Release Announcement — The Salvaged Sword of Vengar

Greetings, all you wonderful people out there!

Tonight, I’m very pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new chapter in the adventures of Vengar the Barbarian… The Salvaged Sword of Vengar!

Click on to learn more…

Stars Rain Down on Paper!

Click Here to Order!

And remember, if you buy 10… you’ll have 10 of them!

Proof Numero Dos

The second proof arrived today, and I’m quite pleased with how it looks. Take a gander. The new one is on the right.

I’ll be digging through it tonight (happy National Coffee Day everyone!), and will hopefully have it up for sale tomorrow. Stay tuned, true believers!

First Birthday Continued

I’ve still got my party hat on and I’ve been reminiscing about all the little steps up to this point. Between patting myself on the back and stopping to allow a single-tear to roll down my cheek, I ran across something that I thought a few of you might get a kick out of… the very first reviews Stars Rain Down ever received.

Some background: before heading down the road to self-publishing, I entered Stars Rain Down (then called Legacy Undying, which still sounds like a weepy vampire romance novel if you ask me… which you didn’t, but I thoughtfully answered anyway… no need to thank me… wow, this aside has gotten mighty long) into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. I passed the one-page pitch round, and then moved on to the second phase of the competition, in which two randomly selected Amazon Vine Reviewers take a look at a 3,000 word excerpt of the novel. Find out what they had to say after the jump.

Stars Rain Down’s First Anniversary!

It’s been a year since I unleashed Stars Rain Down onto an unsuspecting world, and I think we can all agree that civilization simply hasn’t been the same since. This little sci-fi-novel-that-could took the world by storm, selling… golly, dozens of copies at least… while I’ve gone from virtual nobody to globe trotting celebrity whose face is plastered all over the tabloids.

Gah! There’s the paparazzi now!

But seriously, it’s been a weird and exciting ride so far, and the feeling of getting my work out there into the hands of perfect strangers has been in turns terrifying, exhilarating, and awfully damn gratifying. Total downloads are over 12,000 (!), and that’s a number I honestly don’t even know how to process. I just can’t imagine it, and believe me, I’ve tried.

Oh, how I’ve tried.

So, what’s next for me and my make believe press? Well, there’s one big step I’ve been dragging my feet on, and you can see what it is right after the jump.

Publicity Fail

I’m going to make a confession: publicizing my work isn’t going terribly well.

Sales are slow, and even free downloads are a bit on the poky side. I sell 16 books a month on average, and give away about a hundred times that, but only Cthulhu knows how many of those are ever actually read.

So, I’m obviously keen to revamp how I go about it. Previously, I’ve advertised on sites like Mobileread and Kindleboards, and contacted whichever random book bloggers I’ve managed to drunkenly stumble across. I also sent emails off to minor internet celebrities in hopes of catching someone’s eye, but pretty much all of that ended up being a massive waste of time. After months of getting little in reply but silence, my efforts tapered off.

The single most effective thing I’ve done in the past few months was make a comment at Slashdot that got modded insightful, and it just so happened to have a bit of advertising artfully tucked inside. Sadly, that’s not the sort of thing I can do regularly, and the mystique would surely wear off if I tried.

So, what next?

Seems I have to aim lower and wider. I’ve previously been targeting folks who have readerships in the thousands (or tens of thousands) who likely receive enough random mail every day to find it annoying. What I need are people with readerships in the hundreds who are still delighted whenever someone contacts them. Prime targets would be creatives in connected fields (comics and indie games should be strong candidates), and science-fiction/fantasy book bloggers.

The other strong possibility is to start marketing locally, looking for sci-fi and fantasy clubs in my area who I could possibly invade. The problem with that is that I’m effectively a recluse who hasn’t met a soul since moving up here, and I have no bleeding clue how or where to start.

I’m not too proud to say that I need help, so here’s my plea: if you happen to know (or just know of) a book-blogger, a comic creator, a mildly successful writer, an indie game studio, or anyone with some kind of audience who might be receptive to helping out a writer in need, please let me know.

Thanks for listening.

AU: Terminus Receives Its First Review!

A reader was kind enough to post their impressions of Arcana Universalis: Terminus the other night, much to my immense relief. The score? 4/5 stars! Here’s how it finishes:

An hour, or two at most, should be enough to get through Arcana Universalis: Terminus and will leave the reader anxious for the followup.

You can find the full review at Terminus’ Amazon page. Hustle up and get clicking.

Release Announcement — Arcana Universalis: Terminus

Oktopod Digital Press is proud to announce our first release for 2011, the fantasy novella Arcana Universalis: Terminus.

Welcome to the world of Arcana Universalis, a strange universe filled with fabled creatures, vile demons, and starships driven by mystical energies. It’s a time of fantastic powers that defy belief and vicious bloodshed that spans the stars… most of which belong to the Imperium, an oppressive feudal society ruled by a millennium-old dictator.

More after the jump…

Universalis Cover Art Revealed!

My challenge this week has been designing a cover for the oh-so-very-mysterious Universalis preview novella, and today I’m very pleased to share a late work-in-progress!

More gritty details after the jump…

Universalis — Milestone 2

As of this past Sunday afternoon, the first episode (or sneak preview) of my ever mysterious Universalis project is complete! At roughly 15,500 words, the episode is now in the hands of some trusted beta readers in order to gather much needed feedback, and is (fingers crossed) on track for release at the end of this month. That means you’ll be getting an early taste of my strange, exciting and unusual new fantasy novel very soon, after which I officially won’t be able to call it mysterious anymore.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to break open the bubbly… and by bubbly, I mean bargain basement whiskey. Cheers!