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!