house, but she's not writing this post.) The three published books will total over a quarter million words.

I found that writing a book is relatively easy, after you've done it four or five times. Writing a sequel, however, is hard. And writing the third and final book in a trilogy is very, very hard.

I know that many people have done this. They've even managed it, as I have, with a demanding full time job, a couple of kids, a home to maintain, and volunteer obligations. It's not like I am any Alison Levine or something (though I have been to Nepal). But I personally consider completing a trilogy a major accomplishment. I even think the books are pretty good.

Turns out a number of other people also think the books are pretty good. Recently both Semper and Forsada have received several new 4-star and 5-star ratings on Goodreads. At this moment, Semper enjoys 62 ratings averaging 4.15

Semper: rated highly on July 9, 2014

and Forsada has 20 ratings averaging 4.60.

Forsada: more stars but fewer ratings on July 9, 2014

My beta readers have given me some very useful feedback on the third book before final revisions, but generally they've liked it a lot. Here are a few of the comments that have come back in the last two weeks from these critiques:

"I thought it was another great read and a very good sequel to the other two books in the series. I particularly like the storytelling and the pace of the book towards the second half which really seemed to find its groove, flowed well, and kept the pace moving (that kept me on the edge of my seat). Really nice!"
-- R. S.

"I think it is a great 3rd installment. A few unexpected twists (in a good way)."
-- J. D.

"Overall, it was a satisfying end. There were some really beautiful moments, very clear visuals. The ending... was very nicely done."
-- J. H.

"Other than [the comments I gave] I thought that it was one of the best books I have ever read."
-- S. D.

It's stuff like this that propels an author through the grueling commitment of writing, revising, and publishing a book... or three.

So, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who's given my work a little of your very precious time, and a double THANK YOU to everyone who's taken the extra time to give me your thoughts. (Yes, even the guy who gave Semper a one-star rating and told me, "Peter, sorry, but I just couldn't get into this story." Seriously, thank you.

And finally, some ducklings.

Lipsticking - my thoughts on writing and publishing

I have admitted in the past that I subscribe to a blog called Lipsticking, though I do not read every post that shows up in my inbox.

Today, one of their authors published an interview I did for her a few months back, about my experience with writing and publishing. Everything in it is totally up to date except the "what I'm working on now." That says I am about 10,000 words into the third book in the New Eden series, but today I'm actually done with the rough draft of that book. Everything else I say? Timeless and classic wisdom.

You should check it out.

And you should subscribe to the Lipsticking blog. There are some pretty smart and eloquent ladies over there.

Go read the interview now!

how to waste a lot of money self-publishing a book

PAID FOR, biatch.

Last night I updated my spreadsheet totting up sales and downloads of Semper and Forsada. It never takes me too long; these are not big numbers. But each book earns enough profit to pay my whiskey and Starbucks bills while I write the next book. And that makes me happy enough, for now.

Between the two titles, my name adorns over 16,000 books out in the wild. I'll gladly admit that more than 15,000 of those were free downloads. Which proves that you don't need to sell a lot of books to make a profit when you self-publish. (My publishing goals are modest; I'm sure I could sell far more if I invested in promotion, but my life is focused elsewhere right now.)

Not a wheelbarrow

My point is that you don't need a wheelbarrow full of cash to self publish a book, and I get really frustrated when I hear people spending thousands of dollars to do something I did for a couple hundred.

A writers group I know of, for example, expects to spend $10,000 to publish an anthology. They're not paying the authors; just the opposite: they're asking friends and family to chip in. It appears, from what I can discern, that the majority of this huge wheelbarrow of cash is going to the consultants who are helping the group self-publish their anthology.

Granted, they definitely need an editor. And they certainly need a cover designed. And they probably need a layout tech. I'm just having trouble adding that up to get to $10,000. Maybe they're planning one hell of a launch party.

Anyway, if you want to waste a ton of money self-publishing, just hire a consultant without understanding what, exactly, they're producing. Anyone who tells you that self-publishing is hard is probably trying to overcharge you, and anyone that tells you they can make your book successful for some fee is probably lying. There is no need to spend a bunch of money on consultants.

Meanwhile, I'm raking in the profits like the guy who cleans coins out of the fountain at the Motel 6 in Soledad. Admit it. You wish you were me.

Not sold out. Copies still available.
The third book will be out in the first half of 2014.

I have an email list. Sign up for it. In six months, I've sent exactly zero emails to this list. But I have two books coming out in the next six months, and you might miss them if you don't sign up. So go sign up now. Before you forget and stuff.

Free kindle downloads this week - YA scifi and adventure, and why they're free

Free September 17-18
Get it here!

I don't promote my books much even though they are, in fact, awesome. I don't write for a living. I make my living raising hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. (Hey, it pays the bills. Don't judge me.)

So when I give my books away for free, it's not because I'm hoping to leverage some discoverability bump into a higher sales ranking. It's because I genuinely want people to read and enjoy them.

Why charge anything at all, you ask? Why not just post a PDF on my web site and make it always free for everyone all the time? Great question. I have two reasons, though others exist:

First, I have costs to recoup. Cover design was the biggest. Factor in my Starbucks and whiskey bills, and all the red pens I emptied in revisions, and pretty soon you're talking real money. (Especially the whiskey.) My day job pays me well, but not so well that budget be damned.

Free September 19-20
Get it here!

Second, I insist that my work has value. Even though I don't care much about the money, I do care deeply about the value. So I assign a price that I think reflects that value from the consumer's perspective. People then buy the book, or they don't. And, from time to time, I give it away without asking for any payment.

Some people and publishers think of free downloads as lost sales, or as a cost of marketing. Me? I look at them as donations to people who like to read good stories. I hope you will download these books and read them. And I really, really hope you enjoy them.

If you do, consider the value you received without needing to pay anything. And if you feel so inclined, head back to Amazon and/or Goodreads and give the book an honest rating. Because really, that's my secret reason for giving these away. Nothing makes me happier than a new rating.

I have more than 12,000 people NOT on my email list. You could be one of them!

Good thing I make my living in fundraising because I'm really bad at this book promotion thing.

I published Semper over a year ago, and with nearly 12,000 copies in circulation I am only now setting up a real email list. Maybe that's why Forsada (the sequel to Semper) has only 1,900 copies out in its fourth month.

See the entry form over there on the blog's right rail? You can sign up there.

When my list gets to 100 people, I'll give away a signed copy of Forsada to a random subscriber. Already have Forsada? I'll give you a signed copy of my next book if you prefer.

When my list gets to 500 people, I'll give away two more signed copies and a $25 gift card (either Amazon or Starbucks, your choice).

I'll give one additional entry into these drawings to anyone who tweets or posts this to facebook. Two additional entries for a Goodreads or Amazon rating. One more for a text review on Goodreads; one more for a text review on Amazon. If you blog your review, that's two more.

Please sign up. I don't send much email. And I'll never give out anyone's email address. I'll use it to announce new releases, appearances, and contests I have. I won't post blog updates; if you want to follow the blog, there's a feedburner over there as well.

My #teen #scifi #ebooks just 99c through may 15 (stock up for summer)

Yeah, it's a discounted period. Because you missed the free download period last week, which about 1,000 people did not miss. I don't know where you were, but I can tell you I'm never relying on you to tell me when the train's gonna leave the station.

Easy enough to get my ebooks, just 99 cents through May 15. Why May 15? Why not. Then it's back to the stratospheric price of $2.99. I know, only the one-percenters can afford that. So you'd better act fast. Quantities are limited. (not really, but I've always wanted to say that)

Here's where you can get them:

SEMPER
Buy it for 99c at its Amazon book page
Dane, in line to become Southshaw's thirteenth Semper, knows of the nuclear war that devastated the Earth three hundred years ago. He understands the Book of Truth and has heard his father's sermons every Sunday since he could walk. But as his sixteenth birthday approaches, he's faced with a choice he never expected to have to make: Should he obey his cruel, fundamentalist uncle and twelve generations of Southshaw Truth, and take his rightful place as Semper? Or should he follow his heart, risking exile and death, to seek and unearth the real truth? An exotic huntress, a mythical ghost-man, and a tailor's daughter hold the keys to his answer. And to the survival of Southshaw itself.

FORSADA
Buy it for 99c at its Amazon book page

Lupay isn't afraid of fighting, but what can one girl do against an army? Thousands of Southshawans, whipped into a war frenzy by a fundamentalist demogague, are poised to sweep in and crush her home of Tawtrukk, and Lupay is powerless to stop it. Or is she? Driven into hiding and pursued even into the depths of the mountain, Lupay and her friens do their best to resist. But resistance won't withstand the onslaught forever, and ultimately Lupay must choose: flee into the radioactive barrens of the Desolation, or rise up and fight fire with fire, like the legendary Tawtrukk warrior queen, Forsada.

I'm working on the third and final book in this series, which I hope to publish in the first half of 2014. At this point I'm the lamest of the lame and don't have an email list manager I'm using, so if you want updates on my third book, subscribe to this blog. (I've got a feedburner on the right rail, right over there.)

DO YOU HATE EBOOKS?
Well, you can get print versions of these two books as well. Just click through to the book pages above and you'll find the links to the print books.

Only seven spots remaining, claim yours now (plus free books)

Forty-three out of 50 spots have been filled already. Only seven remain, so hurry to claim yours now.

Of course I'm talking about how many Amazon reviews my book has. Didn't you know I'm pitifully begging people to post a review at Amazon, pathetically trying to reach 50 reviews before June 26? (That's my birthday, in case you haven't started shopping yet.)

Oh please?

You didn't? Why not? Don't you love me anymore?

Ok. You say you do, but how much do you love me? Five stars? Four stars? I mean, all I want is an honest answer. Surely you can give me that. No, of course you don't owe it to me, and I should know it without you having to say it. But don't you agree that it needs to be said out loud once in a while?

Oh.

What, you haven't even read it yet? I see. No, of course, I know how busy you've been. And yes, there's been a lot of bad weather. And I know the dog won't walk itself. But what fun is life if you don't take time to read?

What's that? You don't have my books yet? No problem!

You can download both my books--Semper and its sequel, Forsada--for free between May 2nd and May 6. These are Kindle downloads. I know you don't have a Kindle. Neither do I. But I read Kindle books on my iPad, and you can get a Kindle reader for really almost any platform...

Ok, ok. I know. I'm pushing the line. But really, if you really loved me, you'd do just this one little thing for me.

Just click here to write your review now.

Writing book two of a series

A writer friend (more experienced than I) recently asked for advice on writing the second book in a trilogy.

Having just published Forsada and beginning work on the third book in the series, I was astonished to find I hadn't really thought about it. Looking back over the past year, though, I did learn a couple of things. I can sum them up in three points:

It's not as bad as you worry it might be

The crowds loved the first one.
Will the second be as good?

Having the first book published and hearing the feedback while you're writing the next book is a double-edged blessing. On the one hand, the praise and great reviews and warm, satisfied glow of watching sales figures tick up is a huge motivator. "People like what I wrote!"

On the other hand, that creates a pressure that didn't exist while you were writing the first book. With the first book, you always had the choice to lock it up in a closet and never let anyone see it. You could always back out. But now, with 34 reviews a 4.7 star rating, you've got a standard to live up to.

As if the pressure of creating something and then showing it to the world weren't enough. As if trying to live up to the fantasy of success you've built up in your own mind weren't enough. Now you've got to live up to the reality of expectations you've already set, both for yourself and your readers.

Which is like steroids for your Inner Critic. You start believing your first book is better than it really is. In writing the second book, you start seeing plot and character complexities that you cleverly set up in the first book take shape, but you worry you're not doing them justice. You remember brilliant turns of phrase from the first book and worry you can't keep being so original through a whole other book. (Then you remember there's another whole other book you have to write when this one's done.) In the first book you introduced your reader to a new world, but we all know the second day at Disneyland is never quite as magical as the first.

In short, you love the story, but you wonder if your readers will. Are you missing something important? Is all your brilliance translating onto the page? Or are you deluding yourself, and you actually used up all your brilliance in the first book and just didn't realize it?

But you power on because, through the 10,000 hours you've spent becoming a writer, you know how to silence the Inner Critic and make the Inner Editor wait until the draft is done. You power through. And at the end, because you've built your skill over years and years, your first draft isn't nearly as bad as you worried it might be. And then you remember how much work went into revisions on that first book to make it so good. and you see how this second book can get to that place, too.

Familiarity breeds contempt, but absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I don't mind saying that I was inspired to write Semper when I read The Hunger Games. So much about the writing, voice, and characters in that book came alive for me in ways that many books don't. (The story and world and characters in Semper are totally different from THG, of course; being inspired by something doesn't mean you try to recreate it.)

Semper was the first novel-length story I tried to write in first person, present tense. That POV ties the reader to the main character in a close, personal way. For good and for bad.

Have you ever traveled with one person for, like, a month? Sharing hotel rooms, sharing cabs, eating together? What about a whole year? Or, have you ever had a roommate?

Writing a novel is like moving into a two bedroom apartment with all your novel's characters for a year. But your readers, the outside world... they only see your characters with their makeup on after they've had their coffee. You have to spend all that time behind the scenes with them. Dishes piled in the sink. Fuzzy green things in the fridge. Laundry spilling out of the hamper. Late night crying jags when their boyfriends don't call, and all those times they had a few too many drinks and you had to clean them up and put them to bed.

Yeah, it kinda feels like this sometimes.

The reader only sees them when they're on stage. We live with them all. the. time. Familiarity breeds contempt. I do get tired of my own characters sometimes while writing. But the readers don't (or shouldn't!). In fact, while you're writing the second book, spending all this time cleaning up after your characters and pushing through their lives, your readers are still in love with them from the first book. They're waiting for that sequel. They don't know anything about it, so to them it's still an anticipation. Absence does tend to make the heart grow fonder (assuming of course your first book was good).

In the end, the story is king
As I said above, I loved The Hunger Games. I don't hesitate to use the word "brilliant" when talking about that book. Catching Fire? Liked it. Seemed a little bit "more of the same," though. Even the beginning is an oh no here we go again moment. But the story is executed with such cleverness and tension that I still enjoyed it. Mockingjay, though... to me, that felt like a 40,000 word story fattened up to 80,000 words.

When I was writing Semper and plotting out the trilogy's overarching arc, I thought a lot about my reaction to Mockingjay. I wondered how I could keep the story fresh for the reader over three complete books all in first person present. The whole series covers only a year or so; while Dane could certainly grow and change a lot in a year, I didn't think I could pull off three separate books, each with its own beginning, middle, end, closure, and character growth.

So I wrote book two from Lupay's point of view. Semper is Dane's story. Forsada is Lupay's story. Both are critical components of the series, but they are their own stories as well.

When writing Forsada, I worried that I'd made the wrong choice. I worried that readers wanted more of Dane, that maybe I should have structured everything differently to fit the more conventional model. But the more I wrote and the farther I got into the plot, the more I realized this book had to be written in Lupay's point of view. There was no other option. Because the story required it.

Changing the books up like that gives me a lot more freedom with the third book. I'm not locked into one character's POV, voice, traits. I'm not finishing up the last bits of a nearly completed story; I'm writing a whole new one that completes the series. And that means I won't have to plump it up if it's too thin. Because that's not serving the story. The structural choices I've made have given me the freedom to let the story be king. I'm not sure that's always true for authors when they're deep into their second book or starting their third in a series.

Every story is a labyrinth for the author.

Your mileage may vary
These are my experiences and my observations. I guarantee you'll find other authors who have different thoughts. Writing the second book felt, during the writing, somewhat different from writing the first. Having the first out there, hearing reader feedback, knowing what I had to live up to and was being directed by... it took more discipline in how I applied my creativity. In a first book, you can just look forward and keep pushing toward the final scene. With a second book, you still have to do that, but now you've got the third book pulling you forward while the first book provides a counter-tension that keeps you restricted to a certain path. It was a fun challenge, but now I'm looking forward to the challenge of concluding a series.

hanging around with writers (at #SFWC13) - blog post

What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians?

I don't hang around with musicians. I hang around with writers. Mostly online, but also in person whenever my schedule allows. For the past five years I've spent three days each February hanging around with a really awesome group of writers: the volunteers at the San Francisco Writers Conference.

Next month will be my sixth straight year. Volunteering at the conference is a great gig. Not just because I get to listen in on a bunch of fabulous sessions (how much do you think the "tension on every page" and "bringing characters to life" sessions really change year to year?). Not just because I get to chat with agents (four of the five years I've had nothing I was actively pitching). Not just because my work has appeared in the two anthologies I submitted to (including the one pictured here).

I come back year after year because of the people. Although the organizers (Michael, Elizabeth, Richard, Barb, Linda, Laurie, and the others) are fabulous people with a wonderful vision, I really come to hang out with the other volunteers.

Nearly all the volunteers are writers. Many have published books, either independently (like me) or traditionally. They write in all genres, from business to romance to horror to cookbooks. And they all are committed to the same vision that Michael expresses for the conference: To foster a friendly, open, learning community of writers, agents, editors and others all trying to help each other learn and succeed.

I am sure I'll get to tell people about Semper and Forsada, but I don't expect to sell any books. I am sure I'll talk to a couple of agents about my new project, and I may get some requests to see it. And I'll have fun tweeting to #SFWC13. Those are important side benefits.

The core benefit for me will be to refill my tank, to reenergize my creativity and my zeal for this work. To hang out with writers, real writers who take their craft and their business and each other seriously.

Oh, yeah, the punchline: What do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?
The singer.

ABOUT MY BOOKS
Both Semper and Forsada are 99 cents for Kindle now through January 27 as a special introductory price. Both are also available in print. Semper is currently available at Barnes & Noble, Powell's, and other bookstores. Forsada will be available in those locations soon.

SEMPER and FORSADA bargains, plus a blizzard of #free #kindle #ebooks! (blog post)

Looks crazy, right? 64 free or severely discounted ebooks January 17 through 19.

Even better, to celebrate the launch of my new book, FORSADA, I'm offering the following specials:

• SEMPER 99c download January 17 through January 27
• FORSADA free download January 17 through January 21, then 99c through January 27

Plus, you can get the other 62 books at the following pages through January 19:

• Science Fiction and Fantasy: smarturl.it/BlizzSFF
  (This is where Semper and Forsada are linked)
• Crime, Mysteries and Thrillers: smarturl.it/BlizzThrills
• Women's Fiction and Romance: smarturl.it/BlizzRomance
• General Fiction and Non-Fiction: smarturl.it/BlizzGeneral
  (Notice that Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever is here with one of my stories.)

You really have no reason not to go grab these great bargains.

Please help me celebrate the launch of my new book by sharing either the link to this blog post, or the links above. There are some great books in this promotion besides mine. But I'd sure like it if you read mine first!

Proofreading: The necessary evil

Before you read this, go enter my drawing for a free ARC of Forsada!

Proofreading is on my mind. I received my print proof of FORSADA last week. My good friend Impatience immediately whispered in my ear, "You've revised it a billion times on your computer. It's solid. Approve it. You don't have to read it again."

But I sat down Saturday morning with my red pen and what I thought were enough sticky note flags, and I started in. I got as far as the Acknowledgments page before I found my first error.

As I stared at that one correction and the 226 pages that awaited my red pen, I thought about this Insatiable Booksluts post I'd just read, ranting about poorly edited self-published books. Consensus seems to be that even professionally edited books from major publishers end up with typos. Readers can forgive one here or there, as long as the book isn't a total mess.

My book, I knew, was not a total mess. If I didn't have such a fun and lucrative day job, I could totally be a professional editor. I once had a first draft edited by a pro, and when she was done she told me she'd love to edit all my work--easiest money she'd ever made.

So I sat there and looked at those two transposed words daring me to take the easy way out and trust that I'd done enough. "Go on," they said. "Just publish the book and be dome with it."

"Be done with it," I mused. "Sounds nice." My eagerness to be done tempted me to declare victory. Instead, I turned the page. And like a cartoon boxing glove on a cartoon extendo-arm, Times New Roman jumped out of the third line where Garamond italic should have been, and it smacked me in the eye and gave me a big shiner.

What the hell?

Somehow, in formatting or upload or printing, all my italics had magically turned into Times New Roman.

The temptation of the easy way out had completely disappeared. If I had to upload a new document and go through the proof process again, it was going to be right. Which is why, this morning about 40% of the way through the book, I ran out of my little sticky note flags. Nothing really big. A double space here, a miscapitalized word there, a "the" instead of "they." Some opportunistic word choice changes.

I'm pretty well known at work for my attention to detail where grammar, usage, and clean text are concerned. It's a rare day when I send an email with a typo in it, and I send hundreds of emails a day. So it's shocking how many simple, tiny errors can slip into a 90,000 word manuscript even after you've read it a half dozen times. Even after ten beta readers have read it. And probably even after one final pass over the printed book.

ARC giveaway and cover reveal #YA #book #indielit #selfpub

All my friends who have books about to be published through traditional channels have "cover reveal day" on their blogs. This is when they get to show the world the cover of their upcoming book. I've always thought this was a vain, self-glorifying, egotistical thing to do. So of course I've been dying to have a cover reveal day of my own.

Forsada, the sequel to Semper, will be available in print and on Kindle on January 13, 2013.

If you haven't read Semper yet, you can get it at Amazon or wait until December 26th when it will be available as a free download for Kindle.

Want a free eARC of Forsada? Tweet or facebook or blog the permalink to this post, and leave a comment here pointing to your post. Couldn't be easier. I'll pull up to five names out of a hat* on December 26 from everyone who enters (one entry per tweet/post).

I'll also send a signed ARC of the printed book to two lucky winners.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot the cover.

Cover design: Wendy Russ

* Or could be a shoe. Or I might make a big Bingo board of all the names, then let my cat eat grass and see which names she barfs on. Not sure yet how it'll work.

Book stats and accidental cover reveal (blog), and a #nanowrimo WIN

On Wednesday I "won" NaNoWriMo, clocking 50,000 words in just 27 days on a new novel I didn't even know I was going to write until I thought it up in October. It's not done yet, but today I'm setting it aside because...

I am on the verge of publishing the sequel to SEMPER. I'll be posting details of the sequel, FORSADA, over the next few weeks until its publication in mid/late January.

I've also got a new cover for Semper. The current cover is not totally hideous (I did it myself) but it doesn't really scream out young adult science fiction post apocalyptic adventure page-turner, does it? Here's the current cover, which has served me well since publication on January 22, 2012:

It actually looks WAY better in print. Although I have not yet approved the new version through CreateSpace, Amazon is already displaying the new cover. So, my accidental "cover reveal" day is today. Here it is:

Writer and designer friend Wendy Russ built that. Nice, huh? She also built the cover for Forsada, which is not yet ready to be revealed. Stay tuned.

After an initial honeymoon during the first half of the year, the old cover was holding back sales. Still, with minimal promotion (less than $100 out of pocket, not counting copies I donated or gave away), the book did okay in its first year:

• Over 400 total units sold (349 ebooks, 110 print copies)
• 8,334 free downloads of the ebook

That means that in 10 months this book has over 8,700 copies in circulation. Of course I don't for a minute believe all those have been read. A free download is easy to get and forget. But the book also has generated

• 29 ratings on Goodreads (4.14 average) with 7 reviews
• 25 reviews on Amazon (4.64 average)
• 2 independent reviews by book bloggers
• 1 high school book report
• 1 photo of a kid 30 feet up a tree reading it on a sunny Saturday

I can't wait to get Forsada out and hear what people think of it. Early readers give it high praise. Some even like it better than Semper. Either way, I can't wait to have two books published. Stay tuned for details.