Kicking it into Overdrive

It’s September now. The best month of the year is just over the horizon. I can taste the pumpkin spice in my beer, and detect the crispness of the occasional morning. We’ll still dabble with the occasional 100 degree temperature, but October will be here before we know it.

It’s been my favorite since I was a small child. All the spooky Halloween oriented things. The changing colors, I love all of it.

Late summer was busy. It seems like Lanternfish sailed all over the world in the last month. We visited a lot of old friends and managed to get Lisa Burton out of the writing cabin. I’m hoping that my free promotion of the first book will walk some new readers into this series. It’s time to send the ship to dry dock now. She has holes to patch and barnacles to scrape before I take her back out for her last cruise.

I’m going to be popping up here and there this month to promote Murder They Wrote. This is an anthology of seven different short stories with a theme of murder. My character, Jason Fogg, is a private detective on the trail in my story.

I’ll be on the lookout for review posts. With Lanternfish’s free days, plus the new book, plus the anthology, one or two could pop up. If I find them, I’l try to share them here.

You might be thinking, Craig’s had a busy year. He’s probably going to relax for a while. That’s just not the case this year. I try to have a Halloween themed promo of some kind every year, and 2020 be damned, I’m doing it this year, too. I have another book I hope to release on October first. I only have part of my promotional artwork, but I have a cool cover. I’m sure the rest of the art will arrive in time. I don’t even have the formatted MS back, but it will be here.

I decided to post some teasers this month. Simple, visual and auditory at the same time. With this post, I’ve officially promoted three new books in one week. Take that 2020. Check it out. Are you teased? Are you intrigued?

Gentle reminder #freebook

My book tour will continue this week. I don’t have anyone for today. I’m just going to drop some cover art and talk about my current promotion, because it’s for a limited time.

***

Blurb: The Lanternfish crew completed their original mission, but got exposed to a more global problem. An entire continent is at war, headed up by a head-strong young king with dreams of power, and pushed from behind by a mysterious religious order known as the Fulminites.

Rather than let their country fall under the iron boot of conquest, James and his crew set sail once more to see what kind of muscle Lanternfish can lend to the war effort. Acting precariously under an unofficial charter as a privateer, even his allies aren’t always his friends.

HMS Lanternfish explores new worlds on its way to war, and drifts considerably off course. It features an international crew of characters, and for fans of the first book, the root monsters are back, too. Tall ships, a few con games, martial arts, and everything you loved about the original book is all returning.

Hoist the colors and wheel out the guns. Lanternfish is taking to the high seas once more.

***

That’s the new book and you can get it for 99¢ for a limited time.

I won’t expect you to jump into the middle of a trilogy if you haven’t already read the first book. Amazon came through on my free days. Therefore, you can also get Voyage of the Lanternfish for free, but only this week.

HMS Lanternfish: 99¢ for a limited time.

Voyage of the Lanternfish: Free until Friday.

I’m going to mention that Serang is also part of this world. It is a stand-alone title and is based upon one of the more intriguing characters in the series. Her book isn’t on sale, but if this week plays out well, I could do something with it later this month to keep the momentum going. Here’s a link for her book.

Success, despite the timing

Amazon finally came through, but I’d like to have had a few more hours to work on this project. HMS Lanternfish is now a book for sale.

It’s priced at 99¢ for right now, and I’ll raise it after my blog tour ends. I sent one post out already, but it probably won’t go up until Tuesday.

I also did five free days for Voyage of the Lanternfish. I kind of wanted day one to be announced at my first tour stop, but we can’t have everything. It should go live tomorrow.

The Lanternfish crew completed their original mission, but got exposed to a more global problem. An entire continent is at war, headed up by a head-strong young king with dreams of power, and pushed from behind by a mysterious religious order known as the Fulminites.

Rather than let their country fall under the iron boot of conquest, James and his crew set sail once more to see what kind of muscle Lanternfish can lend to the war effort. Acting precariously under an unofficial charter as a privateer, even his allies aren’t always his friends.

HMS Lanternfish explores new worlds on its way to war, and drifts considerably off course. It features an international crew of characters, and for fans of the first book, the root monsters are back, too. Tall ships, a few con games, martial arts, and everything you loved about the original book is all returning.

Hoist the colors and wheel out the guns. Lanternfish is taking to the high seas once more.

You can check out HMS Lanternfish by clicking the image in my sidebar, or right here: http://mybook.to/HMSLanternfish

Voyage of the Lanternfish will probably be free starting tomorrow. It depends upon which timezone you’re in, and Amazon doesn’t allow all countries to participate. If you can take advantage, this is the link: http://a-fwd.com/asin-com=B07MP8V633

I’m off to work on other things like BookBub and Goodreads. If time allows, I’ll try to get some more tour posts in the pipeline tonight.

How I spent my day

I started off setting up the old Mac, now that my work PC has been replaced by a laptop. The laptop gives me more versatility, and I have my desk back.

After the inevitable upgrades, I spent some time letting my email program catch up. All of that took a few hours. They weren’t wasted hours, we played ball with the dogs and did more regular things.

Then I knuckled down and put HMS Lanternfish through Amazon’s grist mill. This led me to adding the series data to Voyage of the Lanternfish, which I managed to screw up. It probably doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but I wanted to call it the Lanternfish Trilogy, and wound up submitting as the Lanternfish Series.

I decided to go with it at that point. It was that or wait a day, change book one again, then take a stab at book two. If I need to, I’ll change them later.

Right now, I’m waiting for the green light from Amazon. It can take up to 72 hours, so I’m not going to panic… much.

I’m doing something different this time. Since this is a series/trilogy, I can play some games. I’m going to run out Voyage of the Lanternfish as a freeby for the five days Amazon lets me. At the same time, I’m going to offer HMS Lanternfish as a 99¢ book. I completely stole some of this from John Howell. (Sorry, John.)

Pretty good deal if buyers time it right. Book one and two of the trilogy for a grand total of 99¢. My desire is to bring more readers in, maybe net some early reviews, and see what happens.

Book one will return to its regular price after my Amazon clock runs out, book two will remain 99¢ for a while longer, then I’m raising it to a reasonable price.

If everything looks like it’s working somewhat, I still have Serang that could be used as a free book to walk readers in, too. Watch for Lisa Burton. She has some new posters she’s taking on the road to help me out.

I may have a day or so lag time before I appear on any blogs. I need HMS Lanternfish to exist before I start the free promo on Voyage.

It’s a plan. No idea if it will work, but I have high hopes. My understanding is the second book often doesn’t perform well until the trilogy is complete. Maybe I can crack that nut just a tiny bit.

Watch this space. Pirates, sea battles, monsters, and root monsters are about to return. Oh, and there are some scary assed Japanese style ghosts included this time, too.

Baby steps

Today was a pretty good flex day. I decided to do my word searches on Mrs. Molony. As part of The Hat series, they’re smaller books and it didn’t take long at all. Took longer to whine about it than to do it.

Based upon word searches, I never had to change a thing. My critique group has eagle eyes. I also took on a complete read through, and did reword a couple of sections. This is where the month away really helps. About the only thing I didn’t do was make a cover page and copyright data.

Imagine my excitement when the cover for Mrs. Molony showed up in my mailbox today. It turned out really good, but sharing it right now might be counter productive. My immediate push will be for book two of the Lanternfish trilogy.

Lanternfish is in the hands of my formatter. I figure it will be ready to publish in a week. Might even get to it this coming weekend. Then I’ll have to shift into promo mode and try to spread the word.

I also placed an order for artwork to accompany Mrs. Molony. We’re going to start off with the cartoon graphics that go inside the body of the text. These just add to the corniness of these tales. After that, I’ll get Sean started on a couple of Lisa Burton posters to promote with.

All in all, it was a productive day. It’s nice to move ahead on Mrs. Molony because I’ll be knee deep in Lanternfish promotion real soon. Hope all of you had a good Monday. Back to work for me tomorrow.

Small Victories

I had to cut back an old rose bush this morning. Morning because of the incredible heat we’ve been having. Old What’s Her Face ran the wood chipper and it really helped with the cleanup. We have room for the fencing crew to work now and I think the rose will recover.

Then, I dedicated myself to the final read of Lanternfish. I found a few mistakes, but they’ve all been fixed. Then I built a title page, double checked the links in my back material, and mailed it off to my formatter.

I might even be ready to publish by next weekend. Honestly, I wanted this done in May, but it is what it is.

If you’re ready for another dose of root monsters, con men, and Serang, it’s getting close.

I have some new monsters and fantasy creatures in this one. Honestly, creating them is kind of fun.

There are also a few new lands to be explored. I tried to flesh those out as much as possible without turning it into a weird travelogue.

I’m going to take my time with promo. I haven’t even tried writing blog tour posts. I’ll do it, but I want the book available first. I have a couple of Lisa Burton posters in hand, so Lisa will be participating in the tour.

It may not seem like much, but small victories add up. I have the cover for The Ballad of Mrs. Molony in the works right now. If things work out, I can promote Lanternfish for a few weeks, then publish Mrs. Molony in time for the Halloween season.

I may keep it boring tomorrow, on purpose. I am supposed to be on a pseudo-break of some kind. Maybe Charles Bronson is killing people on television somewhere. If noting else, The Santa Clarita Diet is hilarious. It’s on Netflix, so I can watch multiple episodes at at time.

Still on break

In some ways, I don’t know what to do with myself, but I’m falling into the routine a little more each weekend. I have two of three critiques back for the ending of The Ballad of Mrs. Molony. Once the last one arrives I’ll address those.

After the critiques, it will be time to read HMS Lanternfish. I haven’t looked at it for a month, so there are bound to be things to repair. I can also do my word searches for corrections that I always seem to need.

After Lorelei the Muse visited, my head is full of ideas, but they aren’t immediately helpful. I’m really excited about The Hat books five and six. However, it’s book four I need to storyboard properly. I know that story, but it needs more structure than the others. It’s going to involve an event that will shape the future of these stories. It needs to have an emotional tug to it. That might sound funny for a series that’s dedicated to dark and snarky humor, but it works within the framework I’ve established.

I also added some fun ideas to a couple of storyboards for some stand alone novels I want to write. There is also an outer space related story bouncing around in my head, but it hasn’t earned a storyboard yet. Muses are great, but more pertinent help would have been better.

If nothing else, once I figure out the issues with my next two books, Lanternfish and Hat #4, I will be ready to scream along on future tales.

In other news, I worked on one of my cowboy hats a bit. Long term readers might remember when Old What’s Her Face and I went to Jackson Hole. There used to be a wonderful hat shop there, and I bought a nice beaver hat. I posted about cutting the brim down, steaming & shaping the brim and crown. Then I used a stitch puller to remove the hatband.

After that, I had my brother make me a copper hatband. This has worked well for years, and it’s my go-to outdoors hat. The band is held on by friction, but it will come off when doing some hat related chores, like fanning the campfire to get it going.

Today, I took some tin snips and some copper pipe and made a couple of staples. It took some effort to get them placed and puncture the hat body, but I don’t think my hatband will be coming off any time soon. Oddly enough, closing the stables was the hardest part. Not a lot of room to swing a hammer inside the crown of a hat.

I’m sure the staple will age and patina to catch up with the rest of the copper eventually.

I also broke down and ordered a new hat. I doubt the cowboy hat will be retired, but I wanted a campaign hat. This will be the third one I’ve owned over the years. The first one was cheap wool, and wore out back in my survey days. I allowed a bar tender to hang it on the wall in a tiny little place called Midas, Nevada. (Hope it’s still there.) The second one got borrowed by one of my son’s friends when they were in high school. They were a bunch of druggies, and once he gave it back I threw it away. Lice happen and I wasn’t about to take a chance.

This campaign hat is slouch style, and made of much better rabbit fur. It will come with the cavalry style acorn band, but I got the officer’s version with gold and black since it was an option. (I already have a hat with gold acorns.)

Years ago, in my part of the world, cowboy hats were everywhere. I’d kind of like to pick up a decent used one to experiment on. I can’t believe how difficult and expensive that process has become. I used to see such things at yard sales, but no more. I’ve learned how to sterilize and clean them up, and have a couple of experiments I’d like to try.

Stirring things up

One of my goals while not drafting new material is to shake things up around here. It’s nothing drastic, just an attempt to sweep out the old and try some new things.

I need to change my banner, but with a couple of releases looming, I’ll probably just wait until one of the new books comes out. I can recycle the underwater scene when Lanternfish shows up in the Amazon store.

Start over there.

(Not liking this new editor. This should be centered. Probably fix it with the old editor)

In my sidebar, I always keep the two most recent publications available as quick ways to check out those books. I could put all of them over there, but that would be a busy mess. These images are about to be replaced by HMS Lanternfish and The Ballad of Mrs. Molony in the next couple of months.

You can always find everything on my Amazon page, but if you’d like to check out Serang or Grinders, the links are still there. I think they’re two of my better works. Serang is a great way to climb aboard the Lanternfish saga.

Up Top

All blogs have pages, but very few people check them out. I’m making some changes up there, too. If you were familiar with my layout, you’ll notice something missing. I have retired Lisa Burton Radio.

This regular feature was designed so I could pay back all the help others have given me along the way. I designed something a bit different that loaned out Lisa’s popularity as an interview of your fictional characters. They were labor intensive, but quite productive.

Honestly the interviews worked best when I promoted them. By doing that I kept a regular schedule of one per week for over two years. It was fun collaborating with my fellow authors, and we moved a few books along the way, too.

I wanted some of my time back, and quit pushing authors to try it out. They were available upon request, and there’s the rub. Nobody was requesting them. Most authors are introverted to a degree, but we have to promote our wares someplace. Good free options are drying up from lack of use, and Lisa Burton Radio is one of those casualties.

My door is still open to folks who want a place to promote their books, but you can write the darned things now.

Still up there

I’ve added a new page to check out. Music plays a big role in The Hat series. Lizzie and The Pythons play music as a way to get her out at night and travel around as they explore the supernatural world.

Some of my Story Empire friends suggested that playlists are popular and that I should consider sharing one. I’ve never tried anything like this before, and didn’t have a playbook, so I made my own up.

I have a huge playlist on my phone that goes along with these books. However, I limited this page to things that got mentioned in the books. Videos are bandwidth eaters, so I didn’t want a page of videos to clog up your processors. I went with links to most of them, but included a few videos from key moments in the stories.

I won’t publish The Ballad of Mrs. Molony until later this year, but I included the music up above. Maybe it will inspire some interest in that tale. When I have a link and cover I’ll make sure to update it. I threw in a couple of tiny Lisa Burton posters for flavor. As I get those for Mrs. Molony, I’ll add one for that book, too.

I’m looking for feedback on this page. If you think I need the artists, let me know. Some of the older tunes don’t have great videos available so I went with what I could find.

I should change the wallpaper from Frankie’s brindle coat to something more summery. My zucchini is trying to bloom, so maybe it’s time for some bright yellow flowers.

Let me know what you think, and if the pointers are centered when you visit, you’ll know I used the good editor to fix what this abomination thinks I need.

Shifting gears.

It wasn’t part of my long term plans, but I’m going to take a kind of break. This doesn’t mean I’m not writing, It just means I won’t be drafting new stories right now.

This morning I finished the draft for The Ballad of Mrs. Molony. I’m debating a couple more paragraphs, but don’t know if they’re necessary.

This story involves Lizzie and the hat in pursuit of a pair of rodeo cowboys. These guys are now members of the undead. This allows the band, Lizzie and the Pythons, to explore country music as part of catching the bad guys. Made for some cool outfits and hat styles, too.

Lizzie has a small melt-down over the music. At the end she returns to more familiar ground. I could add a couple of paragraphs to show how they weave in some country songs without compromising what they like. Or I could leave it out.

I’m calling it finished, regardless of what I decide. I need to work up some blog ideas for the books, work with my cover artist, decide if I’m spending any promo money, but I doubt it. Think about formatting. Oh yeah, I’m going to need some of those silly graphics to put in Mrs. Molony so as to keep with the theme.

I’m going to be storyboarding, too. The final Lanternfish is going to require a storyboard. I have two novels full of information that I have to stay faithful to. There are a bunch of loose ideas for the finale. A board helps me mold all that into a decent story.

I think next year’s Hat story could benefit from a storyboard, too. I want this one to be more grim with an undertone of sadness, while still keeping the humor going. Not an easy task. It’s my intention to break Lizzie mentally toward the end of the next one. That will lead into another one that has a lot going on including a revisit with the witching community.

Aside from that, I have some stand alone novels that are already in the early phases of storyboards. I should probably hold off on these until Lanternfish is complete.

There’s also reading. I haven’t taken a serious reading break for a long time and there is a lot I want to catch up on. I also have a bit of a blog makeover in mind.

Honestly, if I can get Lanternfish out this summer, then Mrs. Molony for the Halloween season, I will have met my yearly goals. If I don’t write another word this year, I’m in pretty good shape.

Just because I’m not working on a draft does not mean I’m not working. We’re going camping this weekend. I’ll probably do some reading while I’m up there.

Not tons going on

It’s rare that I get to this point, but the title says it all. Work this week was kind of a disaster, and I’m not excited about the future of some things right now. I won’t say more, but I need to get in another six years or so before I can retire. Craig will play nice. Craig will do what he must.

I didn’t write anything, but still fiddled with the writing business. I sent out a submission for critique on Lanternfish. I also added some personal information to the end of my short story. No idea whether the publisher wants that, but if I don’t send it, I could be shooting myself in the foot.

I still need to read the short one more time, and may do that tomorrow. Mrs. Molony is still hanging around, but since this is my short weekend, I decided to bag it for now. Getting Lanternfish out is my main priority. The critiques are bringing me closer to that goal. I’m a little concerned about having Mrs. Molony ready in time for Halloween.

My artist is busy with Lanternfish projects, so I won’t swamp him with the Mrs. Molony stuff until that’s finished. I have a cover in mind and some fun Lisa ideas to support the story.

I touched up and scheduled my next Story Empire post. That will show up at the end of next week. I really enjoy posting over there, but need another solid idea. My stronger suit is characters, so I should focus on that again. Trying to come up with something for my July posts. Maybe another Expansion Pack or two.

I also started another pin-board on Pinterest. This one is dedicated to magical items and mad science stuff. I like to have reference points when I write and have found them quite helpful. They’re open to anyone, so if they might help you, feel free to help yourselves.

I spent some time finishing Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell on Netflix. I heard it was going away, and I’ve seen the early episodes a couple of times over the years. It kind of dragged in the middle, but finished pretty well. It gave me a cool new magical idea, so I made some quick notes before I forgot it. Who knows if I’ll ever use it, but it’s down in one of my apps if the occasion should come along. All in all, I’m glad I stuck with it. I may have caught the first parts on PBS years ago, but never saw the end until this weekend.

I’d like to find something else to watch on either Netflix or Disney+. Something speculative in nature. In another week or so, Disney+ has one that looks fun called Artemis Fowl. Any recommendations until then? Leave them in the comments.

I’ve made an executive decision to stop drafting new material after Mrs. Molony gets published. My brain needs a break for a while. (Three publications per year, two years in a row.) I’ll work on some kind of promo, but have no idea what that will look like. I’m also going to turn my attention to my storyboards. I’d love to produce another stand alone title, but I promised a Lanternfish trilogy. This means when I start back up, Lanternfish III has to be a priority. A more detailed storyboard will help with that.

Hope all of you are having a good weekend. We went from sunny and about about 95 degrees to raining and 70 degrees today. When one extreme front meets another, at least we didn’t get the gigantic winds. We don’t seem to get tornados out west, so that isn’t a worry.

Talk to me people. I’m trying to avoid all the negativity in the world right now. What’s fun on television? What kind of character tips would you like to see at Story Empire? How’s the weather where you are?