Web site up and running!

Bookmark it, kids!

The web site is up for The Gamble of the Godless and all its attendant sequels and spinoffs: mosey on over to http://thechroniclesofavin.com to catch all the latest developments with the book, plus a preview of Book II and a few hints about other projects in the works. Once the book goes up for sale online, there will be links to vendors as well as reviews and guest-blog posts written by myself.

Meanwhile, the final corrections have been turned in for updating, which means that the book should go to the distributor early next week (fingers crossed), which means thw whole shebang should be available online late next week (fingers doubly crossed in a somewhat painful double-jointed fashion which nonetheless we hope denotes success).

Let the world domination begin. (That line will make more sense once you've read the book.)

I'm reading the eBook as you read this...

Ahoy!

Just got the e-file of the eBook and I'm going through it now, word by word, punctuation mark by punctuation mark. I'm proud to say that 83 pages in, I have discovered exactly 7 errors, one of which was an omitted period, one of which was an extra period, two of which were omitted quotation marks, etc. So the proofreading I did in a blur last month seems to have gone pretty well, at least through the first four chapters.

However--there is an odd quirk to the e-file conversion that left out the space break between words whenever a single word was italicized. So instead of someone saying "I never did that!" you have, "I neverdid that!" or whatever. It's odd, and it doesn't happen every time I use italics, just enough times to be noticeable and annoying. So I'll have to fix those moments too.

I hope to be done on Monday and the e-file will be corrected soon thereafter. And then hey, kids, I'm done. With luck it'll be up on Amazon et al in a week. Fingers crossed...

Here it is!

New cover for the forthcoming eBook, in its final form:

I am very happy.

It's the Final Countdo-o-own!

Remember this horrible song by unspeakably lame cheeseball hair-metal band Europe, back in the '80s?



I'm no fan of the band, but the chorus has been going through my head incessantly these past few days. (If you want to spare yourself the agony, just skip to 1:56 in the vid.) On Friday I got the revamped and (hopefully) almost-finalized cover for The Gamble of the Godless, and boy it looks killer. I don't want to unveil it till it's good and ready, but with luck that won't be more than a day or two. Then what happens is:

- The manuscript gets converted into an eBook file (3 days more or less)

- I look over the thing one more time and, I hope, find no errors (the weekend)

- It goes to Amazon, Barnes&Noble and The Apple Store, among other places (early next week).

- After that it's up to the vendors how fast it goes on sale. I guess Amazon gets it out there in 24 hours, but other places take longer. Why am I not surprised?

So--woo-hoo!--it's actually possible that this thing might be out in the world in the next 7 to 10 days. At which point I will fall down on the ground, gasping for breath. Just pray that I don't find a bunch of mistakes in the e-file that need to be corrected, because that will add time.

Around that time I'll be sending out some printed paper copies to a handful of bloggers who might find it in themselves to say nice things--fingers crossed--and thus start the tidal wave of excitement that we're all hoping for. (And guys? Hang onto those hard copies. They might be worth a lot on eBay someday.)

And then?

The excellent web site www.thechroniclesofavin.com will go online at just about the same time. At first the site will be pretty bare bones, but as reviews start to trickle in, there should be a bit more meat growing on its frame. There's also some talk of doing videos. Yes, viral videos. Stay tuned.

I also have a Chronicles of Avin page on Facebook which is so bare bones, it makes the web site look like sensory overload. Eventually I plan to get that up and running too, with Facebook pages for some of the characters in the book. That'll be a riot. Or a complete dud. You decide.

All together now: It's the final countdo-o-own!

Taking a break from all the cover brouhaha...

Hey, happy Fourth of July weekend! I'm tired of hashing out the particulars of my forthcoming eBook cover--nothing definitive yet, stay tuned--and I just really fel like spacing out and listening to some heavy washes of stoner rock. So for your enjoyment: Naam.

You can find these guys on Amazon if you like the song. The record is pretty consistent, and less limited/more varied than a lot of stuff out there. Worth a listen IMO.