One Week until Copper Centurion’s Ebook Copy is released.
One Week until the high-flying, mechaniphant riding, assassin chasing, barbarian fighting, political intrigue, and seat-of-your-pants adventure ebook novel is yours to purchase!
With just seven days left, here’s seven new locations introduced in Copper Centurion.
Copendrium – (Copenhagen, in our time)
Volcano Island – (Gotland Island)
Sundsvall – (Sundsvall, Sweden)
Nortland – (A feudal nation occupying all of the Scandinavian peninsula, as well as Finland and parts of Northwest Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland)
Midgard – An invented capital city and fortress built from the living rock of a huge mountain in central Nortland.
Viken Rivers – The Indalsalven rivers and tributaries
Copendrium Cafeteria – don’t know what the Officers eat? Want to hear some juicy gossip? The Cafeteria is the place for you. (Just don’t try the greens, they’ve been there all week)
A sneak peak inside Brass Legionnaire, a look at my promotion plan, plus major updates!
Looks like I’ve finally set a publish date – May/June 2012.
Just to get you in the mood:
A clattering sound drew Julius’s attention back to the tower in time to see the tribune hastening down the metal ladder. He waited for Constantine to join them before asking nonchalantly, “So, Tribune, sir, how did reason fare over violence and anger?”
The tribune grimaced. “We’ll just have to reinforce the lesson with a bit of old-fashioned corporal punishment.” A thousand-throat scream of fury and belligerence interrupted him.
He ran back to grab the discarded speaking trumpet. This time he addressed the defenders. “Ready, boys—remember your training! Keep your thrusts short and cover your brothers. Repeaters, I want as much fire as you can place on those rebels. Aim for the leaders if you can!”
The guttural screams rose in pitch. “Here they come!”
The rush to publish is on! Here’s a quick update of the comings and goings during the last few days.
1.) The edited files are being read through as we speak (3/4 of the way through now, making notes to return it to the editor!)
2.) Illustrations are in progress (Saw the first one – looks awesome!) The readers will definitely be in for a treat!
Rough Draft Idea for the Promo Poster!
3.) Super top secret awesomeness for the Kickstart Supporters (and later the newsletter sign-uppers) is completely finished! I’ll post the very first draft of it on here to give you a baby clue as to what it may look like.
4.) Finished the book series website, but holding off on publishing it until the book is almost ready.
5.) Upgraded my wordpress to change Modern Papyrus to danielottalini.com – This is now more my blog and author site, rather than the review and thoughts blog it was originally!
Wow, so much done, and yet still so much to do! It’s early April now, and my goal was to have the book published by June, so now that is a very reasonable goal (in my mind at least). Still have an array of things to do before then though. I’ve taken some time to sit down and set up a plan to promote my book.
Promotion Plan:
1. Talk to friends, family, etc. (Short and sweet – they’ll probably get sick of me)
2. Build an online presence on Goodreads (Add me as a friend!) Twitter, Facebook (Coming soon!), and my blog. This is in progress now! For example, the folks over at Indie Book Collective had some great promotional things going down. I’d want to join in on that!
3. Set up and finalize book-website with cross-linking between it and here.
4. Set up a newsletter service through Mail Chimp or Adweber.
5. Get bookmarks, stamps, and business cards through Zazzle so that I can do low-level promoting (leaving bookmarks in books at library, business cards when paying tabs at restaurants, shamelessly self promoting myself in all areas 🙂
6. Set up giveaways on Goodreads and send books to be reviewed by several self-publishing blogs/steampunk blogs. One I’ll definitely be contacting is IndieBookSpot for their author interviews and reviews.
I’m sure I’ll think of more in the meantime, but that’s it for right now. Anything else I missed that should be included!?
Book Teasers/Trailers for Brass Legionnaire are Up! Also, an update on How I made them, and on the status of my Kickstarter Project
My Brother emailed me with the most wonderful birthday gift (not today, but soon!), a finished audio rendition of my chapter one. “Now hold up” I can imagine many of you saying. “Your book isn’t even out yet, how do you have an audio book component?!” Well my good friends, I’ll let you in on a little secret… Most editors will do a free test edit of your first chapter. If you like what you see, you can send them the rest. In my case, I was fortunate enough to have a great editor in Marg Gilks over at Scriptora Editing Services. Not only was she actually interested in the story, but I carefully reviewed her previous work and found a few books similar to mine. So I hired her.
Back to the main point! I asked my brother, who has lots of voice and drama experience, if he would be willing to read my book. I love his voice, and he is able to make the different voices. I’ll admit, the first time he read it, I got goosebumps! He emailed me the copy earlier today, and I set to work.
Just a brief background – he used his PowerBook G4 with GarageBand to make the audio. He spent a few days locked in his room, recording and fiddling and rerecording. No expensive microphone (he started using a headset microphone I have from Rosetta Stone, but gave up on it after a while and just used his regular computer microphone) was needed. The music comes from Garageband’s ample free library, and I think it fits the mood really well. You can even fiddle around with it to make your own music.
So after I got the files, I simply plopped them into iMovie, imported my cover art, and using a few ‘Ken Burns’ slides and transitions, I was able to make a pretty handy book chapter teaser. I wouldn’t say it is on par with the professionally produced ones, but it doesn’t have to be. I didn’t spend $800 on it either. This way, I get the best of both worlds: A free book teaser with increased traffic and attention, while also doing it quick and easy. Now granted, I used family to help out, but that’s what they are for! He was amply paid in food, and the chance of a free room in my condo/house at some point.
Anyways, the most frustrating part was splitting up the file. It was 22 minutes long, and YouTube only lets you load 15 minutes at a time. Keep that in mind! If possible, record your audio and stop at good points, so that you can split it up easier. I had a hard time finding my split, as the most convenient on was at… 15:05. Seriously. 5 extra seconds was all standing between me and perfection and I could not make it fit. So I cut elsewhere. A little bit rougher, but it still works.
The thing I like best was that I could upload it direct to Youtube. A click here, there, and poof, it’s online! Don’t forget to make sure you tag your video with appropriate tags to grab the right people’s attention! Another cool thing is that eventually, it will be the start of my audiobook as well if I don’t get it more professionally done.
By the way, FUN news! My Kickstarter project was actually funded! Hurrah! I’d honestly given up hope, but sometimes it just takes one person to make a difference. If you’re still interested in helping out, you can contribute for another two days here. Please consider contributing, each extra dollar helps me get more cool promotional things and keep the cost of editing the book down.
Here’s the second part of the trailer for your viewing benefit! Or read the entire thing here -> Brass Legionnaire Chapter 1
As a writer (And avid reader) of alternate history novels, I’ve often been asked why I read this ‘what if’ genre. I think the best way to answer it is to simply say ‘Have you ever wondered ‘what if?’
What if I was a police officer, or a medic, or a doctor, instead of a teacher? What would be changed? Who would have my job? Whose world would be turned upside down, for better or worse? Who would I have met/not met? How many of us ever wonder how the world would be different if one little thing happened? This is a ‘turning point’ or life change, or ‘point of divergence’ as some people say.
So what makes a good turning point?
I put forward three rules for good turning points.
1. It must be believable (makes sense in the story context).
2. It must be reasonable (COULD actually happen based on technology, characters, etc)
3. The results must be possible based on the outcome of the event.
Let me give you a good example. In my story, Brass Legionnaire, I have two main points of divergence. The first is the rescue of Julius Caesar by Brutus. The change is that Brutus loved Caesar (True in real life) so much that he was willing to forgive the general’s ambitions to save his life, rather than kill him for the sake of the republic.
Believable? Yes, I think so (so do several professors I’ve talked to over the years, remember, it was a big surprise to Caesar at seeing Brutus among his assassins)
Reasonable? Yes, hasn’t love for friends, family, or significant other driven you to do something a tad bit crazy? This is just asking Brutus to put his friend above the needs of the republic, a stretched, but still reasonable, idea.
Outcomes: Well, the assassins get turned in, Caesar gets his Emperorship, and the Empire gets off to a roaring start, rather than suffering through a few years of civil war at the hands of Augustus (Octavian) and the rebels. With security and stability, plus respected and talented military and economic leadership, the foundation for our world has been set.
So what is my point? Great authors create realistic and possible worlds by making their turning points believable and possible. Some of my favorites are Harry Turtledove and S.M. Stirling. Mr. Turtledove, in particular, creates beautiful portrayals of worlds that have undergone one major change, but it throws off the entire course of history. See ‘Opening Atlantis’ for a great example.
Let me know what you think!
So in case you didn’t know, I’ve been using the company Streetlight Graphics for my book’s cover art. I decided to splurge on their Ultimate Pro Package, which includes the following (Those people new to self-publishing may find this really cool!)
Ultimate Pro-Package: (Taken directly from their website)
Print (Createspace only)
Book Cover Interior Print (Createspace only)
Formatting E-Book Cover
Formatting for Kindle
Formatting for Nook
Formatting for Smashwords
A written tutorial explaining how to upload your e-book
All this for only $265!* (Since increased to $285)
(It also used to include banner ads for wherever you wanted them, but they claimed that most people didn’t want them. I asked nicely and got them included 🙂 )
To me, this was an awesome deal. I mean, I know I could spend some of my own time formatting them for all the different sites, or just pay someone $50 to do it, but the fact that I get a print cover, an e-book cover, and someone to do my formatting all at the same time is really cool. Also, its the convenience factor. It’s only one person to talk to, handle, and work with, instead of several different ones. Although I’m pretty technologically savvy, I’ll take all the help I can get on this first go around.
How did I find them, you ask? Actually, it was courtesy of Lindsey Buroker, (Encrypted) someone who I admire and have been following for the last few months. She puts out great comments, tips, tricks, and really useful stuff for us self-publishing people out there. She used these guys earlier to update her cover art for her novels. I have to say my experience with them has been awesome. No complaints at all! They are very communicative, open and helpful. They are able to change the smallest things to fit your wishes. They knew how to deliver what I hadn’t even known I had wanted (If that makes sense?).
Anyways, on to the actual point of this post. I asked for and got two different advertisements that I can use on my YouTube page (not much there now, much more planned in the future). In addition, I’ll see if I can somehow adapt it for my twitter (@dOttalini – Add me!) I figure that I can use these cool advertisements to point people watching my videos or tweets in the direction of my book once it is published. So here, I’ll post them below.
This one is a 728 x 90, which is a perfect size for a youtube video. They can be made on photoshop if you’ve got the time and desire (I’ve done it before, even though I’m a poor hand at it!)
The second one is simply 468 x 90. It’s a bit smaller and may be a pop-up ad in a video, rather than the header of a video or posting. Let me know what you think of them. Like I said earlier, It’s important to keep the theme simple, but also demonstrate the concept of your book.
I’ll take this last moment to plug my kickstarter project. PLEASE consider donating any amount of money, there are some pretty cool rewards you can earn (For those of you with lots of disposable income, You can not only name a character, but decide if, and how, you want them to die!) Here’s the link again, talk to you all soon! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/187272667/brass-legionnaire
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!
Hey all, so I’ve been considering a new story based on several of my favorite genres. Alternative History + Steampunk + Historical Fiction. Read the prologue to my story idea below. I won’t give away the actual story, but maybe the prologue will tweak your interest. PLEASE offer feedback. Let me know what you think! But keep it constructive peoples 🙂
In the year 1856 A.D., the most powerful and glorious empire ever to grace the world of Earth sat like a giant amoeba over the mountains, rivers, and plains of Europe. The Imperial Roman Empire had continued it’s slow spread over the various barbarian tribes of Europe for more than the past two millennia, from the founding of the Republic to it’s transformation into the Imperial Roman Empire with the crowning of Julius Caesar as Emperor. Despite initial attempts to prevent the transformation into an empire, solid Roman citizens with their eye on the future ensured the success of the first Emperor. The most important, Marcus Brutus, close friend and savoir of the Emperor during an assassination attempt in 44 B.C. is now venerated as a deified member of the Roman Pantheon.
The Mysterious St. Benedict Societyis the suspenseful and entertaining story of four youngsters – Reynie (unknowing leadership material), Kate (gadget girl with an unusual twist), Sticky (Bookworm/Intelligence Figure), and Constance (the youngest and most stubborn member of the team) – on a quest to save the world. Although it doesn’t appear that way at first, this is actually, in my view, a more heartwarming story demonstrating great morals for young adults. Written in a similar method to A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, The Mysterious St. Benedict Society is a New York Times Bestseller, and author Trenton Lee Stewart has done an admirable job creating a believable world in which some quite unbelievable things happen. Definitely a must read for those children who loved the Lemony Snicket books, Society, is a bit more mature in some ways, with more interesting, and less obvious, methods of evil infiltrating the story and plot. Continue reading “Four Children vs an Evil Mastermind: Round 1”
) someone who I admire and have been following for the last few months. She puts out great comments, tips, tricks, and really useful stuff for us self-publishing people out there. She used these guys earlier to update her cover art for her novels. I have to say my experience with them has been awesome. No complaints at all! They are very communicative, open and helpful. They are able to change the smallest things to fit your wishes. They knew how to deliver what I hadn’t even known I had wanted (If that makes sense?).
Modern Papyrus 