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My blog has been very quiet this week beyond the Questions 3 and Sue Vincent‘s amazing guest blog. Not sure if it’s the Ask-a-Character or something else. So I’m sticking this post at the top for a bit to get a few more reactions. Mostly on items 2 and 3.
Good News
Legends of Windemere: The Mercenary Prince has broken 100 sales. This is a ray of sunshine since the lists are hard to maneuver these days. Still sitting on #40 of the Men’s Adventures as of this post’s writing. Anyway, this is the bit of good news that I wanted to share.
Other News
I figured out the chapter title that was giving me trouble. It involves Battle Mountain, NV where they have to earn money through gladiator fights. I kept thinking of the violence aspect, the location, and the gold. Then I just thought of the word Gladiator and got:
Are They Not Entertained!?
This is a slight variation on the ‘Are you not entertained?’ from the movie ‘Gladiator’. I was thinking of making it ‘Lloyd’ instead of ‘They’, but I thought it unfair since Cassidy doesn’t have a chapter title. Then again, I might make the next one ‘Cassidy vs Reno’ and put Lloyd back in this one. Have until hitting publish before it becomes permanent.
Question News
With Crossing Bedlam nearly done being edited and on its way to being published in February, I was thinking of the future. This comes down to a few questions that I’m going to write below.
First, is anyone willing to help promote Crossing Bedlam in February? I have 3 volunteers so far and would really appreciate the help.
Second, I did a successful world searching thing last year. I do a lot of world building and not everything goes into the books. Other times people have questions about the world or characters that I never considered or is not story central. This is where the blog can give more insight, but only if I know what people are wondering. Again, this is about the world and characters instead of me and my process. For example, asking why there are diseases in Windemere if there are magic healers.
These would be for March and beyond, but I’ll put two categories down here:
- What do you want to know about Windemere and/or its characters?
- What do you want to know about the Shattered States and/or its characters?
Thanks and hopefully this can bring about some fun for all involved. Now back to editing if the kid lets me.
Legends of Windemere 
Congratulations on the good News, Charles 🙂
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Thanks. 🙂
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Congratulations on the success of your new novel, Charles! Let me know what I can do to help promote the next one – shoot me an email. 🙂
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Thanks for the help. It’ll be an HTML file sent after the release. Noticing that non-group blog tours and cover reveals don’t have the impact that they used to.
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I think part of the problem is that we all follow each other, so it’s hit and miss whether anyone new will see it. Since I’ve been out of the loop for a while, hopefully I’ll get some new eyes on your work this time. 🙂
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Good point. I think another issue is that there was a big rush of cover reveals and blog tours last year. I had days where that was nearly a quarter of the emails I got. So people stopped paying attention. This is one reason why I’ve taken such a casual approach and let people decide on the posting date.
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Yep, that would do it.
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Those sound like decent sales. I’m always happy to help with your promotional stuff. The blog ideas sound great too, but you might want to take the lead on them. Sometimes the phone doesn’t ring. What I mean is you might want to post something about Windemere, and leave it open ended enough to get questions. When I’ve invited stuff that’s a little too open ended, I don’t seem to get any response. If I were to start an advice column by Lisa, it would get some kind remarks. If I just chose a topic and wrote it, I’d get a ton of comments.
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I actually thought this post was the open ended one. The thing is that I’ve said so much about Windemere and I have a bunch planned for Shattered States next month. I’m at the point where I can’t predict questions or topics that I’d miss as the author. I kind of feel like I have a habit of leading people to a clear topic instead of being surprised by a question. There’s also the issue that I’ve covered so much over the years in regards to my stories that I don’t know what else to say besides spoilers.
I tried to be a little less open-ended with the open forum interviews this past week. Didn’t seem to get more than I normally do.
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Okay, I’ll bite. I want to know about schools to better ones self. Someone isn’t born with the knowledge of how to build siege engines, or ships. How would one learn about trade routes, or getting a building to handle a heavy snow load? Not everyone is a warrior, and the story isn’t about them. They still have to exist to flesh out the stories. Authors love stories about research, and I’d be interested to know.
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So you want to know about Windemere’s education system. Interesting. Going to have to figure out a way to organize that one. Thanks.
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Congrats on the good news!
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Thanks. 🙂
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Dunno if you counted me in those volunteers, but if not, do now! 🙂
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Thanks. I don’t think I did because I lost the first list.
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Its ok, in that comment I even wrote that I probably saw the post a tad bit late 🙂
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I’m trying to recruit early this time. Then again, blogging has been very slow even after the holidays.
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I volunteer (again) I would like to know what entertainment opportunities there are in Windemere. You know do they have places to play sports (not pro but like our tennis courts and bowling alleys). Do regular people get together for fun? Are there theatres. I know there are eating and drinking places but anything else?
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Funny thing is that I did design a professional sport for Ralian. Revolved around flying creatures, nests, and a bunch of fake eggs. This was when a friend and I were trying to see if Legends of Windemere could be a video game. The sport would have been an optional part for fun.
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Awesome news for Legends of Windemere: The Mercenary Prince! Great job with breaking the 100!
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Thanks. Best is #30 so far. Feels weird not being very far on the fantasy lists, but those have become a mess from what I can tell. That and it seems to always be the same names hogging at least half of the list with the same books.
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Makes me wonder what their strategy is…
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It’s the big names like Rowling, Martin, and Tolkien. Not sure we can ask that last one for advice.
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Yeah, I don’t think that’ll work.
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I echo the congratulations, Charles! And yes, add me to your volunteer list. I just hope I’m not stuck on a jury come February! (I’ve been summoned.) 😦
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Thanks. Hope you avoid the jury job too. I got summoned once and never picked.
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Congrats on the good news. Hope sales keep gaining momentum for you.
Put me on the volunteer list. I’m always happy to help.
As for the questions regarding the world, how about a “World of Windemere” page (Think Wikipedia) where newbies can discover your magical creation and explore it in-depth. You could have sections on fantastical creatures, the series most prominent heroes and villains, et cetera, then link all your previous posts on different subjects plus add new stuff. I could see you rolling out a new “sections” of World of Windemere every so often. Plus you could add your unused info about Windemere here. Maps, sketches, poems, historical stuff could all find a place on the World of Windemere.
You could promote it in your books as the Windemerewiki, try to get the fans to gather there. Hopefully, as new readers and fans came and explored, they’d have questions come to mind, which would result in a comment which would cause a reply; all of which means you’d organically grow interaction between you and them as well as between them and other fans of the series.
Only draw back I could see is the time element. Obviously, it would be a time sink. 😦
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Thanks. The World of Windemere page is definitely a problem in terms of time. I think wikipedia pages get a benefit from being fan created instead of by the artists. The blog is the closest thing I have right now, but it’s hard to organize that like a Wiki. The whole thing is rather odd in that it’s created and maintained independently of the ‘world creator’. At least from what I can tell. Sadly, I’m not famous enough to have a wikipedia page either. Somebody tried and it was deleted a few hours later.
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