Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The Big Finale

Well. Here it is. The story I've been building to since One Time Only.



There’s a fresh grave dug at the Fairfield Funeral Home and all it’s missing is a tombstone. 

For months Alex Cheradon has been on the receiving end of a helping hand from Jonathon Bragan. But Bragan’s help has been nothing more than a careful manipulation of Alex. Bragan’s reaching the part of his plan where it’s time to make his true intentions known to Alex. Of course, when that happens, the price of Bragan’s help is going to come due as well. 

Devon Christian is on the edge of sanity. The voices in his head get louder every day. At some point, he’s not going to be able to ignore those voices forever. And when he stops, there’s only one person at the top of his hit list. 

And to top it off, there’s a Probability Engine loose in Clayton City. So the odds of everything going to Hell just increased dramatically. 

This is it. 

The big finale. 

Everything’s coming to a head.

Okay. If, at this point, you're still reading this post and you haven't gone over to Amazon yet, a few extra things:

First, it's because of you guys this book is being published now and not late February. You guys are the greatest. I asked if you wanted the book early, you said yes. So here it is. Thank you for being the best fans ever.

Second, if you like it, or any of the Alex Cheradon books, please consider leaving a review, even if it's only a sentence or two. Reviews can be vital in courting new readers and every positive review helps.

Third, please, if you have a friend or two who might like Alex, please share it with them. I love Alex Cheradon. I could probably spend the rest of my life just writing books about him and his team. I've got the omnibus of Volume 1 that makes it super easy to get caught up on Alex's longer adventures. Plus, more readers will inevitability lead to more Alex books. It's a win-win for everybody!

Fourth, there's actually another reason that you're getting this book early: I'm already at work on Volume 3. There was originally going to be a longer break between Volumes 2 and 3. But I ran into some mental roadblocks on another project and I find myself mentally wandering back to Alex. Thus, a lot of the pieces for Volume 3 fell into place very quickly. So, as of this posting, I'm almost a third of the way through Alex Cheradon #6. I figured that if I was that far along, there was no real reason to hold back One Tomb Short of a Graveyard any longer.

Fifth, save yourself some time and energy and subscribe to my newsletter. This way you'll have Alex Cheradon new book announcements delivered right to your inbox.

Alright that's everything. What are you still doing around here? Go get reading already.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

A Birthday Sale

Hey Guys,

Tomorrow I turn 31. Yep. That's right. Tomorrow is my birthday. And to celebrate, I'm throwing a sale.

Fruitbasket from Hell was the first novel I wrote. Consequently, Alex Cheradon has been with me longer than any other character. And, of course, he remains my favorite, because he's totally awesome.

So, here's what I'm doing for this weekend only, January 25-26, 2014: Each Alex Cheradon book is only $1.31. Amazon won't let me go as low as 31 cents and somebody told me that charging $31.00 was a bit much. I figured $1.31 was a nice middle ground.

So, that's:

Fruitbasket from Hell
A is for Amnesia, B is for Bullet
Little People, Big Crimes
One Time Only
Welcome to Crazytown
Odd Man Out
Full Moon, Half Wits

Each one only $1.31. It's my way of sharing my birthday celebration with you guys. If you've haven't caught up yet, or there's friend or two or twenty that you think would love Alex Cheradon, this would the perfect time to get them hooked!

Also, it's that time of year again, where I want to get to know my readers a little better! If you read my books and have a minute or two, would you mind filling out this survey? Thanks!

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Behind the Scenes

We're coming up on the finale of the second volume of Alex Cheradon. Which has prompted me to design this:



Unfortunately, this has left me with a whole new problem. Because now the last two AC books look like this:



And, of course, they look pretty good. But books 1-3 look like this:


So I've been working out some possible alterations to see if I can give this volume of Alex a more uniformed, or at least a more connected appearence.





The biggest problem, of course, is Welcome to Crazytown. It's kind of perfect just the way it is and adding any yellow or tweaking it, kind of just ruins it. But adding white to the other books doesn't have the same kick as adding the yellow.

I like my series to have specific looks. I like the idea that you can glance at a group of a books and immediately know that they're in the same series.

Reapers in Heels turned out perfectly:






Of course, there's the first volume of Alex Cheradon, which looked like this:


And I liked the way these 3 turned out, too.

But this new volume of Alex. I don't know. I want a specific look for Alex. I just can't figure out what it is yet.

I've been thinking a lot about what genre Alex Cheradon would be in and I've settled on something like, science fiction/fantasy. That sounds about right, if a little broad. I'd like to drill down a little more, but I don't know if there's anything more specific than that. Alex is such a hodgepodge of genre elements. A little bit of everything I like.

I've also been thinking about my elevator pitch for Alex and, boy, that is that a tough one.

"It's a series about a private investigator who has a partner who's immortal and they investigator some supernatural cases, some science fiction cases. There's a bit of a time travel, clones and..."

As a opposed to the elevator pitch for RiH:

"Bounty hunters for the dead."

I feel like I learned a lot of stuff working on RiH and I just want to apply some of that to Alex. I want shape the Alex Cheradon series into the same kind of focused, streamlined model that RiH was/is.

Feel to chime in with your thoughts about the covers.

If you had to describe Alex Cheradon to your friends in one sentence, what would it be?