My current 40K novel, The Fist of Demetrius, is starting to shape up. I am about 25000 words in. An ominous cloud of intrigue looms over Macharius as he reaches the absolute zenith of his power at the height of the Crusade. The Dark Eldar are moving across the event horizon. Multiple conflicts loom, with the xenos, with ambitious generals and corrupt Imperial politicians. Macharius ,although he does not know it, is about to experience the pivotal event of his life, a confrontation with something that will turn him from the golden reflection of Alexander the Great into the dark, ruthless fanatic we know from the background texts. Slowly, a bit at a time, a book is coming into being. It's fun to watch and at the same time frustrating, … [Read more...]
Create Your Own Ebook Cover, Step By Step, With Pictures
Fair warning, you are about to get advice on creating your cover from a man with all the artistic talent of a slug. Indeed, so small are my gifts in this area that several slugs have written in to complain that my statement is demeaning to their creative abilities. It also has to be said you're going to be taking PowerPoint advice from a man who is not particularly adept with PowerPoint, especially its Windows variant. So why am I doing this exactly? Because I can, of course, and because I want to make a point; that even a man with my stunning lack of skill can create an acceptable ebook cover in a few minutes with a minimum of fuss. And if I can, then you can too. I am going to use the cover I create here for the ebook version of my … [Read more...]
High Elves, Dark Elves, All Elves
Central to the struggle in the Tyrion and Teclis trilogy is the conflict between High Elves and Dark Elves. We all know what that means, don't we? High Elves are glittering and noble, proud and good. Dark Elves are decadent and wicked, drugged out and crazy, given to torture and malice. They are as different as two peoples can be, aren't they? Actually, I don't think so. I think they are exactly the same people. They are just the products of two very different societies. I believe that in every High Elf is a potential Dark Elf, and in every Dark Elf there is the seed of a High Elf. Consider this. They were all one people once, before the coming of Chaos, before Aenarion and the Godslayer, before Morathi and Malekith. There once were only … [Read more...]
The Utility of Free: Some Thoughts on Free EBooks
I was planning on posting my guide to creating ebook covers in PowerPoint today but these posts are quite labour intensive and yesterday was Valentine's Day and I decided I would rather go out for a nice dinner with my lovely wife than spend the evening making annotated screenshots. Go figure, huh! So it's next week for the PowerPoint guide unless my monkey brain gets distracted by something else... Over at Terribleminds Chuck Wendig has an excellent and thoughtful post about the costs and uses of going free in ebook publication. Go read it, I will still be here when you get back. A warning for the easily shocked, Chuck is somewhat more profane than I am, just so you know. He has put into words some of my own reservations about making … [Read more...]
Go Read This…
...if you have any interest in self-publishing your own ebook. Dean Wesley Smith has put up an excellent post on the costs of indie publishing. I can confirm that everything Dean says here is 100% accurate. At some point in the next few weeks I'll stick up a post about the actual mechanics of doing your own covers with PowerPoint. I am a man with the artistic talent of a slug (and that is probably insulting slugs) and I can do this. If I can, anyone can. … [Read more...]
Create Your Own Kindle EBook, Step by Step, With Pictures
Important Note: As of November 2012 Amazon appears to be rejecting some ebooks created using Calibre. More on this subject can be found here. Today I am starting a series on how to publish your own ebook. I have had a fair amount of interest in my posts on this subject over the past few months and I wanted to give some substance to my claim that self-publishing an ebook is not much harder than pushing Save on your word-processor. Honestly, this is really true, with the proviso that you are producing a novel or a short story and that you do things correctly right from the start. I won't talk about picture books or books with footnotes, citations and references because I have no experience of such things. I have, however, as of this date, … [Read more...]
Two Different Paths
I have been experimenting with writing 2000 words of new fiction every working day since the New Year. This is in addition to outlining, planning, revising and producing new ebooks. It's led to some interesting (for me, at least) consequences. Right now I am working on two different projects and my methods are about as different as I can possibly imagine. The first is The Fist of Demetrius, my second Macharius novel for Warhammer 40K. This started off last year as a simple first person narrative and mutated into something else as it progressed. The second project is my sword and sorcery novel The Stealer of Flesh about a monster hunter named Kormak. The Macharius book is part of a series within a greater series. It fits into Games … [Read more...]
