Wow, okay. It’s been a whole month since my last blog post, eh? Shame on me. I suppose you folks are wondering what I’m up to! Or to be grammatically correct, you are wondering up to what I am. (Grammar is stupid sometimes.) Well, here’s what I’ve got!
Free-Wrench is now FREE(-Wrench)
To celebrate the upcoming release of its sequel, I decided to make Free-Wrench free for the entire month of March. Astute observers might recognize that it isn’t March yet. This is so, but Amazon can sometimes be sluggish about noticing price drops, so I started the ball rolling early. And boy oh boy, did it pick up some momentum!
Hi Lindsay. Just visiting. You’ll have the top of the Steampunk list soon enough.
It turns out Pixel of Ink picked up the sale and mentioned it on their blog, and as a result, more than 2800 people have downloaded Free-Wrench in the past few days. That’s enough to make it #63 overall in the free store and the number one Steampunk novel on Amazon right now. Not bad!
You can of course find Free-Wrench on all the usual sites: iBooks, Amazon, Smashwords, Google Play, etc, etc.
If any of you good folks are reading this post because you read Free-Wrench and loved it, THANKS! I’m glad you liked it. If you are reading it because you read Free-Wrench and hated it… First, I’m rather curious why you would seek out the website of a book you hate, and second, I’m sorry you didn’t like it, but thanks for giving it a chance.
All of this attention that Free-Wrench is getting is good news for me, because…
Skykeep releases on March 26th!
Yep, I know I’ve said it before, but gosh darn it, it bears repeating.
Cover, as always, by Nick Deligaris
The sequel to Free-Wrench, Skykeep, is still available for pre-order, and in less than a month it will release worldwide. I’ve shared it with a few beta readers and early reviewers, and I’ve got to say, folks have some really nice things to say about it. I think this is the fastest I’ve ever written the sequel to a story (not counting The Book of Deacon Trilogy, which was complete before it was released). Something tells me this isn’t the last you’ll be seeing from this setting.
I don’t want to give too much away from the plot, but let’s just say a few of the accidental “Joseph Lallo Mandatory Features” are alive and well. A dash more hard science than necessary. Check. A cute, cuddly character? Double-check. Banter between characters? Lots of checks.
It’s a little short, as my stories go, with just about 83,000 words, but when you factor in the original word target of 50,000 words, that’s right about where we’d expect it to be. If it sounds like your cup of tea, go ahead and pre-order on iBooks, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, or Google Play. And don’t forget that the previous installment is free for March.
NEW ARTIST and NEW PROJECTS!
Yeah, I love Nick’s stuff, but he’s a big successful artist-type person who has plenty of other clients and jobs to worry about. That means I can get covers done by him only when he’s got a spare moment. In the past that’s been no problem, but since I quit the day job and started polishing off all of the minor stuff I’ve been working on, I’ve run into the need for more art than he can provide. So I’ve decided to add another artist to my roster, and that artist is Georgi Slavov. Georgi’s done some great fan art for me in the past, and his style is reminsicent of Nick’s in a few ways, so I thought he’d be a good fit. Let’s see if you agree:
Ayna, looking rough and ready.
Well, I’d say he managed to make one of my least popular characters look pretty darn impressive, wouldn’t you? That’s Ayna, and believe it or not, the weapon and armor are both present in a short origin story I’ll be releasing in the not too distant future.
Here’s another one:
What are you up to now, Desmeres?
What do you think? I could be wrong, but this may well be the first image of Desmeres ever made, canon or otherwise. This too is for a short story I’m working on, showing off what he’s up to in the weeks and months following The Battle of Verril.
BoD 4
People who have been paying attention have heard me talk about an untitled sequel to The Battle of Verril, but you may have noticed I haven’t spoken about it recently. Have no fear! It is rolling along nicely. Recently it’s been sharing a little too much of the calendar with smaller projects, but once I polish those off, I’d like to really buckle down and get it down. Right now the story is 70,000 words and climbing, and it’s really scattered and wacky. It’ll need some work to congeal into something that makes sense, but I’m doing my best to make it a worthwhile continuation of the story.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast
Every once in a while someone will comment that they’d like to know what my voice sounds like. I’m not sure there’s much value in that, but if you’re really interested, you’ll be happy to know that for the last few months I’ve been co-hosting a podcast. I share the hosting duties with Lindsay Buroker and Jeffrey Poole, and we mostly talk about ways in which we can spread the word about our books. It’s geared toward other authors, but if you’d like to hear how the business end of indie-authoring works, I’d like to think it’s a good resource. Here’s a link to a recent episode in which we interview Tammy Salyer, my current primary editor!
And also Between
I’m still writing Between most weeks, so if you’re longing for new Lallo writings, Between is one way to get your fill.