Now selling at Barnes & Noble!

Woo-hoo! Courtesy the folks at Smashwords, my books have begun selling at Barnes & Noble for the Nook tablet!

Tales of the Wyrm and Kaunovalta: The Complete Trilogy are already available, and the rest should be heading to the site over the coming weeks.

Huzzah!  Next stop - Kobo and Chapters, Sony, Apply, Diesel...

Published books - fixed!

A sincere apology to any of my readers who have purchased my books from Amazon.com.  I found out earlier this week that there was a problem with the image settings in the files offered for on-line purchase; a reader complained about the maps in The Sea Dragon not displaying properly, and Amazon contacted me to fix the problem. I got it sorted out and republished the book in minutes, but then decided to check the rest - and sure enough, the same problem affected ALL of my books.

So they've all now been fixed. I even took the opportunity to republish my non-fiction book on NATO and Kosovo as well.

By way of apology, here's a special offer to anyone who bought a copy of one of my books from Amazon, and ended up with a product that did not display properly or that was poorly formatted: send me an email via the contact page at my author website, specifying the book(s) you purchased and a return email address, and I will email you the most recent .mobi file for each book, along with a complimentary copy of the companion volume, Tales of the Wyrm.

All I'd ask in return is that you consider visiting the appropriate page for each book at the Amazon Kindle store (or the Smashwords site) and leaving a "like" (assuming of course that you liked the book); or better yet, if you have the time, a review.

Thanks - and once again, my sincere apologies!

Kaunovalta: The Complete Trilogy

Now available at Smashwords and Amazon: the full Kaunovalta trilogy in a single volume!

The new book can be found at Smashwords here - Kaunovalta: The Complete Trilogy;

or at Amazon, here - Kaunovalta: The Complete Trilogy.

As always, the complete set will always be cheaper than buying the three books individually.

Happy reading!

Kaunovalta / Bjornssaga sales report!

A shout-out of thanks to everyone who's bought my books over the past two months! So far they've sold in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Germany, and an indeterminate number of other European countries!

Folks, I couldn't be happier. I've been writing my whole life, and it's nice to see my work appreciated.

Anyone interested in looking my stuff over, you can find my author pages at Amazon, and Smashwords.

So far only The Sea Dragon and Tales of the Wyrm are available at Smashwords; the full Kaunovalta trilogy (The Running Girl, Dweorgaheim, and Daughter of Dragons) will be available on Smashwords early in August).

Thanks again, everybody! You're the best!

What's next?

As I'm finishing the final edits on book #4, "The Sea Dragon" (Book I of Bjornssaga), I've been pondering what to write next.  I think it's going to have to be the three books of the next trilogy, the Brotherhood of Wyrms.  This trilogy begins around about the same time as Ally is interrupting a group of thieves in the royal gardens at Astrapratum (see The Running Girl), and wraps up roughly while she is going toe-to-toe with her uncle Luperio in Elder Delvin (see Dweorgaheim).  This is one of those cases where the stories are already written in my head; it's just a matter of getting them down in prose that's agreeable to the reader.

In the meantime, I've been playing with the cover art a little more.  Here's what I've got at the moment:

It's a start.  I should have my author website up before too long, too; and I'll be passing appropriate credit to the lovely lady who's been helping me with that.

Cheerio!

Cover ideas

Trying some art ideas...

I kind of like these.  Let's see what develops as I write them.

Thanks, Instapundit

Professor Glenn Reynolds, the inimitable Instapundit, very kindly posted a plug for my books yesterday in the early afternoon.

As a result, I sold three times as many books in the next 12 hours as I had sold in the previous 3 weeks.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of individuals with strategic reach on the Internet.  Somebody ought to write a book about that phenomenon.

Oh, wait...someone DID!

Thanks, Raven

Somebody going by the handle "Raven" has just posted this review of The Running Girl on Amazon.com, giving it 5 out of 5 stars:

Wonderful Escapism May 14, 2012

By Raven

Amazon Verified Purchase

I can't believe that I'm the first person to review this book. It's a cross between the Hobbit, Harry Potter, and has elements of Star Wars. The main character, a female elf, is likable and believable. Her wonder at the Dwarven world is delightful. The writing is well done and puts you right into their world. I rarely pay more than $1 for a Kindle book but this is worth every penny, including the $6.99 that I just paid for the sequel. If you're looking to escape into another time and place then you will greatly enjoy this read. It's appropriate for young adults and adults alike.

For the record, I've been writing for scholarly purposes for more than 20 years.  I've published more than 100 papers in dozens of international newspapers and journals.  I passed my doctoral dissertation on first reading, have made presentations all over the world, and have won dozens of awards for academic work.

And I've never felt quite like this.

Thanks, Raven.  I hope you enjoy the next two.

Dweorga-tastic!

Just saw this: the Amazon list of Dungeons & Dragons related books published in the last 30 days.

Dweorgaheim is right next to R.A. Salvatore's "War of the Spider Queen".

Yeah, I know - he'll sell a lot more of his than I will of mine.  But that's still really, really cool.

Also, somebody just bought another copy of The Running Girl.  That's two!  I can now afford a (domestic) beer to celebrate.

This is fun.

Oh, and Daughter of Dragons should be ready by the end of next week.  As a special bonus, I'm including a map that tracks Ally's travels through Erutrei.  Some of you might recognize parts of the map...

Okay, THERE it is!

Woo hoo!

THERE it is!  Turns out I had forgotten to push the last button.  But now it's available at the Amazon site for Kindle e-books, once again for the low, low price of $2.99.

I'm working on the rewrites for Book III (Daughter of Dragons), which is substantially longer than the other two.  It'll take me a while to get through the amendments, but hopefully I'll have the last volume up within a month or so.

Meanwhile, thanks again to the guys whose imagination and insanity meshed so perfectly with my own.

Cheerio!

First-Time (Fiction) Author!

Well, this certainly feels good.

After trying traditional publishers for the past three years, I finally decided to go for e-publishing via Kindle.  The book is available at Amazon.com for the bargain-basement price of $2.99!

Note that this is Volume 2 of the trilogy entitled Kaunovalta; for some reason, Volume 1 hasn't propagated yet via the publishing system, despite having been submitted several days earlier.  Volume 3 will be some time in coming; I've got some significant rewrites I want to do before I let it out of the box.  Once that's done, I think I'll finish up and publish Bjorn's Saga, and then get to work on the next one.  Maybe it's time to write the Tale of the Shards down in one piece.

Anyway, I'm unreasonably excited by this, so I just thought I'd share.  I've published plenty of academic papers both short and long, but this is my first piece of published fiction.  I'm already planning how to spend my first royalty check.  Depending on how long it takes to rack up $100 in royalties, it might be on...well, on Depends.

Many thanks to Breygon, Joraz and especially Bjorn/Thanos/Karrick for making this all possible! 

Yeah, you know who you are.