Inkarnate, and Kira’s Village

It’s been a while…

Lots of good reasons, but good reasons are just more excuses. 

In fairness I DID publish a book, stayed employed, lost 15 pounds, and taught my daughter’s service dog how to play frisbee…so I’ve not been dead on my ass. 

More on the book I published later. That is a long story. For now, check this out…

This was simple. After having wanted to make a map of Kira’s Village — where much of the Lonely Hunter story takes place — I stumbled upon www.inkarnate.com today and within 90 mins was able to learn enough to use their free version to create Kira’s Village as you see it above.

It’s been stuck in my head (and on my hard drive) for 5 years now, so I know it pretty damn well. I’ve tried hand-drawing and PowerPoint and they all look like crap, so had all but given up. Once I mastered Inkarnate, I was able to knock it out quickly. 

With a bit of luck and a lot of self-discipline, I hope to get back to fiction shortly. 

Lonely Hunter continues to be 95% done, so I probably ought to finish that soon. It is now the second novel in the series.

IrSaa’s Prelude (now the first book in the series) continues to delight and challenge me. The first draft is nearing completion, so still needs to go through Critique Circle and a lot of editing. 

Bright Universe (now the third book in the series) is still effectively done short of going through CC and being professionally edited. I continue to be pleased with this book even though it is brutal and without hope. 

The 4th book (which will remain nameless at the moment), continues to sit at about 70% done.

The 5th and 6th novels are each at about 20% + a rough outline. Occasionally — rarely, to be honest — I jump into one and tweak a paragraph or two, but that is about it. 

I don’t really anticipate making any more maps for any of them…just seemed like something I need for Lonely Hunter.

That’s it for now… 

 

 

$200 Donation from Sales of Youth in Asia in 2019

VFW Donation

Sales of my novel have ceratinly slowed — only 307 copies this year — but that still allows me to donate $100, which my employeer (Dell Technologies) again generously matched. So the total is $200 for the year, which brings the total to $2,500. 

If your’re curious, the other half of the money I collect goes to marketing, advertising to be precise. I have a very modest spend of about about $6 or $7 a month for pay per click advertising with Amazon. 

Not a huge donation, but more than I thought my little book would ever do, and happy to help. 

Lonely Hunter…interrupted

Lonely Hunter in progress, Sci Fi novel, Science Fiction Novel

Six weeks ago I was on the verge of sending my manuscript to my editor, but I had a few interruptions: My older twin daughters (yes, we have two sets of twins) graduated from high school and we had to visit the colleges they are going to for orientations, we moved to a new house (which was a ton of physical work, and I aggravated an old collarbone injury), my boss (and friend) was fired and I’ve taken on a bigger role at work, and my wife and I have both had to travel for various other reasons.

I saw some of this coming, so I decided to take advantage of the pause to have two more beta readers go through the manuscript. Both are accomplished readers with keen and critical eyes, and both are preparing to publish their first novels. I finally had some time today to look at their feedback in detail…

Continue reading “Lonely Hunter…interrupted”

Star War’s Rogue One and Lonely Hunter: Strange Coincidences

Rogue One, Star Wars, Science Fiction Movies, Sci Fi Movies, Best Sellers, Bestsellers, Science Fiction Bestsellers, Lonely Hunter novel, End War

Star War’s Rogue One: A short Review

I took my four teenage daughters to see the sci fi movie “Rogue One” a few days ago. There were some really strange coincidences between the movie and my forthcoming novel, Lonely Hunter. But first, some thoughts on Rogue One.

None of my kids are particularly dialed into Star Wars, but a few have seen a prior movie or two. I’ve seen four of them (swore I’d never go to another one after Clone Wars). Three of my kids enjoy various Sci-Fi-ish flicks from time to time such as Hunger Games, Inception, the Marvel franchise, Transformers, etc. We all thought the trailer looked interesting, so we gave it a shot.

The consensus coming out was that it was underwhelming at best. But what was really weird were the number of coincidences with my own novel.

Continue reading “Star War’s Rogue One and Lonely Hunter: Strange Coincidences”

How to use Keywords in your Book Title and Subtitle to help Ramp your Book Sales


Amazon Author Central
As a self-publisher (or indie publisher), you not only have to write well, you have to be good at every aspect of production and marketing if you want to sell any books. I’ve taught myself much about book publishing, but there is much more to learn. One of the most important things I have learned is that picking the right keywords for your title and subtitle on Amazon allow you to tap into the massive amount of traffic that is already on Amazon’s site.

This is really important to understand. Optimizing for keywords may be an arcane science, but keywords are what your potential customers use to find what they want. These are people who are already shopping to buy a book, and if your book is in their genre, the book they see might as well be your book. Much (but not all) of the success summarized in the graph above is because I fine-tuned the keywords in my subtitle to get more interested traffic.

Continue reading “How to use Keywords in your Book Title and Subtitle to help Ramp your Book Sales”