As was brought up over on Goodreads, "A Beast Requires Confirmation" is the best preorder email ever.  Good luck Jay, and thanks for the preorder back! :D

We have a cover! We have a cover! Excuse me while I squee for a moment.

Probably going to need a longer moment.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COZLStHUcAEqTkx.jpg

Cover art is coming.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COKacL9UwAAVXn7.jpg:large

With Chapter One up, I wanted to take a moment to talk about having learning disabilities and the writing process.  I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and a whole host of other goodness in 7^th grade. For the next five years I attended a school specializing in teaching methods developed by Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham. It was more of a dyslexic Dead Poets Society than linguistic Hogwarts.

Dyslexia isn’t something that’s cured. It’s not something that is conquered. You adapt to it. Know where your struggles are and compensate. It lengthens the writing process, adding extra drafts and a heightened scrutiny in editing. Proofreading is a long, drawn out process, and reading aloud will only help so much. It takes a lot of time, and remembering that there will be mistakes.

I draft a lot, filling notebook and legal pads with carefully drawn letter. Hand cramps are common, as are erasure marks, crossed out lines, and margins filled with cramped notations. I know that I cannot trust my brain and hand to communicate, that there will be mirrored letters and words. Sometimes I omit them completely. Homonyms are my enemy and spelling is not my friend.

By the third or fourth draft it’s time for typing. It’s slow. It has to be to avoid the ugly red symbol indicating spelling and grammar errors. Words, sentences, and entire paragraphs will be skipped, and my brain will autocorrect and tell me they’re there. Spellchecker and the dictionary can help, if I haven’t completely butchered the word. The thesaurus is my greatest ally. Even if I don’t know how to spell it, I still know what a word means. It’s faster too.

I’m in love with the Dyslexie font. I’ve found it incredibly beneficial for reading and proofing. It wasn’t available when I first wrote A Beast Requires, and I sometimes forget to change the font back when doing submissions. Technology has made the process easier, but not less time intensive, and all writers struggle with time.

I’m up for questions about this, or anything else. I exist in a permanent state of AMA, and will answer any question posed to me. I hope everyone enjoys the Prologue and Chapter One. Revisions of Chapter Two are coming, and I will update the status of the cover art later one this week. Thank you all for supporting me as an author and this book. It took a long time to get it here, but I am in love with the result.

Chapter One is live! 

On target for the release of Chapter One come Monday and the heroic entrance of our primary protagonist, Albicon Pine! He's special, or at least in need of special help.

Taking a hard edit of Chapter One as I type this, and expect to have cover art at some point next week.