I dropped some books off at House of Hero's Comics in Oshkosh. Scott had radically redesigned the store since I was last there. The coolest change was building new book racks on wheels so they can be moved out of the way for movies and special events.
It's a great store. Very comfortable and warm place to shop if you are in the area.
Heard from a couple of readers today. Both loved the book. One finished to discover it was 3 in the morning. The other, a trained martial artist, wondered how much research I put in to get the sword fighting right. The answer is, I made it up. My main inspiration was the 2003 movie, The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. I recall, on the DVD extras, writer / director Takeshi Kitano said he wanted the sword fights to be realistic and be over within moments of starting. It made sense, so I brought that idea into Gladiator Girl.
Gladiator Girl is on the Kindle!
Amazon has some nice tools for prepping Kindle versions of manuscripts, actually it's a .mobi version. Combined with the new Scrivener 2.0 that integrates the KindleGen command line application into it's manuscript compiling interface, it was a tweak-it-until-it's-perfect (but it never is!) dream to set up.
The Nook, not so much. I'm still working on that one.
Wow, that was fast. Here's the link, Gladiator Girl
The first 5 people to write a review, and send me their shipping address and shirt size, win a Gladiator Girl t-shirt (when they are available). It has to be a real review (I'm the judge), it doesn't have to be positive. The order of the winning entries will be determined by Amazon's 'Newest First' review sorting.
Gladiator Girl is available, now, from the Chimaera Ranch store at CreateSpace. To purchase, click the link in the right sidebar, or click here, Buy Gladiator Girl. Within the next three weeks it will also be available on Amazon.com. I'll add an Amazon link to the sidebar when that happens.
By december 15, it should be available a Powerhouse Comics in Appleton, WI, and House of Heros in Oshkosh, WI. I will also have a box of books in my trunk to sell.
The next step is to prepare the ebook versions for Kindle, Nook and other ebook readers. And then, the audio version.
Here it is: the Gladiator Girl cover.
;)
Cover Art
Lucy Star is a hot, up and coming rookie guardian in the sport of Blood Battle. A sport built around the new genetic procedure that allows girls, and only girls, to survive extraordinary injuries up until the age of 25, when they stop growing.
Her life has complications most people can only dream of having: Her budding fame catches the eye of Jayzen, favored son of the wealthiest family in the city, entangling her in his and his sister Francine’s fortunes. She struggles with career and relationships, and doesn’t recognize the spark of love growing right under her nose.
But she has a dark past: a family history and childhood she had escaped from when she was 14. With the help of her best friend Charlotte—the only person who ever knew her secret—she had successfully put that life behind her. It was all but forgotten.
Then one day, her younger brother, who she hadn’t seen since he was 10 years old, walks back into her life, harboring a dark secret of his own, one that threatens to suck her back into the past she thought she had escaped, and destroy her and everyone she loves.
I thought it was ready back in July, but I was wrong. It needed another draft. The Raven King on WriterCafe.org kindly pointed out that I had too much exposition. Fixing that turned into a major revision, one I'm much happier with.
The cover is ready to go. I've tried to catch as many CreateSpace gotchas as I can before submitting. I'm waiting on notes on the MS from a couple of readers. Once they are incorporated, it's off to SquareSpace.
My novel is finished. On Tuesday at two in the afternoon, I crossed off the last item from my list of things I wasn't satisfied with, then printed a few copies for friends who read earlier drafts. Unless they find some show-stopper errors, it's ready to send to Amazon's CreateSpace. I'll be self-publishing for now, or perhaps forever. A friend has taken up the challenge of finding a publisher and agent.
By Tuesday evening, I was shocked to realize I was actually suffering separation anxiety. I couldn't concentrate; I didn't even have the attention span to watch mindless TV, and I couldn't sleep. I ended up spending all night figuring out how to make an epub version of the manuscript.
This project isn't done. Since I'm self-publishing, I need to design a cover. That will be my project for next week. (The book layout is finished. The second-to-last draft was combined with making the book layout, and the last draft was combined with a read through of the layout PDF.)
The title is, Gladiator Girl. It's an alternate reality, action-sports, love story. It is and it isn't exactly what you would expect from that title. Oh, and the author is R. H. Watson. You haven't heard of me, yet (You can't do this without thinking positively.)
Working on fifth draft and laying out book for Amazon print on demand.
