Facade and Speculations

Facade is off to the proof reader. Yay! Because I had such clean and helpful feedback from my beta readers, I had easy rewrites each time around. Therefore I am almost a month ahead of my schedule.

As soon as Alex finishes the cover for Facade, I will reveal it here.

When the cover is done and the final corrections from the proof reader are done, I will submit the book to Kindle Scout. Once it's up there, people can take a look at it and put it up for nomination. I'll be asking for people to check it out, so keep an eye on my blog.

I finally came up with a name! Speculations is the title for the 3rd book in A Changed World series. It is still on track for a fall 2016 publication.

I've had a couple of questions from people lately about how many books there will be in A Changed World series. I don't have a cut off planned at this point. I had a plan to wind up the brothers' plot line in a first trilogy, with other arcs coming in to start off another set of books. However, because of some new elements that arose in Scattered Seeds, I think it might take me 4 books to finish that particular plot line.

Right now, my plan is to put out at least 1 book in each series every year. If I can write faster, maybe more. That said, it's time to get back to work!

Changing Tastes

Recently I was on a forum where people were talking about a young adult book. One person responded that he didn't read YA anymore because he was an adult now. I was ready to fire back an answer about how ridiculous that was, when I remember how much my tastes have changed over the years.

Once upon a time I bought an interesting book in a used book store. I went to the library for the sequel and discovered, to my horror, it was in the young adult section. I was embarrassed to be looking at those books and skulked away without checking one out.

Looking back, I can't imagine giving up on an interesting series because of the designated audience. I didn't have any trouble going into the children's section to get the Harry Potter books. But maybe it has to do with distance. In my 20's and 30's I didn't want to be seen reading books for teenagers. Now I don't care. I read whatever catches my fancy.

Back in my college and post-college days I read "serious" fiction, Camus, Kafka, and adored Ibsen's plays. I liked things that were dark and angsty. That doesn't appeal to me right now.

People change as they grow and so does their taste in entertainment. What I loved a decade ago doesn't always appeal to me now. But it may in another couple of years. Who knows? And genres change and grow sub-genres.

I say I like Urban Fantsy, but that's because I love Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden. That genre seems to have a lot of interpretations, some that don't appeal to me at all. On the other hand, I've said I lost my taste for Epic Fantasy, but I love Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series and Brent Weeks' Lightbringer series and those are definitely epic.

Tastes change and maybe come back around again. I just know I like a well-told story regardless of who the intended audience is.

Brainstorming Keywords for Facade

Keywords are supposed to help readers find my books. In that, they are an extremely important part of the publishing prep. I need to get them right.

Aside from the blurb, this might be the hardest part of getting the book ready. Once it's written, there are a number of steps before it can be released to the public. Several of them have nothing to do with crafting the story. Those are very hard for me.

I started with the larger themes:

• Aliens in hiding, but they are hiding in plain sight. So not an invasion or first contact or exploration. That might be a little confusing.
• They are hiding from a civilization that enslaves them.
• They also have psi-skills like telepathy 
• And are healers extraordinaire

On the other side I have:

• Undercover intelligence agents that are great buddies
• Multiple alien species coexisting
• Interstellar travel
• Long established galactic governance
• A simmering subplot of economic instability

And then there's:

• A character who uncovers her own hidden identity
• An unfolding of the devolved culture of the enslaved people
• Innate skills that look like magic

Somehow I have to distill this all down into a handful of keywords and blurbs of varying size. Some as small as 50 words! I have to take a step back and try to see the largest arcs of the book, dropping out all the subplots. Sometimes that makes it sound cliched. Another thing I need to avoid.

And when I'm done with this, I'll be getting back to Wisp, Nick, Tillie and Angus.

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