Just a quick one: as I mentioned in my post on marketing a while ago, for the release of Causal Nexus I decided to come up with an actual, honest-to-God Launch Plan™. Namely:

1. Delist Ascension Point and Venus Rising from the non-Amazon stores.
2. Enroll both in KDP Select.
3. Finish Causal Nexus, upload it to Amazon at a discounted launch price of $2.99 and enroll it in KDP Select.
4. On launch day, make Ascension Point free for 5 days, run a concurrent 99¢ Countdown deal on Venus Rising, and advertise both on Ereader News Today.
5. See how it goes!
6. At some point, revert all three to the usual price of $4.99.
7. …
8. Profit?

Excitingly, we’re currently in the midst of step 5, ‘seeing how it goes’, and the signs are very promising! So far I’ve had about 650 downloads of Ascension Point via my Ereader News Today promo, and that’s been good enough to launch the book to the upper reaches of the Alien Invasion and Space Opera charts on the Kindle Store:

I expect the downloads to begin to tail off later today, at which point Ascension Point will start its slow descent back down the rankings. It’s the pace of that descent that’ll be interesting: the more successful the promo, the ‘stickier’ in the charts the book will be, hence more eyeballs, more sales, more follow-through to Venus Rising and Causal Nexus. I’ve been delighted with how the promo is going so far, so fingers crossed for an extended chart-topping stay!

In other promo news, I’ve also recently started experimenting with advertising, both through Amazon’s own AMS platform and through BookBub ads. More to follow on those once I’ve let them bed in for a few weeks, and had time to draw some conclusions.

Onward and upward–to book four! Cheers.

It’s been a while. When I last posted–an unseemly four months ago–I was still eagerly awaiting feedback from my editor, Misti, on the first draft of Causal Nexus. She got back to me not long after, but unfortunately for my long-suffering readers, Life Intervened©

Without getting into tedious detail, it’s been a busy time: Mrs. Dan and I have bought our first home, had several house guests to stay, been on a few of our own trips, and finally got our green cards. Hurrah!

All of which meant Misti’s diligent and insightful edit was left untouched until just last week, when I blew off the metaphorical cobwebs and got to work.

After a scrub, a polish, a fine tune, and the addition of a tantalizing prologue, the new draft is in her inbox, meaning we’re looking at an August publication. Double hurrah!

Stay tuned, for I will return–and not in four months.

After many posts about random science and technology news, it’s nice to get back to writing about writing, i.e. The Original Point of This Blog. Excitingly, we’re into the business end of the creation of my third novel, Causal Nexus!

I sent a reasonably polished draft to my beta readers a week before the holidays, and after two months of this…

…the feedback arrived!

Pro writer tip: don’t give a draft to beta readers a week before the holidays and expect to receive prompt feedback. You won’t.

The happy news was that I appear to have written a solid, entertaining story with compelling characters that flows well. (Their words, honest.) Hurrah!

I had a chunky slate of minor changes to make, to tighten language, clarify points, and improve flow, but overall I couldn’t have been happier at the positive reception.

Thus it was with great enthusiasm that last night I submitted my revised draft to my editor, the charming and eagle-eyed Misti Wolanski (http://mistiwolanski.com/), who I also worked with on Ascension Point and Venus Rising. The typical cliche would be to say that Misti has forgotten more about the English language than I’ve ever learned, but as far as I can tell she hasn’t forgotten anything. On top of that, she’s also deeply versed in science fiction and fantasy, being both an author and avid reader of those genres herself.

I should receive her first edit in 4-6 weeks or so, then we’ll have two to three rounds of back and forth to polish the novel into sparkling, publishable shape. If the process goes as it did for the first two books, we’re looking at a May publication date.

Watch this space!