Corrected a few things

I've fixed a few things about the Wheel of Fire books.  A few typos, but also removing the series name from the titles.  I still have to do this for a couple books on Kobo, but I'll do that Tuesday after the current promotion is over.

I have no idea when the instructions prohibiting parenthetical stuff in titles were put in place.  It's either a recent thing and no one told me, or it's an old thing that I simply missed somehow.  Either way, I'm making the fixes so that the metadata's compliant everywhere.

I've also signed up at StoryOrigin.  I've joined a group and will be promoting Clouds of Venus as part of that group later in April.  We'll see how it goes.

Twenty years ago today

Morpheus gave us all the red pill and showed us the real world.

A movie like The Matrix might never happen again

Watching today, Neo seems like the poster boy for a disaffected Generation X, a non-conformist who escapes his dull life as a cubicle drone to become a god.

I can agree with that.

I never saw The Matrix in the theaters.  I saw the trailers on tv, but it didn't seem that interesting.  The trailers showcased the special effects, but that was it; nothing about the story.  I expected the movie to be shallow on plot and relying on explosions and martial arts to carry the day.  I figured it would be short-lived at the box office before quickly fading from memory.

Man, was I wrong. 

I eventually saw the movie later when it came to cable.  It's now one of my favorite movies of all time.

And in hindsight, the movie definitely seems to have represented a turning point in American cinema.  Perhaps even a peak of sorts.  Which, of course, was also a theme in the movie: according to Morpheus, 1999 represented the "peak" of our civilization, which is why the machines used that era as the basis for the Matrix.

As Cypher might say... what a mind-job.

Pollen season has begun

I'm not usually bothered by pollen.  This time, though, there's a "thick" feeling in my head and neck, and I suspect it's my lymphatic system trying to deal with the pollen.

I really don't want to get sick for the second time in a month.  Let's hope this stuff blows over quickly.

On the plus side, the weather has warmed, and once the pollen dies down, it'll be comfortable to sit outside and enjoy the great outdoors.

Thanks once more to Kobo's customer service for being so helpful and accommodating.  I've made a few sales of each book in this weekend's promotion.  If any of those readers are reading this, I hope you enjoy the Wheel of Fire.  And there's more of it to come, so stay tuned.

I found an article recently that I thought was fascinating.  It's about a community of Russian Old Believers living in Alaska.  Check it out:

https://weirdrussia.com/2016/02/04/alaskas-old-believers/

I've also been reading up on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn.  It's a big snowball, basically.  It looks like Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back.

It's also geologically active and experiences "cryovolcanoes."  Pretty cool, huh?

That's all for now.  Later, folks.

I screwed up

I wanted to correct a couple of typos in Hostile Planet before the book's Kobo promotion began.  The promotion begins on the 27th, so it's just a few hours away.

I uploaded the corrected file thinking everything would be fine.  Well, it's not, and now the book's product page is gone.  The problem--I think--was that I had the series title and number in the title field.  This is apparently a new change, because I did this before without any problems.  In fact, I didn't change any metadata at all when publishing the corrected file.

I've just published again, this time with--hopefully--correct metadata.  If I'm lucky, the book will go live before midnight and Kobo's promotion won't be screwed up.  If I'm not lucky, then Kobo will probably be upset with me.

I've already sent a help request to Kobo, so maybe a human will look at it in time to fix everything.  We'll see.

But I feel like the world's biggest idiot right now.  I should have known better than to make changes so close to a promotion.  I should have let those typos ride it out until after the promotion was over.

There are times when I really hate this business.  There are too many things that can go wrong, and it's too easy to make a catastrophic mistake.

If anyone from Kobo is reading, I'm sorry, and I hope you'll all forgive me for my stupidity.


UPDATE: The book is live again.  Kobo's customer service, as always, is awesome.  All is well.  :D

Miscellaneous thoughts

I just had my driver's license renewed last week.  It arrived in the mail today.  It's kind of unbelievable.  It took less than a week for the government to manufacture my license and mail it to me.  I was expecting it to take a month at least.

Meanwhile, PublishDrive told me they want my tax and payment info.  I've apparently reached some sort of threshold for that.  I entered it, but I'm not sure I did it right.  I'll look at at again later tonight.

I've got over 10k words written in book 4 of Wheel of Fire.  I took a couple days off from it to jot down some ideas I had for a short story.  I returned to the book last night, though.  I let myself get a little carried away, too, with a monologue by a new character.  I mean "carried away" in a positive way.  I could sense myself getting a little emotional while writing it, and that's a good sign.  I'm keeping the monologue.  In fact, I'll probably expand on it during revision.

Members of Bookbub continue to recommend Clouds of Venus, and that warms my heart.  Thanks, folks.  :)

I've been thinking a little about the horror genre lately.  I don't have any plans to write horror stories, but I still find the genre fascinating.  The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that horror stories are, first and foremost, morality tales.  There needs to be a main character that survives the killings and whatnot, and that MC needs to learn some moral lesson or other.  Traditionally, those moral lessons are imparted by the other victims.  The bullying jock, for example, ends up dead because bullying is bad.  The slutty girl ends up dead because promiscuity is bad.  And so forth and so on.  There are all sorts of different morals the writer can present, and they don't have to have anything to do with traditional morality.  I think some sort of moral needs to be present, though.  The MC has to learn something from the deaths of his/her friends.  In modern times, we've seen horror movies where everyone dies, and what's the point in that?  No one survives to learn anything and become a better person.  The story becomes pointless.  It's just death and torture for the sake of death and torture.  So if ever venture into horror, I intend to go the traditional "morality tale" route, because a story should actually be a story rather than just a vignette.

That's all for now.  Take care, folks.  :)

Slow couple of days

I haven't written much in terms of "word count" lately.  It's because I've been stuck on something.  One of my characters is in a room with some important people, but I didn't specifically name those people in my outline.  So I've had to sort out who I want in that room and, just as important, what their motivations are vis-a-vis the conversation they're going to have.

I'm nearly there, I think.  But I hate these little delays.

Am I well? (Maybe)

After two weeks, I might finally be over my sinus infection.  Man, I hate being sick.  I hate even being a little bit sick.  I'm a naturally low-energy person as it is, and any setback just renders me practically catatonic.

I've got about 6500 words written in the new draft.  I've nearly worked all the way through the first page of my 12-page outline.

Free downloads of Clouds of Venus have declined considerably over the past few weeks, but the rate is still above pre-Bookbub levels.  As I've said before, I'm thoroughly pleased with how that went.

I think I've decided on a title for book 4, which means the cover is finalized.  I've still got some work to do on the cover for book 5.

That's all for now.  Take care, everyone.  :)

A new draft is born

I've started the first draft of book 4 of Wheel of Fire.  I'm not completely satisfied with where my outline is, but I've decided it's good enough to get started on the draft.  Word count currently stands at 787 words.

I'm still trying to decide on a title.  I've got a working title, but I don't plan on using that one when I publish.  I've got a couple of ideas.  We'll see.

I'm still not completely over my sinus infection.  It's a lot better than it was, but I can tell some remnant of it lingers.  I really hope this thing disappears completely soon, because I'm tired of it.  At least I can think well enough to write.  That's the important thing.

My goal now is to finish this first draft before the end of April.  As usual, I expect to fail at my goal.  Life always finds a way to ruin my plans.  But it's something to shoot for, and having a goal is better than not having one.

That's all for now.  More updates in the days to come.

Happy Pi Day!

For those who don't know, today is March 14, or "3.14," which is an approximation of π.  Hence Pi Day.  I know... real nerdy stuff.  But it's harmless fun, so here we are.

What are we supposed to do on Pi Day?  Good question.  Some people eat pies, or bake pies, or do other things with pies.  I don't have any pies on hand, so I won't be doing any of that.  I can do some math, though.  That'll be fun, right?  Well, no, probably not.  But we'll do it anyway.

The volume of a sphere is ​⁴⁄₃ πr​³.  (Like those fancy subscripts and superscripts?  Heh.  I had to copy and paste that stuff.  I have no idea how to properly format it in Blogger.)  Now let's take the derivative of that formula.  :o  I know, I know... Calculus!  Be still my beating heart!

First you multiply the exponent by the coefficient to get your new coefficient.  Three times four-thirds gives you four.  Then you reduce the exponent by one to get your new exponent, so it goes from three to two.  Your derivative is this:

 4πr​²

 And that just happens to be the equation that describes the surface area of a sphere.  :o 

"Wait a minute, Uncle Jeff... you're telling us that the derivative of the volume of a sphere is equal to the surface area of a sphere?"

Yes, that's what I'm telling you.  Pretty neat, huh?

"Wow.  Calculus is like sorcery."

Yep.  It's like sorcery.  Congratulations.  You're a wizard now.  :D

So that's our use of π for today.  Happy Pi Day, folks!

Titles and outlines

I'm still sick, but I felt better today than I have in a while, so maybe I'm getting over this thing.  In the meantime, I've been doing some thinking about titles and working on the book 4 outline.

I've also had some new ideas about how I want the series to progress.  No major changes, but some important minor ones.

When the series is done, I'll still have lots of fertile ground for side stories if I'm inclined to write them.  Depends on how successful the series ends up being.

I'm still not sure how PublishDrive's reporting works.  It seems to be a little haphazard.  But I'm getting steady downloads of Clouds of Venus on Google Play, so I'm pleased with that whole experience.  PD's customer service rocks, and GP's readers are downloading my freebie and occasionally putting a few bucks in my pocket.

That's all for now.  I'm going to finish my drink and then suck on another cough drop.  Later, folks.

Update

Well, I still have a sinus infection.  It's not any worse than it was on Monday, but it's not any better, either.  Hopefully my antibodies will get their act together soon and knock this thing out.

Sometimes my eyes get watery as a result of being sick, and when that happens, I can't use the computer.  That's in addition to the fact that my brain isn't running in top gear.  So my writerly progress is still mostly stalled.  I hate it--I'm itching to start the next draft, dadgummit--but it's sort of out of my hands.  I'm at the mercy of my own biochemistry.

Clouds of Venus is once again permafree on Kobo.  I know it seems like I'm being kind of scatter-brained as far as my pricing strategy on this retailer is concerned, but I simply can't figure out how to get steady sales there.  I've got momentum going on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and perhaps Google Play, but Kobo is still an enigma to me.

I've picked up a bunch of followers on Bookbub in the days since the Featured Deal.  A number of Bookbub members have also recommended Clouds of Venus, and that's pretty awesome.  I'm getting new notifications of this sort every day.  I appreciate all you guys, and thanks for supporting my work.  :)

In spite of my illness and my brain and body working at reduced capacity, I've managed to give some thought to book titles for the rest of the Wheel of Fire series.  I've had working titles for all eight books since the beginning, but a working title isn't necessarily the one you want to go with when it's time to publish.  That's why I've been careful to not mention those titles publicly until after the book is available.  I won't know for sure about any of the new titles I've thought up until I can play around with book covers in Photoshop and see how they look.

Last year, the winter months were the most dismal part of the year as far as sales and free downloads went.  The action picked up in late April and was fairly good through the summer and early fall.  I'm curious to see if a similar pattern will play out this spring.

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading, folks.  :)

I'm sick

Sinus infection this time, not a fever like I had during the summer.  Still sucks, though.

Send me some good vibes, folks.  :(

Update

You may have heard about the tornadoes that hit Georgia and Alabama, but don't worry about me.  I'm alive and well and wasn't affected by the weather.

For those who were affected, though, you have my sympathy and best wishes.

I've been out of the state for a few days, and I haven't gotten anything productive done.  I've also got a sore throat.  I hope I'm not getting sick, but we'll see, I guess.

Since the Bookbub Featured Deal, I've picked up a number of new followers on Bookbub.  Also, several Bookbub members have recommended Clouds of Venus.  Thanks, y'all!  Glad you liked it.  :)

I better stop there.  I'm exhausted and can barely type.  Later, folks.