Greetings, all! Been awhile since I posted something that wasn’t a review of a book or movie, so time to change that. And I want to start with giving an update on the final book to The Heart of Light Trilogy, and an apology on the lengthy delay in releasing it. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 2 years since Crown of Ravens was published. In that time, I’ve furthered my career in graphic designing, and just this year started taking courses so I can move into web development and design. I never forgot about the series and writing in general, but it’s one of those things that starts to get put in the back seat when you’re dealing with life and trying to support yourself. It gets harder and harder to make time when so much is needed for the more pressing issues, and every day you’re racing to catch up and cram as much as you can into that short space so you don’t fall behind. And with the audience for my books not being large, it was easier to put off the third book for “later”.

I’ll be honest, I never did much with marketing my books. I take full blame on that one. 😛 When I first published the series, I had to make the art myself, and while I was confident in the story itself (my mom and I did double-time on the editing) I wasn’t as confident in the cover art. If there’s one thing I pride myself in, it’s knowing a good cover. And while I will never knock my old work (it was pretty advanced for what I knew back then) I am brutally honest. It had some serious flaws, and trying to market a book with a cover you know is not put together very well is scary.

Last year was when my skills with making graphic art got to a point that I knew I could finally, FINALLY, give these stories the spectacular artwork I had always coveted in other books, and that they deserved.

I was already in a competition where the contestants needed to choose one of their older works and redo them. I looked through some of my older artworks, and the one for Crown of Ravens caught my eye. Right there, I decided to go for it. And behold, what I got was the art I had always dreamed of seeing on one of my books. I was even able to make the crown itself, a feat all on its own that I was unable to do before. (And yes, I was kicking myself for writing it as black. Gold sure would have easier. 😛 )

So Crown of Ravens was taken care of. It had a gorgeous cover, but now we come to The Dark Wolf. That book will always be my baby because it was my first, and from the start, I was never happy with the cover it got. Don’t get me wrong, I take pride in what I was able to make back then. I had ZERO experience making that stuff, and at the time, I had only a couple tutorials on Youtube to get me going. So it was big thing for me to even make a cover on my own. But again, I knew it had flaws, and it wasn’t the best work to represent the story. The first cover for Crown of Ravens had its own problems, but even that looked visually more appealing. As the years went by and I continued learning graphic art and design, The Dark Wolf went through 4 different cover variations as my skills gradually increased (I feel so sorry for putting it through that 😦 ). Last year was when the cover switching finally ended with the creation of the fifth and final work with a brand new piece of art.

Before

After

 

Before

After

I got both covers prepped and put together, then uploaded them to Amazon. Honestly, I did get a little thrill when the covers appeared on Amazon. 🙂 It was the art I had always dreamed of having for a story of mine. And at last, I finally had it. I did try to market it, but again I got sidetracked, and that was put on the back shelf. My workload was growing, and when I decided to take the leap into web development, that just added to my already full plate.

It was actually one of my friends who recently read my books that gave me the shot of encouragement and motivation I needed. And I realized I had to go back. I needed to finish what I started, not just for the dear readers out there, but also for myself and for the story that got me started on this journey through life. It was that first book, The Dark Wolf, that led me here. Now, I need to give it and the readers out there the ending they deserve.

Now you’re probably asking, “The update, man! Where are things with that third book (you dang slow author you)!”
Okay, enough suspense here. 😛 Currently, I’m still on the first draft but have managed to reach the halfway point on it. And I have already plotted out the remaining chapters, so no time will be wasted with wondering where the story should go. While a 2017 release is not likely at this point, 2018 is. I can’t give an exact date, but I’m looking at publishing the third book in either summer or fall of next year, depending on my schedule. Regardless, I want to let all of you know that the third book will be published, and the series resolved. And once again, I apologize for the LONG delay. The last chapter of The Heart of Light Trilogy is coming, folks. May have taken awhile, but it is coming, so hang in there.

Next post, I’ll be sharing some exciting news about what to expect for the third book. And I promise, I won’t do my usual and post a month later. 😉

(Disclaimer: Image and art used is my work and copyrighted)

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A happy October to you all! It’s fall time, and it’s a season I always get excited about. Everything is colorful and the scent of Christmas seems to fill the air. It’s like magic comes to life in this world. This month, I thought I’d go ahead and leave an early post instead of leaving this blog unattended for months on end. Due to being almost ridiculously busy, I never got to leave a post here on Crown of Ravens being finally published. Below is the cover I made for the book, as well as the link if you wish to check the book out.

http://www.amazon.com/Crown-Ravens-Heart-Light-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B00VS6KRX0/ref=sr_1_1?tag=geolinker-20&s=digital-text

Gorgeous, isn’t it? It’s almost hard to believe that there’s only more book left to write in the series before the adventure is finished. I get misty-eyed just thinking about it! But all good things must come to an end, sad though it is to admit. One adventure ends, and another begins.

Currently, I’m almost a quarter of the way through the first draft of the third book, and things are looking good. The story is really shaping up into what I think is the most epic of The Heart of Light Trilogy, with a lot of surprises and twists that even caught me unawares. As I mentioned a couple posts back, I wanted to get to work on a new series to get published for next year. Good news and bad news. Good news is, most of the kinks have been worked out and I’m currently polishing things up in the first draft. What’s the bad news? I had a little over 6000 words written up for it that will mostly get scrapped, leaving me back to almost square one. Still, with everything mostly all set and ready to go, I should be able to make it up quick. I have also started two other projects, which I am super-excited about. Both are fairy tales and one of them I’m writing for this contest here.

The other is inspired a lot by the movie Maleficent and a fantasy book from the ’90s called Children of the Night by Harold Mrya. This one I’ve probably made the most headway in. Over fifteen thousand words and growing. Not too sure where it will finish at, but I’m hoping for something over the twenty-five thousand mark.
Anyway, that’s about it for now. Feel free to like or comment. Next Friday, I will be giving a sneak preview of one of my fairy tale novels, so make sure to tune in then. 😉

I meant to get this up sooner, but again, I didn’t have the time until now.
As those of you who have been following my blog know, I was forced to take down the e-book of my book, The Dark Wolf, due to multiple formatting errors. After a few days of tinkering with it, I got it back up and running, this time error free. I will admit, this whole thing has been a huge learning process and MORE than a good bit of work. But the pain in my eyeballs from staring at the screen too long, and the general frustration when I saw another snag that needed to be corrected was worth it to finally have this DONE. Now, due to the formatting I used, when you go to Amazon and press the ‘Click to View Inside’ it won’t show any page breaks. This is not due to any formatting errors on my part. I recently learned that this feature Amazon has carries a few bugs, so unless you have really complex formatting, the page breaks won’t show. Seeing as how I’m not into making things harder than they need to, I opted to go with the simpler formatting that still delivers great results.
Those page breaks are there and will show with the e-book itself when you purchase it or download the free sample Amazon offers, so don’t worry. I checked with several authors to be sure of this, and each one verified it. So anyway, here’s the link, (again) and when you buy the book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HSTAVIM

And on a sidenote, for my next post, I will leave a few helpful tips on how to format your own e-book. God knows, after what I went through, I want to make sure you guys have enough info so you can avoid the pitfalls.

Goodness, has this blog really fallen into oblivion. My apologies, folks. Lately, I have been busy with getting my book published, and I am happy to say that my book, The Dark Wolf, is finally all taken care of and available for purchase in both print and e-book formats. It was a long process, but God is good, and the dream is now a reality. Talk about finally reaching the light at the end of the tunnel. 🙂 If any of you would like to check it out, here are the links to view the book on Amazon.com.

e-book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HSTAVIM

paperback: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Wolf-Heart-Light-Trilogy/dp/1492260452/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387329736&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Dark+Wolf+by+J.M.+Christian

I’ve been to post at least once a month and seeing as how April is already half gone, I figured I’d better hurry and get something up on here.
For this month I decided to give everyone an update on my novel’s progress. I’m at 110,015 words so far, and have completed the major editing of fifteen chapters. I was planning on only having twenty chapters, but it ended up working out that I needed two extra ones in the middle of the story, so I slipped them in there.
Three others I decided to rewrite completely, but now that I’ve complete my latest chapter, I expect the editing to go a lot faster as the last seven chapters need only minor revisions.
I’ve already signed up with CreateSpace, and after I’m done proofreading my novel, I should be able to get published very soon this year!
By the way, I haven’t forgotten what I said about posting some of my story on here. After this post, the next one will contain the beginning of my first chapter which I will try to get on here before the month is over.

Here everyone is my first update on the progress of my book!

I couldn’t bear to reveal I was at a mere 395 words so I labored and spent as much time as I could writing. I can now say I have written over ten thousand words. Hurray!

There is still a lot more writing to be done before my book will be ready for publishing but it is at least a start. Hopefully if I continue to push, my story should be ready for a late fall 2012 release. Hopefully. The latest would be a early spring of 2013. I personally don’t want to wait that long. I want to publish my book this year so I’m praying that God will give me speed and inspiration to get it done.

The publisher I’m favoring the most is CreateSpace from Amazon. You can set your own price and get most of the royalties. The best part is that you are your own boss. I may or may not go with them as I am still looking around. One thing is for sure though, my book will be getting published very soon. That is something I can hardly wait for.