Category: Ninja At Law

Ninja at Law – The mighty pitch

Reposting this as there are only 3 days left to enter. Go get you a book cover, yo!

Ninja at Law (Ages of the Seed, vol. 2)

Life at the tail end of the 24th cee is fairly righteous. The advent of Stringtech mere centuries ago revolutionized the world. Hunger and disease are concepts of the past. Free energy is here for the taking of it and mankind enjoys an unprecedented period of largess, peace and growth.

Tobe Sparkles is about to fuck all that up.

All you NaNoWriMo’ers out there, wouldn’t it be awesome to have a sweet cover for that new novel?

Ana Spoke, who made this awesomeness for her own book…

shizzle-paperback-final-for-production

…is going to do a custom cover for one lucky person.

All you need to do is work up a blurb/pitch for your book, like I did up top there, and let her know by posting a link to it in the comments over here.

She’s taking submissions through the end of the year, then readers will vote to determine the winner. How cool is that?

 

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When is it coming out? Can I get it for free? Will it be printed?

Some questions I was asked frequently during my recent trip to the Great Surprisinglygreen North:

When is it coming out?

I am not quite sure. Since this is my first time publishing there is a lot of new stuff I have to educate myself about as I go. The writersphere makes that much easier than it would be otherwise but it’s still a lot of learning. I am hoping to take as great advantage of y’all as I can in order to avoid mistakes.

All that said, here is my current loose launch plan for the first four books:

  • Weavers, March 2016
  • Ninja at Law, May 2016
  • Unseen, July 2016
  • Makers, November 2016

Can you just send it to me? Can I have it for free?

These were generally said jokingly, but yeesh it was distressingly frequent.

There will be opportunities for ERCs and ARCs for each book. Early Readers help after the first draft by giving basic feedback on the story, plots and characters. Advanced Readers give an honest review of the pre-published manuscript. Both groups receive a free digital copy of the manuscript as well as my thanks.

I will also be trying various marketing tools and promotions. It’s pretty likely that some of those will be free.

Will it be printed?

Maybe? This is a whole big ball of question for me at the moment. I know I will commission at least a limited run for myself and to promote the books but whether they will be generally available in print depends on things I am largely ignorant about now.

Must…resist…editing…

Early reader feedback for Weavers and Ninja at Law have started trickling in and it’s both extremely promising as well as mega frustrating. The promising part is because both books are getting high marks for readability and the storylines themselves. The frustrating bit is because the feedback is excellent and I want SO BADLY to go start fixing the things that are being pointed out.

But I must stay strong! I must resist this fell compulsion! I must NaNoWriMo!

I must also admit that part of the urge to go edit is because Unseen is coming along so much more slowly than those other two. I haven’t been able to fall in love with the protagonist yet and I’m worried that means others won’t either. The genre is also one that’s new for me to write in, for multiple aspects. It’s post-apocalypse and I’ve never done a story for that. It’s also a buddy adventure and I’ve never done one of those. Lastly, the world isn’t fully developed in my head the way the other two were.

But I shall prevail!

Okay, Jim. Get off the damned blogs and go write.

(sigh)

Help! I’ve edited and I can’t get up!

I’m editing and I can’t stop. NaNoWriMo is about getting new words on paper – not so much about fixing them. But I’m in a weird spot for the Seed project overall.

I started a new book for NaNo as they encourage but I finished it yesterday. For the project goals I need to return to the first book of the series (Weavers) and get it finished to 1st draft so I can get Early Reader feedback and get my illustrator the story she needs to create chapter art. That requires incorporating about 6.5k words of dialog (that is already written) into it so I’m editing and getting no word credits for NaNo.

My choices are start Unseen (vol 3) and smash through NaNo or keep on with Weavers to drive that to publication.

I was stressing about this over my coffee this morning and then it hit me. For the first time in a decade I have so much to write I don’t know what to write first.

And I smiled sooooo big.

Surge

I’m wondering if this happens to other writers. I will get entire chapters of my book springing into my head at the oddest moments. Fully formed, where about all I have to do is regurgitate it. It’s usually not when I’m writing or even thinking about writing and is usually not about the part of the story I am currently focused on.

Ninja at Law was about 70% complete for initial draft. I was on a conference call and the end of the book just popped into my head. Three chapters worth. I jotted down some quick notes but spent the rest of the day terrified I was going to forget it before I could dump it out.

So then I had a book 85% complete but missing the fourth fifth. I struggled a bit figuring out how to connect what was written because the ending that sprang forth didn’t quite match where I had been heading. Eating dinner last night the missing part surged out with an elegant solution that not only matched up the separated parts but retroactively added two character arcs I hadn’t realized I was building.

Am I just lucking out here or is this a thing that happens?

NAL – Early Readers

Ninja at Law early reader review copies will be sent out by 11/20/15. Actually with the surge I’m riding now it could be as early as this Friday but I learned long ago not to pull in delivery dates so I’m sticking with 11/20 for the promise date.

There are currently 7 people signed up to help with these initial draft reviews. If you’re interested in getting an early look at the book and helping by providing feedback please let me know.