Starting to Blog about Indie Books!

Here's why: I want to support my fellow Indie authors. People who don't write, or who work with a main-stream publisher, have no idea how hard and isolating it can be to do it all on your own. I do.

First of all, we write for thousands upon thousands of hours - fine tuning our first draft word vomit into something beautiful. Then we design (or have the cash to pay someone else to design, which I don't) an eye-catching cover that is both appealing and embodies the theme. Finally we publish and promote until we have nightmares.

Recently, as part of that promotion nightmare, I've been contacting book bloggers and reviewers. It has been a wonderful experience, and if you haven't done that yet I suggest you jump off of twitter and find a blogger/reviewer! These are people who receive a free copy of your book (usually via email in ebook format) and then they read and review it. Don't be surprised if you don't get all 5 star reviews.

It's very hard to do it all yourself. Did I mention that? For instance, I whittled down my first novel - Shattered - because main-stream publishers want fantasy to end around 100k words. Mine was 120k at first. I shaved it down to about 105k. One review, from The Mind Palace, said it felt rushed and could be lengthened. I know that's just one person's opinion, one that hasn't been shared by anyone else, but it says something I agree with. Don't try to fit your book into a box. Had I gone with my initial intent, instead of carving it up for the big name publishers who rejected me, perhaps that 3 star review would have been a 5 star one.

I also entered my cover into a design contest, from which I received helpful feedback and thanks to which I redesigned the fonts and font colors. I appreciate all the help I can get!

That's why I'm now offering book reviews/blogs. If you're an Indie author and your work is fantasy, paranormal anything, historical fiction, or something along those lines - no erotica, please - then email me your book in PDF or some sort of ebook format. legendsofrune at gmail. I will read and give an honest review. If you're interested, we can trade books for review. I'm down with that.

My primary job is and will always be writing. This is just a side hobby that hopefully will benefit the Indie author community. I'm glad I chose to do things my own way, even more so with books 2 and 3 and the next one in a new genre, and all the others I have planned.

If I can help, I'd be happy to! :)

Book trailers... why do they suck? Part II

I'll tell ya why they suck. It's because they're effing hard to make! I mean, as an author, I have no visual representations at hand to show the world. I'm not an artist of that medium. I had to find free pictures and videos, or ask permission to use people's artworks because I'm an indie author and still mostly unknown.

I'm hoping the book trailers will change all that. I said that I was using the trailer for Iced by Karen Moning as my level of excellence meter, but I don't have a budget and I just did my best with what I had. I hope you like it. If you do, would you mind rating it and giving me a thumbs up?

If you haven't read the book yet, please do. It's in ebook and paperback format at amazon.com. It's a free ebook if you rent it with Amazon Prime. If you buy it it's $2.99 for the ebook and no more than $9.99 for the paperback. (Amazon changes prices, so it's $9.99 minus change.)

Buy it here.

Here they are! Enjoy! The first one is the short version. Second one is the long version. Make sure you check out the amazing work of the artists at deviantart who were so kind as to let me use their work.