Monday, July 28, 2014

Ever had poison ivy on your fingers? Between your fingers? It sucks!

I woke up a couple mornings ago with one swollen eyelid thinking I had pink eye. And even though the doctor thought so, too--nope. Poison ivy. Dammit. LOL. I should've known... not-so-coincidentally, it was the morning after I'd weed-eated the yard.

So Dreampire is out and I'm already focusing hard on the next project. It's the one I mentioned toward the end of June, Shimmer, the first book in a new series that fits the same genre as the Watchers novels, but has a completely separate story line. So far it's been going well, so well in fact that it feels like the book is writing itself.

For any of you wondering why I'm not diving straight into the next Watchers novel, I promise I'll be doing that right after I write Shimmer. I feel like I need some time to flesh out the plot a little more. Dreampire was good, but it has introduced new characters, new concepts, new relationships... I want to be sure I use everything in my arsenal, and I want to use it well.

Friday, July 25, 2014

How about that: ahead of schedule, even.
Dreampire is now available on Amazon.
BN, Kobo, Sony, and iTunes to follow within the next 5 days.


For anyone who enjoys the Watchers series, this is a great new installment that does a fabulous job setting the stage for the next two books to come.

I hope you enjoy it!

Monday, July 21, 2014

So who's way over due for a blog post? This guy. I know.

Ever since I got the edits back for Dreampire, I've been hard at it. Lots going on in the "real world," too, and it has kept me going nonstop.

10 days to hit my target for publication. It'll be tight. Right now I'd say getting it done by the 31st is a definite maybe. Best I can do.

On a positive note, I did have a really good time on Saturday night playing music with the guys. We started in on "Jesus of Suburbia" by Green Day, which is kind of an ambitious song. Not a lot of really difficult stuff in there, but that's the magic of Green Day if you ask me: they take really simple riffs and play them so clean and perfect, it comes out sounding amazing. Plus the song is over nine minutes long. Lots to learn. But a FUN addition to the playlist.

Inventory for 12 stores, two ad layouts, a sales analysis, and then I'll be back at it. I know many of you are waiting for Dreampire, and I will absolutely strive to get it out as soon as I'm able.

Thanks for reading!
-Matthew

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Well... I got the first round of edits back, and there's a whole lot 'o' red. As I anticipated, I suppose. It's always tough to have whole chunks of your book deemed unnecessary. I know it doesn't mean the writing was poor or anything, it just means the information in those parts didn't serve the overall purpose, or went against something else in the book, or was redundant, or...

It's like this every time a book gets to this stage, and I'm used to it, but I always struggle with removing anything because some of the parts my editor tells me to dump are near and dear to my heart. I (almost) always end up caving in, because she's always so frustratingly right, but still... any author reading this knows exactly what I mean.

I still think I'll be on track to hit "publish" by the end of the month. I have 8 chapters edited, there are 26 total. I think I can do it... lol. If not, then it'll be very early August. Hey- the wait only makes it that much sweeter, right?

I'm sitting here waiting for all the sales reports to come in from the pizza stores tonight, and it naturally led me to thinking about book sales. For the last hour or so, I've been browsing blogs and forums for information on sales results from using Bookbub and Bookgorilla. I wanted to compare my own results to those of others, but I'm finding that hard to do because if you aren't comparing similar genres, especially on Bookbub, then you aren't comparing apples to apples. Sure, a book is a book, but there are a whole lot more "Thriller" readers on Bookbub than there are "SciFi" readers. Like- a LOT, lot more. I'll have to do some more digging to come up with any real solid numbers. As for Bookgorilla, I have an ad going out on the 22nd of this month with them, and was curious to see how they do for others, but most of the information I'm finding is a year old or more. I've done $0.99 ads with them before, and they weren't terribly effective, so I'm curious to see if promoting FREE with them will do any better.

I was thinking about posting tonight with a breakdown of how I've done since my Bookbub promo, but I think I'll wait until after the Bookgorilla promo is done and compare the two, as well as a few others. I know most authors appreciate the information (I know I do!) and I don't mind sharing, especially if it helps other authors who are trying to figure it out like me.

Oh- hey! Got a new car today. Ford Focus. I'm a little ashamed to admit it... I've gone from over a decade of driving pick-up trucks, to 7 years of SUVs, to 2 years in an Impala, and now a Focus. Am I shrinking? I don't think so, because the Focus still seems like a really small car from the outside looking in. I had to do it, though. I put 3,000 miles a month on my vehicle. The Impala was only 3 years old and it had 113k already. It was on borrowed time. For fuel economy and comfort, it'll be hard to beat the Focus. It's a lot roomier inside than I ever would have expected and it has a lot of bells and whistles like Sirius radio and the hands-free link to my phone.

I sound like a commercial, don't I?

Maybe I'm just trying to justify buying such a small car. It's black- does that put my Man Card back in my wallet?

No, I know it doesn't.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

4th of July for this guy was pretty tame. In fact, I didn't even watch any fireworks. I drove home from Michigan yesterday, so by the time I put my bags down in Kentucky I was pretty tired and didn't feel like doing anything except stare at the inside of my eyelids.

Tonight, though--I have a house full of company coming over. We have a little over an acre and it's perfect for lighting off fireworks, a bonfire, and entertaining friends. Everyone is supposed to bring a dish to pass, and I LOVE that because my friends all make really good food. We'll have cornhole (for all my European fans, you might want to look that up... it probably isn't what it sounds like to you!) cards, two pools, a pool table, and we may even fire up the guitars if we're feeling like we need to make some noise.

I still haven't gotten the edited manuscript for Dreampire, but I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. In the meantime, I've really begun to get in deep with the characters in Shimmer. A couple weeks ago, I started writing it at turbo-speed simply because I had such a clear idea of the story itself, and it got roughed in quick. But now I'm looping back and -wow- I really like the characters in this one. This book is at the stage where it gets really exciting for me, because it's when I become emotionally invested with the people in it. A story is just a story until that happens... I just love it when it moves to this next level.

I hope everyone had a much more exciting 4th than I did, and I hope the rest of your weekend is amazing!