Hello there!
Once again, I’m changing things up just a little bit in the hopes to hit just the right stride for this website and my author goals. Rather than 1+ times a month posting a big blog post with reviews, discussions, and all sorts of other things lumped into it, going forward I’m going to post one newsletter a month; this will be the only post that will be paired with alerts. I will also post reviews and discussions as separate posts during the months, but those posts will come as they come and won’t go out with any alerts.
What’s going to be in the newsletter? Well, the newsletter will be the post that’s more about me, directly and indirectly. I’ll share updates on my writing progress, as well as links to prior blog posts (reviews and discussions and such), I’ll share cool things that you may find interesting, and I’ll do my best to keep it on the shorter side.
Without further ado… Here’s me figuring out how to do a newsletter!
Writing and Publishing
Looking Back
June and July were pretty big months. Inner Demon was published July 2nd and then I went off on a family vacation, which prevented me from properly updating things following the release, leaving the website still focused on pre-orders. That said, I think the release went really well—I did get a handful of pre-orders, after all! (Impressive with a marketing budget of $0.)
I’ve since been going through and slowly updating the website, particularly with vendor links now that I’m able to upload Inner Demon to websites that wouldn’t let me set up a pre-order. (Why, Apple Books, why do you want to make me pay a subscription to set up a pre-order for an ebook? Something still tells me I was doing the upload wrong, because there’s no way an idea that stupid ever got off the ground and onto your website.)
If you’re interested in purchasing Inner Demon, click here. The book is available as an ebook, paperback, hardcover, and will be available in audio (hopefully in August). If you want to take a look at some character portraits that were part of the build up to launch, this blog post has you covered. I’ll throw Kraw below just because I think it’s so dang cool.
Looking Forward
So… What’s next?
Well, first and foremost, I’ve got a lot of business-side cleanup to do for Inner Demon. I’ve nearly finished uploading the book to various vendor sites, but there are still more battles to fight—and/or decide if they are worth fighting. Do I really need IngramSpark when they won’t accept any version of my cover and I’m tired of asking my artist to make adjustments? Why must the US copyright website forget the account I made four or so years ago when publishing The Failed Technomancer? Such headaches.
Also, as mentioned earlier, Inner Demon will get an audio release, hopefully in August. Most likely late August. I’m waiting to get the files back from my audio guy, who got back from a visit to Japan recently and is now really going at them.
I don’t write for the business side of things, though. The business side is a necessary evil; I do it because I want to build this into a living, which will give me more time to write and tell stories, and make it easier to share them widely. No, what excites me is letting characters and worlds escape my head into other people’s, and to do that again I’m hard at work on Halfwhisker. In fact, Draft 1 was finished a while ago, and just a few days ago I finished sending off a heavily revised Halfwhisker: Part 1 to a bunch of test readers. I’ll start work revising part 2 once I finish the Inner Demon bookkeeping items mentioned above, but comments are already coming in! Most are positive; several indicate resistance to my use of ash (æ) and thorn (þ). I happen to quite like those symbols and I think they elevate certain fictional words when used with intent, so we’ll see where that all goes.
Upcoming
I’ve been pretty slow in reviews and discussions—after all, my last review came at the beginning of June, and the rest of that month was dedicated to Inner Demon‘s release.
Well, I’m still reading books, watching shows, and I’m excited to share a handful of things in the coming weeks, things I expect you’ll like quite a bit. To get specific, reviews for the following are upcoming:
- Bartimaeus: The Amulet of Samarkand and The Golem’s Eye
- Chloe’s Kingdom: The Lost Colony
- Frieren: Rip and Tear (I mean, Beyond Journey’s End)
I also might provide a more full review of the video game Coromon, or write an article about it. It’s a game that, as a Pokemon fan (particularly of the era that Coromon apes), I so badly want to like… but so many decisions the developers made are hard to get behind. They often either didn’t go far enough, or felt like they existed just to exist—which is a real bummer when that game has so many moments of pure genius. And the art style! Easily some of the best monster pixel art ever.
I digress.
What Am I Reading?
Right now I am finishing The Golem’s Eye, a Bartimaeus novel, and then I’m going to read Travel by Star, an indie novel that came extremely highly recommended (to the point where I’ve been considering putting everything else down and just starting on it; alas, I don’t like leaving things unfinished).
After all that… most likely I will read the polished draft of The Engineer’s Craft, a novel from one of my writing group members.
Anything Else I Recommend?
Per the usual, everything I’m sharing here I just think is cool. Nothing is sponsored.
Clint’s Reptiles. It’s a YouTube channel that, despite the name, discusses all sorts of critters, and because of Clint’s raw enthusiasm (and helpful advice) I, for the first time in my life, have gotten excited about the idea of owning a spider as a pet. Which, if you know me personally, you know that’s quite the jump.1
Even if you’re not into weird animals, Clint is just… the happiest geek ever. It’s impossible not to feel a little better hearing someone be so genuinely excited about something, and enthused to share.
Peak is a cooperative video game where you play as one of up to four survivors of a plane crash. You’ve landed on a mysterious deserted island in the middle of the ocean and the only way to survive is to climb to the peak of the mountain and set off a bunch of flares (in the hopes it will catch the attention of rescuers). This game features amazing platforming and enough variety to get many hours of fun out of an $8 purchase. The downside? Unless you really badly prefer to be alone, the peak of the game’s value comes with good company to play alongside you.
After all, part of the fun is the game’s proximity-based chat system, meaning how distant you are from your friends in-game (and the direction you are facing) will affect their ability to hear you. Far from the first game to do it, but still pretty cool.
Word Play is a word game—meaning, you create words to earn points and advance through rounds. Simple enough on the surface. But, taking inspiration from Balatro, Word Play really gamifies things by adding modifiers that you can unlock, unique letter tiles with special effects, and more, greatly rewarding you for both your ability to spell words well and for carefully selecting what gameplay elements will earn you the most points (in combination with those words). It’s not the type of game I play alone for fun, but when my wife and I have a free fifteen minutes we have a blast popping this open and putting our heads together to see if we can beat previous high scores.
- Fortunately, my wife would feed me to said spider (before killing it) if I ever followed through with this unwise idea, so for the sake of life and limb I’ll refrain. ↩︎
Boo Ludlow 
Leave a comment