Author of THE UNITY SEQUENCE. Doing the right thing for Alderaan reasons since 2012.
This made me laugh. It doesn’t take much to climb the Bestseller Rankings for the Amazon.co.uk Kindle Store, it seems. Yesterday ASCENSION POINT was languishing at #251,110. But then…
SOMEONE BOUGHT A COPY.
Yup–it’s stormed up to #30,554 on the back of that single sale. You have to assume that it takes a few more sales than that to be ranked in the top, I don’t know, ten thousand. But it’s still nice to see the line going upwards 🙂
Early days, folks. Early days.
This is almost the last ‘Ascension Point Now Available’ post, I promise.
But it’s a belter! My good friend Steve has cast his beady eye over a proof copy and declared it fit for sale. So to all of those folks who prefer their interstellar space opera to come on 294 pages of gleaming white paper–you’re in luck! I’ll post some photos as soon as I have them, so we can all bask in the shiny paperiness.
You can grab it from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
Who needs the digital revolution, I ask you. Paper’s been good enough for five hundred years. Pesky kids with their e-readers, and their Pokemons, and their skinny jeans. I tell you, back in my day… (falls asleep)
And in a couple of weeks, I will be! This afternoon I uploaded the paperback version of ASCENSION POINT to Createspace, which means in the not-too-distant future it’ll be on Amazon alongside the e-book version.
The most exciting part of the whole process for me? Getting the final version of the paperback cover from my designer, the wonderful Stephanie Mooney. And here it is…
Some of you may recall a post from a few months back where I talked about my second book, ROGUE, and how it was starting to come along nicely–but was going to be too short. At the time I was planning to just keep writing the bloody thing, and let the story tell me where it could best be expanded, or the characters deepened. You know, writerly stuff like I imagine Stephen King does.
That’s not one of my strong suits, as it turns out.
It’s not like I’ve sat down to write very often in the last ten weeks or so–what with getting married and all–but when I have, I’ve found it almost impossible to crack on with drafting when I know the outline’s not finished. I can’t do it. I find myself just staring at the wall, wondering where I could slot in another chapter, or an extra subplot.
Well, happy day, I finally worked it out. And, like all the best ideas, it was completely obvious in hindsight. Just one additional chapter at the end of act two, a few build-up scenes inserted into previous chapters to point the way, and lo and behold we have a new secondary character and a plot tweak that cranks up the tension for Possible Ending Flashpoint #1.
Boom. Suddenly I have a twenty chapter novel which should roll in at about 75K words, and be a much more satisfying read.
Phew. Now I can write it!
I got an email earlier from my editor, Misti, telling me that’s she’s almost finished her edit of ASCENSION POINT.
SQUEEEEEE-
Ahem. We’re going to have a chat on Wednesday, and shortly thereafter I’ll be able to start carving up my MS into a leaner, meaner form, with an eye on publishing before the end of October.
As this milestone nears, I just wanted to post on something I’ve been thinking about, what I consider the two different approaches a writer can take to self-publishing. In essence, one’s free, and one’s not. But there’s only one which I think is doing it ‘properly’. Can you guess which? Read more…
Limited bloggery over the past few days – sorry about that. We’ve been away on a little trip over the long weekend here in Brazil. I have no idea which saint’s day it was which gave me the day off last Thursday, but I’m grateful – taking the extra vacation day on Friday made it a four day weekend, and they’re always good.
Anyway. Read more…
Lovely fiancée Amisha powered through the first half of ASCENSION POINT today, and has loads of great feedback, including some things I’d simply never have thought of:
“If she’s a really powerful politician who works all the time, why does she care so much about her beauty regimen? I mean, look at Dilma.”
It’s marvellous having a voracious reader and very smart cookie to give the story a good kicking before it goes off to the professional editor. I really want to make this first novel the absolute best it can be.
And on that note, I’m very excited that Stephanie Mooney will be starting work on my cover next week – can’t wait to see what she puts together. Exciting times!
What to do when you can’t write, or edit, your WIP? Like now, when I’m waiting for feedback from my beta readers. (Or rather I will be when a new printer cartridge arrives in the mail, so I can print a copy, so my fiancée can read it. I bet Stephen King never has this problem. Anyway.)
You write the next thing, of course! I’ve had the high-level premise for the next book knocking around for a while now, and today I started putting some bones on it. I’ve now got a chapter-summary outline for the first half, and biographies for the four protagonists, which I think is a pretty good day’s work.
The second book is set in the same universe as the first, a few months later, with a slight overlap in characters – I’m not sure if this will be confusing when I start switching between projects. I hope not.
Another pitfall I’ll need to avoid is due to the setting – the story is primarily based on a harsh, desert world, with an advanced but still fiercely tribal culture. I’ve already had to throw a few possible plot points away because I realised I’d unconsciously ripped them wholesale from Dune.
Damn you, Frank Herbert. Using up all the good desert-based material. Oh well. I’ll manage!
Just finished the first pass edit of ASCENSION POINT. I was quite pleased, overall. I managed to tighten the prose and trim just over 6,000 words from the draft – about seven percent – and the plot seemed to flow quite well.
My new inclination toward self-publishing has brought with it an unhealthy obsession with book covers. I must have spent over an hour today just flicking through designer’s websites listed on the Writers Café Yellow Pages. There’s also a great cover art category on A Dribble of Ink, which has inspired me.
My novel is (at the moment, at least) called ASCENSION POINT. It’s far-future space opera, fitting neatly alongside Iain M. Banks, Neil Asher, Alastair Reynolds, and the like. As such, when it comes time to publish I’m going to want a proper, space opera cover that fits the genre. Something like these…
DAN HARRIS: 10% SCI, 90% FI 
