Book Release: Storm's Herald

I am pleased to announce the release of Book 1 of the Stormfall Chronicles, now available for free on Amazon through January 23rd:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MYK9QHC/

It has taken a little longer than I had anticipated to polish everything off. I hope that everyone enjoys reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it - and sharing the story with my own children.

A peasant girl who dreams of becoming a sorceress, a boy who imagines himself a knight – trailed by a ruthless mercenary armed with an ancient sword. 

All Lynette wanted was to leave her boring village life – to attend the Fae Academy and become a Druid priestess like her teacher before her. Her clumsy attempts at magic are a reminder of how much she has yet to learn. But if they would only accept her, if the Fae Kingdom – closed to human visitors for centuries now – would only just open its doors, she is certain she could become a master of the magical arts. 

Yet her journey puts her on a collision course with a reawakened evil – offering a king’s ransom for the recovery of a long-lost relic. Treasure hunters of every variety – werewolves, mercenaries, common thieves and undead alike – are soon locked in pursuit of its promised riches. Together with Baxter, a young squire who fled his own kingdom, and Eirlon, a gnome who trades in rare antiquities, Lynette is drawn unwillingly into the hunt for the elusive relic. 

Hounded by goblins, ogres – and darker things – Baxter carries his own burdens: secrets that have made him the enemy of the crown. And then there is Garth, the mysterious mercenary who both frightens and intrigues Lynette: the weapons-master armed with an ancient blade – snatched from the hand of a long-vanished fae prince. 

Willingly or not, Lynette, Baxter and Eirlon must together solve the riddles behind the relic – and stay one step ahead of the ruthless killers that pursue them. 

The complete Book One of the Stormfall Chronicles, Storm’s Herald is an Epic Fantasy series suitable for all ages.

Storm's Herald - Cover Reveal

The cover of a fantasy novel is one of the key elements in helping a prospective audience to relate, and connect with a new novel. It is often the audience's first impression, and first opportunity to evaluate their potential interest in an author's work.

For my first fantasy-fiction novel, I selected a cover design that on the one hand, evoked some of the genre-common motifs that could be readily recognized by most audiences - and on the other, captured a key moment from the story in the book. My middle daughter (who was also my Beta-reader for the novel) also put in a lot of effort, to help bring my vision for this particular cover design into reality. I hope that everyone is as pleased with the outcome as I have been.

Fantasy-Fiction Map Reveal

Part of any elaborate fantasy world, is the landscape: the peoples, cultures, history, and of course - the map of where everything is.

I can recall studying the maps from fantasy worlds generated by a wide variety of authors: imagining adventures beyond the borders of the written story, cast in various corners or margins of the fantasy world map they inhabited. It should therefore come as no surprise that I would look forward to generating a fantasy-fiction world map of my own, providing a reference for the places and context which my own story inhabited.

While my couple of maps might not be as elaborate as those of some, I nonetheless hope that others will find the landscape as captivating to imagine as it was for me when I was writing the stories behind it.

A History of Fantasy-Fiction: The Tolkien Revolution

I had considered writing a brief blog-post on the history of fantasy-fiction - its evolution and how it came to occupy the place that it does in today's modern literature. I very quickly realized, however, that there could be no such thing as a "brief blog-post" on such an expansive topic, and the crux of the matter - how fantasy-fiction came to be popularized in the manner that so many of us are familiar with today - really revolves around one formative event.

It may come as a surprise to some younger readers (those under the age of seventy), but fantasy-fiction as we know it today owes its existence to one particular turning point in modern literature, and to one particular author: the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. All of fantasy-fiction can be divided into two periods of modern history: those that came before Tolkien and "The Lord of the Rings" and those that came after. Before Tolkien, the world of fantasy-fiction was a wasteland. There were a few outstanding authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe or Mary Shelley, that had strayed into the periphery of this domain, but the landscape of fantasy-fiction had largely been ignored by both authors and publishers as being of little consequence, the subject of children's "fairy tales" and nothing more.

Tolkien himself wrote about this sad state of affairs in his essay "On Fairy-stories" - originally delivered as a lecture at the University of St. Andrews in 1938 - long before The Lord of the Rings was written or published. This lecture was later reproduced as part of a collection of Tolkien's writings in The Tolkien Reader. As Tolkien observed at the time,

"What, if any, are the values and functions of fairy-stories now? It is usually assumed that children are the natural or the specially appropriate audience for fairy-stories."[1]

The landscape of English-language literature at the time, was in this respect very similar to how animation was treated in the United States throughout most of the 20th century. In the world of animation, cartoons were viewed as the province of children. The idea that animation could be exercised as a story-telling medium - to convey stories with adult themes and universally human messages - would remain alien to most audiences until Japanese anime began to make serious inroads during the latter 1990s. Fantasy-literature was at a similar impasse until the 1960s, when The Lord of the Rings emerged onto the American marketplace - defining a new genre expansive enough for the publishing industry to finally take this medium seriously.

As Tolkien observed himself in his 1938 lecture,

"It is true that in recent times fairy-stories have usually been written or 'adapted' for children. But so may music be, or verse, or novels, or history, or scientific manuals."[1]

Tolkien saw in the realm of fantasy-fiction an opportunity to redraw the boundaries of the world, and in so doing to allow us to see our own world, our own human experience, with fresh eyes. The act of writing or reading fantasy-fiction was not seen by him as the special reserve of children - but as an art form that could be exercised to illuminate topics that have plagued the human soul since the dawn of mankind.

I can remember myself, devouring the works of Tolkien when I was younger, indulging in the broad richness of the literary world that he had created. And if I later went on to enjoy the works of other authors who likewise followed in this genre of literature, it was made possible only by these earlier works that paved the way before them.

All of us who have followed, as either readers or writers of fantasy-fiction, therefore owe an immense debt to the persistence and vision of this one author in particular, that opened the way for the rest of us to explore our world and our human existance within this art form.


References:
[1] J.R.R. Tokien, The Tolkien Reader, Ballantine Books, New York, 1966.

Indie Publishing - Part 7: Indie Author Resources

There is one other online resource for indie authors that I would be remiss if I failed to mention - and that is Derek Murphy, who has published a number of successful novels of his own as well as numerous "how to" guides for the aspiring indie author.

Derek Murphy maintains his own website, including a blog and newsletter:
https://www.creativindie.com/
http://urbanepics.com/pc/

As well as his own YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com/user/holyblasphemy123

He was also the founder of the YA Author Alliance on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/YAauthoralliance/

A number of Derek Murphy's guides for aspiring indie authors are available for free, including Book Marketing is Dead - among others:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HC6HQ70/

Any indie author, fantasy-fiction or otherwise, owes it to themselves to review Derek Murphy's guides, and collect their own notes regarding some of the steps they should be taking to reach their respective audience. To summarize just a few of his guidelines:

• Produce a good product that has a market
• Ensure that you have a beautifully illustrated cover that is easily identifiable as part of your respective genre
• Have a sales description or blurb that draws readers in and converts passing interest into readers
• Build an author website or platform that helps to sell you as an artist as well as your publications
• Be collaborative: helping others will help you to grow your own network and reader interest

There are many more items that I could add to this list, but I will close by encouraging other indie writers to explore for themselves the many resources that Derek Murphy has assembled.

Indie Publishing - Part 6: Learning from an Established Author

There is a lot that can be learned from the established authors - those that publish regularly through printed media - that are not in the same category as the "mega-stars" of the publishing industry. These authors do not have the automatic name recognition with the general public, nor do they have the massive marketing resources at their disposal as the million-copy selling "mega-stars" that usually come to mind when people think of a particular genre. Like indie authors, they have to sell their books in part by establishing a following, and by applying the same, practical type of marketing tools that indie authors also have access to.

As I indicated previously, I wanted to select one or two authors and one or two relatively recent books from each category, so that I could track some of the strategies that each author relied on as part of a successful book launch. There are many more fantasy authors that I might have selected - so please don't be offended if your favorite was not one of the ones that I chose to track for these demonstrative purposes.

Among the book launches that I reviewed and tracked was Sara C. Roethle's The Witch of Shadowmarsh, which was released in August 2018. Ms. Roethle is the author of some 21 previous titles - prior to the release of The Witch of Shadowmarsh. These included several previous series - such as her "Tree of Ages" series (five books) and the "Xoe Meyers" series (seven books). She was therefore a well established writer with her own following, her own website (https://www.saracroethle.com/), Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sara-C-Roethle/198150710229162), and Twitter account (www.twitter.com/SaraCRoethle) - all in place at the time that her latest book was released. These are all social media tools which any indie author should likewise be able to exercise to help promote their own work.

The Witch of Shadowmarsh was intended to be the first book in a new series (The Moonstone Chronicles), published through Vulture's Eye Publications. Vulture's Eye specializes in young adult (YA) fantasy fiction, providing Ms. Roethle with a platform that could generate significant sales even without an online site such as Amazon. However, a great deal can still be learned by following the launch of this particular book on Amazon.

Coming from a known author with her own following, The Witch of Shadowmarsh went from only four online reviews at the beginning of September, to 40 by the beginning of November. This is the kind of following that every indie author dreams of. Moreover, during this time period the price quoted for the eBook version of the novel steadily increased, from $0.99 at the beginning of September, to $2.99 at the beginning of October, to $3.99 by early December. In other words, the eBook was priced at a discount when it was first introduced to help encourage online sales, with the price increasing as the title became more established. Again, this is a promotion tactic that every indie author can learn from - without having the same marketing tools at their disposal as the more established, traditional authors.

With a traditional publishing house behind her, Ms. Roethle did not have to rely on online sales to reach her audience. Nonetheless, it is instructive to compare the online sales ranking from this book for the eBook version versus the printed edition. On Amazon, the eBook edition for this book has consistently ranked 50 to 100 times better than the paperback edition. True, there are more paperback or hardcover books listed by Amazon than there are eBooks - but in my experience this translates into only a 2X or 3X difference between the two rankings, not one or two orders of magnitude difference. In other words, for this audience, even for an established author with a consistent following, the vast majority of online sales will be electronic, not printed.

To recap, there are a number of items from Ms. Roethle's latest book release that indie authors in this genre can hope to learn from:

• Price your book low - to generate sales and reviews - early after release. You can always raise the price later as sales and recognition build.
• Have as wide of a social media presence as possible. A personal website or blog, Facebook, and Twitter account all help to build your audience and following - and make it easier to market later novels or additions to a series.
• For the fantasy fiction genre, eBook sales will predominate over the sale of printed copies - at least online.

There are some other lessons to be learned by aspiring authors from this particular book release. Obviously, if your book isn't written well and edited well, then you're not going to get very far - but that should go without saying. Having a beautifully illustrated cover - featuring the protagonists of your book - is always an important part of marketing. But one other item sticks out in my mind when I review the sales strategy for this particular book: the online summary or "book blurb".

Out of the summaries that I reviewed as part of this exercise, this one stood out as being particularly well done:

When the fate of the elves rests on the shoulders of an antisocial swamp witch, will a common enemy be enough to bring two disparate races together?

The Empire rules with an iron fist. The Valeroot elves have barely managed to survive, but at least they’re not Arthali witches like Elmerah. Her people were exiled long ago. Just a child at the time, her only choice was to flee her homeland, or remain among those who’d betrayed their own kind. She was resigned to living out her solitary life in a swamp until pirates kidnap her and throw her in with their other captives, young women destined to be sold into slavery. 

With the help of an elven priestess, Elmerah teaches the pirates what happens to men who cross Arthali witches, but she’s too late to avoid docking near the Capital. While her only goal is to run far from the political intrigue taking place within, she finds herself pulled mercilessly into a plot to overthrow the Empire, and to save the elven races from meeting a bloody end. 

Elmerah will learn of a dark magical threat, and will have to face the thing she fears most: the duplicitous older sister she left behind, far from their home in Shadowmarsh.

The Witch of Shadowmarsh is the first installment in the Moonstone Chronicles, an Epic Fantasy series suitable for all ages.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GSMN6DW/

An opening title or summary to the blurb in bold, followed by a description of the book that draws the reader in, and concluding with a keyword list in italics at the bottom.  Again, probably the best online book blurb that I reviewed when comparing between titles, and a worthy example for any would-be indie author to learn from.

All told, a beautifully executed book launch on the part of Ms. Roethle and her publisher.