[Addendum] Also, if you ask for a free review copy of Blurred Weaponry, I don’t EXPECT a review - I just hope that if you’re kind enough to read it, that it inspires you in some way to reveal how terrible / good / at least not boring it was.
I would have done this sooner, but actually finishing the book and then immediately hitting "peak" overtime means I’m not doing much other than working.
To start, I did an audio review for Shawn Furniss’ Inkshares draft The Agoge as the first part of a two-review video, which is the first episode of something I’ll be doing which will ALWAYS include a review I did for this community. Here it be:
https://youtu.be/9rXtcl9O6rs
Anyway, Blurred Weaponry is complete and released. The ebook is available on Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, yadda yadda. No links because I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that, but it’s an easy enough pair of words to search for. It’s all of $3.99, so hopefully the few of you all that supported it originally will buy it (question mark in parentheses).
And of course, as I mentioned previously, if you want a review copy, please send me a direct message via twitter (@SixelaZed) with an email address and preferred format, which should be either .epub, .mobi, PDF with bookmarks, or .doc. I worked incredibly hard and am very excited for the craziness of the next books in the series, but I don’t think I’ll sell too many, and won’t give more than 15 review copies away total. I don’t care if someone hates it or mildly enjoys it, as long as if/when a review drops, it’s honest.
To end this, I’ll post an image of my first review because I’m quite thankful (it was my beta reader, who honestly shocked me by reading it when no other person I gave early copies to bothered to do so).
I’ll be reviewing stuff for Inkshares when I am awake enough to do so, and will accompany each video version review with some fan art.
Peace out, me hearties, I’ll be around all ghost-like and whatnot, and hit me up on twitter and Facebook if you feel up to it,
This isn’t super short, but it IS an important announcement.
Thank you to everyone who clicked follow here and there for Blurred Weaponry. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, I have to remove myself from Inkshares as a writer and release projects independently for now. The reason is simple: I’m god-awful at this. I can’t sell myself or my work for the life of me, and couldn’t even give the book away and have people take it. I was planning on spending a couple thousand dollars just for this first novel in advertising with the HOPES of getting the measly 250 copies ordered for Quill, but what if I didn’t make it because I’m terrible at hammering home sales? That thought, and potential extreme loss of cash, drove me away from pretending to be salesman.
[Blah blah blah, deleted second paragraph full of justifications because who cares, and now moving on…]
In any case, I’ll still be on Inkshares. I’ll be writing a review here and there, about every ten days (I’ll be doing one later tonight), supporting a syndicate, sharing via twitter, and liking pages / posting comments on Facebook. I like this platform, and love the chance it gives to authors who are better at being salesfolk than I can ever be, so I’m not really going anywhere (honestly, I’ll be way more active thanks to reviews than I ever was while updating since I never had anything to say).
On a final note, Blurred Weaponry will be out in like 3 weeks. I’ll have a very temporary download link up (I mean, seriously, 24 hours at most) for free copies to Inkshares followers / authors if they DM me on twitter when I announce that. My next update will be about then, and should also include the reviews I’ve done (if they were accepted ^_^) and links to those projects.
May the words be with you. Also, the force. That’s fairly important, sometimes. Peace out,
I always underestimate how long it will take for a YouTube project, so the last three days have been me staring at colored bars in After Effects for extended periods of time. It doesn’t help that I always kind of go hard despite not knowing what I’m doing. Oh well. Here that new clip, which I’m pretty happy with as a bit of world-buildy info for the book.
Now that my edits are done (maybe like fifty more words for a specific thing I forgot in my notes), I have to give it to my editor and await the Red-Lined Yelling. It also means I’ve started finalize the plot of Sinopia Property Management, which is looking quite different than anything I’ve done in a lot of cool ways. Also, there’s a character in it named after my Dominican loanshark / banker grandpa. Just wanted to say that somewhere besides my own head.
Peace out!
(And, don’t forget to click these next words to download the three-chapter preview, and maybe review the project and let me know what you think? I’m asking nicely before I start the process of begging for pre-orders ^.^)
This time I’m on schedule! Below you’ll find the piece of art I worked on for this week. I was going to do another simple outline, then I began to experiment with Black Ink again (the same program I used for the art on my YouTube stuff and the Sinopia Property Management temp cover), and kinda went crazy. This is a clipping of the new work, showing off the character Nes aka Corporal Nesembraci Jaydef:
I’m still working on his props (mostly meaning his gun and belt-full-o’-dangerous-sh*t). Also, my friggin’ boot design wasn’t working, so I’m redoing that too.
Thanks as always for following Blurred Weaponry, and I’ll be back with more nonsense later!
-Michael Valdez
@SixelaZed
48saints@gmail.com
PS: The pose I used as a skeletal basis for this drawing is from CharacterDesigns.com, which I’ve used for years, and can’t wait for his new version of the site to get going.
Listen... sure, I said the 17th. Did I try? Oh, baby, you bet I did. Did life decide that the 17th was the perfect day for a combination of hard drive failure, needing a new car battery, and a bunch of smaller nonsense that literally took up every waking hour? Apparently.
Criminey, being an adult is annoying. You know what isn’t? Having a brother who knows lots of stuff about cars AND owns all the tools to prove it. That, folks, is straight up awesome!
Unfortunately, while I’m done with the art I promised I’m having some... uh... issues posting it here in non-giant size. Apparently these updates are a little weird about images, so I posted it on Twitter (I’m @SixelaZed). It’s a base design for Saan-Hu’s outfit, minus accessories.
I have similar designs ready for the other six "main" characters, so I’ll dole those out over time.
And, of course, here is the download link for the first four chapters of Blurred Weaponry with proper formatting and errything.
http://bit.ly/28JrXVW
There are four versions available: .epub, PDF, DOCX, and a DOCX with yellow background for readability. Download, read, enjoy, share as much as you like, and / or review on Inkshares.
Thanks a whole lot and plus a bit of a bunch for following this project.
This is great Michael! I love "dream casts." I was thinking of doing something similar. I’m looking forward to seeing how this book progresses. Keep up the good work!
Just a quick update to show off an image I forgot about. This is every major and minor character in Blurred Weaponry. It’s not quite perfect, with some characters needing different hair or natural eye color (a bunch of these people have silvery-gray or gray-tinted eyes in the book), and it’s definitely not how the characters look in my head, but it’s a fin thing. Here you go:
Also, there’s the occasional emphasis via italics that’s missing from the uploaded chapters, but unfortunately Inkshares’ "upload chapter" option or even copy-pasting completely negates that stuff, which quite frankly needs to change. Sorry about that, and I’ll have downloads for those chapters available next week that has the formatting fixed.
I’ll also be looking at a lot of Inkshares updates over the next couple of days too, so you’ll find my “likes” on tons of projects. And as soon as I’m not ultra-broke, I’ll be supporting more books and joining a syndicate or two.
Thanks to those that follow, and I’ll have some stuff for y’all to see and read next week!
It’s been a long time, but I honestly didn’t have much to say beyond "still hammering at a keyboard!" With my pre-order restart date not coming up for a while, I kept writing updates and never posting, feeling guilty about the lack of real content. So this time, I’m writing this as I go and forget thinking ahead.
There are some minor changes to the main Blurred Weaponry content. I uploaded "the version I’m going to send to an editor" for Chapters 1 (both separated scenes) and Chapter 2. Plus I uploaded Chapter 3 and sent it out ahead of time!
I like the direction of this introduction to the story, as the tragedy at the very start seemed sadly understated in the old manuscript. If you haven’t read that stuff, please do.Tell me what you think, highlight excerpts, and so on. At most I’ll upload two more chapters, especially since Chapter 5 features one of my favorite conversations in the whole book, so I gotta put that out somewhere.
I’ve also been working on tons of extras that I’ll reveal soon. To put some heat under my butt to get it done and stop being lazy about it, I’ll post a small schedule now!
June 17th: Some Artwork!
July 1st: More Artwork!
July 15th: Sending the manuscript to my editor (finally!) Also, new YouTube clip. Also, going to do more work on a prequel novella and my next project, Sinopia Property Management.
August 5th: Either some artwork from a talented artist or a new YouTube clip.
There, now I have to do all that. I’ll also announce a date for the pre-order restart as soon as I can, but my plans include having a lot of money saved up, so that date could go a week ahead or late, and announcing it now would be a hassle. It’s a comin’, though, for sure.
Thanks so much to those that follow, and I promise to be way more involved in paying attention to Inkshares updates and stuff from now on!
-Michael Valdez
PS: And thanks to Amanda Orneck for sending a copy of Shadow of the Owl (click that title to order from Amazon!) as a raffle prize for ordering her Inkshares project Deus Hex Machina. Congrats on the Quill numbers :)
[Addendum] Also, if you ask for a free review copy of Blurred Weaponry, I don’t EXPECT a review - I just hope that if you’re kind enough to read it, that it inspires you in some way to reveal how terrible / good / at least not boring it was.
Final Update
I would have done this sooner, but actually finishing the book and then immediately hitting "peak" overtime means I’m not doing much other than working.
To start, I did an audio review for Shawn Furniss’ Inkshares draft The Agoge as the first part of a two-review video, which is the first episode of something I’ll be doing which will ALWAYS include a review I did for this community. Here it be:
https://youtu.be/9rXtcl9O6rs
This isn’t super short, but it IS an important announcement.
Thank you to everyone who clicked follow here and there for Blurred Weaponry. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, I have to remove myself from Inkshares as a writer and release projects independently for now. The reason is simple: I’m god-awful at this. I can’t sell myself or my work for the life of me, and couldn’t even give the book away and have people take it. I was planning on spending a couple thousand dollars just for this first novel in advertising with the HOPES of getting the measly 250 copies ordered for Quill, but what if I didn’t make it because I’m terrible at hammering home sales? That thought, and potential extreme loss of cash, drove me away from pretending to be salesman.
[Blah blah blah, deleted second paragraph full of justifications because who cares, and now moving on…]
In any case, I’ll still be on Inkshares. I’ll be writing a review here and there, about every ten days (I’ll be doing one later tonight), supporting a syndicate, sharing via twitter, and liking pages / posting comments on Facebook. I like this platform, and love the chance it gives to authors who are better at being salesfolk than I can ever be, so I’m not really going anywhere (honestly, I’ll be way more active thanks to reviews than I ever was while updating since I never had anything to say).
On a final note, Blurred Weaponry will be out in like 3 weeks. I’ll have a very temporary download link up (I mean, seriously, 24 hours at most) for free copies to Inkshares followers / authors if they DM me on twitter when I announce that. My next update will be about then, and should also include the reviews I’ve done (if they were accepted ^_^) and links to those projects.
May the words be with you. Also, the force. That’s fairly important, sometimes. Peace out,
-MAV
Short update today!
Listen... sure, I said the 17th. Did I try? Oh, baby, you bet I did. Did life decide that the 17th was the perfect day for a combination of hard drive failure, needing a new car battery, and a bunch of smaller nonsense that literally took up every waking hour? Apparently.
Hi, everyone :)
Just a quick update to show off an image I forgot about. This is every major and minor character in Blurred Weaponry. It’s not quite perfect, with some characters needing different hair or natural eye color (a bunch of these people have silvery-gray or gray-tinted eyes in the book), and it’s definitely not how the characters look in my head, but it’s a fin thing. Here you go:
Also, there’s the occasional emphasis via italics that’s missing from the uploaded chapters, but unfortunately Inkshares’ "upload chapter" option or even copy-pasting completely negates that stuff, which quite frankly needs to change. Sorry about that, and I’ll have downloads for those chapters available next week that has the formatting fixed.
I’ll also be looking at a lot of Inkshares updates over the next couple of days too, so you’ll find my “likes” on tons of projects. And as soon as I’m not ultra-broke, I’ll be supporting more books and joining a syndicate or two.
Thanks to those that follow, and I’ll have some stuff for y’all to see and read next week!
Peace out,
Michael Valdez
It’s been a long time, but I honestly didn’t have much to say beyond "still hammering at a keyboard!" With my pre-order restart date not coming up for a while, I kept writing updates and never posting, feeling guilty about the lack of real content. So this time, I’m writing this as I go and forget thinking ahead.
There are some minor changes to the main Blurred Weaponry content. I uploaded "the version I’m going to send to an editor" for Chapters 1 (both separated scenes) and Chapter 2. Plus I uploaded Chapter 3 and sent it out ahead of time!
I like the direction of this introduction to the story, as the tragedy at the very start seemed sadly understated in the old manuscript. If you haven’t read that stuff, please do.Tell me what you think, highlight excerpts, and so on. At most I’ll upload two more chapters, especially since Chapter 5 features one of my favorite conversations in the whole book, so I gotta put that out somewhere.
I’ve also been working on tons of extras that I’ll reveal soon. To put some heat under my butt to get it done and stop being lazy about it, I’ll post a small schedule now!
June 17th: Some Artwork!
July 1st: More Artwork!
July 15th: Sending the manuscript to my editor (finally!) Also, new YouTube clip. Also, going to do more work on a prequel novella and my next project, Sinopia Property Management.
August 5th: Either some artwork from a talented artist or a new YouTube clip.
There, now I have to do all that. I’ll also announce a date for the pre-order restart as soon as I can, but my plans include having a lot of money saved up, so that date could go a week ahead or late, and announcing it now would be a hassle. It’s a comin’, though, for sure.
Thanks so much to those that follow, and I promise to be way more involved in paying attention to Inkshares updates and stuff from now on!
-Michael Valdez
PS: And thanks to Amanda Orneck for sending a copy of Shadow of the Owl (click that title to order from Amazon!) as a raffle prize for ordering her Inkshares project Deus Hex Machina. Congrats on the Quill numbers :)