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So long story short, I'm only working 24 hours this week instead of the usual 38-40. I'm not entirely thrilled about it, but I'm at least a lot less annoyed by it than I was when I first saw it on the schedule board. The boss informed me that the latest version of the scheduling software got wonky and dropped hours of several people, and unfortunately I was one of them and even more unfortunately he didn't catch it until I texted him with a slightly miffed 'WTF' on Friday. He did say that he'll ensure that won't happen again in the future.

On the sort of plus side, this will give me the next three days off in which I can catch up sleep, get a lot of writing done, do several house errands that need doing, and play with the cats! And I am definitely taking a few days off the week after this coming one, days I'd put in for and will be using some of my remaining vacation/floater days for. A's taking those days off as well so we can have fun doing little day trips and neighborhood walks. Woo!

*

Meanwhile, check it out: the Remastered Edition of A Division of Souls is now available for preorder at Barnes & Noble! Here's the link:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-division-of-souls-j-chaisson/1148097942?ean=2940182462112

 

jon_chaisson: (Default)
 It felt wonderful to sleep in until 8:30am, something I haven't done in ages! Granted, I was up until 11pm last night finishing off Shannon Chakraborty's The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, which I'd realized early on was in fact a 'let's get the gang back together for one last heist' caper film, complete with bonkers action and wait-what plot twists, and just enough humor to make it a super fun ride. This new series is a lot less serious than her Daevabad trilogy, that's for sure, but it you loved that, you'll love this one as well.

Meanwhile, we walked to the park today and spent a little bit of time in the botanical garden, harvested some more of the red lettuce (there's still a ton of it left), then had a late lunch at the Richmond Republic, where I had a 10% APV beer that was super tasty and left me slightly spinny for at least two and a half hours. All in all a lovely day to be outside!

I'll admit I've been allowing myself to relax over the last couple of days, partly because my setting up Queen Ophelia's War for Thursday's drop date went so smoothly and quickly. I've earned it, dang it! I'm not entirely sure how I'll go about promoting this one but I'll give it the old college try, I suppose. That's something I'll be working on in the next six months anyway: figuring out productive ways to attract attention to my novels!

As for the day job, I'm doing a few midshifts this week (one as a register jockey, the other as a front end babysitter) with a midweek day off, which I've come to enjoy. the 1-2-1-3 variation on the day job schedule breaks it up so I'm not going full out for five days.


Hope everyone has a lovely week!
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Queen Ophelia's War will be going live on Smashwords and Draft2Digital on 20 June, right on the Summer Solstice! See you then! :D



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I made good on my recent plan to surprise-release Diwa & Kaffi on July 1! Here's the link:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1412637

So how did it feel to pull it all together in record time? Really great, actually! Even with the trouble I had getting the photo editing software to behave for the cover, I'm happy with the result! I'd finished revision on it some time ago so most of the work was just on the cover and the formatting. The latter only took a few hours at most.

I've definitely missed releasing new e-books on a yearly basis. I'm still happy that I took a few years off for personal reasons, but I'm glad to be back. And if this one does well maybe I'll pick up one of my backburner projects to work on while I work on MU4 so I can get back into the habit again!

jon_chaisson: (Default)
 So this past Friday we had a surprise drop of the brand spankin' new album by Sigur Rós, who haven't released a studio album since...Kveikur back in 2013?? On Thursday they just popped in on their Instagram feed and say "hey gang, our new album ÁTTA is out tomorrow, have at it" and of course us fans were like WOOOOOO and downloaded/ordered toot sweet.

Meanwhile on that very same day, I'd gotten an email from Smashwords informing me that their annual July sale was coming and if I'd be interested in signing up for it? Of course I always do, considering that I always get new readers out of it, even if I don't make a dime because I offer them for free during those sales. [Side note: It seems that In My Blue World is my best 'seller', and I'm cool with that too.] 

So I start thinking: what if I do a surprise drop of Diwa & Kaffi?

I mean, it's been ready for a couple of years now. The only reason I never released it is because of the pandemic and that I'd been wanting to commission someone to do the cover art but never quite got around to it. It's not doing anyone any good just sitting there on my hard drive, available to no one but myself, yeah?

So this means two things: One, I'm planning -- hoping -- to create my own 'temporary' cover and have it prepped and ready to go by 1 July, which menas...a little less than two weeks. Two, that the book will be formatted and ready for release on the same day. I'm pretty sure I can pull it off, considering I'd completed all revision on the book some months ago, and these two steps I can easily do in the course of a few days before or after work. 

I'm really looking forward to this, and I hope you enjoy it too, because I'm super proud of this particular novel!
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It seems our weekend entertainment usually falls on Saturdays, leaving Sunday to be the Errand Day.  In this case, we went to see Alita: Battle Angel at the Alamo Drafthouse in the Mission last night.  Having been a fan of the original 90s manga, I'm quite happy to say they did a fine job of remaining close to it (I read later that it's based on the first four tankobon of the original series) and that they kept the theme that it's most definitely NOT a male-gazey female-cyborg story.  I would totally go see it again, and yes, I will definitely get the blu-ray for it when it comes out.

Today's errand excitement was a walk to the farmer's market down the other end of Clement, then a drive down to Fort Mason to drop off book donations at the SF Library store and clothing donations at the Goodwill up the street.  (Why do I drive down there when I could easily use the Goodwill up the way on Clement? Parking, you see. As in There Ain't None Close By On Clement. Heh.)  I usually use that as my excuse to get out of the house and the neighborhood. Sometimes when I'm down there I'll also stop at the Flax Art Supply store and pick up some things -- I bought a smallish sketch book down there that I desperately need to start filling in.

I'm slowly cleaning everything up here in Spare Oom so I go ahead and buy a replacement for the loveseat that's in here. It's old and lumpy (it was A's and dates back to the late 90s by her reckoning) and desperately needs to go. We're planning on ordering from the same place we bought our living room couch (which came in two big boxes as a build-it-yourself thing). I'm sort of playing a long game here, planning out each step with the final goal of getting my papers, books, music and personal effects in order in this room.  Getting a new mini-couch in here is one of the biggest steps and will make things a lot easier once it's purchased and installed. 

Anyhoo!  Good news on the writing front!  IN MY BLUE WORLD IS OUT NEXT SATURDAY!!!  Woohoo!  It'll be available as an e-book at Smashwords if you follow this here link:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/925076

It's a long time coming, but I'm quite proud of this one.  I took a lot of chances with this story...it's definitely different from the other novels I've written over the years and heading more in a direction I want and need to go in with my writing. I'm seeing it as the first of a new path for my writing, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it'll lead.


Hope everyone has a lovely week! 


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Wait, it's Thursday?  Yes, Thursday evening.  I've been flying through so many things this week in preparation for FogCon that I almost forgot to do a few other things like updating here!  No worries, though.

But HEY YES NEW BOOK.  That's the big news.  Yay, Meet the Lidwells is finally out in the wild! I'm slowly but surely spreading the news hither and yon again, and I've gotten a few sales already.  Yay!  The first two were by friends, but I'm not gonna complain. Heh!  I sent it off to a friend over in Oakland who runs a music blog and thinking of other places I can plug it.  I've also sent it to BookLife, which is a monthly insert for Publisher's Weekly focused on self-publishing.  That cost a bit, but I'm essentially buying advertising in a very highly regarded writing magazine and I believe it'll show up in April, so there's that.

OH!  Which reminds me...all this week, Smashwords has been doing a sale which I signed up for.  All three books in the trilogy are currently free, and the new book is half-off, so it's only $1.50.  (Go ahead and sneak over and pick any of them up if you're so interested, the sale ends on Saturday!)  I've made a few sales here and there, which is cool...but the surprising bit is that suddenly I'm getting download confirmations for the tirlogy too!!  That surprised me, but I ain't complaining! :D

Okay, quick post here. Got a con to head to tomorrow! :)
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 Things I Did This Weekend:

--Learned how to rip DVDs onto my external hard drive.  I may start doing this to get rid of some of the older DVDs I rarely watch.
--Visited the in-laws in Petaluma for lunch, had a tasty pizza at one of the tiny hip restaurants in the Theater District
--Did a quick overview of the electric guitars at Tall Toad Music (in the same city), as I'm contemplating trading in my rarely-used 12-string guitar for a second electric 6-string.  Fell in love with a Gretsch that I hope is there when I return next.
--Went to the gym for the first time in a week or so.
--Had a very tasty brunch at the new Turkish/Mediterranean bistro up the street (Lokma), deemed it quite excellent.
--Three loads of laundry, surprised that no one else was using it at the moment.
--Started to prepare for FogCon, which starts this Friday.  I have a reading and I'm on a panel about self-publishing!

Oh-- and I FINALLY released Meet the Lidwells!  WOOHOO!  It's now available at Smashwords, and it's on sale this week, for only $1.50!  Go check it out! :D


So yeah, that's been my weekend.  How's yours been? :)

jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)

If you haven't seen my posts today on both my WordPress blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and I think pretty much everywhere else:

YES!  Book 2 in the Mendaihu Universe, The Persistence of Memories, is now out and available in ebook form!

Here's a few links to the fine establishments where it's available:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Smashwords


Don't forget to support your local bookstore! If they sell e-books, go ahead and download from their website! Here are a few of my favorite local bookstores where you can buy it:

Copperfield's Books

Green Apple Books

Books Inc


Thank you for your support! :)


***


A DIVISION OF SOULS is also STILL FREE! Want to get caught up first before jumping in? Head over to B&N, Kobo or Smashwords (or hey, even NoiseTrade) and download the first book, and your reading list is good to go!
jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Another lazy Sunday morning, in which I'm up and awake and watching the local news cycles while enjoying a cup of coffee. It's a bit chilly this morning but the rain seems to have abated somewhat. Not much going on today, although I'm going to need to do a bit of writing work later. Due to other plans I wasn't able to update the A to Z Challenge post yesterday, so I'll have to do that today.

FINALLY got around to updating the ebook for A Division of Souls...the odd typos and weird word choices are getting fixed so they're in line with the physical copy of the book. This will be the official 'second edition' of the ebook in that respect (and yes, I am in fact labeling it such on the copyright page). And yes, I have had some thoughts about giving the entire trilogy another 'remaster' once all three are out, but that's quite some time down the road, so I'm not going to worry about that. Still...I'm about 2/3 of the way through, so hopefully I'll be done by end of week. Just in time for the new book release!

This week is going to be kind of busy for me, between my writing projects and other things, including needing to head into Concord on Tuesday. I see no rain in the forecast for that day, so hopefully the drive there will be uneventful. But really, I'll be focusing mostly on this Friday, when the new book comes out. I really need to start pushing it in various places just to get some airtime. [Doing the current A to Z meme is actually helping, heh!] Even though it's longer than ADoS, I chose to give it the $4.99 price (a dollar cheaper than the first book originally), plus I'm offering Book 1 for free.

Going to be quite the busy week...here's to hoping I'll be able to keep on top of it!
jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
If you haven't seen me post it hither and yon from last night onwards, here 'tis:

The Persistence of Memories will be released on 15 April via Smashwords and other fine ebook establishments!



[And just in case you never picked up the first book, I'm giving it away for FREE for a limited time as well!]


**

For anyone curious, Book 3 (The Balance of Light) will most likely be released late in 2016, probably late autumn. There's a lot to be done with that one, and I'd like to take another breather before I work my way through it. I'm also thinking about post-trilogy writing projects at this time (both MU-related and not) to set myself up for 2017. A lot of things still up in the air, but I'm not going to worry too much about it right at the moment. For now, it's time to put on my Salesman Hat and sell the heck out of my two books. :)
jon_chaisson: (Mooch writing)
Wow. I can finally call myself a published author now.

It's still sinking in. How many years did it take me to get to this point? And compared to that, how few months did it take for me to go from making the decision to reality? I'm still amazed by it all.

But yeah...it's official, A Division of Souls is now available for sale! :D

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/565782

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