Tag: Starveyors

Proofing Starveyors

KenMcConnell2 Comments

The final printed proof of the Starveyors paperback is in my possession and I’m going over it all one last time. So far I’ve found two cover issues and a bunch of interior issues, primarily related to formatting. We’ll get these things cleaned up this week and hopefully have it for sale in early July.

 

The folded pages here indicate problems we need to fix on the interior pdf.

 

This is the final back cover now with the bar code box. I’m very happy with how the artwork turned out. My brother Byron used many angles of the models I built to create this scene from the novel. He got all kinds of detailed by including starfighters in the bay of the closest starship. Click to embiggen the pics.

 

Starveyors Paperback Update

KenMcConnell3 Comments

Thought I’d take a moment and update you on the Starveyors paperback. I should be receiving the final paper proof of the book this week. After one last going over it should go on sale sometime next week. This will be the third Star Saga book available in print. So those of you who love paperbacks, now is your chance to own them all.

The above wrap around cover art is nearly final. There is a capitalization offense in the back cover blurb. Can you find it?

There is one final novel left to convert to paperback, but I just don’t have the bandwidth to work on it yet. That would be Tyrmia. It requires an extensive edit and its a very long book, meaning it won’t be selling for less than ten dollars like the other four books I’ve written. Given that I’ve sold a grand total of four paperbacks to this date, there is absolutely no reason to rush any more of my books into print.

June is turning out to be a dismal month in sales for me. Not entirely unexpected given that I don’t advertise or send out review copies of my work. But it would be a hoot if I make it through the month with absolutely no Amazon sales. It would be the first time that has happened in about three years.

Some writers would be mortified by that but fortunately I have a very good day job and don’t rely on my writing to make a living. So basically I don’t care about sales much. At least not yet. Right now all I care about is getting at least one book out each year for the next couple of years. I’d like to get the second and third Star Saga novels out and then I’ll probably write something different. I’ve been in the same universe for three years now and I’d like a change of pace.

There’s another SF book that I would like to write that’s not set in the Star Saga universe. I may finally write that book. Or I could go back to Mystery and write the second Joshua Jones novel. Either one would be a break and would be keep me writing and learning. Which at this pre-discovered time, is just what I need.

STARVEYORS Proof

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We received the first proof copy of Starveyors on Friday. I’m not going to be editing on it yet, as I’m saving it to show off this weekend at Norwescon. But after I get back, it’s going to be handed over to Bill and he’s going to bleed all over it with his red pen. We hope to have the final copy edits complete by mid April.

At this time, you can now order the paperback versions of Starforgers and Starstrikers on Amazon in the US. They sell for $9.95 and are 5 x 8 inches, just slightly bigger than a mass market paperback and smaller than a trade paperback. Starforgers is linked to the ebook and I expect the same will happen to Starstrikers soon.

We’ve already discussed doing a paperback of Tyrmia in the months to come, but there is no firm date on it yet. Tyrmia is set in the Starveyors Era of the Star Saga but is not a numbered book in the series.

I won’t be selling these books at Norwescon, but I’ll have some copies with me. I will be passing out some designer bookmarks during my signing at Norwescon and I’ll gladly sign the book mark for you. There is a URL on the bookmark for a free epub of Starforgers.

Starveyors Ebook Now Available

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The latest Star Series book is finally out. Starveyors is now available on Kindle, Nook and Kobo. You can click on the book covers to the right of this blog to select which vendor you prefer to purchase from. All of them feature DRM FREE ebooks.

Starveyors_Cover_Small

From the Synopsis:

The Great War nears to a close, but peace hangs in the balance as Ambassadors on both sides battle a thousand years of ill will between the Votainion Empire and the Alliance. Professor Rachel Kelley is recruited to lead the peace talks for the Alliance after the previous Ambassador is killed by the Votainions. Accompanying her is Lieutenant Cryse, a human and Votainion half-breed Starveyors officer with a natural talent for negotiating. Working with a sympathetic Votainion Ambassador, the two humans embark to go where no human has gone before in a desperate attempt to end the thousand year war between the two galactic civilizations.

Along with this new release is the reissue of the other two ebooks in the series. Both of which have been cleaned up and formatted to match Starveyors, including new covers and a series graphic that helps put them into perspective.

If you are new to the series, I might like to suggest that you hold off purchasing them until the new Omnibus edition comes out next week. It will include all three books and three short stories all for just $9.99 USD, which is like getting the short stories and the third novel free.

As always, please leave a review wherever you purchase your ebooks from, and if you enjoyed the stories, let your friends know on social media and with word of mouth. Thank you for considering my Space Opera series!

Finally, be sure and sign up for the newsletter to get your free short story next month!

Writing Update, Late November

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I’m moving closer to end game with Starveyors. The manuscript has been edited, copy proofed and broken down into individual sections. Now its heading off to the ebook designer along with the other two Star Series books. If all things go as planned, the ebooks will be available in fresh new editions in mid December.

With the new releases, come higher prices. I’m moving from $2.99 to $4.99 for all three ebooks. Sales have been pretty lame for months and I thought it was a good time to try a new price point. Both $2.99 and $4.99 are popular prices for indie books and the difference between them seems unimportant to potential readers. Anyway, get them at the old prices before the increase, if that sort of thing matters to you.

If you wait and get them in late December, you’ll get the new ebook formats for all three books. They will look sharp on any reader and will have a unified style.

I’m also planning a three book Omnibus version that will probably be $9.99 which will save you five bucks. That bundle will also include several short stories not available in ebook form.

What about Tyrmia, you ask? I’m going to give that one a new copy edit and relaunch it sometime early next year. I have not decided for sure yet, but I could be dropping it to ninety-nine cents to create a funnel for the Star Series.

As for the short stories, I’ll be keeping them on Amazon only for the foreseeable future. They are intended to act as funnels too, but they don’t really sell well at all right now. The anthology – Tales From Ocherva, Volume One, will remain at $2.99 and will be available on all the ebook vendor sites that I support: Kindle, Nook and Kobo.

That’s all for now. I’ll be posting more and more about Starveyors as the release date gets closer.

Star Series Notes – Chapter Quotes

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While I’ve been working through Katie’s edits on Starveyors, she brought to my attention the importance of the pre-chapter quotes that I have been using in these books. Here is what she said about the one I used for Chapter 17 (Click to Enlarge):

The idea to include these realistic quotes from fictional works came from a friend of mine who reads much more Fantasy than I do. He suggested that they would help the reader become more involved in the story by adding to the world building. He was right. Thanks Scott!

As Katie indicated in her comment, they can also convey a bunch of useful information in a way that doesn’t feel like an info dump. But more than that, they also let me the writer, more fully develop certain POV characters by sampling what they had to say about the events that were taking place in the chapter.

The keys to doing this effectively are to keep the quote relevant to the action in the chapter and to keep it short. Also, you can’t reveal to the reader any surprises that may have not come yet. That can be a challenge.

One thing that I have not been able to pull off yet is to add to the narrative in a substantial way with each chapter quote.  The idea would be to tell a subplot with Twitter-like sound bites. If the novel was told from a single POV, that might be possible. Similar to journal entries by the protagonist. As cool as that might be to pull off from a nerdy writer perspective, I don’t think it would work in this particular Space Opera series. Having different points of view in the quotes really does add to the world building. Or in this case, the universe building.

STARVEYORS – by Ken McConnell, available this December, from GB Press.

Starveyors Back from the Editor

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I got my copy edits back from my editor, Katie Abderhalden and they are fantastic. She’s really good at finding the weak points in my writing. This time around I set records for head hopping and showing not telling. I hope she had those comments in her copy and past buffer, because typing them over and over would have been tedious. Every novel seems to have something that I lapse on all the way through.

This novel was not as much fun for me to write as Starforgers. I’m not sure exactly why, but I expect that its because there is a substantial lack of esplody things going on. In fact, the idea in this book is to stop shooting and blowing things up. It’s about a peace treaty and ending a war. Not saying things don’t go wrong, far from it. But the galaxy is more civilized and less wild in this time frame.

So I’ll be in editing and fixing mode for much of this month. I hope to have the manuscript into the final proofing stage before the end of November. I’m still expecting to launch Starveyors in December.

Writing Update

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Spent the whole of the last week or two doing a final pass on Starveyors before sending it to the editor. Now I’m diving back into The Rising which will be the second book in the Starforgers trilogy.

I’m on chapter three of The Rising and sitting in the neighborhood of 8,000 words in length. I was afraid that I’d be getting tired of doing this epic 9 book series by now but somehow the opposite is happening. I’m completely stoked to be writing this book in the Starforgers time frame. Small wonder there, considering how much fun I had writing the first book.

Many of the characters in The Rising were in Starforgers, but there are new characters in this book that I think readers will love as much as I already do. The Rising takes place 1-5 years after Starforgers. I haven’t exactly locked it down yet. Probably closer to five. I need some time to have passed so that my main character, Devon Ardel, has some time in grade.

The third book in this trilogy will probably be about ten years after The Rising. The temporary title for that one is Counter Attack. The plan is to go ahead and finish it before taking a break. I would like to see if I can actually write two books in one year’s time. No idea if that’s possible, but its worth a shot.