Just thought I would make an update here.  The second book is coming along well.  Hopefully, it will get done this year.

On another note, my computer and my wife's  computer both went out.  She lost her boot drive and my operating system crapped out.  Both simple problems but a series of weird circumstances has made it ridiculously hard to fix the simple things.   The computers are 7 years old, so this is to be expected.  The good news is that no information lost, just a delay as I get my house in order, so to speak.

In other news, my Amazon KDP Select obligation just ran out so I am now in the process of publishing to Barnes and Nobles, Create Space (printed books) and Apple.  B&N is as easy as Amazon.  Create Space wasn't so bad, though I have some unresolved questions.  I now understand why other Kindle books charge $15 for a one-off printing.  The less said, the better.

Apple is really tricky.  They prefer you use an aggregator so their "help" isn't very helpful.  If you don't have a macintosh it is non-existent.  Still, it seems there are online converters to the ePub format and there's a service I have heard of called "Macinclouds" where you rent an on-line macintosh.  I think I can use this to publish through Apple, but we'll see.

Merry Christmas everyone!  Just thought I would give out a status for those who were interested.  The bad news, no sequel this year.  The good news is that the story is still cooking away.  Maybe by next year I'll have something I can publish.  I am hoping that when I do I can have it proof read a bit more than my initial book was.  Thanks for reading!

I found a new feature in Kindle.  Apparently, readers can report errors in books.  This, in turn, gets fed back to the writer by Amazon Kindle.  A bit embarrassing, but there is no point in pretending my book doesn't have mistakes...  The feedback I got was very specific and allowed me to delete several repeated paragraphs!  Maybe one day I can pretend!

Anyway, version 6 is published.  Once Amazon reviews the changes it will go live.  It also has a new cover.  I previously mentioned that I bought some royalty free photos.  Well, I edited them a bit and I think its pretty decent.  I wanted to mix in a cityscape but after several wrist breaking hours with the photo editor, the changes weren't saved.  A bit disappointing.  I used Cyberlinks PhotoDirector and it doesn't allow saving while removing backgrounds and you can't edit the foregrounds once isolated.  Still what I have is better.

As a side note, the original dragon cover is actually a wooden carved figure I own.  It was a gift from my wife.  Not really a realistic dragon or what I picture my main character to be, however I thought it was decent as concept art.  Its actually a varnished brown color but I thought grey scale hid several flaws better.

I downloaded some very nice royalty free pictures. I also bought a photo editing program. I am hoping that I can get a nice shiny new cover out of it. I may even put a rear cover on if I figure out how. I have gotten a bit of criticism on the cover and while I didn't think it was that bad... I admit its not that good. That's what you get for doing a book on a budget, I guess.

So the cover I can fix fairly inexpensively. Not sure what to do about the spelling and grammar except go over it and over it until I catch most of the errors. The commercial service I saw to do this for you was about $2000 for a book this size. Ouch! It's going to be a long while before I even make that much.

Anyway. the second book is started. Not far in, but started. I have some ideas on the cover too, however it will be while before it matters.

One of my readers notified me I had duplicated text in the book... and told me approximately where.  I have now updated the story and it should be on Amazon within 12 hours.  Please welcome revision 5!

I have been arranging to sell my house and move.  Things are falling in place and hopefully, I can get back to work on the sequel instead of spending all my time organizing and packing.

I had been making regular improvements to the books and feeling very proud of it.  Then I downloaded the book from Amazon and realized it still had the original version.  I have unpublished the book entirely and re-published it.  Hopefully, this will work.  It should be on version 4.  I will also try to get in touch with Amazon's service people and figure out if I am using their upload system incorrectly.

Just finished editing and uploading a new revision of the book using the free version of Grammarly.  It caught a lot of errors so I am hopeful that it will be a better reading experience.

Apparently there is a website called Shelfari that has extra information about a book.  Kinda cool, though I am not convinced anyone actually looks at it.  Anyway, I had fun filling it in.

http://www.shelfari.com/books/38398686/A-Prison-of-Worlds-(The-Chained-Worlds-Chronicles-Book-1)

-Published - 01/06/2015, 12:44 AM

Thanks to the reader that reviewed the book I knew it had to be proofread more thoroughly.  January 4th 2014 I uploaded a revised version of the book.  The first 1/3 had been corrected.  I am hoping for more from my proofreader soon.

Publish Date - 01/05/2015, 6:43 PM