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.

Saaaales (May)

Just a quick thing. S3 is down for a moment, but it'll be back up soon. Just thought I'd change up the cover to something more simple and clean.

And now let's see the situation.
Kindle:
US - 10
UK - 4

Createspace:
US - 1

A grand total of 15 sales this month! Practically a 50% increase over last month!
THAT'S AMAZING!
Maybe we'll reach 200 by the end of summer!

Time to tally up the results...

All right. Let's see how S3 did during the free promotion...

Amazon.com - 211
Amazon.co.uk - 9
Amazon.de - 3
Amazon.fr - 1
Amazon.es - 1
Total - 225

The first day it did all right. But after that...a sharp drop.
Well, for those of you of who managed to nab it--thanks for checking it out.
I hope you all enjoy it, and don't forget to tell your friends about it.
I'll be back later for the monthly sales report. See y'all then.

All About S3! ...Self Interview?

Now that I've decided to finally self-publish S3, I thought I'd take a moment to just sit down and talk about the book for those wondering stuff like, "What is an S3?", "What is the book about?", "Why should I care?", "How many fingers am I holding up?", "Whose nose did I just pick?"... and of course, the most important question of all-- "Wait--wait--wait a minute... you're still alive? Then where the heck is the next sequel to--"
(No, no, no... we are not even going to go there.)

So anyway, back on topic... since I'm self-publishing the book, I figured I might as well self-interview too  (yeah, the situation is that sad) :) !
There will probably be a few light SPOILERS, so just a heads up.
With that said, here we go!

Me: Before I begin, on behalf of everyone here, I'd just like to--

I: Just skip to the important stuff please. You're just talking to yourself, you know.

Me: Oh. Okay then. Uh...let's see here.... I guess I'll go with... um...What is an S3?

I: Really? You're opening with that question? Isn't there something better--well, I suppose it's not too bad of a question. The title doesn't say much about the book. S3 is the code name of the main character.

Me: Code name? So what you're saying is that this book is like a spy novel?


I: Yes and no. I'd prefer to call it more of a parody of a spy novel... for kids. The main character--his name is Stanley Stanley Stanley, by the way; that's where we get the S3 from--is a very unremarkable individual. Yet from the beginning of the story, he's been marked as... THE CHOSEN ONE.

Me: The chosen one? Like we haven't heard that one before. Isn't that a bit...cliche?

I: Exactly! Like I said, it's a parody. I want to make that clear. Don't go in expecting anything serious. In fact, the actual concept behind the book is completely silly. For most adventure/fantasy/action stories (even most of the ones I write), it's always been about saving the world. One of Stanley's opening lines is, "The world always ends. Not almost. Not sometimes. Always." Even the title of the first chapter is, "The World Always Ends." I tried my best to make it clear that this book isn't going to run away from the cliches. No, my hope was to run them to the ground in fun ways. The book is just one huge joke about how the world always has to be on the verge of ending and how the heroes always have to be unexpected.

Me: You keep emphasizing the whole the-world-always-ends thing. Did you ever consider that for the title of the book?

I: Of course. As you probably guessed, that was the original title.

Me: Why did you change it? "The World Always Ends" sounds fitting.


I: I didn't intend to change it at first. The thought never crossed my mind until this one time--when I told someone the name of the book--I got a response I never expected. He told me something along the lines of: "Oh, so it's a depressing story?" That really made me reconsider the title. While it's nice to have a title that accurately summarizes the general idea, I think it's better to have a title that also fits the tone. Silly book. Silly, nonsensical title.

Me: Okay. So it's a wacky story about teenage spies saving a world that always ends?


I: Basically. Throw in some time-travel, special abilities/powers, other dimensions, government conspiracies, and genuinely improbable scenarios... and you've packed it in a nutshell.

Me: Wait. Did you say special powers? What kind of special powers are we talking about here?


I: I don't want to spoil it as it's kind of vital to the plot. But I will say that it's nothing as over the top as Coranite Chronicles. S3 has some action, but it takes a back seat to the fun, silliness and the story.

Me: Since S3 is a parody of spy stories, I take it this means you're a fan of the genre?


I: I'm actually not particularly fond of it. I like to watch James Bond films, but wouldn't consider myself a fan of the genre.

Me: Then why did you choose to write S3?


I: All I wanted to do was write a fun book about saving the world. That's it. I think the concept of a time-traveling secret agent just felt like the easiest way to do it. I chose this design because of the freedom. In the story it talks about how the world can end every single week, but a band of time-traveling heroes prevents thousands of disasters from occurring without anyone else knowing. With the story set up the way it is, it allows for endless possibilities of world-ending scenarios. That freedom of the design is what I love most about the story and that's why S3 turned out the way it did. Even after I finished the book, which is meant to be a standalone story, my mind automatically came up with a concept for a sequel (which I doubt will happen). That freedom drove me to it.

Me: That's a definite no for a sequel?


I: Nothing is ever definite. But I have other projects to work on, and the commitment to write a novel from start to finish (especially a lengthy one) is so great that I can't put myself to it without motivation. And that motivation comes from the readers. Anything that is created is created for a purpose. Even if you were to create something that has no purpose to prove a point that something could be created without a purpose, that would be a purpose in and of itself (I apologize. That was...terribly worded). Books were meant to be read, not written. If there's no demand for a sequel, there's no motivation because I write to entertain.

Me: Well, I guess that about wraps it up. Any additional words?


I: I do have a little something more to say. When I was preparing the novel for submission to agents and the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest, I had to cut out as many words as possible to lower the word count. I cut out a few chapters entirely and had to rewrite a couple of sections. Some spots of the story might seem a bit... odd because I couldn't figure out how to perfectly revise it in a way that would feel natural with the lack of certain chapters. I do apologize for that, but I assure all you readers that it doesn't affect the story at all.
And that's all I have to say. Boy, am I tired of talking to myself.

Me: Me too. Let's shut up now.

S3 is up on Amazon Kindle.

S3 is finally up on Amazon Kindle!
Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00860XMEM
It'll be Free on Amazon for five days only--starting tomorrow. So be sure to check that out!
And as a reminder, The Guardian is also doing a free weekend promotion going on right now.
And the link for that is right here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005QU8A5G

Just thought I'd get those announcements out of the way real quick.
I'll be back later to do a quick post about S3.
See you all then!

Aaaaand... submitted.

Just finished submitting everything to amazon. They still need to review the files. Should take a day or two.
Still crossing my fingers for tomorrow. If I can get S3 up by tomorrow, then Saturday will be the start of the Free promotion.

S3 almost complete.

Just a quick update.
Still working on the cover for S3. If all goes well, should be done by today and submitted. Amazon might give it a quick check and then perhaps by Saturday it'll be up for grabs.

Announcements: S3 self-published release and Guardian Free Weekend

So, I waited. And it looks like there is no response for S3. That means it is finally time to self-publish it.
It'll take a few days for me to get it out there. I'm probably going to do one last quick edit, then I'll make a cover, and it should be ready sometime next week.
For S3, I'll be doing things a bit different. I will use all the free promotion days (5 of them) in one week, the moment I release it. And that will be it. I will not be making S3 free after that because I want to put S3 on Barnes and Noble and that means I can't be on the Kindle Select program since they require exclusivity. I will also be setting the price for S3 at $2.99 so that I can get more royalty. Amazon has this strange policy that if it's less than 2.99 I only get 30% of the sale, but if it's 2.99, I get 70%.
If you want to check out S3, that's the time for it. Since I will be having S3 free for a week, I won't bother putting up sample chapters until the moment it ends.

And for the last announcement, as usual, next weekend (May 25-26th) The Guardian will be free on Amazon. If you don't have the cash (or perhaps live in a country that has difficulty ordering from Amazon), that's the time to nab it.

That's all for now. See you all next week!

The April Report

Sales for the month of April.
Looks like we're up 11 books sold. Pretty nice. Brings us to 149?
We've got a ways to go before reaching 200, but we're getting there.

Anyway, lately I've been pitching S3 to agents...and the response still hasn't been favorable. I've submitted my last batch of queries and if there still aren't any takers, then I guess it's time to self-publish S3 as well.
We'll see what happens. I really hope I can get a book published the traditional route. But I've already gone through most of the agents that handle this kind of stuff and nobody is even slightly interested.
I'll probably make my final decision on S3 in a couple of weeks, perhaps near the end of the month. And when I do, maybe I'll do another free promotion for The Guardian. So keep your eyes peeled for any future updates.

April Time.

All right. I'll be doing a one day Free promotion of the Guardian on the 7th in celebration of Easter. Yes, yes, I know Easter (Resurrection Day) is on Sunday, but it seemed better to put it on the Saturday as I'm sure people may be busy on Sunday.

Anyway, sales report time!
Amazon.com - 11
Amazon.uk - 1

A total of 12! Pretty impressive month! Thank you guys for giving me more hope! February was pretty dismal, but things are starting to look better now. Maybe reaching 200 might not be such a stretch after all.

And the results?

Tomorrow ABNA will be releasing the list of the books moving on to the next round. I feel like I've been waiting forever, but now that it's here, I'm not sure my heart can take it.

So, to get my mind off of things, I did the Free Promotion over the weekend. Let's tally up the results and see how we did...

These are the number of free downloads of the Guardian.
Amazon.com - 110
Amazon.co.uk - 8
Amazon.de - 4
Amazon.es - 1
Total - 123

Pretty good, all things considered. I was expecting about a hundred. What I did not expect was that the second day had a significant drop. Thinking logically about it, I suppose Sunday isn't a very good day for this sort of thing. I'll keep that in mind for the future.

Thank you all for participating. And a BIG thank you for the reviews on Amazon!

It's Time...

It seems as though the Free Promotion days have been reset. That means we can do a few more Free Promotion days. I'm thinking that the 17th and 18th of March would be a good weekend for it.
So keep that date in mind.
Here, I'll bold it so it's more eye-catching and memorable. :P

The Guardian (Book 2 of the Coranite Chronicles) will be Free to download from Amazon on the 17th and 18th of March.

If you're wondering why I'm using these free promotion days (and why I'm announcing them ahead of time), it's because the Coranite Chronicles is still unknown. It sells terribly (we'll be lucky if we get 10 books sold in a month :) ). And when it sells terribly, it pretty much won't show up on Amazon. For example, at the moment, the Guardian is ranked like... 100,000 something. And that's because of 1 sale (by the way, thank you for that, whoever you are). At least with these free promotion days, if enough people download it, I can go up the ranking on the freebies. So that's the story behind that. 

Of course, as always, I appreciate it even more if you guys buy the book instead.
But for those who really can't spare the cash (these are rough times), are too uncertain about the book, or can't/won't buy the book for whatever reason...then mark your calenders!

Here we go again...and again...

ABNA News:
As I had stated last month, I entered S3 into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
Ah, but S3... is hardly what one would call a work of art. I don't know much about art to begin with, but I know S3 is definitely a troublesome book to enter. Didn't have much of a choice.

While I was editing, I ran into quite a few problems. I did what I could to salvage the situation.
All I can do now is hope for the best.

The good news is that it did manage to pass the pitch stage for the first time in MY LIFE(okay, so I've only entered 3 times, but still...this is a first). So, onto round 2! The results for those moving to the next round will be revealed on March 20. It's excruciating to know that there's absolutely nothing I can do anymore but wait for the results. It's not like a normal competition where you're actively engaged. Can't even edit the submission. Permanently locked.

So I will wait.

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As for other news, the ninety day period should be over soon, which means I'll be able to do another set of Free Promotion days on Amazon for the Guardian. I'll make a post in advance when that happens. This time I'll space out the days a bit better. So be sure to check back around the middle of March. I think it should be about March 10th or so, but I don't know exactly how it works.

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 And finally...
Sales report for the month of February.
3 books sold total. Two from UK.
Better than nothing, right ;)
Thanks for the support and... hopefully I can spark a bit more interest on those free promotion days.

It's that time of the year again...

Once again, I am entering the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award...for the 3rd year in a row.
The last two years... didn't even make it past the pitch stage. This year will be different.
I've been hard at work, perfecting the manuscript. Still have a few days before it closes and still a lot of editing needs to be done. It just never ends.

Anyway, usual monthly report time.
Let's see.
Amazon.com - 9 sales! 3 were for the Guardian. An unusual sales spike for the Judge.
Amazon.co.uk - 8 sales! WOOOOOOOOOW. What just happened there? UK sales have never been that... high. (O_O)      And 5 of those were for the Guardian. Nice. :D

Er... Amazon.it - 1 sale of the Guardian! THAT'S EVEN MORE AMAZING! First sale of that country!

All in all, what an amazing month!
18...books...sold...in one month. *GASP* unbelievable!
Thank you all so much! Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is... unbelievable.
Brings our grand total up to... 122!

Reaching 1000 might only take 10 years now.

2012! 2012!

2012 is upon us. And I'm late for the monthly report. I thought it'd be done with by the last post, so I wouldn't have to do it again on the 31st, but there were some surprising (totally unexpected) end-of-the-month sales!

7 sales on the Amazon.com front, and 5 were for the Guardian.
2 sales on Amazon.co.uk, and 1 was for the Guardian.

I don't really understand the sudden sales, but thank you so much!
That's nine total!
(Almost 10% of our current all time sales (aka. over a year's worth) :P )