Friday, September 25, 2015

15 free fantasy books

A brand new blog has launched intended to help guide readers to free fantasy novels they might be interested in.

Check it out at http://freefantasygenrebooks.wordpress.com/

One of those books might look familiar. :)

Friday, September 18, 2015

It's Release Day!

The Secrets Dragons Keep is now available!

For the past couple weeks, India Drummond and I have been sharing excerpts, artwork, and teases on Facebook about Book 2 of The Dragons of Kudare, but the wait is over -- The Secrets Dragons Keep is now available!

Outcast from the temple, brothers Caden and Deshic journey with their family to the Plains of Fire to seek absolution for their crimes. There they endure cruel punishments under the unrelenting eye of the woman who rules over every soul at the temple compound.

When the faithful's true plans for their sister, Rane, come to light, she and Caden flee to dragon territory for help. They must act before time runs out to save Deshic and their parents from unthinkable horrors. But the elder dragon lord has troubles of his own that could unbalance the races and spell the end to a peace accord that has lasted for centuries.


You can get The Secrets Dragons Keep at these retailers:

Amazon: http://hyperurl.co/TSDK
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-secrets-dragons-keep/id1041105349?ls=1&mt=11
Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/the-secrets-dragons-keep
B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/2940151155229


Don't Forget

Book 1, The Lies Dragons Tell, is on sale!

If you haven't started the series yet, you can get it for 99¢ until Sept 30, 2015. If you have read it, please consider sharing the links below with your friends and family. We just released the new and improved second edition with simplified dragon names.

Where the story begins...

A mysterious illness strikes down a young woman pledged to the god of the Blessed Empire. Two brothers, as helpless as the healers who say there's nothing more they can do, watch while their sister fades away.

Determined to save her, they approach a dragonborn alchemist who promises help but leads them along a path of hardship, darkness, sacrilege, and death. Impossible choices divide the brothers as their love and loyalty are tested. What price is too high to save someone you love?


Amazon: http://smarturl.it/TLDT
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-lies-dragons-tell/id915345863?ls=1&mt=11
Kobo:http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-lies-dragons-tell

B&N (US): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-lies-dragons-tell-india-drummond/1120328827?ean=2940150626850
B&N (UK): http://www.nook.com/gb/ebooks/the-lies-dragons-tell-by-india-drummond/2940150626850


Thank you!

The Secrets Dragons Keep is our longest book ever! To compare, the Kinshield Legacy was 121,000 words. The Secrets Dragons Keep clocks in at just shy of 135,000 words, making it about 25% longer than The Lies Dragons Tell. The end result, polished to a mirrored finish (like the scales of the elder dragon lord!) came about with the help of our extraordinary beta readers:  Jennifer Hill, Kirk Hudson, Lorie Humpherys, Matteo Michelotti, Marsha Moore, Ed Nelson, and Ray Nicholson. Thanks, too, to our editor, Susan Helene Gottfried, for her flexibility and dedication to helping make this book the best it could be.

India and I truly appreciate your support and encouragement, and we hope you'll join us in celebrating the release of our new book. We're super excited about this story because we've been having so much fun writing it. We hope you enjoy it!

~KC

Thursday, August 20, 2015

The Secrets Dragons Keep

The first revision pass for The Secrets Dragons Keep is DONE!! India Drummond and I are so happy and excited about the second book in The Dragons of Kudare series. That means we're on track for a mid-September release.

We also plan to put book 1, The Lies Dragons Tell, on sale for 99c close to release day. For details, sign up for my newsletter. I'll announce the dates to my subscribers first.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Upcoming Changes

As a reader, you may or may not know how books are made available to borrow for Amazon Prime members and those who subscribe to Amazon Unlimited. Many big-name publishers get special access through special deals, because they're special. We indie authors (and those published through small presses) who distribute through Amazon's KDP program are given the option to participate by way of what's called Amazon Select.

Opting into Amazon Select requires exclusivity to Amazon. That is, authors who put their books into Select cannot also sell them at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, or any other retailer. If books are selling at other retailers, it's a huge risk to pull them out and hand over the keys to Amazon.

I've tried Amazon Select because, let's face it, I have to eat. I have a mortgage to pay, an electric bill to power the computer with which I write books, internet bill, phone bill... in other words, I'm a person without a deep pocketed spouse to pay my way through life. 100% of my income is through my writing, and sometimes that income is less than what I need to pay all the bills.

Generally speaking, I want my books to be available to anyone who wants to read them. I want to log into my account at Nook Press or iTunes or Kobo and see people buying them and enjoying them and wanting more! But... that's really only happening for my Kinshield series. It's my bread and butter, so I probably won't try Select for that series again (unless the exclusivity requirement is lifted).

The Mindstream series, on the other hand, is not getting much traction at other locations. So far, for the month of June, I've sold six copies of those books outside of Amazon. SIX. I can't live on that! And so the Mindstream Chronicles will be removed from sale at all retailers except Amazon so that I can try them in Select until the end of July.

You see, Amazon is making a change to the way authors are paid for borrows in the Select program. Rather than pay all authors the same for each book borrowed, they're going to pay for each page read. This means that authors of epic sagas who hold a reader's attention will earn more than someone who puts up a 2500-word short story. That's great for writers of sagas, assuming the work is compelling enough to hold the readers' attention.

If participation in the Select program still turns out to be a dud for me, I'll opt back out at the end of July and return the books to the other stores. It's not that I want to give non-Kindle readers the big middle finger. It's more that I need food in my belly if I'm to continue writing full time and not have to go back to a 9-5 job. :)

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Mobile friendly web site

After doing a crash learning session on Twitter Bootstrap, I've converted my web site to a mobile-friendly design. If you haven't seen it yet, it's at kcmay.com. I tried to keep it more or less the same as it was, but there are a few minor differences. The carousel "slider" on the home page isn't as slick, but I think most people aren't there to watch it change to all its varied images anyway, so I kept it to three.

What I like best about the bootstrap structure is that it's easy to incorporate existing HTML. I didn't have to change a whole lot. The menus are the same, the text is the same, but it's actually a lot easier to get everything to line up right on any size screen or browser.

Now, back to my revisions of Verse of the Vanguard...