I know. It’s been a quiet week. Mostly because my fingers have been busily clicking away on the finale of that Jacob Rocke book. He’s knee-deep into things now, and it’s all but wrapped up. The draft is sitting at around 115,000 words, which is a bit longer than I expected, and there’s some rewriting and adjustments to make before it’ll go into Alpha, but overall I’m content.
Once that’s done (and it’ll be sometime next week; there really isn’t much left), I’ll start on Axtara 2, which I know a lot of you have been waiting anxiously for. It’s going to be a lot of fun, folks. And after that …
Well, might as well drop some other news. Somehow, in the span of a few mysterious hours, One Drink received today over twenty new ratings on Amazon. No reviews, just ratings. No other book received any attention. Doubly strange is that One Drink hasn’t even had any attention recently. I’ve got the sales numbers, and it’s far below the floor set by Axtara and Colony. Yet somehow, in the span of a few hours … boom.
It’s puzzling, so I guess I’ll keep an eye on it?
Anyway, that really is all there is for news this week. It’s been a quiet week, really. Just working on this still-unnamed Jacob Rocke book, and gearing up for Axtara 2.
Oh, and there was the fairy tale I put up for supporters on Patreon. I do have another short planned between the end of Rocke’s latest mystery and starting work on Axtara – Magic and Mayhem. It’ll go up on Patreon next month. No name, but it’s a fun little idea I had that just begged to be written.
And after Axtara 2 … Well, that’ll be for the Patreon Supporters to decide, I think. There are some fun options coming.
A simple and sweet plain-old news roundup for this week, folks. Feels like it’s been a while since one of those.
So, what’s happening? Well, first of all, I have some news that might lead to temporary disruption of the site schedule, or at least a few lighter Being a Better Writer posts: My rental contract is up at the end of this month, and I’m fairly certain my landlords are going to be jacking my rent up an obscene amount on the logic of “because we can and we need more money” because that’s exactly what they did last time. With, of course, no improvements to an already less-than-stellar setup.
In other words, I’m looking to relocate, which means time spent checking out new apartments, basements, condos, etc. Plus the actual move itself, which even if about a third of my belongings are still in boxes, is always a pain. The last week of this month might be a little stressful, basically. Just a heads up.
Now, onto happier news. I’m pleased to report that on Amazon, Axtara has brought her review-race with Colony nearly to a tie. As of posting, Colony holds 61 total rankings (and with an average of 4.3 out of 5 atop that). Axtara? Why, she’s just one rating behind, with a total of 60 rankings (and a higher average of 4.8 out of 5)!
Given her speedier progress, it’s very possible that she’ll overtake Colony any day now, but I wouldn’t count the first book in the UNSEC Space Trilogy out yet. See, while Axtara has nearly brought things to a tie on Amazon, over on Goodreads she’s still almost lapped by Colony, her meager 43 ratings nearly doubled by Colony‘s 83. So Axtara‘s winning one race, but the long-term victory still goes to Colony.
Since I’m speaking of reviews and ratings, it’s worth mentioning that a bunch of new ones have swept in across most of the library in the wake of LTUE, as new readers have found—and from the reviews left, greatly enjoyed—their new adventures and discoveries. Starforge in particular seems to have really hit the mark with a lot of readers, being touted as a fantastic ending to the trilogy and a real thrill-ride besides.
That fills me with joy, because I spent a lot of time working on it. If you’re one of those readers that hasn’t swung over to Amazon to pick up a copy yet, I wholeheartedly recommend that you give the series a shot, especially now that it’s complete. I know there are a lot of readers out there that won’t touch a series or trilogy until its complete with a ten-foot pole, and for good reason, considering how much waiting might be had and the risk that a series may never finish. But hey, that risk is gone now with Colony and its sequels, so you can read to your heart’s content!
And if you’re waiting for an audiobook, well … crud. Anyone know how good Kindle’s “Text to speech” routines are these days? Sorry folks, but that’s still on the back-burner. As for paperbacks … Well, how’s this. I promise I’ll take a look at the formatting sometime after my housing situation gets resolved, and see exactly how the whole trilogy might make it into a paperback format, or if it’s even possible with Starforge‘s titanic size.
In the meantime, if you haven’t yet, consider taking part in the race between Colony and Axtara and leave one or both of them a rating/review!
Last bit of news, about what I’m currently working on, past the jump.
So, a few updates since last week. First and foremost, work on the new Jacob Rocke book trundles on. It’s about a third or so of the way done. This one will be longer than his first outing, but still not as long as Dead Silver, I think. It’s a smaller story, really. However, that means it gets written quicker, and editing (later this year, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves) will be quicker as well.
Anyway, progress continues there. Am I willing to drop any hints at this juncture? Well, let’s just say that a lot of my online advertisements lately have been all about colleges. While you all puzzle on that, let’s move to the next bit of news to talk about which is—
A sale! But not on any of my books. No, not yet (February is coming, more on that below). No, this sale is for a game. A few long-time readers of this site may recall my post of admiration for one Subnautica a few years back. Well, it’s only become a better game since then as the developers have continued to polish it and work to bring it to feature parity with its stand-alone expansion, Below Zero.
Oh, and it’s on sale right now. Along with that stand-alone expansion right now. Through January 30th.
Yeah, I know. I’m supposed to be encouraging you people to spend money on my books. But Subnautica is just fantastic. Besides, I’ll be doing plenty of encouragement for purchasing my stuff at LTUE.
Which is coming soon people! We’re not in February yet, but I myself am in the prep stages. Yesterday I placed my order for a new array of paperback books to be sold at the LTUE vendor hall. A larger number than last year, since everything last year sold out so fast. I’m not joking about that by the way: Every copy of Shadow of an Empire was gone before noon on the first day. I’ve increased the number of books that’ll be on hand this year, but given last year’s sales … that might just mean they sell out by day two.
I’ve still got some other prep work to do in order to be ready for LTUE, however. I need new standees for the signing since Starforge is out, and this year I’m planning on doing some nice prints of a few book covers to raffle off. I’m thinking “one entry for coming by the booth, five for showing proof of purchase of said book.” Which naturally would include brandishing said book.
So yeah, if you’d like a nice matte printing of the covers to Axtara or Shadow of an Empire, maybe even Starforge, be sure to come by the signing booth at this year’s LTUE!
And well … that’s pretty much it. Almost. Sales keep on trucking toward that 10,000 number, but I think the make-or-break moment really will be this year’s LTUE. At the current rate, sales won’t quite reach 10,000 by February’s end if they stay consistent … but they always shoot up during LTUE. So … it’s down to the wire, really.
On a related note, I should figure something out to celebrate the tenth anniversary of both becoming a published author and One Drink‘s publication. One more thing to add to the pile, I suppose.
Anyway, that’s the news. I’m going to get back to work on Rocke’s next adventure! Max, signing off!
No, not in the way 2020 was. In fact, I mean that in the best possible sense. 2022 was, by almost every metric available to me, a standout year. Sales were up overall despite a few slump months, with books such as Axtara – Banking and Finance finding success in almost double the number of markets as any of my other closest books, and then Starforge smashing its way to victory in the final months of the year. Site hits were up—in fact, the site saw more traffic, interaction, and the like in 2022 than it ever has. That’s including two prior years in which a single post in each year went a bit viral and accounted for a good majority of all traffic.
Yes, that’s right. Without having a post go “viral” and score thousands upon thousands of hits, Unusual Things still saw more visitors, readers, and regular reads than in any prior year in 2022. And, while it’s still only week two of 2023, the current level of site traffic isn’t just holding steady … It’s growing. December of 2022 had more hits than November of 2022, which had more hits than … well, you get the idea.
And this introduction has already gotten away from me. Welcome, readers and writers, to a post-2022 news post, and a look ahead at what’s to come in 2023. We’re going to talk about what went on in 2022, what the impact was of the lone book release (but it was a big one), and then we’re going to discuss what’s in the pipe for this year.
And folks, I’ve got a good feeling about what’s to come. Hit the jump!
I feel like for this announcement I should be climbing up on a mountain outcropping and shouting “BEHOLD!”
Yesterday, after thirty days of grueling work, I finished the first Beta Pass for Starforge. And grueling almost doesn’t describe it. I have now read through Starforge … five times, I think? I’m starting to lose track. And that’s just start to finish, in-depth reads, over the last few months. There’s still the “Oh, check this chapter again” reads, the rereading of a paragraph, several times, to check changes, aloud and silent …
Point being I’ve read it a lot lately. And there’s still at least one more full read-through to go. So … what is the status right now?
Well, today I’m taking a day off. I’ve been regularly up editing till past 1 AM several nights a week for the last few weeks, and I am exhausted. So I’m taking today to just rest and not be editing for a little while. Just for one day. As much as my mind is whirling and whizzing on “Okay, gotta check that” and “Ooh, make sure too …” I need a day off. Thirty days of grueling double-checking of every comma, period, and apostrophe, word by word, across a 500,000 word draft is … a lot. Thinking back to the Being a Better Writer post on Mental Health, I need to let some pressure out of my pressure cooker before my brain overloads.
This isn’t bad news, mind. I’m not trying to paint it as such either. This is good news. I’m still on track to get Starforge out in November thanks to all this work. It might be late November, but then to be fair so it was with Colony and Jungle.
So what’s next, then? Well, tomorrow (not today, despite my itch to jump right in) I’m going to go over the Beta Reader feedback, taking each of those catches and doing a master comparison against the whole manuscript. Plus there are a few checks of my own I want to make as well, things I caught but want to make certain I didn’t miss any instances of (for example, yesterday I caught a single instance of “steeping” instead of “stepping” and found on a search one other instance of it in the book). I want to recheck a few of the larger chapters, or those that saw heavier edits and may still have “shrapnel” (my term for when a paragraph or section gets cut up or rewritten but old stuff gets missed, put in the wrong place, etc). Anything I might have missed when I was up until 1 AM editing, or because I was enjoying an action sequence a little too much to be paying attention, etc etc. You get the idea.
That’ll probably take a few days. Once that’s done however, and I’m satisfied with how clean the draft is … It’ll be time for the copy edit. Yes, that means putting in a Table-of-Contents, an introduction, all the copyright stuff, etc etc. It also means that I will be sending out an e-mail to all Alpha and Beta Readers who participated, both for acknowledgement in the book itself and for figuring out where to send their complimentary copies once the release hits.
But … it also means that once I’m officially going over the Copy-Edit, something else can happen. The pre-order can go up, because I’ll be able to set a release date.
That might happen—I’m not setting anything in stone yet—next week. While it may not, I can say this: We’re getting very close.
Which is going to be a relief to me. Starforge has been a major stressor for me. I’m ready to finish this project and do some smaller, lighter things for a while. Like another Jacob Rocke novella. And the next Axtara book.
Hey writers! Got a short post for you today. Yesterday, after I wrapped up Being a Better Writer and started on some chores I had to take care of, I finally put on a video that had been sitting in my watch-later queue for quite some time and was immediately struck by the lessons in the video that apply to writing.
Specifically, this video explains why Axtara has been such a success, flying so far so quickly. As some of you might have gathered, sales numbers have been on my mind lately, as I’m pushing to reach that “10,000 total sales in ten years” number after finding out how close I was about a month ago.
Anyway, before I pontificate too much further, I’m going to link embed this video and encourage any of you writers who are looking at or wondering about your own sales numbers to take a look. This talk was given at the 2017 Game Developers Conference, or GDC, and so while it’s talking about lessons one can take towards game development from Ikea, it actually applies incredibly well toward writing and selling books. Give it a watch below the break.
Hey there everyone! It’s time for a news post, keeping you all up to date on what’s going on and all. But this week we’re going to start off with an odder bit of news that’s less to do with writing and more just to do with the personal goal of me getting healthier.
Back in the end of June I picked up a Fitbit. I did this with the goal of measuring my workouts and tuning them to be more effective. To that end, I will say I was shocked with some of the results. Some of the routes I was following that I assumed would have been decent workouts were, in fact, not that great, and some of the routes that “common sense” would have said weren’t that great were actually my best in terms of caloric burn and cardio.
The power of a little data, right?
Anyway, there was a little bump in the middle where I got sick and lost a week of workouts while eating … not so great food … but the result is that currently I am, since June, down about thirteen pounds, and still heading further down.
Now that’s nice to have lost, isn’t it. It’s not a shock diet, or a carb fast, or anything like that. It’s just having metrics and a willingness. Well, and the bike. The holiday pounds are on their way out!
I know it’s not super impactful when it comes to the site, unless that lost weight will somehow help me write faster (I doubt it, personally), but it is something that I’m very happy to be able to see progression on, day after day.
With that said, I’ve got more news for people, and more tangential to the focus of the site, so hit that jump!
Hey there folks! I know, it’s been a slow week, hasn’t it? Monday was a holiday, and I’ve really not said much since then.
But that’s because things haven’t actually been that slow. In fact, for me they’ve been very busy! And for the Alpha Readers of Starforge‘s Alpha 2!
That’s because as you’ve largely surmised, that’s what I’ve been hard at work at. And things are booming. Currently, I’m rewriting the majority of chapter 15, as it needed a severe cleaning, and about halfway through that chapter. Chapters 1-14 are up for the Alpha crowd, and I’ve been seeing comments crop up … though not that many given the work done on the other passes.
Will this be the last Alpha? Or will I go for a third? Can’t say, honestly. As I’ve stated before, this being the last book of the UNSEC Space trilogy (and yes, I will reaffirm that this is the end of the story started in Colony; no secret “surprise” extra book here) I want it to be as spiffy and shiny as I can make it for you all. So will it get a 3rd Alpha?
Maybe. We’ll have to see. But at the current pace, with my editing speed and the speed of the Alpha Readers (seriously guys, you’re rocketing along!) the Alpha 2 could be done this month.
And that would be awesome.
So yeah, Starforge‘s second Alpha is off to a rolling start, with several readers already racing to catch up to me at my rewrites … Though once chapter 15 is done, my pace will likely increase to what it was before I got slowed rewriting most of a chapter.
Though if any of you Alpha readers want to impatiently knock at my “door” by catching up, you’re welcome to try!
Now, moving onto related news … The rest of the UNSEC trilogy seems to be getting some attention over the last few months. Colony has continued to collect reviews since hitting the big five-zero, with much positive applause. Accordingly Jungle has followed suit, picking up new five-star reviews as well. The world is getting ready for Starforge! And when it hits …
Of course, Colony‘s star status is closer and closer to being challenged, as Axtara – Banking and Finance is currently outselling it. Granted, Colony is quite a bit older and Axtara is new, but the banking dragon is doing her best to unseat the adventures of Jake, Anna, and Sweets at the top spot. Though in fairness, Colony has quite a lead … but Axtara is winging hard to catch up.
I can only imagine once I get a sequel out things will really start to heat up.
Other than that, I’ll go light with the news. New Being a Better Writer Monday, as usual. For now, everyone enjoy your weekend, and get some reading in!
Oh, wait, I do have one last bit of news. Absolutely zero individuals expressed an interest in Ko-Fi support on the site. So unless you’re one who was interested but didn’t speak up, for now I think that’s going to be tabled indefinitely unless you do speak up. Speak now in the comments, or forever hold your peace!
Heyo readers! How are things going on your side of the screen?
Things over here are … busy, to put it lightly. Last week I edited 168,000 words, and I’ve already put a solid effort in this week on another 60,000. Haven’t even started today yet (because sadly I cannot edit and write this news post at the same time, though if I could …).
But one of the things that I need to be busy with is this news post! Because I’ve been AFK for five weeks (not counting last week), and the news continued to pile up during that time. So I’ve got some stuff to drop for everyone. Including, yes, you read that title correctly, Axtara fan-art that I received while I was in Alaska.
But we’re going to talk about that in a bit. First, let’s talk about the Alaska trip. Now, unlike last year I’m not going to dedicate a whole post to this. Last year was a special occasion, and in addition had much more eventful happenings (like the killer whale pod that checked us out). This trip was more sedate by comparison. With a few exceptions.
Which isn’t to mean I didn’t get some pictures. A friend of mine asked me to snap some pictures for them, and I obliged, sending them a decent-sized dump when I was back on the grid. Though, just in fairness, these are all quick snaps, unlike some of the pictures I took last year. They’re still solid pictures, but they’re not professional in any sense, and I say that with even more emphasis than last year.
I didn’t even have any pictures of wildlife this time. What exposures we had were brief and over far too quickly to get a picture. With one exception, which was when we were pulling a set that was following a beach, while further out from some whales that were playing or feeding at the beach.
There are no pictures or video of this. We had our hands full. And there wasn’t much to see outside of occasional spouts as both took a breath and went back to whatever it was they were up to. But it was a neat counterpart to our work for a good half-hour, since we were keeping time up the beach.
Okay, with that disappointment of no footage for all of you, here are the pictures I took. Consolation prize, right?
Yes, that is a barge in the last picture. Hauling trains. Well, train cars anyway. Portions of a train? Trainlets? Carriages?
You get the idea. The rest is just scenery, which is usually what I was able to find time to capture pictures of.
So, here’s a quick question for you (which some of you might have wondered about): Why did this trip take me five weeks? I’d of course warned it might take that long, but why did it?
Well … the correct answer is equipment failure. There’s a lot of equipment you need for fishing, and one of those is a very vital piece of machinery that I’ve always called a “depth finder” though I’ve also heard it referred to as a “depth sounder” or in a term that dates the user, “color machine.”
Basically, this neat little device bounces signals off of the seafloor and displays the result on a screen, telling you both how much water you have between the bottom of your boat and the seafloor (more than zero is ideal) and, if you know what you’re looking at, the condition/material of that floor.
When you’re fishing on the bottom, this information is vital. Which is why it’s really bad if you’re about to set out from the harbor and the depth finder will not function.
Long story short, the boat needed a new one, which meant finding a new one, ordering a new one, waiting for it to arrive, and then installing it. All of which royally wrecked the schedule. On the plus side, I had a sudden abundance of days with which I got to just read and catch up on the fat stack of books I’d been holding onto.
But yes, as to why it took five weeks instead of three? That’s why. Thankfully, I’d guessed that something like it might, and prepped the site accordingly.
Now, this wasn’t the only disaster that occurred on this trip. There was a brief but very exciting incident with one of our holds losing, shall we say, containment, and dumping hundreds of gallons of water into a particular place that water should not have been, resulting in very bad things happening aboard the boat until we figured it out. That story, however, does deserve its own telling, and so I won’t post it here.
Besides, we’ve got more news to get to, including some Axtara fanart to see. So hit that jump, and let’s talk about what else is coming down the pipeline.
Yes. This is a summation post from someone who reviews cozy, whimsical, slice of life Fantasy books, noting all their recent and favorite reads and, unsurprisingly, on the hunt for more (because who isn’t always on the hunt for more books.
Do you notice what’s missing from that list? I do.
Yeah, there’s no Axtara on there. It’s not even listed or recommended.
Now, I can’t go on there and post about it. This particular sub has very precise rules about self-promotion (with, last I checked, a select exceptions). And they do, to their credit, do a halfway decent job of connecting Reddit accounts to actual authors.
But that list is missing a vital entry. This reader/reviewer clearly has never heard of Axtara – Banking and Finance or it’s many charms.
So, I’m calling on all of you who have a Reddit account (because that is allowed). Someone please go tell this reader what they’re missing out on. Especially when they’ve got Dealing with Dragons: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles on that list, and another story about a young dragon who leaves home to make their way in the world (but sadly, both for the plot and the drive, becomes a human ASAP).
Rare is there a list begging for Axtara to show up in such force. Someone please, for the love of literature, post and let them know that?
Unusual Things 