Tag: book releases

OH HEY I HAVE A BOOK OUT

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Meet the Lidwells Cover F Outside 2

MEET THE LIDWELLS! A Rock n’ Roll Family Memoir

“Rule number one in the music business: never start a band with any members of your family. 

Sure, it’ll start off just fine, everyone having fun, with big dreams of success and gold records, but then you realize you’re stuck in a stinking, too-small tour bus with your siblings for the fifth year running, and your brother hates you. Next thing you know, the band implodes just as it’s reaching its highest success, your family won’t talk to you anymore, the press is having a field day ripping you to shreds, and you’ll need to start your career all over again as a solo act. If you dare to at that point.

Rule number two in the music business: rules were made to be broken.” — Thomas Lidwell

Meet the Lidwells! is the story of four siblings and two cousins who start a band as teenagers and achieve success beyond their wildest dreams. But while they consistently top the charts with their irresistibly catchy tunes, they’re also fighting their own demons: perfectionism, disenchantment, addiction, exhaustion, sexism…and figuring out how to become an adult in front of millions of fans.

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NOW AVAILABLE AT SMASHWORDS!
ON SALE ALL THIS WEEK FOR ONLY $1.50!
Come check it out!

The Balance of Light is now available!!

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Book 3 in the Bridgetown Trilogy is available at all fine e-book retailers online, including:

Smashwords

Kobo

Barnes & Noble

[Not on Amazon yet, but the Kindle format is available at the Smashwords site.]

 

 

 

 

And don’t forget, you can also shop indie!  My e-books are available at numerous independent bookstores that sell them via Kobo.  Here’s a few great local Bay Area stores for starters:

Books Inc

Green Apple Books [Our neighborhood indie store, one of the best around!]

Copperfields

Out this Friday!

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tbol-170201-yellow-2a

Woo! It’s finally DONE!

The Balance of Light, the third book in the Bridgetown Trilogy, will be released as an e-book from Smashwords and other nifty e-book retailers this Friday, 10 February!

This one was the culmination of a hell of a lot of years of writing, a nearly five-year hiatus, and close to five years of revision and rewriting.  Ten years ago I wasn’t even sure I’d get this far, but here we are…three books released out into the wild, and all done DIY.

It’s been one hell of a ride, folks.  Sure, I’m glad it’s over and I can now, finally, dedicate the majority of my time to new projects.  But right now I’m just feeling a bit of pride that I believed in this project and saw it through to the end, however long it took.  I learned a hell of a lot along the way — the writing and publishing knowledge that will stay with me throughout my writing career.  I met a lot of cool friends and fellow writers as well.

Yeah, I think I’m gonna stick with this gig.  It’s grown on me. 🙂

Editing Complete!

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(SPOILERS) The last page of the third book in the trilogy.

Oof.  Note to self: as much as I’m happy that I’ve FINALLY finished galley editing The Balance of Light, in hindsight I probably should not have stormed through the last six (albeit short) chapters in one marathon session last night.  I climbed into bed and passed out around 11 last night.  Exhausted, but happy.

That said…one MAJOR hurdle has finally been overcome!  TBoL was a beast in need of taming, and over the last few months I did my best to do exactly that.  Most of the prose that got the axe contained a lot of chaff to begin with — a lot of lengthy phrases that were culled down to much shorter sentences, a lot of visual cues that were cut, a lot of filler words that weren’t needed.  As this edit took place purely on paper, I have no idea how many words I cut, but I’m sure I cut a lot of them.

So what’s next?

Well, next is the physical printing of The Persistence of Memories.  I have a galley copy here that’s been marked up and everything, I just need to clean up the e-book and prepare the physical copy for release.

Then, one more time with TBoL: create the e-book and physical copy for release.

And that’s it?  No more work on the Bridgetown Trilogy?  I can put it to bed?

Well, not quite.  I have something special that I’d like to prepare for a March 2017 release; something to celebrate it being twenty long years since that first writing session that started it all.  A special e-book release, maybe with some fun extras?  And maybe shiny collector’s edition versions of the physical releases with extra stuff?  Who knows.  But it’s gonna be fun!

And then I’ll have to think of what to work on next!

The Persistence of Memoiries is NOW AVAILABLE!

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We interrupt our A to Z Challenge Meme with some important news:

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The Persistence of Memories
 is now available!!

Here are some fine online establishments where you can purchase the ebook:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Smashwords

Don’t forget to support your local bookstore!  If they sell e-books, go ahead and download from their website!  Here are a few of my favorite local bookstores where you can buy it:

Copperfield’s Books

Green Apple Books

Books Inc

 

Thank you for your support! 🙂

 

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A DIVISION OF SOULS is also STILL FREE!  Want to get caught up first before jumping in?  Head over to B&N, Kobo or Smashwords (or hey, even NoiseTrade) and download the first book, and your reading list is good to go!

Returning Back to the Fold!

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My life over the last month and a half.

FINALLY!

Yes, I have returned from the shadows and back to the land of the living!  I’ve been so busy as of late, it took me a few days to realize that I didn’t have any pressing OMG deadlines weighing me down!

The last few days have been spent mostly doing project clean-up and getting everything back to some semblance of order.  This meant an often precarious balance of Day Jobbery-related fires to put out (and there were many), doing the post-production and release prep for The Persistence of Memories, and generally just taking time to BREATHE again.

So now that it’s midweek and my brain has stopped spinning some, what do I have on tap for the close future?

Glad you asked!  A partial list:

— The Persistence of Memories to be released in ebook on 4/15!  WOO!  It’s available directly from Smashwords in all kinds of formats, including Kindle, for $4.99.  And for a brief time, you can buy the first book ABSOLUTELY FREE!  Two for the price of one!  [Note: As before, since the formatting of the physical book takes more time, I’ll let you know as soon as I can when it’ll be available through CreateSpace/Amazon.]

— I shall be taking part in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge this year, here at WtBT!  It’s a fun blogging exercise that I’ve done a few years in the past on my LJ, and thought I’d give it a go here.  I was thinking of doing an A-to-Z of the Mendaihu Universe, partly to get me to talk about it more (as I’m sure you’re all wondering, what the hells is he talking about in these books?), and partly to get me back into the blogging habit.  Hope you enjoy what I have in store!

— And speaking of blogging, I’m still planning making good with my ‘alternate plan’ for the Walk in Silence project by turning it into an ongoing series over at the WiS blog.  This series will start the third full week of April (around the 20th or so).  Stay tuned!

— Returning to the whiteboard schedule.  I purposely put it aside a few months ago when I chose to focus solely on the TPoM revision/edit/remaster/release, and now it’s high time to return to it.  Which means more practice words at 750 Words, more WiS entries, and maybe even some words and music elsewhere.  Truly looking forward to that.

 

So yes!  Definitely looking forward to returning back to the writing and the other projects.  It’s going to be a fun and creative summer, that’s for sure!

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Ahh…now that everything’s back to nor–

TPoM: Cover Revealed! Coming Soon!

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It’ll look a bit better when I redo it with the real non-watermarked picture I just downloaded from Shutterstock not that long ago. The picture creator is Marcel Clemens, whose collection on that website is full of lovely spacey images.

The Persistence of Memories will be released mid-April! Stay tuned for more info as we get closer to the release date! 🙂

Still Editing, Still Busy

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No, really, I’m getting stuff done! Honest!

Hey there, everyone!  Lots of movement here in Spare Oom.  The Day Job has been keeping me busy, though I’ve been sneaking a few minutes here and there to edit.

At this point, it looks like the release of The Persistence of Memories will more than likely be end of March rather than February…I do apologize for the delay, but this edit run is taking a bit longer than expected.  I’m still about a quarter of the way through, but I’m making good headway.  I’m giving myself a bit more of a buffer so I can do the formatting and the cover, and so I can release both the e-book and the physical version at the same time.

I’ll have more to blog about my editing processes to date, but that will be after everything is done.  Yay, future blog posts!  And thank you for your patience, as always!  I promise, it’ll be worth the wait.  This one’s still my favorite of the three.

But seriously, I’ve been taking extra steps to make sure I get all this work done on time and with minimal distraction.  I’m still utilizing the habit of closing down all web browsers when I’m not using them for something important (like checking my word choice against the Merriam-Webster website).  I’m even doing this during the day when I’m editing during slow moments, as you can see from the above picture.  Making good on my plan to scale back on my internet usage in general has worked out just fine.  I’m more productive and less distracted.*   Once I post this, I’ll be closing down the browsers again.

* – Okay, I may have returned to my FreeCell playing habits, but the trade-off is worth it.  A five-minute game is a lot better than a half hour of Twitter.

Oh — and if you’re curious, here’s the wallpaper I currently have.  I took this out Spare Oom window with my nice camera during a rather spectacular sunset late last year.

End of the day, 8 October 2015
End of the day, 8 October 2015

HOLY CATS! I didn’t expect that!

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So here I am on vacation at my old New England stomping grounds, and only just now have I been able to pull out my laptop and let you all know some nifty news!  As of today, A Division of Souls is a New and Notable Book on NoiseTrade Books.  I thought that was kinda neat that the lovely people at that site contacted me to ask if I’d be interested in such placement, so how could I turn it down?

[For those unfamiliar, NoiseTrade is a website that features e-books and music as a name-your-price setup.  I’ve used the site over the last few years for some great tunage and readage.  They’re also an excellent avenue for your self-published books.  You can find it here if you are so interested.]

So yeah, the unexpected moment?  Logging on to see how many hits and downloads.  Here I was, thinking that I’d get maybe a dozen or so people interested…maybe twenty or so at most.

As of about ten minutes ago, the download count is at 114.

Seriously, I had no idea it was going to get that much interest.  Granted, it got a flashy moment on the top graphic of the site, so the very first thing you see on the page is ADoS, in all its mysterious blue glory.  Which basically means I’m an impulse buy!  Hee!

Seriously, folks.  All of you who downloaded the book and are now checking out this here blog, y’all are too cool, and I thank all of you.  Once I am back from my vacation, I will do my best to keep you all informed and entertained with the upcoming newsletter (which I promise won’t have the frequency of, say, the Guided by Voices discography).

Thank you again.  I’m literally full of squee right now. 🙂