Guess what showed up at the Kindle store!

I guess I’m used to Smashwords and their preorder process.  They’ll let me create a preorder with a publication date of up to a year away.  When I originally submitted Wizard in the Woods (ToL5) as a preorder I tried to do the same for Amazon, but was surprised to see that they will only allow a 90 day preorder.  I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the big-name publishers & authors releasing books much later than that, but whatever.   Interested in preordering the book?  Here’s the Amazon US link:  Wizard in the Woods  and the Amazon UK link:  Wizard in the Woods   🙂

Yep.  Yesterday I took the time to submit all the files.  Well, obviously not the finished book file, nor the final cover.  The cover is just something I made ’cause I didn’t want to leave the cover blank.  What I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of times when you finish a book you enjoy, and it’s part of a series, then oftentimes you’ll look up the author to see what other books are out there and when the next one is due.  And, usually, if the next one is a preorder, they’ll go ahead and preorder the thing so that they don’t forget about it.  To me, that’s a valuable tool for an author to have at his/her disposal.

So will I be able to hit my deadline?  Will I actually release 3 books in one year?  Well, if I have my way about it, I plan on releasing 4!  We’ll see about #4, though.  As for WitW, I’ve already hit the 40,000+ word mark and am only on chapter 5.  I should easily be able to hit the 100k mark for this one but I won’t make any promises.  The last time I did that I fell short by about 5,000 words.  So I’ll zip my lip about it.  The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t see any reason why I can’t make that deadline.  In fact, I plan on having the book finished by early July.  Keep your fingers crossed.

The Goodreads Giveaway for a print copy of A Portal for Your Thoughts is still underway.  That giveaway will be going through the month of June, so if you live in the US and haven’t already done so, head over to Goodreads and enter the contest.  You never know!  You could be the proud owner of a signed paperback copy of the book!

I’ve already had some people ask me about becoming a beta reader for WitW.  I’m not ready to send out the call yet, but it probably will be in the next 2-3 weeks, so keep an eye on the blog.  I typicallly will take about 6-8 beta readers and those slots fill up fast.  Very fast.  I’m actually thrilled to death on how fast people volunteer to beta read for me.  Makes me smile, guys, so thanks!!

I think that’s it for now.  I hope everyone is having a great week!  Happy reading!

J.

15 Comments

  • I just finished Lost City. I believe it is the first book I’ve read of yours, and I really liked it, especially for the humor of the dwarves. The two brothers sounded like me and my brothers, always giving each other a hard time.
    I would love to be one of your beta readers. I have always been an amateur editor, finding errors in English usage and spelling, and CRINGING at the abundance of errors in some ebooks. Such disregard for the editing process makes me drop some authors from my reading, and I would like to be able to help you avoid that outcome from other picky readers such as me.
    I look forward to hearing from you and reading more of your work.

  • I would be overjoyed in being one of your many beta readers!

  • I would LOVE to be a beta reader for you! I LOVE all your books! thanks

  • At the end of ToL 2, the king and queen said they were both expected to be in Capily, but the queen never came.

  • Jordan & Whitman –

    LOL! I had totally forgotten about that reference to the queen. I’ve got a list of changes/tweaks that I need to do to the books. That one gets added to the list. Thanks for reminding me!

    With regards to the loss of the “ye” terminology that is in the first three books, I purposely phased it out in Lost City. I was getting numerous people & reviews telling me that I wasn’t using the “archaic” English correctly. And you know what? They were right. I found myself constantly rewriting certain sentences to avoid using “ye” where I wanted “you”, and so on, so I made the decision to lose it altogether. What that means, though, is that I need to redo the Bakkian Chronicles and take all those ye and yers out of there. The reason I haven’t yet is that as long as I’m at it, I was also thinking about cleaning up the POV issue I have. It’s not too terribly bad in Insurrection & Amulet of Aria, but the point-of-view shifts in Prophecy are way too many. There is only supposed to be one POV per chapter, or if you do a shift from one person’s POV to another, it should be for at least several pages. I didn’t do that.

    Oh, well. It was my first book and I’ve learned a lot since then. 🙂

  • In the ToL series, Lentarians stopped using ye instead of you. Did you do this on purpose or was it a mistake?

  • i noticed that too

  • Question on Book 3 – A Portal for your thoughts- Steve tells Lissa that the King and Queen both came to the portal after her disappearance in Chapter 14. I went back to Chapter 2 and did not see mention of the Queen making that appearance at the portal area. Did I miss something? Thanks

  • In the first book? The Prophecy? Damn. Thought I had corrected all those references. Thx! I’ll get it corrected!

    J.

  • In the first book(first chapter), it said Luther was Steve’s great grandfather. In ToL 3, it said Luther was his great great grandfather.

  • The number of betas varies. I’ve had as low as 4 and upwards of a dozen. I usually shoot for 6-8.

  • how many beta readers do you usually have?

  • Yes to all your above questions and I too have a Pembrooke Welsh Corgi. Look forward to hearing from you.

  • Hi Jordan! Thx for looking me up!

    With regards to being a beta reader for me, I’ll tell you to keep an eye on the blog here. I’ve already passed the halfway point on WitW and don’t see any reason why I would slow down. That means I’ll officially ask for beta readers probably in the next week or two.

    How’s your English skills? Can you spot typos & incorrect grammar? Do you have any problems pointing out errors in the book? Plot holes, extra spaces between words, and so on? If you can then I’d definitely would be interested in having you sign up. 🙂

    Thanks for stopping by!

    J.

  • Any chance of being a beta reader? I have read all your books and eagerly await WizW. Thanks