Author of THE UNITY SEQUENCE. Doing the right thing for Alderaan reasons since 2012.
I’m ecstatic to report that my first novel, ASCENSION POINT, is now available! You can find it on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and on Smashwords.
To everyone who has followed my journey from blank page to publication, I want to thank you – for your comments, feedback, support and congratulations at every milestone along the way. It was really appreciated.
And if you pick up a copy of the book, let me know what you think! 🙂
Final edit is go go go. We’re nearly there, folks…
There’s a lovely fantasy short on Tor. com here. It’s written by Marie Rutkoski, who I didn’t know of before reading this; I like her style a lot.
Here’s a snippet:
“Not that Zephyr felt it. That would require skin. It was a good thing she didn’t have any at the moment. If she had, she would have been sweltering along with the humans. If she had a face, her expression would have shown what she thought of them.
Their parents or grandparents had burned Chicago down in 1874. Now, five decades later, their reborn city was an ugly thing, with straight streets and right angles, full of humans who drank and laughed and had no idea that they were living their lives in a space hollowed out by the murder of a people better than them in every way, in every thought and intention.
Namely, creatures like herself.
Zephyr floated, invisible, into an alleyway snaking out of the club’s side entrance. She was nothing, a wisp of air.
Then her body molded into being and she became a girl.”
There seems to be a pattern emerging.
When I was about a third of the way through the draft of ASCENSION POINT, I started to find myself daydreaming about ideas for new stories. Some were vague and insubstantial, and didn’t come to much; for a couple I jotted down the basic, high-level premise to come back to later; and one really caught my imagination and quickly turned into the outline for the book I’m writing now, ROGUE.
Now that I’m about five chapters into the draft of ROGUE, the same thing’s happened again. It’s as if, with the WIP’s outline in place* and the story and character arcs plotted, my ‘big picture’ creative juices need something to do. So they wander off and think up new things.
Which is why I got out of bed at 4am last night to write down–before I forgot them–the notes which now make up the broad-strokes outline of what will end up being my third book. Tentative title: BODIES IN MOTION.
The story’s actually not entirely new: it’s a fleshing out of one of those basic, high-level premises I dreamed up last year. Now there’s some meat on the skeletal plot bones, and I’m really excited to start writing it!
But… Oh yeah.
I just need to write the other 55,000 words of ROGUE first.
(* Work in progress, for anyone unfamiliar with the acronym :))
Exciting news! I’ve just this afternoon completed the edit process with Misti, and ASCENSION POINT will shortly be winging its way into the inbox of a lucky proofreader at RedAdept.
Who will doubtless tell me that we got all of the ellipses wrong, and they should be em-dashes, and then we’ll have to have a grammar fight. I can’t wait.
What does this mean? It means, in theory, that I’m a mere week away from being ready to publish.
EXCITEMENT LEVEL: DEFCON 2.
I’ve finalised the back blurb for ASCENSION POINT. This will adorn the back cover of the paperback version, and double as the book description for the eBook on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc. So without further ado…
Titan. A genetically engineered warrior for whom going home means a death sentence…
Commonwealth. A powerful politician chasing a legend from her family’s past…
Seryn. A young girl seeking adventure and hiding more power than even she knows…
Collective. A synthetically augmented scientist whose singular nature makes him an exile…
Representatives from each of humanity’s four feuding factions, each offered the chance to see the legendary Book of Ascension—an ancient artefact that might hold the key to immortality. The four form an uneasy alliance before discovering they have been misled: Before they can see the Book, they must find a mythical deity, protect the galaxy from an ancient evil—and save humanity’s future.
I’ll have another post in a day or two, as I’m nearing the end of the editing process. EXCITING TIMES.
Keen observers will have noticed I’ve flipped the colour scheme of the site from light to dark. Let me know if you like it, hate it, or plain don’t care.
UPDATE: That experiment didn’t last long. I didn’t really like it myself, and the one comment I received was not in favour. So I’ve toned down the dazzling brightness by making the background and menu bar a pale grey.
Just a quick one.
Somewhat amazingly, I’ve actually written over 2,000 new words of my second book, ROGUE, in the last two days. I can’t remember exactly the last time I wrote anything entirely new, but it was probably in June, what with the focus on editing ASCENSION POINT and, you know, getting married and stuff.
It was also pleasing for me to notice how I could immediately apply Misti’s feedback from her edit of ASCENSION POINT to the new scenes in ROGUE. This should mean my first draft is much higher quality than it would otherwise have been, and the editing process at the end will be even smoother.
An inspiring piece from Kealan Patrick Burke on how self-publishing kickstarted a writing career he’d thought dead.
“In September of 2010, I put The Turtle Boy and some short stories up for sale. I followed it with The Hides, and eventually the other books in the Timmy Quinn series. By the end of the year, I’d managed to sell a grand total of 101 books, and made $134.00. And I was pleased. My expectations going into it had been grounded and realistic, because if my almost a decade in the small press had taught me anything, it was that lightning in a bottle is usually something that happens to other people. Try to duplicate it and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. And this was alien territory for me. So when I started, I expected nothing to happen, that my books would remain just as forgotten in their digital box as their physical counterparts had. When the books started to sell a copy here and there, I was delighted. The sales were just enough to cover the gas bill every month, and I thought that was pretty damn cool.”
Got a wonderful bit of feedback from Misti this morning. When I fired off my edited MS to her on Saturday night, I mentioned how baffled I was that she hadn’t given me any notes on the storyline, or characterisation–you know, the broader strokes of the novel. I was a bit worried that I’d accidentally bought the wrong editing service, and got just copyediting instead of developmental/structural/content editing.
Instead, I received this gem in Misti’s reply, which has absolutely made my day.
“As for the content question, you might remember me commenting on your outlining during your phone call, and asking about your reading habits. I didn’t notice any issues with the storyline, and the only character issues I noticed were the speech patterns. You’re quite right that so few content issues is unusual for first books.”
DAN HARRIS: 10% SCI, 90% FI 