Tag: ebooks

Introducing Senatora Pelia

Here’s a brief interview with Senatora Octavia Pelia, one of the new characters in Copper Centurion. Don’t forget to check out Brass Legionnaire on Kindle and on Nook! http://bit.ly/MU6Gv1


This is D.O. and I’m coming to you live from the halls of the Imperial Roman Statehouse here in the center  of Rome. With me is one of the youngest members of the Roman Senate, and by far it’s most unique one. She also happens to be the first major female character introduce in Copper Centurion. Thanks for taking this moment to meet with us, Senatora Octavia Pelia.

P: Can we hurry this up? I’ve got a committee meeting in ten minutes, and I’ve got to talk with the other senators about this expedition to Nortland and….

D: Excuse me, there’s an expedition going somewhere?

P: *Levels an angry glare at me and sighs* I suppose I can tell you about it since there’s no way you’d let anyone else know. Yes, there’s an expedition in the works to go north and punish those pesky Nortlander savages for their destruction of Brittenburg. That’s the official line, anyways.

D: What’s the unofficial line?

P: High command is stuck in a political battle between the career and political officers. We’ve just barely managed to get a career officer in charge of the expedition, but the vote was so close I don’t know if it will manage it in the full senate. This expedition would be a fine way for some political imbecile to truly *part censored due to language unbecoming a young woman of Roman breeding and standards*.

D: I… I never knew you felt that passionately about this…

P: My father was a career officer. I blame his death – on the field of battle, no less – on those political idiots he couldn’t remove from his supporting armies.

D: Ah, I see. So I can take it you plan on voting against whatever political appointment is proposed to lead the expedition?

P: Yes. Rumor is that they’ll try to vote through General Minnicus – As though anyone would want that man in charge after the debacle back in Brittenburg. Did you know that he nearly got our Crown Prince KILLED? By rights, that man should be in chains. And to place him in charge of the same legion that contains the primus imperio Constantine Appius again would be sheer foolishness.

D: Sounds like you’ve got a thing for this Prince.

P: *Blushes and glares at me* What is this, a drama worthy of Virgil? I’ve never even met his highness, much less talked with him. How could I have a ‘thing’ for him?

*Bell rings

P: If you’ll excuse me, a vote is being called for, and I don’t want to miss it.

D: Thanks for talking with us anyways, Senatora! And now check out this fun fan art from Hazel West. Thanks Hazel!

Learning from My Self-Publishing Experience in Five Steps: Part 2

Learn from my Self-Publishing Experience: Part 2 – Advance Reader Copies and Promotional Opportunities!


Hi all, and welcome to part two of my self-publishing experience post.

It’s a busy time of year here in the mid-Atlantic. School is ending and all the stuff that goes with that is being thrown together in a hurry! I’m moving rooms, moving houses, and have to balance all that with grad school and writing. Whew! When do I find time to sleep?

Here’s a quick review of the earlier post –

1.) Create an online presence in advance, not when just publishing.

2.) Get some beta readers and have your book read before an editor looks at it.

3.) Make a publishing plan and stick to it. Do your work in advance so you won’t have to do it on the fly.

Here are steps Four and Five.

Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...

4.Send out Advance Book Copies – So you’ve published your novel, but no one knows it exists. And no one is willing to risk their money on an unrated novel. It’s easy to spot friend and family reviews, so what’s an author to do? The answer: Advanced Reader Copies. Grab some people you know, but aren’t your closest friends, and ask them to take a look at your book. If you’ve already done step 1 and 2, then you probably have some people who you trust to review your book fairly and honestly. Notice I didn’t say POSITIVE. A book with a ton of five-star reviews the second it comes out may arouse suspicion, and can garner angry reviews from readers who buy it based on those reviews but find it horrible. On the other hand, a book with a mixture will most likely elicit people’s interest and will garner more honest feedback. People don’t like buying an unknown quantity, and especially don’t like getting duped. But with a few reviews, more people will be willing to try it, even if it’s a three and a half star book.

Now you can purchase book reviews through Kirkus and other websites, but it’s far cheaper and more beneficial to you to utilize your readers. A handy thing to toss in at the end of your book is a nice ‘If you liked the book, please review it online” comment. It can’t hurt, and certainly can help, even if you just get one person to review out of 10, if you sell 100 books that could be ten positive reviews! That’s a nice amount to show up on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Also, don’t forget that you can take snippets of reviews and put them on your blurb or other places, like your website – especially if they are from a more recognized reviewer. Just be sure to credit where the review came from.

5. Promote, but don’t be obnoxious – So you’ve got your twitter and Facebook and goodreads account and everything is going well. Are you posting a million messages a day about your book? Hopefully not! That’s annoying and is called spam. But I know none of you would ever spam… right? It can drive your followers away if all they get are messages about your book. Be different! Write about your life and what’s happening. Limit yourself a few posts a day. Be sure to use your hashtags effectively too.

I’m not saying to never talk about your book, I’m just saying use common sense. It shouldn’t be the only thing happening in your life! Here’s a list of some other ways to get people to try your novel.

1.) Write a short story or two about your world and make it free (or $0.99) on all marketplaces. People can decide if they like your writing style. For example, I’m in the midst of something called ‘The Traitor’ about the non-assassination of Julius Caesar. Maybe it will bring in some readers. Maybe it will reward twitter and Facebook and blog followers.

2.) Use your online presence to team up with other indie authors for cross-promotion and similar things. Especially around the holidays (and right after!) deals and networking can really pay off!

Anyways, I hoped that helped. What do you all think about what I learned? I’m sure I missed a ton of other things, which I’m sure I’ll have to write about in the future!

Thoughts on the Formatting Process

What to expect when you are formatting! Plus a call for Beta Readers


Greetings all!

I’m trying to get into the habit of posting twice a week – Saturdays and Tuesdays. During the summer I’ll be able to post a lot more! I’ve got an update on Brass Legionnaire for everyone and I’ll talk a bit about my experience with the formatting process.

Just as a side note, I know that many people do their own formatting. For me, it was a simple look at the payoff versus work balance. As a full-time teacher, I don’t have much weekday time to pump out a solid amount of formatting, nor do I have time to check and double check. As everyone knows – you only make a first impression once – so when I was looking at cover art, I was fortunate enough to find a team that did my cover, illustrations, and formatting. Simplifies my list of outside consultants immensely. And I’m paying a flat rate, not an hourly fee.

As many people may know, Brass Legionnaire has been finished edit-wise for sometime. The illustrations/maps have just been completed as well, and now all that is needed is for the book to be properly formatted into ebook/smashwords/amazon style and print style. I’ve seen the first proofs for each one, and because they required minimal changes (More just a ‘what goes where’ type thing), and they are almost finished. So what have I learned from the process already?

1. If you’ve got acknowledgements, terminology, illustrations, etc, state exactly where you want them to go in the beginning. The Print and Ebook version will be a bit different, so think about how you want them to be. Here’s a checklist (not in any specific order)

  • Cover (You should already have this, silly!)
  • Table of contents
  • Maps/Prologue?
  • Copyright
  • Acknowledgements (Optional, but surely there is someone you’d like to thank for their efforts?)
  • Illustrations (optional!)
  • How you want your chapter breaks to be – new page? Paragraph break?
  • Terminology or epilogue? Sneak peak of your next book? What will you put at the end?
  • A ‘the end’ page
  • Don’t forget for a print book you’ll need a back cover blurb and perhaps a review or two to place on it!

2. Expect things to go a bit slowly. You want your work to be done well, correct? Which is why you didn’t pay for someone to do it in an hour. If you can do it in an hour, awesome! If you’re not quite so skilled, you can outsource it, but look around for the best deal.

3. Be confident in asking for something to be done. After all, it is your book. I myself accidentally sent my formatter (verb? noun?) off on a wild goose chase after mistakenly sending him two completely different instruction sets.

Whether finding a professional or doing it yourself, formatting your book takes time and effort, and is critical. People don’t want to have to fight your book in order to read it. You’ll lose readers and get negative reviews. Do it right the first time and you won’t have to worry about it again.

UPDATE #2 – I’m looking for a few beta readers for Copper Centurion, book two in the Brass Legionnaire series. If you are interested, shoot me a message here or on my twitter account. All I need is your email and a promise you will be honest with your criticism and not share my hard work with anyone (Need I say that?) I’d send you chapters as I finish them for your input on them, you’ll get mentioned in the acknowledgements of book two, and there might even be some cool swag in the deal for you. I’m looking for three to five people. Let me know if you are interested!

 

My Top Ten Favorite Books

My Top Ten Favorite Books/Novels for your enjoyment!


Good evening everyone!

As an author, it is important to learn about your own likes and dislikes in literature so that you can create a product that you and your readers will enjoy. My own novel (soon to be published!) is actually fairly unique in the ‘world’ of the book category, but I believe that every author was, first, a reader. Here are my top ten favorite books.

10. In the Balance by Harry Turtledove – I love the entire series, but it blends together realistic characters and components of WWII with a distinct sci-fi alien invasion. Sounds unbelievable, but done so magnificently that you wonder if you should root for the nazis or the aliens.

9. Storm Front By Jim Butcher – Another beginning of a series type of book, but Mr. Butcher’s style and cynicism really bring urban fantasy into the forefront. It’s gritty, down to earth, not your teenage daughter’s type of zombie, vampire, and wizard novel. Mr. Butcher’s style of writing is one I admire and enjoy.

8. Conquerors’ Pride by Timothy Zahn – is an older novel that threw humanity against an alien force. An entire war breaks out because of a simple misunderstanding. Great read, realistic characters and plausible situations mean that you wonder if it could happen when/if we are faced with a first contact occurrence.

7. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin – You know it, you’ve seen it, if you haven’t, I highly recommend checking the book out before the series. The series is awesome, but the book has way too many subplots to be included in the television show. He definitely rocked my world with his willingness to kill every single character I started to like!

6. Guns, Germs, and SteelBy Jared Diamond – It was required reading for me in my high school AP World History class, and became one of my favorite reference and support books. A great background book that describes why the world developed as it did, and why the Aztecs weren’t running around wielding muskets when the Spaniards landed.

5. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling – Iconic, lovable, our childhood in a neat little box. What more can be said?

4. Off Armageddon Reef By David Weber – An excellent series that melds 17th century technology with futuristic human-know how. Nearly made the top three, but the other one edged it out because of a week book number 3.

3. The Lost Fleet: Dauntless By Jack Campbell – Yes, another sci-fi space opera – bear with me here, it’s the last one I swear! And definitely one of the best.

2. Wheel of Time Saga by Robert Jordan – This was my first epic fantasy novel, and boy did I have to persevere. But the story has stuck with me, and I’ve reread all (now 12) books of the series again… and again.

1. Percy Jackson By Rick Riordan – Young adult totally claims the top spot against the field. Mixing mythology, growing up, and lots of action, this series and the Lost Hero ‘secondary’ series are truly my favorite books (at this time in my life, who knows where I’ll be in a year!)

There you have it folks. What are your top ten books?

Using Wix to make your book Website

Book website, Using Wix, Countdown to Publication


Hi everyone,

Background:

So as a reader, I’m a big fan of separating your author blog from your book website. Since I’m planning a series, I put together a website for my series over at brasslegionnaire.com so that people who were interested in the book could check it out. I envision this site growing as each book gets its own ‘branch’ so to speak from the main page. I used Wix to design and host my website

When you first go to the site, you start at a pretty empty page, where you can click on one of two pictures or on the enter button. All the options take you to the same place. As I publish more books, I’ll be able to expand the options and add pages to purchase the book.

Why Wix?

Well, to be honest I stumbled across them and started using their website for fun. It’s very intuitive and simple to use. You don’t have to know about HTML code or anything like that. It’s more like Powerpoint, where you drag pictures around the page and you can upload things to post as well. Although I consider myself a relatively technology capable person, I didn’t want to waste my limited funds hiring someone to make my page, when I had a site like this that I could play with enough to make it myself!

You do have to spend some money to register your site for your own domain name and to eliminate their ads, but you also get some nice vouchers for facebook and google ads that you can use to offset some of the cost (What you spend here, you won’t have to spend there)

Would I recommend Wix?

Yes, I would recommend them based on their simple, easy to use site and the way most people can figure out how to do it if you have a basic knowledge of Powerpoint or Word. They have helpful videos to show you how to set up your site and format things. They offer enough different price packages to give you options for most budgets.That being said, if you’ve got a friend or relative who is really handy with HTML code, it might be better for them to do it for you. But being a finicky person myself, I liked the control I had over every step of the process.

Book Update

The book’s illustrations are now complete! I’ve sent the book and all the other odds and ends back to my format/illustration team and they are hard at work putting it all together for the final event. I’m very excited for you to have the opportunity to read the novel I’ve spent so long in making. It’s been an intense experience these past couple of months. I’ve set a personal goal to publish Brass Legionnaire by mid-May.

If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, follow me to get more updates and sneak peeks!

Ciao!

Illustration Rough Drafts

Rough Draft Illustrations are here! Check out the mid book scene and end book scene rough drafts! Plus another teaser from inside the book


Good Evening all!
Just got word from the illustrator that all the illustrations have been conceptualized and they are now hard at work putting the recommendations I asked for in place. I figured I’d share the rough drafts since you’ll have to buy the book to see the final ones 🙂

Concept Sketch of the descent from the airship - Mid-Novel

I’m really liking where these illustrations are going. My illustrators suggested a random edge effect on the final draft (which I’ve seen, and think you’ll like) that breaks up the ‘too neat’ border of the picture. Here’s the end of scene book.

Last Battle Scene View

Hope you enjoyed those! Just as a reminder, be sure to follow me here, on twitter or facebook to get the most recent updates and fun previews!

Speaking of that, here’s a sneak peek inside the world of Brass Legionnaire.

It was often said that even the fog feared to tread in the depths of Sludge Bottom. Only the brave, the foolhardy, the desperate, or the conniving dared to venture into that economically stagnant and most run-down sector of Brittenburg, where seedy gambling halls, dank, smoke-filled bars, and automaton-fighting pits in abandoned warehouses were the chief attractions. The operators of these businesses, always tight-fisted and tight-lipped, had tightened their vigilance as well, with the auxilia more active recently. Anyone who seemed a bit out of place or a tad too eager to learn more about their companions at the gambling table was “taken care of,” right along with anyone who happened to develop an exceptionally strong winning streak at the dice tables or during a rigged card game.

Here, Domino Grex ran the notorious Atrium, five stories of every kind of disreputable entertainment imaginable. The building stank of desperation and ill-gotten gains. The fact that it was neither as well-lit nor as well-ventilated as its name implied appealed to the con artists, runaway peasants, prostitutes, loan sharks, and the city’s assorted riff-raff who frequented the establishment. And no one crossed Grex. The survival rate for those who did was zero. Even the auxilia dared not raid the place. Domino Grex had so many illicit connections that his complex was untouchable; any officer who tried to impose the law soon found himself transferred to the city’s Sanitary Division.

Though the private rooms on the fifth floor could provide for any vice or perversion, they seemed to exude the evil, hatred, anger, and violence they’d witnessed over the years. No member of Grex’s staff was assigned up there for any length of time. Too many seemed to disappear, go mad, or simply see things that . . . shouldn’t . . . be there.

One of the largest of these rooms had been booked for the evening. Two muscular street toughs stood on either side of a dented copper door, the verdigris of age belying its well-oiled mechanisms. The men leaned on heavy clubs, and short swords and daggers were sheathed at their belts. The toughs stepped together in front of the door as three cloaked figures approached, blocking their passage.

The cloaked figures each withdrew necklaces from within their cowls to display small medallions with intricately geared moving components. Newly alert eyes lighting up their dull expressions, the thugs nodded to one another and moved aside to let the strangers pass. The leader inserted his medallion into an opening in the wall as if it were a key; after an audible hum, the door hissed open, sliding slowly into the wall. The figures passed between the two toughs, who ignored them—their job was to guard the door; what happened inside was not their business.

With another hiss, the door squealed shut behind the last cloaked figure to enter, and the gaslights blazed in their wall sconces, casting a yellowish haze throughout the room. Two of the figures moved to the last remaining high-backed chairs surrounding a massive brass table, designed in the shape of a gear, in the center of the room. The third figure stood between and slightly behind the two chairs, keeping his face in shadow. Anticipation weighted the air, seeming to make movement a challenge…

More to come later! Ciao!

New Steampunk story is almost halfway done.


Hey all, so my story is roughly halfway done, got over 33 thousand words. I’m anticipating completion by the end of September, with a few months then for editing, revising, and cover art. Just for a few sneak peeks at the ideas inside the story.

 

Julius is just looking for adventure and a paycheck.

Constantine is looking to move out from under the thumb of his controlling father.

Corbus is one of the most dangerous assassins, and he happens to work for the wrong side.

When a series of unconnected events brings one of Imperial Rome’s grandest industrial cities to its knees, there is only one unit close enough to respond. Join the 13th of the XIII legion as they become the first aerial assault legion in Roman (and steampunk) history. Check out the first chapter in Daniel Ottalini’s new novel Brass Legionnaire today!