Michael Valdez · Author · added over 9 years ago · 4 likes

Hi, everyone. Just wanted to note a few things while I had the chance.

First, a big thank you to Richard Heinz, Amanda Orneck, Eric Landreneau for pre-ordering my book. As a reward, you each get a $25 Amazon gift code. Send me your email addresses ASAP to 48saints@gmail.com and you'll have them on 12/18, just in time for Christmas! (Maybe the 19th, I work like 10-11 hours and may hit the sack early on the 18th ^-^)

Feel free to use that as an incentive to buy more stuff on Inkshares - or hey, another ebook copy of Blurred Weaponry! Was that too much? Possibly. Likely.

I'll be giving at least one $25 gift card every two weeks. From now on if I get more than one pre-order, I'll calculate the odds and roll a polyhedral di thingie to figure out who wins. I'd give some away to Jeremy Thomas and Thaddeus Woodman, but as they are part of the Inkshares running crew, that might be weird (winky face, yo).

As far as Blurred Weaponry's story goes, the biggest change I plan on making is expanding the prologue to give the introduction more mystery. The new section will be about Mill, the so-called leader of the homeless enemies, the terrible things he had to do to get himself involved with Citizen Vaiss, and why he did them at all. That means likely adding one more chapter elsewhere to come back to his POV, but it will add much more humanity to the story as a whole.

Finally, please let me know what you think of what I've posted so far on my Inkshares page if you have time to read it some of it. Remember, I believe you get a $5 credit for your first excerpt pointed out / liked and $5 for your first content review (or comment.

Links:

Watch the YouTube stuff I made so far supporting my book @ http://bit.ly/1WuZhql

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago · 2 likes

Hey, all. Here's some quick notes / changes / additions.

1: More formats for my BETA. Now, .epub and .mobi are available, so you can toss it onto your phone and whatnot and have the file work as if it was a “published” ebook. It’s the same link as before: http://bit.ly/1LCGuB2

Please let me know what you think, good or bad, so I can add / adjust / polish.

2: The main page is significantly better, with lots of content compared to when I started. If you followed early and haven’t seen it in a while, please take a gander. My YouTube videos have look more professional, too, despite the first couple having low volume (sorry about that, though I still think they're decent promotional clips).

3: I finally started work on "The Great Jioda,” a stand-alone short story that will be included with the book. It’s a tale about a twelve-year-old that tries to impress his friends by training animals with stolen hypnotic tools. Things go super-wrong, obviously.

My promotion is still going on, so all books until 250 copies get a $10 Amazon code, for which I'll collect the emails if/when I make a funding goal.

Thanks to those that follow, and peace out! @sixelazed / 48saints@gmail.com

Michael Valdez · Author · edited almost 10 years ago

That download link for the draft will work until 11/13 (until further notice). If interested, anyone with an Inkshares account will be able to get it after I cut it off with a message.

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

Beta copies available, good folk! (PDF and DOC because the .epub and .mobi converters were all terrible)

http://bit.ly/1LCGuB2

It’s been a week of updates from many writers due to the funding changes (I’m pretty glad I got way ahead of that). For me, it’s time to put Blurred Weaponry in the open and try and get some feedback. I’m quite happy with the way the story has worked out in this first book, and I’d love to know what I can do to improve it (I'm a newbie, after all). The only thing missing is an epilogue tease for Book 2, but I have lots of options for that and want to wait to choose one (I'm leaning towards the return of Husband).

Also, remember my book is fully FREE for the next couple of days before the funding goals roll over, as any purchase gets a $10 Amazon gift card code (I’ll collect those email addresses later on). Past 10/30, codes will go to everyone up to 250 copies sold.

Peace out! ~MAV

If you know of a way for me to promote this project, let me hear it:

@sixelazed / 48saints@gmail.com

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

Let me get your attention right quick:

All (ALL) copies of my book pre-ordered by 10/30 up to 250 copies (come on, that’s not gonna happen, but I certainly hope for a few sales) will receive AMAZON GIFT CODE FOR THE EXACT AMOUNT THEY PAID. It's similar to what I was doing before and was about to advertise better, but there's a reason for the change.

Thanks to the new changes to the funding goals on Inkshares, I now have so many more options for helping the success of my book.

If you have credits to use, you can support me and make off in the positive. I’ll be sending those digital gift card codes in batches before the book is published if I make the new smaller goal. Even better, I was already planning on doing t-shirts or other merch as freebies, and now Inkshares will support that. I love this!

Lastly, I’ve been ransacking edits and polishing like a mad man. I don’t like doing more than one update in a week, so BETA versions of Blurred Weaponry will be made available on 10/30, the same day the funding goals change. I’m pretty happy with my changes, so I hope some of you have time to read / review / give me feedback.

Check out the edited chapter 1 excerpt on the home page, and thanks for the support. Tell your pals and whatnot if they want themselves an essentially free sci-fi thing, and peace out.

Time for coffee, a Michiko & Hatchin break, and more editing.

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

What’s the haps, y’all? I’m DONE! Sorry, kinda went in with no subtlety there, huh? Let’s try again.

Here’s what’s covered in this update: my story editing is done, a second YouTube clip, and my site is up.

~~~~~

Temporary unemployment means I’ve been eating edits like candy. Or, like mini Snickers Almond bars. I love those. Anyway, I’m now officially, totally, probably, more than likely done with Blurred Weaponry’s story. After some time rearranging chapters and cutting 8,000 words to make the story punchier, the book is now, to use a gaming term, feature complete. Sadly, I don’t have access to an editor that won’t charge an arm and a leg for the polish stage, so hopefully some of you nice people will have a chance to read the novel’s beta version and tell me what you think. And tell your friends, you know how it goes. That beta download will be up in a week as a PDF and likely also as a .mobi file for you to simply add to your Kindle library.

I know it won’t be perfect, as I’d like to continue making the word-use snappier and smarter, but I’m very happy with the way this universe is going for me.

~~~~~

https://youtu.be/5u9jLL2V_dQ

That right there (or thurr, if you prefer) is how to get to my second YouTube video (which I'm also putting on my Inkshares page). It's a narrated clip from Chapter 1 of Blurred Weaponry. It’s very heavily edited since when I did a rehearsal for the full section it was a pretty long video, and I wanted something short and sweet. I’m happy with how it’s turned out and how I’m slowly recovering my atrophied artistic skills.

~~~~~

Lastly, my site is up, yay! You can go to 48saints.com, a small web page featuring whatever I feel like adding here and there, including at least one other way to support me.

I don’t think of myself as someone with a lot to say, but I think I’ll add a blog to the site soon to round it out, and see about other stuff to make it more me.

~~~~~

Whew, lots to say this time around. Thanks a bunch to those who follow me or Blurred Weaponry, and peace out!

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

Clarifications!

About the previews stuff:

Anyone who follows / pre-orders will get the first half of the book to read via a download link. Anyone who pre-orders gets a review copy in a little while. Anyone that has a book on Inkshares and either follows or pre-orders will also get the review copy. Maybe that didn't need to be fixed, but it irked me a tad.

Also, I may as well post a link to the YouTube video since I'm so smart I forgot to do it in the update.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7zf3k1QBRs

I'm off to put balloons on goats!

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

Free stuff! Big changes!

I think I'm supposed to be able to hook people quickly, and hopefully that sentence worked (Lord knows that with only one pre-order, I'm probably terrible at hooking people).

First, the gifts. I was a little confused about what price Inkshares would put my book at, and initially wanted to sell it literally as low as possible so I could get people interested, maybe some feedback and reviews so I could get better, and so the sequels would also be as baller as possible. Overnight success is not my goal - I want a lifetime of writing.

With that in mind, the first 20 pre-orders will get a $5 Amazon gift card, which will be an email code given to them after the novel is out. The next 60 will have a one-in-two chance at the $5 gift card code, calculated literally by a roll of eleven or higher roll on a 20-sided dice. It's an investment in myself, and there's going to be different gifts that readers may be able to get very, very soon (some of which may be more worthwhile to some than just a few bucks). Gotta put skin in the game, right?

Second, the big changes that I've made over the past week. The name of the book for one. There's a theme to the people, the system, and the enemies to this first book that I figured worked better as "Blurred Weaponry" than "Atypical," and it sounds more attractive to me, so bonus.

The Inkshares page is also quite different. There's now a video attached, and a bunch of information about the world. I've worked very hard on this story's universe, and I wanted to show that I'm not joking around at all about my passion for this.

Lastly, my plans for previews. I'll be working on more videos and doing lots of editing, and will have a preview of the first half of the book available quite soon to anyone that follows the project. The full review copy will come later on, of course, and that's for anyone who pre-orders or follows Blurred Weaponry and happens to have a book of their own on Inkshares.

Whew, lots of typing today. Thanks, y'all. Share, like, read, yadda yadda. Peace out!

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

Hiya, folks! I decided to go ahead and upload Chapter 6 of Atypical to Inkshares. That's the last chapter in the Part 1 section, and features the calm after the bullet storm. The reason I wanted to add this was twofold.

One: I like this chapter - it's calm and personal in a way that not much else was as the story was starting off, and it's where my writing started to feel so much more... me, for lack of a better word. It was here that I grew more confident in being able to do things that have made this book far more alive than it was in my ultra-dirty first draft.

The second reason: holy cow my first YouTube video is taking forever. It's a "glossary" narration, one of many I want to do as part of spreading information about my universe as widely and personally as possible. I underestimated how long the art was going to take while working a "normal" 45-50 hour-a-week job. Once the video is done, I'll have processes in place to make things faster and continue releasing glossaries and narrated excerpts in the hopes it'll get some more attention.

Also, I changed the page number on Inkshares from 450 to 550 because I forgot to add in the "Northwater" novella that I'm throwing in as a freebie. What happens in that novella is really fun and just as anime as anything in Atypical, and the consequences are critical to Book 2.

If you read any of the chapters, please let me know what you think. If you feel like I'm working on something cool, share it via Twitter and / or Facebook.

Thanks and peace out!

Michael Valdez · Author · added almost 10 years ago

End of August Update! I uploaded Chapter 5 of Atypical, simply titled "Bullets" because a whole bunch of those get flung about. It's the last full chapter I'll add to Inkshares, as that covers the first 80 pages of the book. I'll focus on favorite excerpts, art, and videos from now on while I polish the rest of the writing up. Thanks for following and especially if you pre-order and share my weird, occasionally silly thing!