So I just realized it’s been a looong time since I posted anything besides Trope Tuesday posts on this blog. A lot of things have happened, and I’ve got a lot of things I want to blog about, but really all my spare time has been spent happily typesetting for Stars of Blood and Glory and Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I).
I always tell people that if I wasn’t a writer, I’d be a typesetter because I enjoy it so much. I’m not sure if that’s true, because it can get a little mind-numbing after a while, but as an indie writer who only has to do it every now and again, it’s really fun! The best part, of course, is getting to that finished product, a book full of words and paragraphs and chapters that look so beautiful on the page, which you can flip through and say “wow, I wrote that!”
The whole process is great, though, even with the frustrations like computer crashes and formatting struggles. Fortunately, those don’t happen quite as often since I’ve more or less figured out the tools. I use LibreOffice almost exclusively for the interior (yes, I know In Design is awesome but LibreOffice works well too), and The Gimp for the cover art.
Yesterday, I started on the cover art for Stars of Blood and Glory, thinking it would take me a few days to finish it. Well, one thing led to another, and a few hours later I had this:
Not bad. I think I was able to do it so quickly because I followed the same basic pattern as Bringing Stella Home and Desert Stars. Once you know what you’re doing, it doesn’t take very long to do it. It also helped to have such great art (shout-out to Hideyoshi)!
So yeah, the only thing I have to do now is order the proofs and approve them. After that, the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory should be up on Amazon in just a couple of days, so keep an eye out for that!
Also, I don’t think Amazon has announced this to the general public yet, but this Christmas they’re starting a program where you can get the ebook edition of a participating book bundled with the print edition of the book for an extra $2.99 or less. It’s called Matchbook, and I’m happy to announce that all of my novels will be in the program! They’ll be priced at either $1.99 or $.99, so if you’re looking for a Christmas gift, you can buy one of my print books and get the ebook for yourself for more than 50% of the price. The Star Wanderers books, when I have the print versions up (and I’m working on that now), will bundle the ebooks for free!
So yeah, that’s what’s been taking away from my blogging time. Salt Lake Comic Con was also pretty cool–it was my first Comic Con experience, so I should probably blog about that too. Also, some book reviews, some stuff that exploded on the internet recently that I want to react to … yeah, I’ve fallen a bit behind.
But above and beyond all this blogging / typesetting / publishing stuff, writing is still my #1 priority. I started the first Sons of the Starfarers novella just last week, and have been working on it a little every day since. I’m way excited about this next project–it’s going to be amazing! Like a spinoff of Star Wanderers, but sooo much more. But I’ll wait until tuesday to talk about that.
In the meantime, keep an eye out for the print edition of Stars of Blood and Glory! It should be out in the next week or so. And as for Star Wanderers, the print editions should be coming out this month or next, depending on how effectively (or not) I can manage this typesetting addiction.
Later!
