Hi

Welcome visitors from Love Romance Cafe. I promised you a free copy of 'Orion, the Hunt' just for visiting my blog. Just send me an email hegro@shaw.ca and mention your visit. Please, feel free to check out my books on my Website 'Herbert's World'. Perhaps you'll see something you like. Should you, by chance, already have 'Orion, the Hunt', then ask me for a free download of one of my other books. If you are a visitor who just stumbled across my blog, the offer stands also for you.
Hope to hear from you.

Right now I am busy writing my Science Fiction novel 'Epsilon'. I just crossed the 87,000 word barrier (not a special barrier. I just call it that for lack of another word). There is still much more to write until I'm finished. I don't know yet how I will end the novel, it is still a secret, even for me. That's the fun of writing. I never really know where the story will take me. I have ideas in my head, but they are still vague. All I know is that in the end everything will come together. It always does.
With Christmas shopping and other things to do, I don't write as much as I would like to, so the story is moving slowly ahead, but that also gives me time to reflect on it and fix some inconsistencies that sometimes happen.

Hello and welcome

Thank you for visiting. Remember me next Christmas was one of my first published stories. It is still among my favorites. It takes place in the future of the trilogy 'The Xandra'. I love the world I created there and decided to write a fourth book in the series. This time I'm following the colonists and scientists who became stranded on the fifth planet in the system. So far I've written about 20,000 words, but I put the novel aside to finish 'Epsilon'. I'm at 80,000 words right now, but there is still more to write before I'm finished.
Don't forget to visit my website Herbert's World and check out all of my other books, including the Xandra trilogy.

Free copy of 'Symbiont of Passion'

Thank you for visiting. Send an email to hegro@shaw.ca and I will send you a free download of 'Orion, the Hunt'. In addition, I will draw one name from the emails and the winner will get a free download of 'Symbiont of Passion'.
Feel free to visit my website Herbert's World to read a short story 'The Anniversary Gift'.

The Anniversary Gift

This is my first published story with Midnight Showcase. It was published in the digest 'Sweet Revenge'. It is currently not available, but I hope the story can be published again some day. To get a free read, please, go to my website Herbert's World.

Stars in Chains and other updates

Just got an email from Midnight Showcase Fiction that my novel 'Stars in Chains' has been accepted and my contract is forthcoming. I sent it in August 31. So this is the longest time I had to wait for a positive answer from MSFiction.
I'm busy with my novel 'Epsilon'. It took me a while to get back into the story, but it is beginning to flow. I left it alone and wrote 'Stars in Chains', which took longer to write than anticipated; it also got longer than I had planned. But once I was fully into the story, I couldn't stop writing and more and more stuff popped into my head.
That's usually the way it happens. I'm over 70,000 words now with 'Epsilon' and no end in sight. I'm beginning to enjoy the story again. I had sort of met a roadblock when I was at 60,000 words. That's why I started with 'Stars in Chains', originally titled 'Mindgod'.
'Epsilon' won't have as much erotica in it than my other books. There'll be some to spice up the story a bit. I have a feeling my readers expect it, but perhaps I can attract a different group of readers. Not everyone likes erotica.
Once I'm done with 'Epsilon', I will continue with Book Four in the Xandra series, of which I've written around 20,000 words so far. I'm excited about that story also, but it will have to wait, even though it keeps calling to me once in a while. I MUST RESIST THE CALL OF THE SIREN. I MUST!
I have no title for it yet. That one, also, will have fewer sex-scenes in it. I want to concentrate more on the story itself, even though all my tales, no matter how much or little erotica they contain, do have a story line. They are not just one mindless sex-scene after another.
But you can find that out for yourself by reading them. Don't just take my word for it. ^_^

Symbiont of Passion is alive

Finally. Symbiont of Passion is live on MSFiction. That is one of the problems with publishing. It takes sometimes forever until a novel or story is published. I sent it to MSFiction in February 2008. That's over a year. That is a long time to wait. A long time of anticipation. But now the wait is finally over. I wrote the story probably over twenty years ago. I decided to bring it out of its drawer and rewrite and edit it. It has quite a bit of erotica in it; there was more when I wrote it. I culled much of it and rewrote other scenes. I believe it's a good story. Science Fiction, what else? This is the second story featuring Orion. The first one was 'Orion, the Hunt', also available from MSFiction.
Orion is an Agent for the Colonial Worlds of Sol Terra. He is human, on the outside, but inside he is much more. Part of his mind is alien, immortal. He possesses certain powers, like telepathy. But read the stories and you'll find out.
Anyone sending me an email at hegro@shaw.ca and mentions that he (she) read my blog and tells me on which site he (she) saw my post will get a free download of 'Orion, the Hunt'. I will also draw one name for a free download of 'Symbiont of Passion'. That will happen Friday, October 23. I will announce the winner on the sites and the winner will also be notified.
Thanks for visiting.
Check out my website Herbert's World for another excerpt.

Orion, Symbiont of Passion

I'm anxiously waiting for 'Orion,Symbiont of Passion' to be released by MSFiction. Here is the preliminary cover for the novel. I didn't want a picture, just a simple design and I suggested it to MSFiction's art director Bratt. She came up with a brilliant design. I think it is bold and strikingly attractive. I'm hoping the book sells on the strength of my name. I do have a small base of fans out there who buy my books. Hopefully they like the cover. Any comments would be appreciated.

Merry Christmas...I mean Happy Thanksgiving

What a surprise! Yesterday we had our first Winter storm. It is supposed to be warm around Thanksgiving, but not this year. Then of course what do we expect. It's been a lousy summer. Why not have a lousy Fall. We had a warm September, but my wife and I missed it. We were in Germany for three weeks. The only consolation we have, the weather there was quite descend also.
There is still quite a bit of work to do in the yard. All the plants are still in my garden. They need to be pulled, the soil tilled and prepared for next Spring. We can only hope the snow melts away.
I went duck hunting yesterday morning, but the ducks have started to go South. Smart birds. Not a successful hunt. It was nice though to spend the time outdoors standing among the bulrushes. It was cold, minus 6, but when you're dressed for it, the cold doesn't penetrate. The weather was otherwise not bad. The storm didn't start until about noon, by that time we were already on our way home.
Here is what we saw this morning looking out of our sunroom. Brr...too cold to even sit in it because it is not a 4-season's room.

Hello Visitors

To get a free read send me an email to hegro@shaw.ca
Thank you for visiting. Please visit my website Herbert's World and browse through my books.

FlashForward by Robert J. Sawyer

Has anyone watched the new TV series FlashForward? The story was originally written by Rober J. Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction writer, and published 1999. He watched the first episode in Winnipeg, Canada, where he was one of the writers attending the Writers Festival, which happens every year in Winnipeg. My son Perry organizes the event and he is responsible for bringing Canadian writers to Winnipeg. Part of his job is to pick them up at the airport and make sure everything runs smoothly. Well, I am very proud to say that Robert J. Sawyer sat in my car, because my son used my car to pick him up. Maybe some of his magic will rub off on me. One can only hope.
The show is different from the book, which is okay, especially for the people who read the book. I liked the first two episodes. The show may turn out to be the next hit series, like Lost. We'll see.

Review of Outpost Epsilon

My book 'Outpost Epsilon' has been reviewed by Coffee Time Romance and received three cups. Please check it out by clicking on Coffee Time Romance
Coffee Time Romance is open again after their site had been attacked by a nasty person and had to be shut down.

I'm back

It’s been awhile since I posted, but I took a little three-week holiday in Germany. It was great but now I’m back and ready to carry on with my chores and my writing. My novel ‘Orion, Symbiont of Passion’ is scheduled to be released next month, but I still have to approve the edits.
When I checked my book sales on Fiction Wise I received a nice surprise. Fourteen of my books (or digests that contain a story of mine) are in the upper thirty list. That means approximately 50% of the sales are from my books. That’s feels good.
Here is the list as of September 27, 2009:
Orion, the Hunt: 5
A little Holiday Romance: 11
Orola: 13
Outpost Epsilon: 14
Xandra 1: 16
Xandra 2: 17
Xandra 3; 19
Seeds of Chaos 1: 20
Cliffs of Time: 24
Beyond the Stars: 25
Seeds of Chaos 2: 26
Midnight Raunch: 27
Stardogs 1: 28
Stardogs 2: 29
Men of Eros: 46
Dual Visions: 51

Some of them have moved on the list today, some up, a couple slipped (Holiday Romance and Orola).

Check it out at Fiction Wise.

My novel Outpost Epsilon has been reviewed by Coffeetime Romance, but they have a major problem with their site right now and it has been shut down until they fix the problem. I will publish the link here when it is safe to do so.

Done

I've changed the title of my new novel from 'The Mindgod' to 'Stars in Chains'. Since it is 122,000 words long, I've made it into a two volume novel. Book One is 'Slave' and Book Two is 'Liberator'.
It is not easy to find a fitting and catchy title. I hope future readers will find this one intriguing enough to want to buy the books.
I sent it yesterday to MSFiction, my publisher, and I hope they want it. It has quite a bit of erotica in it. Kind of ironic, since I said I wouldn't write any more erotica, or at least less of it. But I wrote the first 40,000 words about 30 years ago and I liked the story, so a pulled it out of the dusty drawer and did some rewriting and finished it. I'm happy how it turned out, hopefully everyone else thinks so.
Now I'm ready to get back to 'Epsilon', but I have to read first what I've written.

Finished (sort of)

Wow. I finally finished my novel ‘The Mindgod’. 122,000 + words. Now the real work begins: Editing. I’m already at page 83 with that. There are 214 pages single spaced.
After that comes the spellcheck, but you can’t really trust that program. It doesn’t catch every misspelled word. The word might be spelled correctly, but it is the wrong word for its meaning. The title will definitely change. I’m still playing around with that. It is not easy to find a catchy title, one that fits to the contents of the novel.
I may have to make two volumes out of this novel because of its length. That means two titles.
Checked my sales at Fictionwise. The Xandra series was in number 7, 8 and 9 position for the last 20 days at August 20th. That has already changed. Now it is the digest Men of Eros, which contains my story ‘A taste of Paradise’, that is at number 4 position and number 5 in sales for the last 20 days as of today. That may change tomorrow again.
Once I'm done with Mindgod I will continue with 'Epsilon'. Of course, I'll have to read what I've written (60,000 words) so I get into the story again. I'm looking forward to visiting again the planet where dinosaurs roam and intelligent Spiders and Ants challenge humans for the right to Epsilon.

The Mindgod

I'm at 103,000 words with my novel 'Mindgod' and still so much to go. It is becoming too long for one book. An ideal ebook is around 70,000 words maybe even less. So now I may have to make this into two volumes and that may be difficult. Where to make the break? Book one won't have an ending and Book Two won't have its own beginning. Well, I had to do it with the Xandra series. The second book turnd out too long so I made two books out of it, ending up with a three volume series. I had to do the same with Seeds of Chaos and The Stardogs. I find it difficult to write a short novella. It seems I can't get enough into the story if it is short. Once I'm done with 'Mindgod' I will continue with 'Epsilon'. I'm at 60,000 words with that one and no end in sight yet. But right now it is not on my mind.
The other book I started, 'Xandra Four' (no title yet), I've written around 20,000 words with that one. After I finish Epsilon Xandra Four will be my next project. I'm excited about it but it will have to wait. I'm trying not to think about it because I need to concentrate on finishing Mindgod and then Epsilon. With Summer and lots of stuff to do in the yard I don't have as much time to write as I would like. Things are slow and yet, I'm surprised how much I wrote. When I sit down with my laptop and start writing the story flows amazingly well, almost as if someone is dictating it to me. Strange. No writer's block here I'm happy to report.
Sales of my books at Fictionwise seemes to have picked up but I don't know how it translates into figures. The money I get from those sales is pitiful indeed. Nobody can claim I write for the money. If I didn't enjoy writing so much I would have quit a long time ago.

Free download

Thank you for visiting. To get a free download of my novella 'Outpost Epsilon' send an email to hegro@shaw.ca and ask of it. Feel free to visit my website.

Star Trek, Dinosaurs and more

I’ve been busy and have neglected my blog a bit. There is not much news anyway. I crossed the 90,000 word mark with my novel ‘Mindgod’. The End is in sight, but I’m still throwing around things in my head how exactly I will end the novel. As I’m writing new ideas pop up. Sometimes that means going back into the story and adding or deleting paragraphs etc. At first I had in mind to write between 70,000 and 80,000 words but when I got there I realized I couldn’t end the story yet. There was just so much more to tell. Sometimes I’m amazed how the writing process works. I sit down and don’t know exactly what I’m going to write next, I might write down a word or sentence just to get me going, and then suddenly the story begins to flow again and takes me somewhere I had not foreseen. I enjoy writing my stories much more if I don’t know where I am heading as opposed to writing an outline and following that. Somehow it takes the fun out of writing and the surprises that sometimes appears. It must be boring to do ‘Formula Writing’, where everything is dictated how the story must progress and end and on what page a certain thing has to happen. Not for me. I need to go ‘Where no man has gone before’, in the words of the original Star Trek series. ‘Man’ in this case me.
Speaking of Star Trek, we saw the last movie and were disappointed. They made Kirk such an idiot. The scene where he is running around in the spaceship chased by a young Dr. MacCoy was absolutely stupid. An eight year old Kirk racing in an old Corvette and then bailing out at the last minute? Come on! And the old Mr. Spock appearing on the scene at the exact moment Kirk needs help? A little farfetched. How stupid are we as moviegoers? I’m not commenting on that, but I read other reviews and many people thought it was the best one yet. Wow! There were some good scenes I enjoyed. I’m easily pleased when it comes to Science Fiction movies. I wish there’d be more good ones around. Most of the movies these days are relying on special effects and are much to loud and furious for my taste. For instance I really loved the first ‘Matrix’ movie, but didn’t care for the following two. The second one was so loud I had to stuff Kleenex in my ears. Actually, my wife and I did that in the last Star Trek movie.
We went to see ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. What a wonderful show. Those dinosaurs are so lifelike they are scary, especially the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Hard to believe that creatures of that size once roamed the Earth. To see the narrator walking between them really demonstrated their immense size. Humans would have had no chance to survive in those days.
I’ve always loved dinosaurs. That’s why I wrote my novella ‘Cliffs of Time’ where humans go back to 100 million BC. Before I wrote that story I didn’t know that T-Rex didn’t appear until 75 million BC. I did some research to make the story authentic and learned quite a bit. Stuff I never learned in School.
In my novella ‘Outpost Epsilon’ I populated a planet with giant mushrooms and dinosaurs. In fact, I liked the story so much that I started a novel titled ‘Epsilon’ where I go into more detail about dinosaurs, intelligent giant ants and spiders, and the geography of the planet Epsilon. I’m at 60,000 words with that novel. I put it aside to write ‘Mindgod’ and I’m anxious to get back to it. My characters are waiting for me to finish telling their story.
By the way, ‘Orola, Warrior Priestess’ never did reach number one position at Fictionwise, only ''Outpost Epsilon' did, but I’m happy anyway.

Reader's Ratings

I just checked the status of my novella ‘Outpost Epsilon’ and found that it slipped down the ladder in sales. I also noticed that two readers decided to rate it. One thinks the story is ‘okay’ the other one gives it a ‘poor’ (Sigh!!). I enjoyed writing the story and I think it is a great :-) story. I am reminded of a Seinfeld Episode where Jerry's mother says: "How can anyone not like my Jerry?" How can anyone not like my story? (Sigh again). It makes me sad if a reader thinks it is poor.
I went through the list of other books and found the ‘Alien Seduction Digest’ received one ‘great’ and one ‘poor’.
‘Interplanetary Passion’ by Jaden Sinclair was rated by 104 readers (wow!). The majority of them find it good and great, but there is still someone who rates it as ‘poor’. This leaves me wondering about what a reader expects when he/she reads the blurb. It would be helpful if we as writers could find out why one reader thinks a story is great and another one doesn’t like it. Just to say: “This story is poor,” without an explanation leaves me questioning it and wonder. Does this reader expect more intrigue, more adventure, more romance, more erotica? Or was there too much?
Writing, like any art form, is a passion. We write because we need to put our dreams on paper. It is a fortunate and lucky writer who manages to get paid a lot of money; most of us don’t. I’m not saying we would refuse the money, but let’s face it, the lack of compensation does not stop us from writing. We write to still some yearning we have inside us. That’s how we start out, but as we progress we want to share our stories with others. We want the readers to feel what we feel when we put our tales on paper (these days into a hard drive), and the last thing we want is to make readers feel they’ve wasted their time and money. I wish I could say that I don’t care about what a reader thinks, as long as I am happy writing my stuff, but that would be lying. I care. That’s why it would be nice to get some feedback. I know, I am dreaming, that’s what a writer does best, but it still would be nice.

The number one position

It finally happened. Outpost Epsilon is at number one at Fictionwise. Orola moved into number four position. All of my other books also moved ahead a bit.

http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b90231/Outpost-Epsilon/Herbert-Grosshans/?si=0

More news from Fictionwise

Good news. Outpost Epsilon made it to number 2 position in sales yesterday and Orola is at number 5. Maybe, just maybe...dare I hope?...one of them will make it to number one position. I haven't had a best seller for a while.
On other notes, I am at 71,000 words right now with 'The Mindgod'. I'm writing every chance I get, which is usually in the evening. We hardly watch TV in the summer. During the day I'm busy with my yard. The garden and other stuff. I've made some progress with my patio. I've put down 12 patio blocks. Only 122 more to go... Preparing the 'bed' is the hardest job. All that gravel I have to remove and distribute on the driveway. With a shovel and a wheelbarrow. And a bad back. In addition, the patio blocks are heavy too. But it will look nice when it's all done.