As of 8:00 a.m. this morning, in the Amazon store, Servant is:
Nook just has a Sci-Fi & Fantasy category. It’s #2 there.
Of all the books sold in either store, it’s #91 on Amazon and #23 on Nook.
We luvs BookBub, Precious.
Those who check the progress bars, will notice that I’ve started the first draft of the thriller, which remains nameless. Poor thing. You’ll also notice I haven’t finished the working outline. That’s because sometimes–well, often–I need to do some drafting to get the feel of the story and characters before I finish that working document. And also because story development has never been a linear thing for me.
I did a lot of work on the premise (the story setup) these last few weeks. Ran into a lot of dead ends. However, it was all good. I got snippets of scenes throughout the process. Did a lot of useful research. Developed characters. I wrote a few drafts of another beginning that I realized didn’t feel right. It was telling the wrong story, had the wrong angle. A few days later, I figured out the right angle on the premise. And it is so delicious to me. Then during another work session–letting my mind run while I showered–I got the outline of the first chapter. I give you the first 300 words below. I’m sure they’ll change, but it’s a taste of what’s to come.
CHAPTER 1: Cowboy Donut
Trying to get a straight job as an ex-con was a lovely experience. Kind of like being dragged behind a bus.
No matter how tidy you looked or how sharp your resume was, it all came down to one question: “And what were you in for?” Frank knew it would be stupid to lie about that. First of all, he was trying to go straight. Second, any employer who didn’t have a carrot for a brain was going to run a background check. So there was no use trying to hide.
Frank was now sitting in the back office of Cowboy Donut in Rock Springs, Wyoming across from Mary Rogers, the sun-wrinkled owner. She was probably in her fifties and had two-tone hair that seemed to take its inspiration from a skunk or badger: all bleached up on top and dark underneath.
Ms. Mary had just asked the question. Frank had just dropped his bomb—voluntary manslaughter, a security job gone bad. He’d been protecting the wrong kind of noun for the wrong kind of people.
Ms. Mary narrowed her eyes. “What else am I going to find on your RAP sheet?”
“That’s it,” Frank said. “Just the one unfortunate incident.”
“Murder is a pretty big incident.”
“Manslaughter,” he corrected. “Not murder.”
She made a noncommittal sound and looked down to study his resume a bit more. Like maybe something new would pop up there.
This was always the fun part, waiting for the reply. First interviews were like first dates. And Frank had basically told his date he had an Ebola monkey virus that would make her eyes bleed, and would she now like to kiss? He’d done this now a couple dozen times and knew the best thing was just to be quiet.
Poor Frank. And in just a few pages things are going to get so much worse when he finds two old associates waiting for him at his house.
Every April, the Whitney Awards holds a gala to announce the year’s best novels by LDS authors. But how do they find and select the novels to consider?
They start with you, dear reader.
The Whitney committee asks the public to let them know about novels by LDS authors they like. A panel of judges reads those novels that receive 5 or more reader nominations and select what they feel are the top 5 in each genre as finalists. Then the Whitney Academy, a group of “industry professionals, including authors, publishers, bookstore owners, distributors, critics, and others,” vote on those finalists. The winners receive a Whitney Award. It’s like the motion picture Academy Award, but for LDS authors.
Back in 2009, readers nominated my debut, Servant of a Dark God. The judges made it a finalist. And it won its category!
(And there was much rejoicing.)
This year, I released Curse and Raveler, books 2 and 3 in that series. Both are eligible. If you liked Curse, nominate Talen, Sugar, Harnock, and the gang to be considered for the Whitney. If you liked Raveler, give the characters another chance and make a second nomination.
Don’t delay. The more nominations the better. You only have until December 31st!
Here’s to hoping the Dark God makes another appearance.
Because a number of folks have emailed or posted asking this question, I figured I should address it in a post.
This edit of SERVANT was signficant, but it involved mostly line edits, copy edits, resequencing, and one important adjustment and addition.
Line edits are things that make individual sentences or paragraphs read more clearly. I made line edits to almost every page. I think most readers won’t notice these. But then that’s the point.
Copy edits catch small things like typos and misspellings. There were a number of maddening copy issues that were introduced into the manuscript in the publisher’s version and others that weren’t flagged. I fixed a number of these and then had two copy editors read over the manuscript to find more. No book is perfect. I’m sure there are still some gremlins lurking in the text. But we caught a lot of the little buggers.
Resequencing is moving chapters or sections around and does affect the experience. The biggest resequence was switching the first eight chapters back to the original order I intended. This is an important change and will have a large effect on the reader for the first quarter of the book. Then there were three other smaller sections inside the story that needed to be moved around to make the chronology clearer and improve the suspense.
The line, copy, and resequencing edits make up the bulk of the edits. But I did adjust and add a short section to the ending immediately after the climax to clarify a few things that should have been revealed in the first version and that lead into book two.
What does this all mean?
It means that while this is a superior version of the tale, the base story remains the same. I care about the stories of Sugar, Talen, Argoth, Hunger, and the dilemmas they face. So I did not change their tales. However, I did significantly change the experience of those tales for the reader.
If you have already read SERVANT, you know everything that happens. However, you will want to get a hold of a copy of the new version to review the updated ending for the new information it includes. To avoid spoilers and confusion, I will not be releasing the ending in a separate document. But if you sign up for my release notification, I’ll let you know when I have my release sale so you can get it cheap.
One final note. Because I feel this is a superior version of the story, and because I do not want readers to be confused about which version to read, I’m releasing it with a different title and different cover art. It will be called “Servant” and include the series label “The Dark God Book 1.”
I think readers are going to be very pleased with this version. I know I am. And then we can move on to “Curse,” the next in the series, followed by “Glory.”
Mark your calendars. Just got word from the folks at PodCastle. The audio version of “Bright Waters” is set for release on April 7th! You’ll be able to get it then. Remember: Everything on PodCastle is free.
Again, this is my story about a fearsome Dutch trapper, a spunky Irish woman stolen as a girl in an Abenaki raid, and a small Iroquois tattoo…
Just go to the PodCastle site. Enjoy!
Just a reminder. The CONduit convention begins on Friday. I’ll be holding a 2-hour workshop on Saturday titled “The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories” from 2 PM – 4 PM.
The rest of the day on Saturday is loaded with a number of great panels featuring authors such as:
If you look at the schedule, you’ll see sessions on
You authors, remember there’s a writers/publishers/editors social Friday night at 10 PM at the hotel bar.
Hope to see you there!
Folks, this book was a blast to write. I feel like I did when I wrote “Loose in the Wires.” Here are my stats.
I’m surprised at my drafting speed on this one. I’m usually between 500-600 words per hour. Of course, there were a few spots where I ran into huge gaping holes in my invention. For example, at the end of June I finished the climax. But I couldn’t write the last two chapters, which usually take no time at all, because I realized I knew nothing about the criminal justice system. I knew TV generalities, but not the kind of detail I need. Not enough to envision the last 5,000 words. So all my writing time in July was spent researching. There were a couple other invention stops earlier on. So that’s my excuse. Let’s hope the next one goes faster so I’m not totally embarassed.
If I were full time, I could have finished this in 10 weeks. As it was, I started drafting in January. My goal is to write two books a year. I’m not going to make it at this speed. Let’s see how book 2 goes.
Here are my next steps. I’m going to let BP sit for three to four weeks to cool. I’ll then read it and revise. Then it goes out to my readers. I hope to be shopping this one around by the end of September.
In the meantime, I’ve already been noodling around with the ideas for book two in this series. My goal is to finish the working outline while this one’s cooling off.
Comments are closed.
Awesome! Are you seeing an uptick in the rankings for your other books?
Yes, the sales of Servant has lifted the sales of Curse and Raveler, but I expect it will take a few weeks to get the full effect because it will take folks that long to get around to reading their copy of Servant.
I’m probably going to keep Servant priced low for the next few months to see how well the sampler strategy works to move readers through the series.
I don’t think there’s been much crossover to Bad Penny, but we’ll see how that goes. I put a preview in the back of each of the Dark God books. I expect that will have some good effect. I plan on putting a similar preview in the back of Bad Penny for Servant for the thriller readers who also cross over into epic fantasy.
Awesome news, John! Happy to see the promotion is having an impact. BTW, all three Dark Gods novels plus Bad Penny are in my virtual to-read pile. Looking forward to each!
Geez, too bad I don’t have a 100 books. You’re an easy sell. (grin)
Hope they bring you many hours of pleasure.