Moving Forward

Two posts in two weeks? Guess that means I'm back to work...

Yes, things are moving forward on the Crow Series again - and by forward I mean, I've finally started editing Release and *drumroll please* I've plotted out the final two books, settled on their titles and started writing the first few chapters of the fourth book.

Why have I started writing the fourth book before I've finished the third? Honestly, as I've mentioned before, the third book got complicated and there were aspects and sections of it that didn't sit right with me. It is a large part of why it has taken me so long to get it out to you. While trying to figure out how to fix it, I ended up outlining book four and realized I needed to move things around so they made more sense - so I've written the first few chapters of Curse, and everything is now fitting together nicely - YAY!

In other news, I haven't removed Crow from Smashwords yet but I have uploaded it to Draft2Digital to get the process moving forward on Crow going perma-free on Amazon. Though I've reported the lower price, they haven't price matched it yet, so if anyone is interested in giving it a push forward, please help report the lower price to Amazon through the Tell Us About A Lower Price section at the bottom of Crow's product description page. The free copies are available through Kobo, Oyster, Inktera (aka Page Foundry), Scribd, and Tolino. I have to fix a few things and it'll also be on iBooks in the near future. And as I said, it is also still available for free on Smashwords for the time being.

In other news, Shift is free in ebook form on Amazon again this weekend. Unfortunately, due to a stressful and hectic day at my JOB yesterday, I wasn't able to put together this blog post or announce the free days until it had already started but it will continue to be free until the end of today - so if you've been wanting to read it and haven't gotten a copy yet, you can get it for free HERE.

Speaking of Shift, someone mentioned recently about finding editing errors in the book. I work very meticulously to try and cleanly edit my books to the best of my ability. Since I'm not currently in a position to hire out the editing, finding errors that have slipped through the cracks haunts me. If you've read the book and found anything incorrect, please bring it to my attention so I can remedy it A.S.A.P.
I hate having errors. They must be fixed!!!! Ahhhhhrrrrggggg!!!

Okay, enough drama. Time to get back to work.

Slow progress is better than none...

I've been doing a great deal of thinking about the Crow Series lately and have made a few new decisions (for those of you wondering about my cryptic social media post the other day.)

I still haven't picked an official date for publication, and unfortunately have pushed it back to sometime this Fall. For various reasons, the least of which is Conner and Denora hijacking my story and taking it in a different direction than I originally intended, the third book has been a lot harder to put together than the first two. I've also been very busy with other projects that have sucked up most of my free time the past few months. However, I hate that this book has been delayed so long and I've put my other projects on a temporary hiatus while I attempt to get Book Three finished for all of you. That was my first major decision.

The second was finally settling on a new title, since I'll be using Curse for Book Four. The third Crow book is now called Release. If you remember from my past posts, I choose the name for the Crow books based on aspects of the story that don't always become apparent until the end, but I choose words that can have more than one meaning - as in "to shift" into something else (shape-shifter), or to move and change. In this case, Release as in "to liberate and set free" or "to let out" like a release of emotion or to release a wail of pain (no I'm not giving you hints. You'll have to read it to figure it out muhahahaha!)

I've also updated the formatting on the ebook versions of the first two books. It looks cleaner and has updated links in the back, as well as adding a sneak peek to Shift at the end of Crow. I'll be adding a similar sneak peek to the end of Shift once Release is ready.

I've also decided to finally take Crow off Smashwords and move it to Draft 2 Digital. I've always hated Smashwords formatting and have never sold anything there. The whole reason I uploaded it to that site was with the intention of making the first book permanently free but Amazon has never recognized the free version on Smashwords to price-match so having it there has been completely useless. I've heard good things recently about Draft 2 Digital and will be trying it out soon.

If your ears perked at Crow being perma-free, yes it will happen, just don't know when. For the time being I have set Crow back up to its original price of $2.99 until I get it all worked out.

As long as the editing doesn't get derailed, I'm hoping to have Release finished by the end of August, but I'll say September just to be safe. I apologize for making you all wait so long and I hope you feel it was worth it when it finally comes out.

Thanks for reading.