Maps! Maps! Maps!

So, I sometimes get somewhat bored. When I do, I think of non-boring things to do. Recently, one of these boring things was to try to prettify my map of Parvumor (and it's sister island, Parvumun). At some point, I might end up using maps in my books, but I haven't seen the need to do so yet. If I do, they'll need to be pretty, and this is the first step in me learning how to make them so. Anyway, I thought I'd share it with you. As far as I can recall, this is the first time I've done so. If you've been wondering where Riverland is or what shape Parvumor has, this is for you. Don't take it as completely to scale or anything, but the generalities are all there.

 

 

End of Days

So, I'm sitting here really not feeling like writing today's scene involving a character by the name of Izzy the Talking Squirrel. Now, you might be wondering about me having a character named that at all. You probably remember, after all, the terrible things I've written about in the past. There's been murder and mayhem, and not all of it has been in furtherance of the greater good. On occasion, I've even had characters who enjoy torturing other characters in the most horrific and yes-it's-actually-torture-in-the-physical-sense kind of ways. Now, on the other hand, I have Izzy. He's a talking squirrel.

 

Of course, you know by now that Bookland and its greater universe is only a place where talking squirrels and chosen ones are the highest and most visible layer of existence. Beneath the façade, there's all my typical insanity. Much like Disneyland, it's a bright and playful world, but we all know there's something truly evil going on there. They lure the children in like millions of Hansels and Gretels. What they do with them after that is still a mystery. Sure, they all come back out looking the same as before, but are they really the same? Are they really them at all? I think the most likely answer is a definite no. If your child has been to Disneyland and returned to talk about it, they're certainly a sentient robot sent by the Illuminati to control us all. It's the only thing that makes sense.

 

In any case, Bookland has talking squirrels (well, not technically, but Literalia does, and it's a sister world to Bookland), and I'm avoiding today's scene involving one named Izzy. Therefore, I'm here to tell you that Bookland, the first book in The Story of Bookland, a series where the characters know they're characters, is still on sale for $0.99 for the remainder of the day. Get it while it's hot!

Buy Yourself a Present

I know, I know, it's almost Christmas, and you're very busy. I get it. In all honestly, my mind is also on other things right now, so I'm going to make this update brief. All I really have to say is that Bookland is now on sale for $0.99. You can find it through the link on the right side of this page. Also, I'm doing a Goodreads giveaway of the paperback version, if you're into that kind of thing. If you're not, I'm doing it anyway. Happy reading!

A Mediocre Sale

I'm sure you remember Booktober. As part of my "Make Reading Josh's Books Great Again" campaign, I offered up a sale to end all sales. You got all 4 books in The Kinmark Saga, a package currently selling for $17.96, for just $0.99 per book, $3.96 in all. I always feel somewhat insecure when doing math these days, and doing math in the morning is particularly unwise, but I'm pretty sure that's $14 in savings. Feel free to figure out the percentage for yourself.

 

In any case, it was quite the sale, and many of you jumped on it. This next one is... not as good. Don't blame me, Bookland is but a single book. True, its sequel just came out (click on the Amazon Author Page link to the right), but I can't mark it down until it's been available for a month at least. There are rules, you see. Like always, I don't get to set them.

 

So, Bookland is but a book, the first in a new series. All I can do is put it down to $0.99 and see how many of you jump on that marketing ploy and buy it. I hope you all do, and I really do think it's worth the price. I even think it's worth the $2.99 it's selling for now. No one has returned it as of yet, so buyers must agree.

 

Anyway, it will be going on sale from 12/22 through 12/29. If you don't feel like waiting, the current price is still, in my opinion, quite the bargain. Heck, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear about someone paying a few thousand for a copy. It's just that good.

Your Fulornian/Booklandic Update and a Preview of 2017

Christmas is upon us. Not long after it becomes behind us, 2016 will do the same. Yes, the time of resolutions is nearly here. We'll all be off sodas and on treadmills. For a few glorious hours, or perhaps even days, our entire perception of reality will change. No longer will we be consumed by our own greed and lusts. We'll be better, better eaters, better sleepers, better souls. We'll become what we were always meant to be, and then, shortly thereafter, we'll remember that we enjoy eating pizza while binge watching whatever show Netflix chooses to put out. It's who we are, and it's who we'll be for at least 340 or so days in 2017.

 

Now, that's not to say that we shouldn't have goals for ourselves, and it's not even to say that those goals can't be tied to the new year. For me, for the portion of my life that I share here on this blog, I have writing goals. Looking back at the two years I've been doing this, I've written close to 300k words in both years. How the calendar worked out with publishing those words makes it look like 2016 was far more productive than 2015, but it really wasn't. My output went up marginally. I want it to do so again in 2017. My goal is to actually pass 300k words this coming year. We'll see if I make it.

 

So, what are those words going to be about? Well, let's look at what's happening now to answer that question of what's still to come. As a refresher, I write in two worlds. That number will grow in the future, but it's just Fulorn and Bookland for now. Fulorn, of course, is the setting for my first series, The Kinmark Saga, and the larger work of which it is the beginning, The Song of Creation. It's a serious world, and the stories set there are best described as gritty and character-driven. Aside from that first complete series I wrote, there are currently two novellas that take place there. You can read them before or after the series. For more information on all of that, go to the tab above labeled "One Story." After all, Fulorn is my first and primary world. Its story is the main one I'm writing and will take a long time to complete.

 

But I needed a break, didn't I? And that's where Bookland came in. Without rehashing all of history, let's just say that it grew from a very simple idea (What if the characters knew they were characters?) and it's a world more lighthearted than Fulorn. Now, I don't want to give off the wrong impression here. Bookland isn't some joke. The setting is parody, yes, and the world is slightly ridiculous. But the characters are very real, and some very real things happen to them along the way. Not all of them are pleasant. The thing I've said time and time again is that The Story of Bookland, that's the name of the series, is a serious fantasy story being told through the lens of parody. The humor is the highest level, the most obvious, but there are darker elements beneath that superficial front. They come out more and more as the story develops.

 

Speaking of that development, I have an update. Bookland, of course, was released a few months back. Well, Literalia, the second book in the series, is now also ready for publishing. I've edited it over and over again and can't stand the thought of doing so again. That's a pretty good sign that it's ready. So, I submitted it on Amazon and Createspace today. It should be available tonight or tomorrow or Saturday. We'll see. I'm really excited about it getting out there, and I'm even more excited about getting started on the next one.

 

I'm also rather nervous about that, however. It's going to be a challenge to write this next book. To call my plans for it ambitious would be a bit of an understatement. If I pull off what I'm going for, it could be the one that we all look back on as changing this series from a fun story into a truly explosive one. If not, it could be the worst thing I've ever written. I could see it going either way, because the elements coming up are really big and extremely weird. But, the great part of being self-published is that I can just go for it, and that's what I'm going to do.

 

By the way, if you haven't yet started this series, I suggest waiting a few days to do so. As part of Literalia's release, I'll be putting Bookland on sale for $0.99 at some point next week. I'll be sure to announce it on here when I know exactly what days that's going to be, but I'd hate for you to waste $2 in the meantime. Then again, I suppose it wouldn't hurt my feelings all that much. Perhaps you should just go buy all my books. Yes, I think that would be wise. In fact, buy them all twice. I'm always taking donations to the Feed-a-Josh Foundation!

The Growth of Bookland

So, I finished another book. Including my two novellas, that makes eight now. Pretty crazy stuff. I'm currently editing this new one and hope to have it out in relatively short order. You might have guessed by now, but I don't labor over a book after the first draft is done. I did that with my first book, The Last Kinmark, and I still don't think the overall product was improved very much. I like the way I write and simply use the editing process to look for errors and fix any big problems that might jump out at me.

 

Now, that's not to say that I just write willy-nilly and throw books up on Amazon (all my books can be found there through the link to your right). Rather, I do a lot of the traditional "continuity" editing while I actually write. If I don't like a paragraph I just wrote, I scrap it. If an entire section doesn't seem to fit, it's gone. Heck, I've got a ten thousand word beginning of a book from earlier this fall just wasting away on my laptop because I had to abandon it. The point is that I don't just fling crap against the wall and see what sticks. At least, I normally don't.

 

Bookland is different. More correctly, The Story of Bookland is different. I guess I should stick to referring to it by the actual series name now that there are two books in it rather than just the first, Bookland. You see, if you've read The Kinmark Saga or any of my writing set in Fulorn, you know that I keep it distant. I'm not in those books. The narration is strictly third-person and limited to one character at a time. For the most part, The Story of Bookland is like that too. On that level, it's not very different from Fulorn. But then there's another level to think about.

 

There are interjections in the Bookland books. There's a narrator, me, who pushes himself in here and there to add some things, and there's a reason for that. I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that the series has grown well beyond what I meant it to be. This was supposed to be a simple idea and a single book. It was just me asking myself, "Hey, what if there was a world where the characters knew they were characters in a story?" And I ran with that idea. I'm still running. I just finished the second of what was supposed to be only one book. At this point, I know there will be two more, and I know the third one is going to be a doozy.

 

I don't really know why I'm telling you all of this. In a way, I guess I'm still in the habit of rambling. I do that some in the The Story of Bookland. It's almost a stream of consciousness experience for me, and that makes the editing process interesting. I want to keep that strangeness, that sense of the story itself being a weird ride, but a very big part of me also wants to rein it all in, to cleanse and purge my writing of its obvious excesses. I don't think I'll let that part win. After all, Bookland is supposed to be a strange and weird place, and if my plans for book three hold true, it's only going to get a lot weirder.

 

If you could use some weird in your life, go ahead and hop on the train. I think you'll like where it takes you.

Election Eve

There are certain things self-important people like to do. Actually, there are a lot. For instance, if you were a self-important person, you would probably choose to post a few political posts on Facebook. I get that, but it's not my drug of choice. No, I'm more of a "give me your money" guy. Even more than that, I'm a "my books are awesome" guy. Are they? Should you? Well, I can't really answer that question. I can only encourage you to give them a try. More specifically, I can only encourage you to go to Amazon through the link on the right and sacrifice your hard-earned money in order to read a bunch of words I've written somewhat coherently and formed into a few stories. Please do so.

Aside from that, let me just break the bad news that the Cubs won the World Series. It sucks, and we're all in mourning. Let's hope it never happens again.

Anyway, have fun voting tomorrow! Your vote totally counts. You know, as like .00000000000001% of the electorate.