News for the Week of 9.13.13: All the Things!

Hello, dear friends and readers!

I cannot believe two weeks have passed since the Kickstarter closed. It's been a crazy last month and a half for me, and I am late on informing the world of several things.

First: I will be at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Conference from September 20-22. On the 20th, I'll be one of many authors signing books. Come on down! You don't need a conference registration to come buy books (or you didn't last time I went). On the 21st, I'll be giving a workshop on cover copy for the indie author. You DO need to register for the conference to attend that. :-)

Second! One of my authors' first books with Carina launched in August (link here). It's called The Adorned, and it's a male/male fantasy romance. I won't apologize for that, because that's what the author writes and loves, but I will say that it is to me first and foremost a great fantasy, with incredible world building and beautiful prose. Yes, there's a love story (and it's a great one), and yes, that love story is between two men. But this story deserves to be read without preconceptions, because it's extraordinarily well written (if you don't believe me, read the reviews). If you're into fantasy, amazing prose, and great books in general, you should check it out.

Third! Wattpad BLEW UP for about the last 30 days before finally cooling off last night. There are now nearly 14,000 people following me there. That number boggles my imagination. I do not understand what it is to be able to click a button and send a message to 14,000 people, other than very, very cool. I have a lot of thoughts bubbling on Wattpad, but they deserve their own post. I'll share them soon.

Fourth! I have fun projects on the way for the fall. Last year I wrote Nadya Skylung and the Cloud Pirates during NaNoWriMo, and I think it's my best work to date. I owe The Unlikely Candidates a debt of gratitude for inspiring this year's crazy fall project, which I'm very excited about and which I have been doing a boatload of reading in preparation for (and which, I should note, will not impinge at all on the schedule for Soulwoven---this is a necessary precondition of its existence). I don't want to say too much for fear of jinxing it (and also because I may fail entirely in executing it---that's part of the magic of the crazy fall project). I'll also be writing a scary story in a marathon on Halloween, possibly alone and possibly at the same time as other writers.

So in short, I should have more good stuff for you soon.

Much love and thanks for your patience. I now have to go catch a plane to Wyoming.
-Jeff

P.S. The front range of Colorado is flooding. I grew up there and it means a lot to me. You can help it react and recover here.

News for the week of 12.5.12: Falling off the Front Page, Switching Gears on Revisions, and Trying New Things on Wattpad

I've started writing weekly newsletters to my fans on Wattpad, of whom there are now 92. So that those of you without Wattpad accounts can get in on the action, I'm also going post similar updates on my blog. You can also sign up to receive them via e-mail here.

Evening all!

Less than three weeks to the solstice, and in my part of the world, you can sure tell. But the Christmas tree is cut and put up, and I only broke one bulb when putting out the lights this year, and eggnog and peppermint ice cream are freely available in the grocery store, so I figure on the whole, it’s all worthwhile. :-)

Right. News.

I wrote a blog post on NaNoWriMo for the publisher I work for this week. You can find it here. I also put up some advice for college writers on my blog.

Soulwoven notched another 19,000 reads and 60 votes last week, but yesterday, it fell off the front page of Wattpad’s Featured books, where a lot of my readers were finding it. There was a corresponding massive drop-off in the number of reads it’s getting.

So to keep things moving with it, I need some help.

Right now it’s ranked #127 in Fantasy. I think it can hang in the Top 25. Maybe even the Top 10. If those of you with Wattpad accounts can take the time go to through and vote for every chapter you liked, and you share the book with your friends and fans and get them to do the same, I bet we can get it there.

Thanks in advance. :-)

In other news, I experimented this week with doing first-page critiques for people in the Share Your Story club on Wattpad. It was fun, and people seemed to enjoy it, so I plan to do it again. In the future, I’ll reserve some critiques for my Wattpad fans, so if you're interested, fan me there and stay tuned for messages from me announcing upcoming opportunities.

Finally, sequel talk! If you got last week’s newsletter, you know that I finished my NaNoWriMo book, Nadya Skylung and the Cloud Pirates. And despite my advice on the Carina Press blog, I can’t tear myself away from it. I’m going to revise it before I revise Soulwoven: Exile. It’s short, so it shouldn’t take too long, and I’ll still do my best to get up the first chapter of Exile sooner rather than later, but I wanted to be upfront with you guys about what I’m working on.

Thanks for reading, dear friends. Until next week!

-Jeff