Welcome to my blog

Hello visitors. On my blog I'm talking about my books, but also about what I'm currently working on and, maybe, some other stuff. Browse through my posts and don't forget to check out my older posts in the archives. If you are interested in my books, please, visit my website Fictitious Tales for more information and a few excerpts. Also, take a look at my second blog Herbert Grosshans, where I talk about fun-stuff and things that concern me.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Welcome

To find out more about my other books visit http://midnightshowcase.com/ or follow this link to Fictionwise http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/HerbertGrosshanseBooks.htm
All my books are listed there.

The flurry of sales has stopped. All of my books are still selling at Fictionwise, but barely. It is time for new stuff to come out. ‘Cliffs of Time’ and ‘Orion, the Hunt’ should be released within the next couple of weeks, I hope, and so should be ‘Stardogs 1, Return to Redsky’. I’ve seen the mock up covers from ‘Cliffs of Time’ and ‘Stardogs’ and I am quite excited about them. They look good.
Dual Visions still isn’t selling and I’m glad it will be released from its misery at last place. I hope releasing the two novellas as separate entities will be a good move. They are great stories and I want people to read them.
Right now, I am at about 86,000 words with my contemporary novel ‘Tarnished Valor’. Slow going, but there is so much other stuff to do around the house and yard at this time of year. Not much time left for writing. I would like to write other stories, but I’m determined to finish this one. Next year my short novella ‘Outpost Epsilon’ is coming from Midnight Showcase and I have this idea about a complete novel set on that planet floating around in my head, but it will have to wait.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Update of sorts

Not much new to write about. I finished re-editing my two novellas ‘The Cliffs of Time’ and ‘Orion--The Hunt’, which make up ‘Dual Visions’, my white Elephant. I couldn’t believe the mistakes I had in those two novellas. It proves again, when you finish a story it is best to put it away for a while to create a distance from it, and then edit it. Our minds are strange and wonderful things. They tend to ignore certain things our eyes transmit to them. I’m sure everyone has read those ‘essays’ (I can’t think of a better word), where all the letters in the words are scrambled, as long as the first and last letter is in the right place. When you read those, your mind automatically adjusts them in the right order and you’re not even aware that they have been misspelled. That’s how it is when you read your own stories. There might be a score of mistakes, you just don’t see them. A writer is lucky indeed, if he has someone who reads for him (or her) and checks for mistakes and inconsistencies. Someone who is not afraid to point it out. I am glad I had a chance to re-do Cliffs of Time and Orion and make them better reads. We don't always get that chance. Now I hope that not too many people purchased Dual Visions, but I think I don't have to worry about that. Unfortunately, I gave away so many free copies (All those mistakes!)
I sent the new versions back to Midnight Showcase and now I have to wait for new covers and then they will be released…again, as standalone novellas. Maybe then readers will pick them up because they are shorter ebooks and readers like them better than longer downloads. We’ll see.
Book Two of ‘Seeds of Chaos’ never made it past number two position at Fiction Wise, too bad. Right now it is at number 12 and Book One at number 15. The Xandra books are also moving up and down.
Now I can get back to my novel ‘Tarnished Valor’, which I had to put aside to edit those two novellas. I’ve written quite a lot on it, in longhand, over the last weekend, and now I have to put it into the computer. That is my first edit at the same time.