For those of you who prefer to hold actual paper in your hands, the print edition of Asylum is available. Use the link below to get it direct from Createspace and save some money as well!
Print Edition: https://www.createspace.com/5315273
(To get $3.00 dollars off, use this code: NA5GGCRC. Good only at CreateSpace.)
Asylum is live on Amazon Kindle! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TVF0S8E
Whoo hoo! (Time to do the happy dance!) And because we are doing the Happy Dance, both Alecto and The Morning which Breaks are on sale for a week! Get Alecto for only $0.99 and The Morning which Breaks for $1.99!
Okay, now we’ll get back to work…
Look for news of the print edition in a few days.
Update: If anyone out there uses a Kindle Voyage, could you please leave a comment to that effect here? Thanks!
Asylum has been submitted for publication! If all goes well, it should be live on Amazon KDP in the 12 hours or so.
We will update here with a link as soon as it goes live! For those interested in such things, the print edition (with should be live on Createspace early next week) came in at 520 pages.
Onward and upward!
We have a release date for Asylum (good lord willing and the creek don’t rise): February 20th. If there are no hiccups with Amazon, the Kindle edition should be available that weekend (February 21st-22nd). The paperback version will follow within 2 or 3 weeks. (The paperback version always seems to take a while to get listed on Amazon from Createspace for some reason.)
We have decided not to deal with preordering this time around. Looking into it more closely and discussing other authors’ experiences with them, we decided it was unlikely to convey a great enough benefit this time. So we are going to revisit the issue when the fourth book is ready.
Many thanks to everyone who helped get this book into shape. Your assistance has been invaluable. What deficiencies remain are ours alone, and are probably there because we didn’t listen where we ought to have.
Enjoy Asylum and onward to Book 4!
Update: It appears the offering our next book on preorder might have benefits of which we were unaware (live and learn). We are going to look into this over this weekend, and if things are as it appears they might be, we will be offering Asylum for preorder by the end of this month. If this works out, the preorder price for Asylum will be discounted (assuming that is possible).
We are a little curious how our faithful readers feel about preordering books. In the larger publishing universe, preorders are used to drive a lot of marketing decisions. In the itsy-bitsy space we inhabit, there doesn’t seem to be much point to it. (I’ll admit I don’t really understand how preorders affect Amazon rankings and thus how useful they are for generating that “all-important buzz” prior to the book’s release, so we probably have something to learn there.) Our basic thought is that it’s just as well to make the book available when it’s ready, and not deal with preordering at this point. (When we have 3+ books already out there, things might change.)
Part of our question is that we aren’t aware of how readers view preordering. Do they consider is a good thing or a not-so-good thing, or something that does not matter either way? So sound off in the comments on this, if you feel so inclined.
BTW: The publication date for Asylum will be sometime between the middle and end of February. We are still waiting to hear back on getting the final proofing done, and once we do, we’ll have a firm date. And, of course, we will post an update here as soon as we know.
Thanks again for all your interest and support!
Happy Holidays!
We hope everyone is enjoying the season!
For our part, we’d like to announce that the draft of Asylum is complete and will be sent out for review very shortly. With all the vagaries of final editing and proofreading and all that sort of nice thing, we anticipate releasing the book by the end of January (and yes, that’s 2015, for any doubters out there). 😉
Then it’s onwards and upwards to Book 4!
So have a wonderful time and we’ll back with updates as things progress!
. . . instead of three strikes, we hope. We just completed another major revision and reorganization of Wogan’s Reef, with additional material added to expand Part 1. We believe we now have a stable ‘configuration’ (if we can use such a term) that will allow us to complete the rest of the story without so much to’ing and fro’ing. On the plus side, the story has come together much better (and our undying thanks to those of you who have helped in the sausage making!); on the less-than-plus side, it’s taking longer than we’d like. (We realize this is not exactly news.)
For those who like stats, the manuscript currently weighs in at 109,000 words, which equates to ~340 pages.
This is where we are on the next book:
Wogan’s Reef, Part 1 is 133 pages long. It has undergone alpha review and we are getting it to into beta shape now.
Wogan’s Reef, Part 2 is at 107 pages. We are still working on the first draft, and we estimate it to be ~66% done.
Asylum (the novella) is beta-ready and weighs in at 118 pages.
We don’t have a projected release date yet. We will announce that when we get the draft of Wogan’s Reef, Part 2 to ~90% complete.
We’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from our awesome readers on the alpha chapters we’ve released thus far. So we are far from blue! (Tickled pink is more like it!) As a result, we are reorganizing Part 1, restructuring some chapters, and adding some new chapters. For this reason, we will not be releasing more chapters at this time, and we won’t be sending out the old, obsolete alpha chapters at this point.
The good news is that we are that much closer to having a beta version ready. And we will resume releasing sample chapters in the future, until the beta draft is ready.
Thanks again to everyone who commented!
Chapters 7 and 8 are ready for your delectation. If you are on this list, you ought to have received them. If you were overlooked, as always, drop us a line or leave a comment.
Enjoy and fire when ready!
Chapter 7:
The gentle light of the new-risen sun filtered through the heavily laden boughs of the peach trees to fall across Mariwen’s face, accentuating the eloquent curve of her cheek and the perfect shape of her lips, while emphasizing the extraordinary warmth of her flawless latte complexion. It was a famous face—indeed, one of the most famous in charted space—revered for its beauty. Such an inadequate word. To say Mariwen Rathor was beautiful was to state that which was blindingly obvious, and indeed, the multitudes were blinded by the captivating trademark smile, the lambent sensuality, the penetrating look in the dark eyes that could kill at a mile. But those were merely the tools of her trade. The essence went much deeper than that; a sublime quality, richer and more invisible, that defied description—and it was gone. In its place was a look of peace, as serene as this perfect morning with the dew-scented air barely stirring and the tiny droplets on the leaves catching the light in a myriad rainbow glints.
To Antoine Rathor, standing at his sister’s shoulder as she gazed up at something that had caught her attention in the branches above, that was the cruelest cut of all. The peace was manufactured, the serenity medically induced. This early walk in the peach orchard was actually a medical exercise: Mariwen’s time sense remained dislocated and carefully planned excursions like this were calculated to steady her perception of the passing days and hours, and help her sort prior memories from present existence. …
Chapter 8:
Kris opened her locker and, reaching far back on the top shelf, took out the metal case there. It was somewhat bigger than the bronze boxes the CEF shipped off to the families of those killed in action, weighed about the same, and served a related purpose: safeguarding critical items, such as service records, and anything else the owner could fit into it. It was equipped with a recovery beacon and built to survive the most catastrophic events. Officers and enlisted alike called them DMBs: Dead Man’s Bank.
She set it on the compartment’s small desk and sitting, opened it with her ID tag. Most people’s DMB held a few mementos, maybe some credit chips, and for the pessimistic (or well-prepared, depending on one’s point of view) a last letter to be sent to family or friends. Other than her service records and a sheaf of official documents, Kris’s DMB held just two envelopes and a dented tin cup. …