A Sci-Fi Interlude

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Well well well… It looks like the science fiction books are starting to gain traction! Check out these fancy little tidbits from two of my fan art regulars. First, let’s see what CatseaTheDevil has for us.

I can see why Lex fell for her.

That’s Michella Modane, aspiring investigative journalist and love interest for our protagonist, “Lex” Alexander. She’s even got the freckles! Funny side note, by the way. I describe her as having auburn hair, which is accurately depicted here. This has led some to make the observation that my leading ladies tend to have a few things in common, including “M” names and red hair. While I can’t deny it, the fact of the matter is, when I was doing the initial description of Michella, I picked auburn because the word had a good sound to it. I actually thought it meant brown. Turns out it means “reddish-brown”. So dueling redheads is the result of poor chromatic vocabulary on my part. As for the M names? Probably something in my subconscious. Don’t even get me started  on the unusual prevalence of “librarian-style glasses”…

This picture is so cute I might need to take a minute to recover.

Look, it’s Solby the Funk (short for Soul Brother, an inexplicable reference to Fatboy Slim in a story that takes place in the distant future). Don’t mind the laser. It is just doing a little clean up. Solby is an adorable little genetic experiment that is a cross between a fox and a skunk. Its presence in the story has thus caused people to remark that I seem to be a fan of foxes. (I am, by the way. Seriously, go look at a fox’s face. It looks like it was designed by Jim Henson.) In this case, the reason for the funk’s creation in the story and in reality are the same. I’d had a discussion with a few of my friends and said, “Hey, if you had a cross between a fox and a skunk, it would be a funk! And it would be smelly, so it would HAVE a funk! It is the perfect pun!” So I put it in the book.

Now let’s see what ArieieTheWatcher has for me.

Look, a robotic arm belonging to Ma, everyone’s favorite artificial intelligence.

Lex gets a tasty treat as a reward for figuring out part of the nefarious plan of the bad guys! I’m relieved to see Lex show up in art so early, because despite being the star, he’s very much eclipsed by the other characters in terms of popularity, it seems.

All of this sudden love for sci-fi presents me with a bit of a dilemma. This is BookofDeacon.com, after all. I feel a little weird putting up stuff for the sci-fi series. But where else could I put it? I’ll probably carve out a little niche in the fan art gallery for this stuff for now. Anyway, thanks so much for the art, everybody!

To NaNoWriMo or Not To NaNoWriMo, That Is The Question

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Okay, so right now a lot of you are looking at that title and scratching your heads. I shall explain. Every November, there is a self-imposed challenge that a lot of people in the writing community take a stab at: Write a 50,000 word novel, from scratch, between Nov. 1st and Nov. 30th. It is a monumental task, but I’ve often toyed with the idea of giving it a try. As I do whenever I make a big decision with the books, I figured I’d float the idea by you folks. Here’s how it breaks down:

The Pros:

– I’ll potentially have a whole extra (short) novel that I hadn’t intended to write for a long time.

– If I do this, I’ll probably write it more or less in the open. I’d set up a page on the site and do updates every few days showing off my progress, or lack thereof.

– If the book reaches completion, I’ll probably price it at the minimum (99 cents), if not outright free. Unless I decide to bulk it up to “Typical Jo Novel Length”.

The Cons:

– This will take all of my writing time for an entire month, putting the breaks on Lain Origin and any of the side stuff I’ve been working on.

– There is no guarantee that I’ll succeed, which would result in a wasted month and an incomplete story.

– The resulting story might well be the worst thing I’ve ever written.

A few answers to anticipated questions:

If you were to try it, what would the story be about?

Well, the rules say it needs to be written from scratch, so anything you’ve heard me say I was working on (Lain Origin, Entwell Sidequest, Second Trilogy) would not be it. It could be something entirely new. (I’ve already got people suggesting “that wacky superhero thing you were talking about”.) Stuff I’d mentioned as potential future projects but never actually started would be fair game. Maybe I’d even do a poll.

If you plan on doing it out in the open, why would you ever consider selling it?

Because the version I’d put on sale would be more carefully edited, and I’d probably try to get Nick to make an awesome cover for it. One of those takes extra time, the other takes extra money. Who knows, though, I’m just making this up as I go along.

If you are so incredibly busy, why even suggest doing this?

Because sometimes I hear about something neat and I get excited about it without thinking it through.

I’ll do the usual disclaimer here. My brain is fickle when it comes to stuff like this. I could be gung-ho about it for a week and then completely abandon the idea the day after. It is almost certain that I’ll ditch the idea before the month starts, and I’m frankly amazed I’ve remained enthusiastic about it long enough to write this post. But whether I do or I don’t I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can comment here, hop over into the forum to discuss it, or even visit the facebook fan page, where a matching announcement will shortly be made. You might want to check out the official website of NaNoWriMo, just to see that I’m not making the whole concept up.

Thanks for indulging my impulsive pondering, and thanks for reading.

So Much Time and So Little To Do…

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Wait a minute, strike that, reverse it. Sorry it has been so long since I’ve given you folks an honest to goodness update. My life has been a wee bit insane of late. Oriech—my buddy, web master, and mystic overseer of the fickle whims of fate—got married last weekend. I’d congratulate him here, but I was the best man, so I my congratulations have been thoroughly handed out by now. He and his new wife are now on their honeymoon at Disney World. My role in the wedding seized an awful lot of my time and brain cycles over the last few weeks. I had to write and deliver a speech, which predictably was about twice as long as I’d intended. There were many pictures taken. There was much food eaten. I windexed the outside of wine bottles. You know, best man stuff. Anyway, that’s behind me now… until October 20th, when I do the whole thing over again for my older brother. The insanity has not ended. But you folks aren’t interested in the matrimonial duties heaped upon me of late, you want to know about book stuff, right? So let’s get to that.

First, the KBR contest. Some time ago, I mentioned I was up for an award, Best Indie Sci-Fi Book of 2012. Some time after, I realized I was going up against Hugh Howey, who is the author of “Wool”, a series of books that is currently the case-in-point when people talk about the sort of quality and success indie books can aspire to if the planets align just right. At that point, I knew I didn’t have a shadow of a chance, and sure enough, yesterday they finally announced him as the winner of the category. The mere fact that I made it to the final round was an awesome achievement. So congrats to Hugh on his continued success, and I’ll continue to work toward his standards of both quality and success.

Next, the cameo contest. If you purchased a StoryBundle in August, you may or may not be aware that you were entered in a contest to win a cameo appearance in one of two books by bundle authors. So far, six winners have been pulled, three for me and three for the other Joe in the bundle. To my knowledge, not one email has gotten a reply. We’re going to continue to send out emails until either Jason pulls the plug or we get replies. If the plug gets pulled, do not fear, I know there are plenty of you out there who are interested in that particular prize. I’ll resurrect the contest right here and try to work out the best way to pick my own winner. I’ll keep you apprized of any new developments, though my twitter feed will probably be the fastest way to find out.  UPDATE: The winner has stepped forward. Congratulations to Louise Yang!

Let’s see, other pending stuff… Well, I believe the Bulgarian Edition of Book of Deacon (called “Marked” in their edition) officially released last Monday, and as I understand it, a pair of copies are coming my way. I’ll post pictures when I get them. I haven’t been paid yet, but that’s mostly because a combination of complex banking policies, a huge time zone difference, a language barrier, a very small bank, and mutual inexperience has stymied any attempts to do an international wire transfer. If only I had someone with years of experience in handling things like this…

Oh yeah! I’ll be meeting my potential agent face to face in a few weeks, and if things go well, I might actually have someone to talk to who knows what the heck they are doing. That’ll be handy!

Speaking of NYCC, it is getting close so I’ll ask once again if any of you are attending, and if so, do you folks want to meet me? I’ll be there Saturday, October 13th, as well as for press day on Oct. 11th and possibly another visit on Oct. 14th. Let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Okay, more stuff. I’ve added an upgrade to the forum and the site that will allow you to censor your posts, so you can hide spoilers. I’ve also added a “fan works” section to the forum for people to post and discuss fan fiction and fan art. These upgrades were in response to a reader who has been working on an unofficial sequel. Cool, right? I’ve also reached out to the good folks at Fanfiction.net to see if they want to add a section for Book of Deacon. No news on that.

Now for the little stuff. Plush? No news. The artist is working and going to college, so the fluffy dragon is being postponed by real life, as so often happens. Jade audio book? Nearly ready to be made. I’ve picked a narrator, I just need to get the final revision of the manuscript and negotiate price. There may be more art from Nick Deligaris in a few weeks, assuming real life doesn’t force it aside for him as well. You might want to head over to the fan art page, there’s been some new additions there recently. Lots and lots of stuff going on, many good things on the way. Hopefully a few of them will have come to fruition by the next time I do an update!

Until next time, thanks for reading!

Lending a Hand to a Fledgling Editor

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Hello everyone. I know I generally use this space to talk to you about things going on with my books, but this time around I’d like to do something a little different. From time to time I get messages from fans who have found errors, typos, plot-holes, etc in my books. More often than not, you are kind enough to point out one or two. Some of you have done far more than that. In the case of a reader named Claudette, she did much much more than that. Claudette, who used to be part of the editorial freelancers association, did nothing less than read and notate every single one of my novels, marking off errors, bad structure, and awkward phrasing and sent them to me. For the final novel, Unstable Prototypes, I sent her the word doc and she sent it back with the full editor treatment: tracked changes, comments, and suggestions. Having had my books edited by a pro in the past, I was impressed by her thoroughness and professionalism, and told her so. It got her thinking. Could she do this for a living?

Well, she’s willing to give it a try, and I’m willing to lend a hand. If you are an author looking for an affordable proofreader/copyeditor, Claudette has opened for business. You can reach her at claudettecruz@ymail.com. For a first time editor, I’m truly impressed at what she’s been able to accomplish. She even had useful comments for the professionally edited books, and seldom took more than a few days to proof a book. As I understand it, she’s looking to price in the $500 range for a standard length novel. Her price for basic proofreading is $150, and for a full edit is $250. If that sounds like a fit for you, send her an email.

UPDATE: Claudette contacted me with brand spanking new prices, plus check out the comments below for a special discount for Book of Deacon fans!

Nominations, Fan Art, and Questions

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Hello once again, everyone. It has been a crazy few weeks since my last post. For one thing, StoryBundle came and went. For those of you reading this site as a result of enjoying my sci-fi novels and wanting to know more, WELCOME! I’m afraid I don’t have a generic author site (yet) nor do I have a dedicated sci-fi site (yet), but feel free to make yourself at home here. The fantasy folks don’t bite. Since this post is likely to have a number of sci-fi folks reading it, thought, we’ll start with sci-fi news.

KBR Best Indie Books of 2012 Finalist

Yep, astoundingly, Bypass Gemini has advanced to the final round of the The Kindle Book Review’s Best Indie Books of 2012 Contest: SciFi – Fantasy. The competition among the finalists is stiff, but I’m proud to be listed among them, and I’ve got my fingers crossed. You may see me post some cross promotion stuff with some of the other authors, too.

Badges. Contrary to popular sentiment, we do indeed need them, and they are not stinking.

StoryBundle Post Mortem

Now that StoryBundle is over, a few people have asked me if it was worth it. I would absolutely say that it was. In the end, we sold over 3600 bundles, which earned me over $5,000. We also helped a pair of charities, and hopefully proved that StoryBundle is a worthwhile idea that deserves to succeed. I was able to meet and work with four great authors, and I look forward to working with any of them, as well as Jason Chen and the StoryBundle crew, whenever I get the chance. It was a blast, and gave me some fun ideas for future ways to connect with you folks. I’m going to try for an author chat at least, and I might even set up a chat room for fans to hang out and shoot the breeze.

StoryBundle also committed me to doing at least one more sci-fi book, since one of the lucky bundle buyers will be getting an email informing them that they have won a cameo in a future sci-fi book by me. Congrats, whoever you are!

Okay, that’s sci-fi out of the way, now let’s get on to the Deacon news, shall we?

Art!

CatseaTheDevil has been one of the most prolific fan artists I’ve yet encountered. In exchange for autographed copies of books 2 and 3 (more on that later) she produced some fun commissions for me, too. You can find them all in the official artwork section, but below is my favorite of the batch, for a few reasons.

Click to full and feast your eyes.

For one, she’s got a great style. The outfit is entirely her creation, as Caya is described only in very general terms in the book. Best of all, though, is that picture on the right. I love that she’s been hitting her ever-present flask a little heavy, and I’m intrigued by the fact that she’s got her midriff showing in only that image. What have you been up to, Caya?

Recently, I’ve also been getting some fun artwork from an old fan with a new DA page, Sandy, or ArieieTheWatcher. You can find her stuff scattered over the fan art and spoiler art pages, but this here is the picture I dig the most.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Yep. We’ve reached the point where fans are producing fan art for books that haven’t even been finished. This is a picture of Lain as a young child, as described in the Lain Origin Sneak Peek. Which reminds me.

Second Sneak Peek Posted

Since it is taking me so gosh darned long to get the Lain Origin story written, I asked over on the Facebook page (you really ought to check that page out, by the way. I post there more often than here, since it is better suited for shorter stuff) which things should I focus on getting done first. The quickest answer was “Another Sneak Peek” so I went ahead and put one up. You can find it here. It is the first time we get to meet Sorrel, a female malthrope. We also get to learn another name or two for Lain, since logically I can’t call him Lain during his early years. For those keeping score, he has at least 3 names now.

Things That Haven’t Changed

I’m sorry to say there’s not been much motion on the plush front. The nice thing about working with fellow Indies is the knowledge that you’re helping them do what they love, and you know that you’re working with someone absolutely passionate about their craft. The less nice part is the fact that real life with its many trials and tribulations gets in the way of their work as well as yours. Plush Myn is tantalizingly close to completion, but PakajunaTufty has returned to college, so her schedule has to be compressed over into the weekend. I’m told that the tricky bit that remains to be done is the head, which I think you’ll agree is an area that deserves a bit of care and attention. I’ll share images just as soon as she’s done, and from there we’ll find out how to move forward.

I’ve finally got most of the giveaway copies of Books 2 and 3 paperback squared away, and I’ve got a drawer full of copies waiting to be signed and sold. All that remains is for Oriech (that would be my web guy, not the mystical observer of the Chosen… though he’s sort of both) to pull himself away from a silly little thing like planning his wedding. Seriously, priorities!

NYCC

New York Comic Con is coming in mid-October. I’ll be there at least one day, so if any of you good people are going to attend and want to meet up, just give me a shout and we’ll try to schedule something.

In Closing

Now that I’ve talked your ear off, I’d like to pick your brain (which is easier, since your ear is off). The plush is in perpetual limbo, and the book is chugging along. What else are you interested in? Should I try for the chat next? Is there something you want that I’ve never mentioned? Feel free to comment. I’m all ears.

StoryBundle

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I’ve been doing a lot of teasing of something big and mysterious coming up. From a tweet expressing undisclosed sources of excitement to the vague promise of more big announcements, I have been uncharacteristically aloof with my fans. Well, I can finally let the cat out of the bag. I am part of the inaugural bundle for a new site called StoryBundle. Gamers will probably be familiar with the fabulously successful Humble Bundle that serves as the inspiration for StoryBundle, but for the uninitiated, here’s how it works. A handful of indie products are gathered, in this case novels, and for a limited time you can name your own price to purchase the set, splitting the payment between the site, the artists, and charity. This has been done with video games and music, so why not books?

StoryBundle is being run by Jason Chen, a blogger of some renown, and I was fortunate enough to have been selected as one of five authors for The Big Bang Bundle. Now, I know most of you who are looking at this post are fans because of my fantasy series, but StoryBundle is a rare opportunity for my science fiction stories to step forward. And that’s right, I said stories. Bypass Gemini is a part of the standard bundle, but if you pay above the bonus threshold, you’ll also get its sequel, Unstable Prototypes.

Much as I’m thrilled to be a part of this bundle, it wouldn’t be much of a bundle if I was the only one in it. I have got the humbling honor of being hoisted to the level of four other highly talented indie authors. Joseph Nassise is contributing The Heretic, Lou Hood is offering Journey to Hart’s Halo, Geoffrey Morrison has got Undersea, and Michael Kayatta has included John Gone (and as a bonus, Missing Signals). Every book is available DRM free, and you can download them to load onto your own device, or if you prefer, you can have them delivered straight to your kindle.

There is a load of stuff I could say about each author, each book, and the site itself, but the bundle will be going for a few weeks, so I’m sure I’ll be doing an awful lot of talking about it in the days to come. Until then, if you’ve been thinking of reading my science fiction books but haven’t gotten around to it, now would be a great time to pick them up. You can get one or both of them, along with a stack of other great books, for just about any price you like! The bundle will run for 20 days starting August 8th and you can find it right here.

So Many Announcements

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Well, folks, it has been a very busy week. And because the universe has a wonderful sense of humor, it decided that now was the perfect time to ramp things up in the day job. I pulled a couple of twelve and thirteen hour days, which left precious little time for anything beyond the usual answering of book mail. A bit of fan mail, and mail of some other kinds. Today, we’re going to focus on those other bits of mail. Mail that said things like…

Paperbacks Approved and Ready for Publication

Finally, the whole story can end up on a bookshelf.

That’s right. After way too long, I finally managed to pull together the necessary procedures to get the final two books in the trilogy published in paperback format. I know that there are plenty of you out there who prefer good old ink and paper over a piece of electronics, and you the grave disservice of leaving you for months with a cliffhanger that ebook readers were able to swiftly put to rest. Well no longer! Now you can finish the trilogy in good old dead tree format. Go ahead and check out the updated book page, where you’ll find links for Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Smashwords Interview

Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, the website that has taught me the most about the ebook biz and has been distributing my books to everyone but Amazon, contacted me a few days ago to ask if I would like to be interviewed for the Smashwords blog. Considering the “first one free” policy to which I owe most of my success to date was inspired in large part by a Smashwords article on fellow indie author Brian S. Pratt, naturally I agreed. The interview is to be conducted by former writer for Rolling Stone (the magazine, not the band) David Weir. I’m about as nervous as I am excited. The phone call pre-interview is set for Wednesday, with the interview going live a few weeks after that. Speaking of Interviews…

Interviews with Indie Authors

Now that’s an author photo.

What seems like ages ago, I was fortunate enough to be contacted by a fellow asking if I’d be willing to contribute some of my “wisdom” to aspiring authors like myself. He was planning to gather together any responses he got into a book of interviews. Well, that book is now available. Rather than giving you the whole spiel, I’ll let them give you the rundown on their website. I love that, when I was unable to dig up an appropriate image of myself, they visited my Facebook page and borrowed the profile picture, so I show up on page 97 wearing an awesome Strongbad shirt and a NYCC media badge. Which reminds me…

Media Badge for NYCC Confirmed

Yep, just a few days ago I finally got sign off. My contributions to the ailing but not yet dead Brainlazy.com have earned me press status once again. Due to a perennial schedule conflict, I’m not able to attend the whole show, but I’ll probably try to be there Saturday at least. If you’ve got plans to be at the show and you’d like to meet face to face, let me know and maybe we can work something out.

Seeking Representation?

This one is still breaking news, but I received a pair of comments from the good people at Trident Media Group asking if I was seeking literary representation. I looked up the name, and it seems like these people are legitimate, and they represent an awful lot of big names. I’ve replied to their message with a request for some info. More as it develops.

To Be Continued…

A few days ago I made a mysterious tweet of mystery. In a few days, the mystery will be revealed. That’s all I’ll say.

Until then, thanks for reading.

The Audio Book Experiment

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Not too long ago I asked a question or two over on the Facebook Fan Page about interest in and thoughts about a potential Book of Deacon audio book. The consensus was that if I were to do it, I should pursue a pair of narrators (one male and one female), but overall there wasn’t a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the project. Since I’ve got a lot of writing to do, I decided that I probably shouldn’t devote too much time to a major project like that. That said, I was still curious about how the process of doing an audio book would happen. A bit of research turned up www.acx.com. For those of you who don’t know, ACX is like a big “help wanted”/”looking for work” site for authors and narrators. As an author, you select your book, make some decisions about how you would want to handle payment, choice of narrator, etc, and then put it up for the world to see. As a narrator/producer, you look at the available books and see what projects you think you would be right for. Eventually, if all goes well, narrator and author get in touch, things are hammered out, and the book is made. It seemed like a neat idea, so I started to look into it.

Now, as with anything, there is the potential for legal and financial complications. Rather than risk screwing things up with The Book of Deacon Trilogy, I decided to put Jade up for bid. It is short, related but not central to the series, and not currently entrenched with foreign dealings. Seemed like a reasonably safe way to see how the site works, and if perhaps the trilogy might one day find a home there. The page for Jade can be found here.

In other news, the site has gotten a minor face lift, mostly in the artwork sections, to help navigate to areas of interest faster. Basically it is just a table of contents at the top of pages with a whole bunch of sections, but I think it will be handy. You go ahead and choose “Official Artwork” from the artwork menu and marvel at the ease of jumping down to “Commissioned Character Art”. Oh, and while you’re there, you can look at the latest addition to my art gallery, a character reference sheet for Calypso, the mermaid from Entwell, drawn by the prolific CatseaTheDevil. Why would I commission a picture of such a minor character? Hmm. Why indeed… Hey, anyone ever wonder what my phone screen looks like during my commute?

Kind of like that, actually. Yeah, the trappings of an Entwell story are starting to come together, and I add a paragraph or two whenever I’m away from the PC for a while, and thus unable to work on Lain Origin. Good news on that one, by the way. I’ve just written the most terrible moment in his life, which means I can finally move on to happier things for him.

Let’s see. Any other things knocking around in my head that I should ask about? … Well, there’s this, I suppose. Something you’ll hear me mention every now and then is “The Unnamed Second Trilogy” or “Trilogy 2”. Some of you may be familiar, but for the rest of you, this is a planned series of books that follows long after Jade and features an almost entirely new cast. I’ve actually written a whole book of it, but it is just sitting on the shelf. Why? Because there is ONE character who I feel ruins the whole story, and my friends are split on whether or not they agree with me. I was thinking of putting up a sneak peek, but it seems cruel because this is a book that is on indefinite hiatus. I’d discuss the issue with you good folks, but then I’d be giving away plot points that would ruin the story for you. Still not sure how to deal with it. Any thoughts?

A Challenger Approaches…

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Greetings once again. I know I just recently updated, but enough cool stuff has happened in the past few days that I feel a new post is in order. We’ll start with this image:

The words “rambunctious” and “scamp” come to mind.

That image, the unmistakeable work of catseathedevil, depicts Myn gnawing on her favorite chew toy. Not only does it look great and show Myn’s mischievous (and dare I say, vengeful) side, it was drawn in response to the commissioned image from the previous post! Do I smell a rivalry? I hope it’s a friendly one!

In other news, I received a very nice email from someone complementing me on the trilogy. Now, every now and then I get a piece of fan mail, but something about this one was extra special. Why? Because it came from the translator in charge of the converting the trilogy to Bulgarian! That makes this technically my first review of the translated edition, and it was well received. Awesome! Not only that, but Book 1 (Marked in Bulgaria), has shown up on the publisher’s website. If you can read Bulgarian, you can find it here. If you can’t, feel free to laugh at the machine translated page here.

There are a few other things, too. I earned one of these:

Hooray for digital gold!

This is my first contest entry of any kind to show some success, so I’m pretty pleased to have come this far. We won’t know until September if I’m a finalist. More interesting is the fact that it isn’t one of the fantasy stories, but Bypass Gemini that has earned this honor. (This is because the book entered into the contest had to have come out more recently than any of the Book of Deacon stories.) It is good to know that the sci-fi can hold its own. For reasons which are still not discussable due to a bit of uncertainty, Bypass Gemini could conceivably end up being one of my most important stories…

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Plushies, Bulgarians, and Sales, Oh My!

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Again, good news comes in waves! We’ll start with what many of you have been waiting for. I’ve finally made the first payment for the Myn plush! The work will be done by the excellent PakajunaTufty. To whet your appetite, and to see what sort of style she might have in mind for the little dragon, I commissioned the following image from her, check it out!

She’s so cute I’m gonna die!

Now, initially the plan was to do one design down in the 18″ range, and that’s still going to happen, but this morning she suggested a 4′ version that I just could not resist, so I decided to splurge and pay for both designs. I’ll spread the word when they are ready. Right now we’re looking at around $160+ for the big one, and $50+ for the little one, plush shipping to your area. Now, realize that you’d be paying for hand made plushies from the artist herself, so if you ask me, these prices are entirely appropriate. However, I realize that they may be a bit steep for those of you on a budget, so if you would love a Myn plush in either size but can’t afford one, let me know and I’ll start discussing things with the artist and with some cut and assemble places and see if an agreement can be made about how to provide a batch at a lower price. In the mean time, here’s the sketch of the design process for the plush.

Gotta love behind the scenes drawings!

In other news, no less exciting, I’ve got some news from the Bulgarian front! Below you will find the intended cover for the Bulgarian edition of The Book of Deacon.

Look! Letters I’ve never seen before!

The top line is my name, Joseph R. Lallo. The main title has been changed for the Bulgarian market. They went with Marked, which I think is a pretty appropriate title. The book, if things stay on track, will go on sale late August/early September. Neat!

Finally, it is July, and you know what that means? Time for a great big sale over at Smashwords. All of my books are available for half price, and Jade is FREE! So head on over to Smashwords to check out the sale. And don’t forget to look around for other great books that are on sale all month!

That’s it for now, but I’d say that’s plenty. Thanks for reading!

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