Whoo...?

Looks like 2012 is soon coming to a close! Hopefully the world won't end just yet.
Anyway, not much to talk about as usual. Just working on some other things. The response to the videos have been...well, nothing, and I've been busy with other stuff, so I guess it was short-lived.
We sold 5 books last month bringing our total up to 211.

Um, yeah. That's pretty much it I guess.
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Time to "talk" to myself then.

Hmm, let's see. What to talk about? Well, I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who lately.
They say that your first Doctor is probably your favorite, and the same holds true for me. I began with the 11th and I enjoy his antics the most. I'm not sure if I would ever go back and watch any of the older series but I'm sure if someone I knew just told me to watch it, I would. Have never reached that point though.

So, anyway, from my limited experience of Doctor Who (watched the 10th and 11th Doctors), I find the show very interesting and funny. But of course it also has some light horror aspects to it, which I enjoy because it adds to the atmosphere.

It's really amazing to me that Doctor Who is as popular as it is. Not because it's bad, but because it's quite corny--and it might just be a cultural thing. Here in America, corny doesn't seem to fair so well.
In the first episode of the new season, the Doctor blows up a Dalek using its self-destruct. Rory goes all..."WHOA, WHO DID THIS?" Then the Doctor shows up with Amy in his arms, fires roaring in the back, and he says, "Who do you think?" And I'm like... yeah... something that corny would never fly in an American show.

Anyway, it's cool. I enjoy it. Not a fan of companions though. They're fine for a season or two, but then they start to grate on me, so I'm glad the 11th can finally move on with his life.

November... Guardian Promotion? And... Deck Building Games...

Hmm... still working on the S3 videos. Kinda busy as of late so it's been getting harder and harder to do them. I'll still work on them for a little bit longer. Hope to just finish chapter 2 (in two parts) and leave it at that. I already have most of the first part complete. But it's been really difficult to just finish it up.

Anyway, it's time for... Boring Sales Talk Time!
This month(well, last month, talking October here), sales have been slow...?
We got 8 sales. All of them US/India.
Hangin' in there!

Since it's the beginning of a new month, thought I'd do a small promotion. The Guardian will be free on Amazon on the 9th. That's a Friday, next Friday. People still grab them during promotions, so I hope it at least expands the amount of people who get exposure to my books.

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween (for those of you that enjoy that sorta thing)!
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Now that we got that outta the way. I figure I'd do a little write-up on Deck Building games.
Deck Building games aren't exactly a new thing. But they're still new to me, and I don't think they're exactly public knowledge. Here we go:

So what's a Deck Building game? Well, from what I understand, Dominion is the one that started it all. We'll use that as our starting point.

It's like a board game, but the focus is on cards, so it's more like a card game that plays like a board game... I think. And it's fairly simple in concept, but has enough depth and variety for great replayability (also, because it's a card game, expansion packs can be bought to spice things up).
You get a bunch of people together, (2-5 players I believe) and each person gets a little deck. Everyone starts out the same, gets the same deck, to make things fair. Then the strategy is in how you buy cards and use cards on your turn to get the most points by the end of the game.

That's the general idea. But now I'll shift over to what I think is great take on Deck Building: Thunderstone Advance.

Let me begin by saying that I love CCGs (customizable card games). I love the concept. I love collecting. I love how it's tangible and has neat artwork and how some cards are cooler than others and need to be sought after. But by gosh, by golly, CCGs are a real pain!
    Want cool cards? Buy expensive expansion packs for a chance at something cool! Or spend WAAAY too much money to buy the specific card you want! CCGs are expensive.
    The other issue is that CCGs are strictly multiplayer games. Want to play with your cool cards? Well... you can only do that if other people find them cool enough to play. Most of the time they're fads. They come and go. You buy them 'cause they're popular, but then they stop being popular and you're stuck looking at your cool cards, unable to use them in any capacity.
   So... they're expensive and mostly useless after a while (unless you have friends who are willing to invest in it and play together for the rest of your life).

But Deck Building games can solve that! Specifically, Thunderstone Advance solves that.

Thunderstone is a very thematic style of Deck Building. You have your dwarves and elves and swords and spells and curses and dragons and ALL that good stuff. You're building your deck like in Dominion, but instead of something plain like buying points toward victory, you have to kill monsters to get those points. There's a constant feel of progression as your getting cards that summon other cards, or you get heroes with special abilities that can whisk away monsters, destroy curses, or draw support from other player decks. There's a random aspect to it because you can't use all your cards at the same time (unless you do a variant instead of the standard, balanced rule set) so you will only use a few specific cards and that makes each game you play different.

Worried that other people won't want to play? Well, don't worry because (unlike Dominion) Thunderstone Advance actually offers a single player mode. It's not the same as playing with other people, but it's certainly a desirable option for me as it allows me to use the cards whenever I want, and not just when people are over.

The original Thunderstone was good, but they decided that certain aspects needed to be fixed (layout of cards, confusing text, and specific rules) so they made an update called Thunderstone Advance. If you're interested in giving it a go, I'd recommend starting with Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin, as that is the standalone set for the Advance series. You'll need one of the standalones in order to play and that's the newest one with the updated rules. The other standalones include the original Thunderstone and Thunderstone: Dragonspire (or something like that). While the original and the Advance style of cards are technically compatible to be used with each other, it's bound to be confusing because they use different terminologies and have different layouts.

Anyway, that's it for now. Signing off.

Dropping the Price of S3

It may seem strange to be doing another post so soon. But I've decided to start uploading to the Nook market as well. It's still in the process of preparing my account. But once my account is ready, S3 will be available for the Barnes and Nobles estore. And with that, I've decided to also drop the price of S3. Originally I had decided to keep the price of S3 up, not because I prefer the higher price, but simply because Amazon (And perhaps B+N as well) has higher royalty options when the price is set higher. But that's pretty much no longer the main issue. So the price of S3 will be the same as all the other books.

Not sure if anyone was really waiting for that option, but there ya go. I'll have a link up as soon as they approve my account.

The Month of October

It's the moment no one's been waiting for! We broke 200 sales!
Yup, last month we had seven sales total. Just enough to push us over the edge.
Sales have been dwindling and, as usual, poor S3 has been ignored yet again for another month.
Well, maybe we'll be able to turn this around someday.
But for now...I might as well post up this video that I forgot to post before: the second half of chapter 1 of S3.
This is a continuation of the first video.
I've been having a lot of trouble with the making of the next chapter because I'm not really satisfied with my drawings, and things seem busier than normal. So I'm not setting a schedule for this.
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And before I forget, I'm doing another Free Promotion for the Guardian this weekend
from October 5-6th.
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S3 Simple Animation Video... (And the usual of course :P)

All right, before I do the usual stuff nobody cares about (except me), I thought I'd introduce my new little project. So, I was talking to this guy the other day (yadda, yadda, yadda) and long story short, I decided to try to promote my books with simple animation videos! Basically, I thought I'd read S3 and accompany the story with some simple pictures/animations. I'm not exactly proud of my *ahem* drawings, but I think it gets the job done.




Whoops. Looks like I forgot to update the blog at the beginning of the month. Looks like we'll have to do two reports this month!    So, yeah, anyway, July...
14 digital sales and 1 paperback! 15 in total. July was a good month. :)
Now...for August = 8 digital sales...
total is 23 for two months!

Might as well update the counter...

I was going to do the usual monthly sales report earlier, but got swamped with things, then got lazy. Well, not much to report anyway. 12 sales for the month of June. Doing all right. I was hoping for a gradual increase, but being steady is nice too.

Doing another quick free promotion for the Guardian

Yessiree, next Friday and Saturday (22 and 23?), there'll be a quick Free Promotion on Amazon for the Guardian. We'll see how that goes. I'm still not sure if these things really work to get the word out on the books, but always worth a try.