In celebration of Read an Ebook Week, please feel free to pick up your free copy of Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike. You can find it here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/102618. Be sure to use coupon code DG97A to get yours for free.
You can now pick up Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike for your Nook by following the link below. Just as at Amazon, Kobo, and iBooks, it is just 99 cents.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1107759360?ean=2940032863465&itm=1&usri=astrid+maxxim
Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike is now availabe at Kobo books for 99 cents. Follow this link right to it: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Astrid-Maxxim-her-Amazing-Hoverbike/book-dHww_7RCZ0eAeEurAyXCNg/page1.html
Part of the setting for Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike is Rachel Carson High School. It actually went through several different name changes. I wanted a female scientist and I didn’t want to go with the obvious Marie Curie. She should also be an American. I think Rachel Carson is the most important woman (maybe person) that most people don’t know.
Being a teacher, one of the things I enjoyed was playing with the school environment. All of the meals at Rachel Carson are gourmet meals. Every child is dedicated to learning. The students stay after to maintain the school and keep it clean. Every student is on a specific program– designed to lead them in a different direction in life. What are the programs? That will be revealed in a future book.
Well, Astrid and friends have made it through the vetting process and are now in the premium catalog at Smashwords. In addition, it’s already shown up on iTunes, so it’s available now there at 99 cents. I’ll let you know when it’s available at other ebook outlets.
I’m on the final edit of Astrid Maxxim and by the time you read this, I might very well have it completely done and ready for publishing. Keep an eye out for it. The other afternoon at work, I got so tired of the paperwork I had to do, that I started writing and came up with a draft of page one of the next Astrid Maxxim book. Book 2 will be Astrid Maxxim and her Deep Sea Dome or maybe her Undersea Dome, you get the idea.
I am in the middle of Chapter 17 right now, so the first draft of Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike should be done within the week. It’s originally plotted at 20 chapters (30,000 words) and it may run slightly over that.
When I finish the draft, I’ll probably set it aside for a week or two. That usually works best for me. It gives me a little perspective before I start the revision process. That way when I come back, I can actually read the words without skipping over them when I remember what I wrote.
I should be able to do the revision and then the editing within a few weeks. This is a short book– about the same size as the Tom Swift Jr. books which inspired me.
In the meantime, I’ll get back to work on Senta and the Steel Dragon 4: The Young Sorceress.
Astrid Maxxim is on the way and here is a good look at the cover. This is the first book for which I hired a professional to do the cover. The work was done by Matthew Riggenbach at Shaed Studios www.shaedstudios.com. I couldn’t be more pleased with the results. I’ll tell you more about Astrid and her story in the coming days and weeks.
Women of Power is done; at least the first draft is done. In fact, as I write this, I’m about a third of the way through the first revision. It’s going quickly for reasons I’ve mentioned before. This will definitely be out before the end of August. After that I can work on revising Blood Trade– a much bigger job, both because it’s longer and because it’s rougher.
In the meantime, I’m about a quarter way through the first draft of Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike. More details to follow.
I’m down to the last few pages of Women of Power and I expect to be done in 2-3 days with the first draft. As I already mentioned, this story is already in pretty good shape, so it will probably be a quick revise and edit. Look for a release date announcement soon.
When I’m done with Women of Power, I need to get back to revising Blood Trade and writing Senta and the Steel Dragon 4: The Young Sorceress, and I will, but as so often happens, I am also working on something new. I skipped right over something I’ve been planning to start for months and started something I just thought up.
I was thinking about how much I enjoyed reading Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid and how much fun I had writing Princess of Amathar, which was very much a tribute to Burroughs and John Carter of Mars. Then I remembered that before John Carter, the first books I loved were Tom Swift Junior Books. They were wonderful, simple, books that reflected their time so well– the late 50s. You can find authors on the web, who have revised the Tom Swift books to make them “up to date” and current, and that’s fine. I wanted to take that feel the books had and recreate it with my own ideas. So my new book is about a fourteen year old girl inventor and her friends and their amazing adventures. This will be my first real “children’s book.” The working title is Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike.
City of Amathar 