DRAGONFRIEND: indieBRAG 2017 Cover Contest Finalist!

The cover for Dragonfriend was nominated as a finalist in the first annual "indieBRAG 2017 Cover Contest." Yay! You may recall this is the same organization that awarded their medallion to Dragonfriend a few years back. So this is pretty cool. Contest voting will be open to fans and readers starting on July 1st. I'll post a link to the indieBRAG site on that date. Then, if you are so inclined, you can go and vote for my book's cover!

Sci-Fi Novel Update

After receiving some wise counsel from several of my author pals, I've decided to go the Kindle Scout route with my space opera novel. As my friends pointed out, the concern about "having to do a lot of promotion" to get people to nominate my book is a hollow one. I was reminded that even traditionally-published authors have to self-promote like crazy these days (unless they're already big name authors or celebrities) and self-published authors definitely have to do that. The consensus: if I was fortunate enough to get a publishing contract with Kindle Press, it wouldn't be so bad to have Amazon as a marketing ally. In other words, worth the effort.

So...

Sci-Fi Wallpaper from Fond Décran (not my cover art, but cool nonetheless)

To get things just right, I'm in the middle of a heavy-duty polish edit of the manuscript. I lopped off the first chapter to get things moving right away and am currently involved in the somewhat tricky process of seeding anything of importance from the former Chapter One into the rest of the book. Somewhat tricky, but also fun in a jigsaw puzzle kind of way. I'm also doing a chapter-by-chapter edit for continuity and overall readability. At the end of the above edit I'll go through everything one more time by having MS Word read my words back to me in its quirky Text To Speech voice (I use "David" because he sounds like an authoritative robot 😉).

Then...

I'll get everything together--manuscript, cover, logline, brief summary, etc.--and submit it to the folks at Kindle Press. At this point, the self-promoting (begging) will begin in earnest, and for thirty days I'll be promoting  the link to my "Kindle Scout campaign page" and asking friends, family, and interested parties to go there and nominate my book for publication (free and easy, all you need is an Amazon account). Expect this to happen within the next week or so.

On a related note: I commissioned a super-cool cover for my book and I'm very much looking forward to showing it to everyone when my campaign launches. See ya soon!

10000 chickens vs. 20 T-Rexes

Not sure if authentic physical and behavioral species characteristics are at play here (I'm pretty sure chickens don't explode, right?), but this does serve as an amusing exercise in "what if" theory.

My Space Opera Novel: What Should I Do Next?

Spaceship concept art by Viktor Titov

Okay, here's the deal. A little over a year ago I finished my YA space opera, had my trusted beta-readers help me pummel it into shape, then had it professionally proofread. I was all set to commission a cover and self-publish when a good friend of mine (who's very cool and also happens to be an author) asked if I'd be interested in a referral to the "Well-Respected Literary Agency" (not the agency's real name). "Heck, yeah!" sez me. I submitted my first chapter to the WRLA and politely waited for word on whether or not they were interested in reading the full manuscript.

They were not. Seven months later I get a "Thanks, but no thanks." email. Disappointing, but not wholly unexpected. Ultimately, I'm fine with it, only wishing they would've made their decision sooner.

So...here I am back at square one. I've got a novel that's close to being ready (I want to go through it one more time just for giggles), but now face some additional possibilities that occurred to me while waiting for the WRLA's decision.

Basically, I'm stuck in an indecision loop and am asking for your help to break out of it.

My options:

• Proceed as originally planned. Commission e-book and paperback covers, then self-publish.
• Submit manuscript to Amazon's Kindle Scout program. This is an option that requires minimal "documentation" and an e-book cover (supplied by the author). The idea is that the author submits a manuscript/cover and, if accepted, a "campaign" is launched wherein readers nominate the book for publication.  At the end of a successful campaign (45 days or less), "a publishing contract with Kindle Press" is issued. Paperback rights are retained by the author and a modest advance is awarded. The downside is that I think you have to have A LOT of readers nominate your book to get a contract. The amount of self-promotion required during this campaign has to be staggering.
• Submit manuscript to TOR Forge. This publisher is one of a very few that has an open submissions policy, meaning you don't need an agent. That and the bonus of having the support of a real live publisher are the upside. The downside is that they are understandably awash in submissions and, unlike Kindle Scout, there's a fair amount of documentation that has to generated--full synopsis, cover letter--all paper, no digital submissions accepted. Then there's this: "If you do not receive a reply after six months, please resubmit. It’s likely that your project or our response disappeared in transit." Whaaat? Not sure if I can hold it together for another 6 months of waiting for a response that may or may not come. Am I being too impatient?
• Query more literary agents. This one's purposely placed at the bottom of the list because I don't want to go through what will no doubt be multiple rounds of WRLA-style waiting. Is this unrealistic of me?

Anyhoo...that's where I am at this point. What should I do next? Let me know what you think of the above options and if any one of them is clearly superior to the others, or if you're able to see a positive aspect of an option that isn't currently clear to me. I'm also open to new suggestions.  Thank you in advance for your wise counsel. :)

MARIO KART 8 - FAST and FURIOUS Edition Trailer

Perfectly executed, this one doesn't miss a beat...

Update: The Great Tree: Undrastormur, Part 2

Just a quick update... The early beta reader notes are starting to come in. I got one yesterday from Eirikur, my pal from Iceland. He works for the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and keeps me honest on Norse terms (names, etc.). For example, he told me that "the 'Einherjar' are a select group and their name should be capitalized instead of lower case." and that "The correct name of Thor's second goat is "Tanngnjóstur" which would sound like "Tanngnjost" in English." Mythology geek that I am, I love this kind of stuff. It means a lot to me to be as "authentic" and true to the era as possible. Thanks, Eirikur!

"Einherjar" (the ghostly warriors of Norse mythology) by Sebastian Horoszko / Kraków, Poland https://www.artstation.com/artist/sebastianhoroszko

Björk 'Notget VR'

Because Björk...