The Coppersmith

Whassup!

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Hi Everyone,

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything to the blog, and also since I’ve actually published anything new, aside from Nicholas, of course. My expectation is that this is soon going to change.

To begin with, you will doubtless notice there have been some significant changes to the website. I’ve been studying my little tushie off on how to the third leg of authoring correctly (the legs are: writing, publishing, and marketing) – hence the website change.

Do you like the new look? Is it a little more user-friendly (ie: easier to navigate, etc.)? I hope so. You’ll notice there’s some free stuff being offered. I’m giving away two of my novels – The Coppersmith and Topheth – to anyone willing to tell me where I can send them. All I need is an email address. Along with that, you’ll be added to my mailing list to receive notice on other cool stuff as well as have an opportunity to join my Advance Reader Team and help me out significantly.

The Advance Reader Team will get early copies of my book and will be specifically invited to give honest feedback – anything from character and plot development to typos – before the book goes live! I confess I’ve been doing this a little backwards, not quite knowing how to get my book into the hands of readers who care until after it’s been published. It seems stupid, but when you’re building in the dark, things don’t always come out right the first time.

I’ve connected with Mailchimp – an email service – to assist me in coordinating these emails with everyone, and I’m crossing my fingers that it all works correctly.

The second thing I’ll be doing is beginning a twin outreach to Facebook users beginning in January. First, I want to invite all those people who have liked my works in the past – particularly Jefferson’s Road – to join my Advance Reader Team mailing list. I’ll be sending some posts to your feeds via Facebook advertising to invite you to join. I have a sign up list on my Jefferson’s Road Facebook page already if you want to get an early start. The second part of this outreach is finding readers on Facebook who might also like Jefferson’s Road and offering them an omnibus edition. I’ve already uploaded this to Amazon, and it will go live in January.

Naturally, the omnibus edition won’t have any reviews when it goes up, so you could really help me by downloading a copy and leaving a review. I’m going to make the omnibus edition available for $.99 for a limited time to give you a chance to get a hold of it on the cheap. I’d do it for free, but Amazon gives weight to reviews from actual purchases rather than just friends and family (as if my friends and family don’t give honest, critical reviews! Go figure.).

In the meantime, I’ve uploaded new editions of all my books which have the new links to the mailing list, reviews, and other ways to stay connected in them (except the Jonathan Munro Adventures, which are managed under Ellechor Publishing House).

And before anyone says something along the lines of “Why doesn’t he quit all this marketing stuff and just get back to writing! C’mon, we’ve been waiting for the next Jefferson’s Road for over a year now!”, please note that I hear and share your concerns, and I commit that I will get the next Jefferson’s Road novel completed soon, ideally by March. Think of it as a New Year’s Resolution.

And yes, I’ll get Wizard Sky Pirates and Anarchy done soon as well (my daughter Rachel is pestering me.). Truth is, I have a number of works nearly complete, and I hope to be sharing them with you all quite soon.

And just to keep you on the edge of your seats… there’s a new story thread in the works along the same lines as Jefferson’s Road. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ve been inspired a little bit by Amazon’s rendition of Philip Dick’s The Man in the High Castle as well as the Political Correctness movements around various campuses – especially Missouri State. It’ll be a spy thriller kind of thing taking place in the future, after the United States has fragmented apart. I’m essentially putting it in “the same universe” as Jefferson’s Road.

Just to recap: if you haven’t done so already, sign up for the mailing list today, get your free books, and join my Advance Reader Team. It’s about to get interesting.

A Sequel to The Coppersmith

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Topheth, the second “Janelle Becker Book” is now available for purchase on TophethAmazon.com and through Createspace. If you liked The Coppersmith, then Topheth is sure to satisfy.

From the back cover:

Special Agent Janelle Becker teams back up with Detective Curtis Bold to uncover the tracks of a serial arsonist burning churches in Rochester, NY. His targets pass all racial and religious boundaries, and his message of judgment becomes peculiarly focused on Janelle herself even as things heat up between Janelle and Curtis.

Can Janelle and Curtis find this arsonist before he traps them both, or will their new-found passion leave them burned?

Only $4.99 for the Kindle, and only $11.99 in print. Grab a copy today! 🙂

 

 

NaNoWriMo Days 7 and 8

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Word count day 7:   3,766
Word count day 8:  +  221 (So far)
Total word count:   12,441

For some reason, I just can’t get started today. I’ve got ideas. I kinda know what’s happening now with The Tree of Liberty, and after the election I’ve been rather re-motivated. Like so many Constitution-lovers, I fear the future, too. Maybe more so now than ever.  The guiding concept behind Jefferson’s Road was giving the Left an excuse to do what they’ve always dreamt about doing: turning the U.S.A. into the U.S.S.R. Now it looks like they’ll go for that even without the excuse. Now they believe they have a mandate, for crying out loud. And what with the Republicans gleefully accepting defeat yet again, there’s little to stop them.

Except us, of course. And that’s gonna get ugly.

I don’t want to turn this into a political rant. I’ve got a whole series for that. But I am grieving. Maybe that’s what’s keeping me from putting words on a page. I don’t know.

Topheth is coming along nicely as well. Cranked out some serious verbage on that last night. It’s another dark, grim story in Janelle Becker’s world. I hope those of you who liked The Coppersmith will give her another go in this book. Should be fun!

All right, enough. I just wanted to get the update in. I’ve got about twenty minutes of the day left, and I need another 900 words or so to reach my target goal. I’m getting back to work, now.

Somethin’s Happening Here…

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What it is ain’t exactly clear.

What is clear is that The Coppersmith is seriously taking off in the rankings. This is the latest from Amazon, as of 4:35 am on Tuesday, September 4th:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,012 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

That I’ve even cracked the Top 100 in two categories is nothing short of amazing. Part of it, doubtless, is the little hiccup with Amazon’s price matching. Seems Diesel Books was still offering The Coppersmith for sale at their site, a discrepency which has since been rectified. I’m unaware of the book selling anywhere else at the moment. So for the past day or so, people have been getting the book at a serious discount. Maybe that’s led to the sales. It certainly hasn’t hurt my rankings.

Regardless, I’m hard at work on the sequel, and I hope to have it done… before the month is out? We’ll see. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have something more to offer all these readers!

Totally Amazing!

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The Coppersmith has continued to climb in the rankings, as almost 1,700 copies were downloaded overnight.  We have now completely surpassed the high-water mark set by Jefferson’s Road: The Spirit of Resistance, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see us bump up against 10,000 by the end of the promotion (around 2 am EST).

Here are some screen shots:

Many thanks to everyone who’s tweeted, liked, mentioned, and downloaded the book! I hope it scares the snot outta you!

The Coppersmith Is Free to Download

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Yes, you read that right. The Coppersmith, my serial killer novel that takes place in Upstate New York (nothing quite like creepin’ out the home folks!) is FREE to Download from Amazon for the next three days.

This is the second “Kindle Promotion” I’ve done so far. We saw more than 6K downloads for the first Jefferson’s Road book. Aside from the freebies, The Coppersmith has outsold Jefferson’s Road by about 2:1.

I’m real curious to see how this works out.

As before, those who SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER and POST TO FACEBOOK or TWITTER will be entered into a drawing to receive a free, autographed copy of the book.

Meanwhile, I’m hard at work on Topheth, the sequel to The Coppersmith. You can find an excerpt in the back of the book.

New Cover for The Coppersmith

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And a new interior file to follow.

I’ve just finished uploading a redesigned cover for the book on Amazon, which you can see below. Soon, I’ll be uploading a new version of the interior file as well. Not to worry – the only change I’m making is moving the Author’s Note to the end of the book.

For the print version, the new cover will be along shortly, as well as a reformatted interior that ought to make the book a little easier to read and enjoy. At any rate, here’s the cover!

Of course, this also means I have to go through the interior files of all my other books and change the graphic of this one (I include a list of published works in the back of each book), but that’s not really a major problem. I think most of the hiccups will be done soon.

Until I finish a new one and have to do the interior print files all over again!

On a related note, I spend a lot of time powering through The Tree of Liberty yesterday, and the story is ramping up toward the end of the second act. It has dawned on me that we’re almost into August, and I still have less than 30K words written on a book promised to be done this year. Gah! So I’m working on it.

I’ve redesigned the cover for Tree as well, but I’ve run into a little hiccup with one of the images – copyrighted photograph. I have an email out to the photographer, to see if the image is licensed for book covers. If not, I’ll have to come up with something else. Something similar, I think.

Oh, and yes, I desperately need REVIEWS FOR THESE BOOKS! So if you’ve read them, please help! Log into Amazon.com and leave your thoughts and comments!

[twitter-follow screen_name='AuthorMichaelJS' show_count='yes']

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All good things must come to an end, and finally, Eye of Darkness has done so! Woohoo! I have finished the book. 106,662 words and 55 chapters long. Now all that remains is to finish the map (and it’s a little different building one electronically than drawing it from hand) and drop it into the text. And a little editing, too, of course. Cover art needs a little TLC yet, too.

But it is relieving to be done, finally. I’ll wrap up these items in the next few days, and should be able to release it via Createspace, Amazon, and Smashwords shortly thereafter. Of course, the fun part will be learning how to incorporate images into e-books. Not something I’ve done before, but it’ll be a good experience.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to plunge ahead with Topheth rather than Tree of Liberty. Given that The Coppersmith is outselling both Jefferson’s Road books, it seems to make sense. I’ll still get TOL done before summer, I’m sure. Topheth already has 26k words or so and a pretty complete outline of where to go, so I should be able to ramp up the speed needed to finish it by the end of March. That’ll give me about three months to work on TOL before the end of June. Worst case scenario: TOL waits for a September release. Regardless, it’ll be cool to have these books and The Lost Scrolls coming out around the same time.

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Yikes! Is it September already? I’ve been busy making Facebook pages to promote my books, as well as releasing Patriots and Tyrants in paperback, and I’ve found the time to do some editing for my nephew and some cover assistance for my friend Linda… I just haven’t found the time yet to write!

I don’t think I’ve been avoiding it, but maybe that’s not true. Time will tell.

Regardless, I’ve made a little more progress on Eye of Darkness, getting a whole lot closer to being done, and I’m eager to wrap it up and get started on the next project on my plate.

The Coppersmith continues to be my newest “runaway” best seller (for me, at least). I’ve sold almost as many copies of my psychothriller as I have of my political thrillers, and in far less time. Maybe it’s the price point, maybe it’s that the subject matter is less controversial, and therefore less frightening.

Apple I-tunes is where I’m selling it most. I sold 35 copies in June and 23 in July. I don’t have figures for August yet, but it’s crazy that it’s doing so well over there. Weird. I’m sure the fact that I share the same first and last name as another major author isn’t hurting me any at all. I know for a fact his name is just a pen name (Michael Scot was the name of a Scottish “wizard”), whereas my name is the real deal. Besides, I had it first. I’m sure people will figure it out eventually. Hopefully, by that time I’ll have established my own credentials as a writer.

Oops. It’s time to go to work now. Gotta run!

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