It’s been two weeks since I released Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet and to say the launch has surpassed my expectations would be a huge understatement. Marathon runners tend to have two goal times for each race – one they see as feasible and one that is their secret dream goal. I had the same thing for Glitch, one lifetime sales target that seemed reasonable and then a second, higher number that seemed unlikely. I’m pleased to say Unseen Planet blew past both those goals and today hit double my higher “dream” number and got up to number 10 in Amazon’s Teen/YA Alien Science Fiction chart – a feat I’m very happy to have achieved given that every other book in the top 20 is part of a series. Even my decision to go wide and sell the book on all platforms has turned out pretty well with about 15% of sales coming from iBook, Nook and Kobo. That includes one copy sold in Australia and another in New Zealand – both firsts for me as far as I know (thanks Kobo). If you missed it, I did a fun interview at the Leighgendarium. As part of that, I ran a contest to win a copy of the paperback edition of Unseen … Read More
Building the Apocalypse – The Middle of the End
After three rounds of my own revisions, my Apocalypse Weird novel, tentatively titled Siren’s Call, has gone off to Wonderment Media’s editor, Ellen Campbell. Now the waiting begins as Ellen reads through the draft and tracks down any issues – not just bad grammar and spilling mistales but also parts of the story that are too slow or don’t make sense or just basically need to be improved. A lot of writers find this bit of the process very nerve-racking, and to some extent I do too. But I also enjoy making the book better and getting other people’s perspective is a key part of that. I’ve used editors on all my indie books and that won’t ever change – I just can’t bring myself to put a book out there until it’s run past several fresh pairs of eyes to catch as many issues as humanly possible. By the time it’s finished, Glitch Mitchell and the Unseen Planet will have been through five different editors and proofreaders (as well as one or two beta readers). There’ll still be issues, I’m sure (even the big publishers miss things), but I’ll have done everything I can to get it as close to perfect as possible. An editor can really make or break a project. Thankfully, … Read More