Idle Hands Are the Devil's … Writing Tools?

Good evening, everyone!

Don't forget to visit my Facebook launch party; guest authors and free giveaways are happening all week!

I've been having an absolute blast today over on Facebook, launching my new book, hosting guest authors, giving away free copies, and more. While The Redemption of Erâth: Exile is my second book (technically third, actually), this is the first time I've bothered to do anything to celebrate its launch, and I didn't think it would be so interesting!

The first, most important thing I've discovered is that hosting a party, even one that's online, is hard work! (Mrs. Satis and I also hosted a real life party on Saturday, and that was chaos, too.) I didn't realize that I'd be literally glued to my computer screen, answering questions, replying to comments, and posting new tidbits of information. Originally, I even thought I might have been able to host the party while still working my day job, too—after all, it's only online, right?

I'm very, very glad I chose to stay home this week (besides having a midwinter vacation). I started up this morning around 10:00 AM, and it's been almost non-stop ever since! I've been visited by the talented Nancy Chase (see my interview with her here), who's been giving away copies of her own work, too! I've revealed a book cover for Will Bly. And I've been talking to people all day long.

The point is, I had no idea that running an online party could be so much work! I honestly believed that I'd be sitting back, drinking tea and idly waiting for people to say something interesting. But so far, I've had people telling ten-word stories, dictating what I ate for lunch, and even correcting minor mistakes I've made!

My hands have been anything but idle today, and I expect the rest of the week will follow suit. I've done more writing—albeit in short bursts—today than I have in ages, and it's a whole lot of fun! The weird thing is, I'm absolutely exhausted, and I've barely moved!

For now, though, it's back into the party—we'll be wrapping up for the day soon, but drop by anytime this week: I'd be delighted to see you there!

Interview: Will Bly

Join the Facebook launch party of The Redemption of Erâth: Exile here!

As part of my ongoing launch this week, I’m going to be interviewing guest authors here and on the Facebook page. This will be a great way to discover new and exciting authors, and possibly win free copies of their work! My second guest is the talented Will Bly, author of the dark fantasy series Dark Compass, with Ravens in the Sky already out and Raven’s Bane coming soon. In fact, Will has generously allowed me to reveal the cover artwork for Raven’s Bane, so feast your eyes below!

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Q. What do you write, and what inspired you to start?

I couldn’t tell you what inspired me to first write. I’ve always been driven to narrative. I wrote my first story in grade school about leprechauns, trolls, and magical mushroom corridors.

I can tell you about what inspired me to write my first book, Ravens in the Sky. Tolkien did. Researching him for my MA Thesis at the University of Auckland did. Learning all about world-building and faerie realms while writing many, many words worth of criticism stoked a simple thought: If I can write this much about fantasy why not just write fantasy? So it is that once I completed my masters I put my notes and knowledge toward my own project. For the first time in a long time I wrote for me. I paid homage to Tolkien’s rules but I also broke a lot of them. This left me with my own piece of literature that contrasts our darker natures with our coping mechanisms, populated with personalities we meet in the everyday world.

Q. We all know writers love to drink—coffee, tea or worse! When you’re writing, what’s your poison?

Ironically I drink a lot when I write academically but not so much for fiction. Not even coffee. I’ll sometimes pour a mug of ale or wear my drinking horn when I write about taverns, however.

Q. Do you have a favorite line that you’ve written? If so, what is it?

I’m super critical of my stuff so to answer this question I will defer to my muse, Michelle Bly. In particular there is an exchange between two of her favorite characters by a campfire:

“Truth is much like fire. Hard to understand, ever-changing.”
“And both fire and truth burn to the touch.”

I guess I have an affinity for creating proverbs and philosophical musings.

Q. What are you most known for amongst your friends and family?

I’ve been told I can talk to anyone. I love hypotheticals. An addiction to wit and honesty gets me into trouble sometimes, however.

Q. Have you ever seen a movie that you thought was better than the book?

Ordinary People. I would say the late 80s / early 90s represented a golden era for literature-based movies. This was an era where movies didn’t have to make you feel good, they just had to make you feel. Ordinary People made me feel terrible when I first watched it and it took a few more views to truly appreciate the subtle hope of it all. Ordinary People is a great book in its own right but the cast of the movie really sell the suburban angst of their characters. I guess you can find this vein throughout my own writing: Great despair without ever losing the luster of hope.

Q. Is there a message in your writing that you would want your audience to grasp? If so, what is it?

This is a tough question because I want my audience to interpret the work on their own. I’ve always written in a poetic way where much is left to the reader to understand. I will elaborate a little on my last answer in that I pay close attention to the relationship between humor and anxiety. My characters literally couldn’t get through their trials and tribulations alone without each other’s support.

Q. Seven is a something of a ‘power’ number in The Redemption of Erâth; it crops up rather frequently. Is there any similar symbolism or talismanic aspect to your own writing?

I like to look to nature and its miraculous creatures for symbolism. The title, Ravens in the Sky, is upon itself a symbol. Ravens follow and find death. Wolves follow ravens to find a meal. The main character, a mage-investigator named Irulen, works with a raven he saves. The raven scouts for him, and he follows the raven. Their relationship is reciprocal and mutualistic.

Thank you for your thoughtful answers, Will—and I can’t wait for people to discover your new book!

Check out Ravens in the Sky here!

Interview: Nancy Chase

Join the Facebook launch party of The Redemption of Erâth: Exile here!

As part of my ongoing launch this week, I’m going to be interviewing guest authors here and on the Facebook page. This will be a great way to discover new and exciting authors, and possibly win free copies of their work! My first, most distinguished guest is the one and only Nancy Chase, author of the fantastic fairytale The Seventh Magpie. Read on to learn more!

Q. What do you write, and what inspired you to start?

I write speculative fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, and fairy tales, usually inspired by myths, dreams, or my own twisted curiosity about “what if?”  I like to mingle some darkness with the beauty, some beauty with the darkness.  Magic, transformation, loss, and every now and then an unexpected glimmer of humor.  

Most of my work falls a little outside of the expected norms for its genre, and that’s intentional.  I want to play with ways for my stories to be unexpected and original while still moving somewhat within the tropes of that genre.  I compare it to the process of writing form poetry.  If, for example, you’re writing a sonnet, you have a set of rigid guidelines about rhythm, line length, and rhyme scheme.  But to express yourself with originality and honesty within that structure, that’s the exhilarating challenge for the writer.  That’s how I feel about writing genre fiction.  

As for what inspired me to start, wow, I don’t even know.  I’ve been writing stories since before I could write.  Literally, I would make little books out of stapled-together pieces of paper and draw pictures and scribble “words” in them, when I was still too young to be able to write real words.  

The first actual stories I remember writing were in second grade—a series of ghost stories—though I may have written others before that that I’ve since forgotten.  I can’t remember a time of my life when I wasn’t somehow creating stories.  I learned to read pretty young, I think by about age four, and books quickly became my favorite thing in the world.  So I guess I started writing simply because I loved reading so much. 

Q. We all know writers love to drink—coffee, tea or worse! When you’re writing, what’s your poison?

Tea all the way, for me.  I never drink coffee and rarely drink alcohol, but I drink tea nearly every day.  I probably have almost 50 different kinds stocked in my kitchen.  My go-to type that I never get tired of drinking is Twinings English Breakfast, but most of my other varieties come from Harney & Sons Fine Teas.  I’m drinking a cup of their fabulous Chai right now.

Q. Do you have a favorite line that you’ve written? If so, what is it?

It’s nothing all that special to the outside eye, but the line, “Quick as a shadow, the Magpie darted over fields and woodlands.  Nimble as moonlight, the horse followed.” from my book The Seventh Magpie is my tiny homage to the great Peter S. Beagle.  As a teenager, I read his wonderful book, The Last Unicorn and found myself inspired by his lavish use of extravagant similes and metaphors.  

At that time in my life I was just starting to be more serious about improving my writing craft.  I was a quiet, careful, somewhat repressed youngster and I’m sure it showed in my writing.  But lines from The Last Unicorn wowed me with their exuberant, over-the-top imagery, like (my favorite):  “Outside, the night lay coiled in the street, cobra-cold and scaled with stars.”  

You can’t get away with that style of writing in every book, but I wanted to include just a hint of it in The Seventh Magpie.  A couple of others I included:  “Her heart lurched like a netted salmon.”  “Small, bright flowers of pain bloomed among the thorns of her spine.”

Q. What are you most known for amongst your friends and family?

Among my friends and family?  Probably for my farming, not (sadly) for my writing!  For the past twelve years, I’ve lived on a small historic farm.  I’ve raised horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens.  I’ve milked cows, sheared sheep, made homemade cheese, soap, bacon, and yogurt.  I’ve spun wool and woven fabric.  I’ve fixed fences, collected eggs, plucked chickens, assisted births, treated wounds, cured illnesses, and attended deaths.  It’s a great lifestyle, being so close to the land and the seasons, raising your own food, and caring for the animals.  But it’s a hard life too, and not a profitable one.  I’m not as young as I used to be, and a knee injury finally let me know I couldn’t do the hard physical labor 365 days a year any more.  So right now I’m in the process of moving off the farm and into a new house closer to where my husband works, so he will no longer have to commute so far every day.  I’ll miss some aspects of the farm, but I’m eager to move on to the next stage of my life where my writing will be able to be my first priority.

Q. Have you ever seen a movie that you thought was better than the book?

I don’t know if it was empirically “better” from a critical standpoint, but I did enjoy the movie Inkheart more than the book of the same name by Cornelia Funke.  I saw the movie first, and really enjoyed some of the visual aspects.  And of course, I fell in love with Great Aunt Elinor’s splendid library and was properly horrified when it was destroyed.  The movie was a fun, magical adventure, but when I read the book later, it fell a little flat for me, perhaps because it was obviously written for a younger age group.  It just didn’t engage me as much as I had thought it would.

I would contrast this with, say, The Golden Compass, which was also a visually appealing film, and also an exciting magical adventure.  But the His Dark Materials trilogy of books by Philip Pullman (of which The Golden Compass is the first) is so much bigger, grander, and more thought-provoking than anything the movie could possibly portray, so the books are clearly better, deeper, broader, and wiser.

Mostly, though, you just have to be happy when a movie doesn’t ruin a favorite book of yours, be satisfied when the film makers do their best to keep what’s important to the original work and don’t make too much of a mess with the things they have to change or leave out.  For example, The Lord of the Rings movies ruined only about three small aspects of the books that I loved.  Out of all that huge trilogy of books and all those long, intricately produced movies, to only wreck three small things that I had loved in the books was quite an achievement, so I loved the movies too.

Another one I can think of like that, from years ago, was Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy.  I read the book first, and when I later heard they had made it into a movie, there was a certain part of the book I just couldn’t see how they could produce in a way that didn’t turn out completely weird and wrong.  But the film makers must have seen that too, because they changed the scene to something different that worked on film and stayed true enough to the gist of the overall story.  So I ended up being impressed that they had made a good choice for the integrity of the film there.

More often, though, when you see a film of a book you enjoyed, you have to brace yourself for a disappointment.  (I’m looking at you, Bag of Bones, by Stephen King, and Horns by Joe Hill!)

Q. Is there a message in your writing that you would want your audience to grasp? If so, what is it?

I explore different themes in different works.  

In The Seventh Magpie, for instance, one of the themes is that sometimes things happen that shatter your world apart, and while it’s perfectly natural to grieve and resist and struggle to put things back the way they were, sometimes there’s just no going back.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t ever be whole and happy again.  It just means you have to allow yourself to let go of the old and be transformed by the new.  

Life is messy and painful and beautiful.  Sometimes, you don’t get the result you want or expect.  Sometimes what you get instead is a new insight or wisdom.  That can be a very hard lesson for most of us to learn, but it can open up possibilities we never would have dreamed of.

Q. Seven is a something of a ‘power’ number in The Redemption of Erâth; it crops up rather frequently. Is there any similar symbolism or talismanic aspect to your own writing?

Well, as you know, seven is a pretty important number in my book The Seventh Magpie too!  For starters, that’s how many magpies there are in the traditional English magpie-counting rhyme that planted the first seeds of an idea for my book.  So I didn’t originally choose seven because it is a power number, although of course it is one.  

In fact, we all instinctively expect fairy tales to be structured in cycles of three.  Three little pigs, three bears, three attempts to solve a problem before the right solution is found.  It turned out to be quite challenging to work with the structure of seven for my book.  But even though three is what people expect, three would not have been sufficient for my story.  

In my book seven represents the sum of reality, the totality of one’s perspective:  up, down, north, south, east, west, and center.  It represents the necessity of persistence, of not giving up, of trying ALL your options and looking at a problem from every angle until you find the right one. 

The Seventh Magpie can, of course, be read as a simple fairy tale adventure story.  But for those who enjoy exploring layers literary symbolism, this book is rife with it!

Thank you for your thoughtful answers, Nancy—and I can’t wait to have you over on Facebook today!

Check out The Seventh Magpie here!

Exile Launches Tomorrow!

Hey everyone! Consider this a last-minute reminder that the sequel to The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation is released tomorrow! Exile will be available on Kindle, iBooks, Nook for just $3.99, and in print for only $12.99.

And, if you come to the Facebook launch event, you could even win copies of the books for free—both digital and in print!

So get ready—the journey of Darkness continues tomorrow!

Exile Launch Announcements

I have two major announcements to make about the release of The Redemption of Erâth: Exile next week. The first, most important thing, is the list of guest authors who will be participating! I'm so excited to be working with such great and talented people, and I can't wait to get started with them on Monday morning.

The second announcement is the grand prize of the week. There will be small prizes and giveaways all throughout the week, but the final prize which will be won by one single participant, is signed copies of all three Redemption of Erâth books (Consolation, Exile & History), as well as a $50 Amazon gift card!

So tell your friends and family, and I can't wait to see you all there!

Monday, February 22: NANCY CHASE, author of the critically-acclaimed The Seventh Magpie, and the upcoming sci-fi epic The Dreamsea Chronicles.
http://www.nancychase.com/

Tuesday, February 23: V.R. LEAVITT, speculative fiction author and host of the review blog Coffee and a Keyboard. Leavitt's first boot, 5 Tales of Transformation, is available now on Amazon!
http://vrleavitt.com/

Wednesday, February 24: ALEXANDRA CORINTH, author, poet and blogger extraordinaire. Alexandra's debut novel, The Stories We Tell, amassed over 200,000 online reads when it was released in 2012.
http://alexandracorinth.com/

Thursday, February 25: NILS VISSER, author of the Wyrde Woods series of dark, urban fantasy novels, as well as the WW2 historic novel, Will's War in Brighton.
http://www.amazon.com/Nils-Visser/e/B00OK5RMSY/

Friday, February 26: ANDY PELOQUIN, dark fantasy author of Blade of the Destroyer and In the Days.
http://andypeloquin.com/

Special Addition: On Monday, there will also be a cover reveal for Wil Bly's brand new novel, Raven's Bane!
http://willbly.com/

History Review

I just checked into Goodreads tonight, and discovered that my giveaway of The Redemption of Erâth: History of Erâth has started to bear some fruit! I have a new review of the book, short but sweet:

This is a prequel to the Redemption of Erath series. It relates a brief but interesting history of this land and the battles between the forces of good and evil that exist there.

They rated it three stars, which I'm honestly pleased with; I knew the History of Erâth book wasn't going to necessarily be a crowd-please—after all, it has minimal plot, and does read like a recounting of events, rather than a cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end.

Still, it's nice to have reviews and recognition of any kind, and I'm glad they found it interesting. Here's to more reviews to come!

www.goodreads.com/review/show/1509102450

Twelve Days to Go!

The twenty-second of February is fast approaching, and with it comes the next chapter in Brandyé's epic journey across the lands of Erâth! When we last saw Brandyé, he was exiled and abandoned on the coast of a dead, black sea, with nothing but his crossbow for survival.

What will happen to him next? Find out how Brandyé will survive in the dangerous lands of Erâth; discover who he will meet; learn more of the history of the world we were first introduced to in The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation! Danger, desolation and adventure awaits!

So come along to the Facebook launch event for The Redemption of Erâth: Exile and meet new authors, ask questions and even win giveaways and prizes! Any and all are welcome, and there will be fun events all week long.

For those of you who wish to preorder the second book, it is now available on Kindle, iBooks and Nook. Preorders aren't currently available for the softcover print edition, but it will start shipping on Monday, February 22 for $12.99.

The Redemption of Erâth: Exile Is Available for Preorder

It gives me great pleasure to announce that The Redemption of Erâth: Exile is now available for preorder on Kindle, iBooks and Nook! If you preorder today, you can enjoy the next chapter of Brandyé’s adventures the moment it’s released on February 22.

It’s been a long road to get here; Exile was originally started in January of 2014, while I was still preparing to publishing the first book, Consolation. But it’s been worth it—multiple edits and versions have passed under my fingers, and it’s only now that I’m satisfied enough with the final story to share it with you all.

To celebrate the release of Exile, I’ll be hosting a week-long Facebook event from February 22 through 26. Attendance is free (obviously), and there will be prizes, giveaways, and guest authors throughout the week, so don’t miss it!

So sign up, preorder, and get ready for a new tale of Darkness and adventure!

Join the Facebook launch event!

Preorder for Kindle, iBooks or Nook

Book Layout Begins

With the final edits for The Redemption of Erâth: Exile wrapping up, I’m starting to look at the internal design of the book. When I published Consolation, I had a publishing company to do all the design work, and I have to say that for the internal design, at least, they did a pretty good job.

This time, though, I’m on my own. I got some practice in when I published the History of Erâth in October, so I know a few things to look out for (for example, good guttering), but since this is a major sequel (the second ‘true’ book in the series), I really want to make sure everything comes out just right. I’m going to try a few different print options—I went for cream paper with History of Erâth, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the stock (it’s a little too thin). I might test white paper, and see if the stock is any better.

I also want an internal design to match the first two books—fire for Consolation, trees and leaves for History. The major theme throughout Exile is mountains, so I’ve designed a couple of black and white mountain silhouettes to try and replicate the feel of the first two books. I use them for Part pages and for Chapter headings, and to separate sections of the book. Below are some examples of what this looks like:

I’d love honest feedback on these; I’m open to changes at the moment, but pretty soon it’s going to have to be fixed and locked in. If there’s room for improvement, please let me know!

First Book Trailer for The Redemption of Erâth: Exile

This is a brief announcement to say that I've completed work on my first ever book trailer for The Redemption of Erâth: Exile. In fact, this is my first book trailer ever, and one of the first videos I've ever made. I apologize if it's a bit rough, but honestly I had a lot of fun making it, and I'm pretty pleased with the results! I'd love to know what you think, and please check out the other books in the series so far, Consolation and History of Erâth.

Thank you all!

Find out more about The Redemption of Erâth, a new dark fantasy series from author Satis!

New Cover Image for Exile

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The original image I found for the cover of The Redemption of Erâth: Exile.

Those of you who've been following me over at www.satiswrites.com will know that I've been struggling to find an appropriate cover image for the second book of The Redemption of Erâth series, Exile. A while ago I found the most spectacular mountain picture on the internet, but try as I might I couldn't find the original photographer, or discover anything about licensing the image. Therefore, as much as I wanted to use it for the cover, I new that I'd never be able to.

So began a very long search for a replacement. I scoured Getty Images, googled for images that were licensed for commercial use, asked friends of photographers, but alas—no luck. The biggest problem was that the picture I had in mind was a perfect representation of a pivotal moment in the book. Near the end, when Brandyé and Elven are slowly making their way through the Reinkrag Mountains, there comes a point where they emerge through the perpetual clouds, ascending to the top of a peak, and look down upon a vast sea of clouds. I simply couldn't imagine a better scene from the book to put on the cover.

After a while, I gave up the search, and began working on other things—editing the second book, continuing the writing of the third, publishing the History of Erâth, and so on. For the first book and the history, I actually used my own photos, so of course licensing issues were avoided altogether. But I simply didn't have the photo I needed for the second book in my possession.

And then, a couple days ago, I was working on updating this site, and I came across, in a search of iStockPhoto, a nearly perfect substitute for the original picture. An incredible mountain sunset, the sun hidden behind snow-capped peaks and turning the sea of clouds a gorgeous, deep violet. And best of all, I could license it for only $12!

So here I give to you my new draft for the cover of The Redemption of Erâth: Exile. Please take a moment, and let me know what you think!

Resuming Work in the New Year

Dear readers,

The past few months have been rough—I won't lie. Writing has been far from my mind, and on some days it's been all I can do to get out of bed. As a result, progress on both Exile and Ancients and Death has stagnated, to the point now where resuming work on them feels daunting, and overwhelming.

However, not all is lost. A new year is a perfect time for the renewal of promises and obligations, and so renew my passion for writing I must. Believe me, I want to write—I just find the effort at times more than I can bear. But the good news is that I'm now in a better frame of mind, and looking forward—for the first time in months—to resuming my work on the ongoing Redemption of Erâth series.

As always, I make no promises as to when anything will materialize, but my most profound hope is that I will have Exile released by Spring, and then focus my time on wrapping up the drafting of Ancients and Death. If I can keep to this timeline, I will be most pleased.

All I ask in the meantime is that you continue to bear with me; writing is no easy task. But write I must, and so write I will. And soon, I'm certain, you will learn the continued adventures of Brandyé Dui-Erâth and his companions.

Many thanks,

Satis

Exile Will Be Delayed

I want to apologize to those of you who've been waiting patiently for the next book in the series, The Redemption of Erâth: Exile. Even with the best of intentions, life has a way of intervening. After publishing History of Erâth in October, I found myself having to take a step back from writing for a little while, and it's surprising how quickly the time passes.

However, things are starting to settle down now, and I expect come the new year I'll be ready to start working again, both on final edits for Exile and continuing the story in Ancients and Death (I'm actually really pleased with the direction the third book is taking at the moment). I know it's been a long time since Consolation was published, and I just ask you to bear with me a little bit longer. My hope is to have Exile ready for publication sometime by February or March, depending on how detailed the edits end up being.

In the meantime, I encourage you to check out History of Erâth, for an insight into the background of the world of Erâth, and how the world became engulfed in Darkness.

Proof in Print

Look what came in the mail!

I want to share a very quick update with you all: the print proof of History of Erâtharrived in the mail on Saturday, and it looks (for the most part) gorgeous! For all the detail in the cover, the image is crisp and sharp, the text is well laid-out, and the iconography (chapter headers, etc.) look fantastic. The only thing I need to fix is the internal resolution of the map image—it’s a little pixelated at the moment.

That’s really all I have right now—it’s looking like we’re well on track for a full release on October 5! Remember, you can already pre-order the Kindle or iBooks version now for only $0.99, by clicking the following links! And if you’d like both the History of Erâth and Consolation for free, just sign up for my newsletter below!

Progress on History

Things are beginning to move fast on the History of Erâth, and I'm getting excited! The print proof of the book is on its way to me as I type this, and the eBook version is available for pre-order on Amazon, iBooks, Smashwords and more! I'm happy with the interior layout design, and I'm hoping against hope that I don't notice too many further errors when I read through the print proof.

Having said that, there are a few updates I wanted to make you aware of. I originally said that I'd be offering the History of Erâth as a free companion book to the Redemption of Erâth series. This is still the case, but I've had to slightly change the way I'm going about it. Because of the nature of Kindle Direct Publishing, I can only run a free offer if I opt for KDP Select. However, if I choose KDP Select, I'm prohibited from distributing the book through any other channels for 90 days, and I don't want this: I'd like it to be available on Apple's iBooks, for example.

As a result, I've had to choose the minimum price possible, which is $0.99. And while you can definitely pay $0.99 for it on Amazon or iBooks, I'm also going to be offering a 100% discount coupon to download the book directly through Smashwords. This will be available throughout October and November, up until The Redemption of Erâth: Exile is released in December.

In the meantime, The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation can still be yours for free by signing up for my monthly newsletter. I've only had a few sign-ups so far, and you're missing out on the start of an epic adventure. On top of that, the discount coupon for History of Erâth is going to go out in the newsletter, so if you do want to grab a copy of History of Erâth for less than $0.99, that'll be your chance to do so!

So go ahead: sign up, get a free book, or pre-order History of Erâth on Kindle or iBooks now! I'm looking forward to sharing the building of the world of Erâth with you all, and it'll give you some great insight into the background of the events set in motion in The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation.

Newsletter and Giveaway

Click here to sign up for my newsletter—and get a free book!

I was talking with a friend the other day about the difficulties of publishing, and the point came up that, often, the people most inclined to write a book (i.e. people who are content to sit alone for hours on end) are also those least inclined to evangelize their own work. It makes marketing your novel a pain in the ass, because frankly all you want to do is sit down and keep writing, but instead you have to advertise, talk, Facebook, post, blog … all the things that it takes to get yourself noticed.

Probably the biggest frustration is that, after all that work, you might end up with nothing to show for it anyway. A handful of sales, a couple of reviews, and negligible exposure. After all, with all the books being published these days, how does one go about getting noticed?

Well, one of the things I've decided to do—inspired by my good writing friend, Nancy Chase—is start a newsletter going. Once a month I'll send out a very brief update on things in the world of Erâth, the road to publication, and any new offers or giveaways that might be going on. I've set up an account with MailChimp, and the first newsletter goes out on October 1.

To give you an incentive to sign up (other than just hearing wonderful words from me!), I'll also be hosting a giveaway: the first thirty subscribers to my newsletter will receive a free Kindle copy of The Redemption of Erâth: Consolation as a gift through Amazon. I'll be running this giveaway throughout the month of September, so you have plenty of time to sign up! The signup form can be found at the bottom of this page, and I'll be including a link in the sidebar of the website to make life easy.

So sign up now, get a free book, and keep up to date on all the goings-on in the world of Erâth!

Sign up here: http://eepurl.com/bxDBX1.