Hyperian Monarch

My current YA paranormal fantasy book which is an ongoing project. I am quickly writing one chapter per week and hope it is completed soon. I plan on making this a solo book with no series in mind. Hopefully it will be under 80,000 pages.

I dare say, it feels vastly different from An Ominous Book in feel as it's both written in 1st person POV and the protagonist Lydia is such a contrasting different person from the quiet Spaulding.

Lydia only wanted to go to a prestigious magic school to become a culinarist. She didn't ask to participate in a sordid game where she is forced to compete against 99 other magicians to rule the world.

The worst part?

She is slowly turning into a monster and might be enjoying the challenge afterall... if she can find the way to win the heart of the enigmatic heir to one of the wealthiest families along the way.

Read it as I write it while you still can free on Wattpad!

A book haul!

If you are an author that sells books on Amazon, you might have noticed that the website started offering creating paperback books with a really sloppy beta copycat of Createspace.

I never bothered to move my physical books at the time because you couldn't. You had to start the process all over again with a new ISBN code. It was in beta, so the little details regarding uploading the files was too much of a hassle.

Now that there are rumors circulating around the web that Amazon is going to shut down Createspace, if you have any files there, I suggest you should move them pronto.

Amazon KDP has finally improved the process and now you are allowed to move your Createspace books by pasting the ISBN 13 code when you click on making a paperback. Amazon will pull the Createspace file, although I personally opted to upload .docx files from my laptop because I didn't trust the sharpness of the text on pdf format.

Moving the files was reasonably fast and Amazon takes a bit less time to approve a draft than Createspace did.

I left the prices the same BTW.

On another related topic, I have finally finished brushing the text of the 7th book Harlequins and it is ready for publishing. I just need a cover for it. Oh, and to purchase a copyright as well.

I'm 30-40% into brushing the text of the 8th and final book of my series Mortality and I hope to send the petition for a copyright together to save money and time. Those will be two covers that need to be made, ouch.

Given my long series doesn't make a lot of money, I see no harm in simply publishing both books together to finish with this series so that I can set my attention on my new Young Adult fantasy book that has absolutely nothing to do with An Ominous Book.

If you are wishing to get a free ARC copy, feel free to ask in the comments!

A huge achievement

Last night, I feel like I closed a chapter by finishing the 8th book. Neither the 7th and 8th An Ominous Books have been "officially" published. It's a well-known fact that stretching series indefinitely accrues very few sales, so I don't know if I would be interested in pushing the publicity for two books that took me a very long amount of time to write for few economic rewards.

It's probably more of a pet project than anything else at this point.

I do leave a lot of unresolved issues at the end of the 8th book and there are things I'd like for the story. I might feel tempted to write a 9th book as a sort of standalone story to close other possibilities, and I'm certain it would be very fun to write it.

And here comes the conundrum: Few people will actually care if I write more sequels.

It's a tough call, because I find it very fun to write therse novels. I could very easily do the draft for a 9th novel in 6 months at the current pace I write in odd bursts of free time/inspiration/urgency to finish the blasted story.

However, I would also like to write about other stories filled with fantasy, and even other Young Adult novels that have absolutely no fantasy elements whatsoever. The possibilities are infinite.

For now, I have to make the tough choice to close the final chapter of this amazing series. It was a really fun ride.

I do wish to continue drawing artwork related to the series, because it's so damn fun. Problem is, drawing takes a huge amount of time for me and I just don't have a lot of time to draw these days.

And while I feel sad about leaving more stories on hold, it doesn't mean I am totally against writing more as pet projects.

All in all, good day, Spaulding. It was a real thrill writing your story these past 3 years!

No, this isn't Spaulding, it is a very crummy Hama drawing I quickly made with Photoshop. The lack of my intuos pen obviously shows.

If you are one of the... what... 5 people? That have bothered to read my book series to the end, wow, I'm amazed that you made it so far.

Maybe you could do me a huge favor and reviewing my work on Amazon and Goodreads, I could surely use the reviews!

Making mockup publicity images of my published books

Mockup ads seem to get more popularity and when you think about it, you can easily see why. Add a dabble of color in the background, put a mini blurb with something that entices the reader and PAM! A small piece of publicity that is easy on the eyes.

I finally chose to do this for fun and enjoyed the result. Each image was purposely chosen as something related to the plot of each book in one way or another.

I wish to thank the awesome website www.unsplash.com for the free use images. Thank you!

An Ominous Book is also available on Smashwords!