Tag Archives: reader

Friday Fiction Freebies!

The weekend is almost here! Time to grab a good book and a cup of tea (or coffee, or, as the case may be, whiskey) and settle in. To assist, here are some free books I want to share with you.

Cheers!

—Ben

The Dream World Collective

The Dream World Collective

Five friends quit their jobs to change the world. Sort of like Friends, but with more art, geekery, and tea.

Chapters 1-8: PDF | Kindle (Mobi) | ePub

Chapters 9-14: PDF | Kindle (Mobi) | ePub

Chapters 15-18: PDF | Kindle (Mobi) | ePub

More FREE episodes posted regularly at: http://bit.ly/latestdwc


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The Argent Star

What if your decisions affected an entire universe?

FREE on Amazon today and tomorrow!

Learn more | Get it now at Amazon

Living on the last surviving island on Earth, Ren has put herself on the path to become an archaeologist. She’s defied her father’s wishes and gone out on her own, barely keeping in contact with him as he commands an army somewhere across the universe. And it was all going well until her brother Elian discovered a planet.

Lost for centuries, Novae was thought to be a legend. It vanished years ago and since being rediscovered the Monarchy has stepped in to take over. What Ren didn’t realize was that she and Elian and their father are the chosen leaders of Novae, thanks to a scorched piece of paper that claimed her ancestor named the star Novae orbits.

With suspicion and doubt, Ren is forced leave her life on Earth to go to Novae with her estranged father and rule over the planet she doesn’t think wants her there. Her suspicions are confirmed when she learns there are insurgents hiding in the darkened forests, and her father assigns her a guardian, Sheridan; a woman with a threatening gaze and silent steps.

Now Ren is just trying to stay alive long enough to figure out what the Monarchy is planning for the planet, because she doesn’t believe that they’re on Novae for the good of the people. But going against the Monarchy means going against a government that spans across galaxies, and Ren doesn’t know if she’ll be enough.

Novae is already at civil war that gets worse with each passing day. Ren doesn’t have long before the Monarchy decides to “neutralize” the threat. Will she be able to stop the hostile takeover? Or will her actions ignite a rebellion across the universe?

Learn more | Get it now at Amazon

Absolutely Critical Miscellany. Well, Miscellany, Anyway.

All right, guys. Not much new to report and I’m severely feeling the itch to get my actual word count up, so just a few quick news items and a mysterious noise today.

Readers! Only a couple days left to pre-order Kara Jorgensen’s The Winter Garden for $0.99. I ordered mine today. You can get yours here. Congrats, Kara!

Writers! Joe pointed me to a pretty cool-looking new writing tool at Novlr.org. I haven’t done much with it yet but I’ll be trying it out and will report back if I find new value in it. Or you can just try it yourself. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Night Vale Listeners! What was that noise? There. There it was again. That silent, brooding noise in the back of your mind, like a heart beating a little too slowly, like the sound of still, cold air. There! Did you hear it that time? No? Well. It’s probably nothing.

Brilliant Friends! New section of The Dream World Collective should be up to read for free later this week. A problematic offer of free beer. Simmering romantic complications. And Otto tries to gather some intel. Hilarity ensues. In the meantime, catch up here or start with Chapter 1.

Also? The Stone and the Song is still regularly selling copies! It’s been three weeks, people! I didn’t expect this sort of thing until I had a critical mass of at least 3 books out, maybe 5. Many thanks to everyone who’s buying, reading, sharing, and reviewing. You are making my days figuratively magical. Maybe even literally. It sort of depends on what ‘magical’ means.

Cheers!

—Ben

Secret PS – Yay! Hi, Ivy!

Origami Lunchbox: Butt-Kicking Thoughts on Life, Fear, and Creative Work

Hey everyone! It’s been a crazy day, so this will be quick. My friend, sounding board, and unofficial publicist Joe recently launched a very stylish site that I think you’ll enjoy. It’s called Origami Lunchbox and it’s—well, think inspiration the way it should be. Not fluffy thoughts about imagining success and feeling good, but honest, no-nonsense, and surprisingly vulnerable advice and reflections to get you pointed in the right direction again. If you’re an idea person or do creative work, check it out.

OrigamiLunchbox

Sometimes you need a kick in the butt, sometimes you just need a reminder that others are in this with you. Origami Lunchbox will give you both.

Cheers!

—Ben

Double-Digit Legit! First 10 Amazon Reviews

It’s official! The Stone and the Song has reviews in the double digits! Not only that, but my work has now been compared to Narnia and Patrick Rothfuss. That’s two separate chronicles! Heady stuff.The Stone and the Song, coming Feb 21, 2015 (!)

No, but seriously, thank you so much to everyone who has bought, shared, read, and/or reviewed the story. You guys are amazing and you thrill me.

In celebration, I present this lovely word cloud crafted from the reviews themselves. Let them be thus immortalized as visual ephemera, as art made out of words discussing different art made from different words.

Ok, I’ll stop. Sorry. It’s been a kind of long week. If you want to get in on the fun, you can get your copy now or sign up for my email list to get a note when the paperback and audiobook forms come out.

Cheers!

—Ben

Name a Book That Totally Immersed You

I remember one time, sometime during college, I was at the airport ready to fly from Turkey to Germany. I was an experienced traveler even then and I prided myself on it. I arrived at the gate well ahead of time, everything neatly packed in one small bag, boarding pass ready. I picked a seat, settled in, and started reading.

Some time later, I looked up to see everyone lining up to board, except they were one gate over, boarding a flight to Bahrain or somewhere. But all my people were gone. I went to the customer service desk and learned that my flight was gone, and in fact they’d called my name several times, all while I was sitting at the gate, immersed in my book.

The book was Harry Potter. Wish I could remember which one—maybe Goblet of Fire, but I’m not sure. What about you? When has a book totally immersed you? What was the book? What drew you in about it?

February in Review + March Goals

Some pretty cool writers I follow are writing month-end reviews and goals. It’s a great idea. I might make a practice of it, too. Certainly last month was great and this month is exciting, so I’m going to try it out today.

February Accomplishments

  1. I released my first story,The Stone and the Song, on Amazon. Lots of work, but a smashing success!
  2. Released 2 more sections of The Dream World Collective.
  3. Launched my mailing list and got 2-3x industry average open and click rates. Because my people are awesome. Sign up here for friendly notes and mysterious missions.
  4. Wrote more of The Unaccountable Death of Derelict Frobisher. Uncharacteristically, I’m not sure how much.
  5. Recorded about half of the audiobook version of The Stone and the Song.
  6. Established rough concept for Hubris Towers, an upcoming serial fiction collaboration, with Bill.
  7. Wrote a blog post every week day.

March Goals

  1. The Unaccountable Death of Derelict Frobisher – Current word count: 96,642
    • Minimum: Write 12,000 words (avg. 3,000/wk)
    • Target: Write 22,000 words (avg. 5,000/wk)
    • Stretch: Round it up and hit 120,000 words total. (That’s my projected total word count! Could finish the rough draft this month! That’s crazy!)
  2. The Dream World Collective
    • Minimum: Release 2 sections on Patreon
    • Target: Release 3 sections and overview remaining rewrites needed before launch
    • Stretch: Release 4 sections and overview
  3. The Stone and the Song
    • Minimum: Keep encouraging readers to leave reviews
    • Target: Release paperback
    • Stretch: Release paperback and audiobook
  4. Hubris Towers
    • Minimum: Sketch characters, setting, and rough arc for Season 1
    • Target: Above plus sketch concept for each episode in Season 1
    • Stretch: Above plus write partial episode to test process and develop speed projections
  5. Write a blog post every week day.

Oh, man. This is such an exciting time! Let me know in comments or at byfaroe at gmail dot com if you’re interested in beta reading, collaborating, or chatting about the art and business of writing. I love this stuff and I love finding other writers who are serious about making it a career and/or lifestyle.

Cheers!

—Ben

Book Survey! Calling All Serial Lovers

I’m starting to plan out a couple upcoming projects and I’d love your feedback. Two of them will probably be released in serial form (episodes released regularly then bundled into books or seasons) and I want to figure out what will give the best reader experience.

I’m really excited about the projects. They are, in no particular order:

  • The Dream World Collective, which you can currently read for free here. It’s kind of like Friends with more art, geekery, and tea.
  • Hubris Towers, still very early in the process but looking hilarious. It’s leaning toward sort of a comedy of manners meets comedy of errors in the tradition (I hope) of P. G. Wodehouse. “Luxury Living at Hubris Towers: Isn’t it time you got what you really deserve?”

Here’s what I’m trying to figure out about how to structure them. What do you think? Please leave me a comment – I’d love to hear from you!

  1. How frequently should episodes come out? Weekly? Monthly? Fortnightly?
  2. How many pages long should an episode be? (Or how many pages per month should I release?)
  3. What’s a good price per episode?

For reference, I’m leaning toward something like one 50- to 75-page episode per month, sold for $2.99, with every 6 (or maybe 12) episodes bundled into a book/season/novel and sold at a discount.

If you know anyone who loves serials, please send them my way so I can get their feedback too. Thanks!

Also, about yesterday? I ended up writing a thousand words yesterday and a thousand today. Haven’t made up for Monday and Tuesday, but it’s good to be back on track and adding to Frobisher.

Author, Geek, Game-Maker

I’ve got a ton to work on today, so I’ll try to be quick, but I wanted to get you guys in on some fun ideas I’m playing around with. I love the idea of gamification—structuring regular pursuits into well-designed incentive structures with quick feedback and a sense of fun and/or competition to induce a state of flow.

I’ve been playing around with ideas for a long-running game-like system for my readers and fans and fellow writers. On the idea side, here are a couple possibilities I’m throwing around:

  • The Obvious Baseline: Players can earn points or tokens or whatever for buying and reading books, spreading the word on social media or otherwise, becoming patrons, etc. These tokens let them level up, get badges, place on leaderboards, get fun prizes, upgrade their virtual flying fortresses, or whatever.
  • The Fun Co-Op Element: Large-scale cooperative goals that let players band together to achieve milestones that will unlock new content, accelerate book launch dates, or trigger fun events or prizes for everyone.
  • The Writers’ Guild: Throw in some challenges for fellow writers. Let people earn tokens for building word count, commenting on each other’s work, publishing books, etc. Set up competitions or gentlemen’s bets where authors can go head to head or try to meet a challenging goal with tokens at stake.
  • The Monte Carlo: Set up a pretend casino and/or racetrack where players can bet their tokens on games of skill and chance whose outcomes depend on story elements or writing progress. Post odds on the outcomes of cliffhangers, the number of appearances a character will make in the next episode, or which author/project will increase most in word count.
  • The Wall Street: Let players invest their tokens in different stories or projects and give dividends as word count increases, sales rank improves, or specific milestones are reached. I find this one extra-interesting because if we set it up right it could actually start guiding production and/or predicting success.
  • The Grand Adventure: Create a series whose actual storyline depends on the game. Players who earn more tokens have more sway over the characters’ decisions and/or the success or resources of different factions or characters in the story.

On the implementation side, I was playing around today and discovered that you can set up a Google form to take information in, feed it to an online spreadsheet, have the spreadsheet make any relevant calculations or transformations, and then publish the relevant parts of the spreadsheet to the web with automatic updates.

Throwing in Google Fusion tables opens up even more powerful options. If I continue I will geek out and bore everybody to death, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Point is, that’s enough to get a basic setup for a fairly scalable interactive system with minimal setup and decent capabilities. I can work with that.

What do you think? Does this sort of thing interest you at all? If so, what sort of game would you find most engaging? Badges are fun, but I think it would be really cool to give it some real-world significance and (ideally) even take it beyond just me and my books. Any ideas?

Cheers!

—Ben

Back to Job One: Write More Words

My first book launch is (mostly) over. It was highly successful and highly educational, a crazy whirlwind of 18-hour days and emotional highs and strategy and enthusiasm and screenshots. Now it’s time to get back to the real work and joy of being a writer: writing.

Launch Highlights

The Stone and the Song: A Fairy TaleThe launch of The Stone and the Song was a test run in preparation for upcoming full-length novel launches. For a first release and a short work, I was surprised and pleased with how well it did:

  • Nearly 100 pre-orders
  • 4 days on the Top 20 Amazon Best Seller list in Fairy Tales
  • Broke the top 10k in Amazon paid rankings
  • Really lovely response in early customer reviews

Above all, I’m incredibly grateful for the massive enthusiasm shown by my friends, acquantances, long-lost friends, friends-of-friends, and new readers throughout this launch. I was blown away by all of your kind words, word-of-mouth, and eager purchases. Thank you to everyone who was involved!

Back to Work

Pre-order and launch was a really intense couple of weeks. I put in many hours beyond the day job working on final formatting, marketing copy, promotion, and infrastructure. I indulged in the urge to obsessively refresh my stats—hey, you only get one debut book launch, right?—and record and celebrate and angst and adjust things. I allowed myself to get fully sucked into the experience, and I learned a ton.

And then, like waking up, I realized all of it had been a week or two out of my life, and the Big Climactic Launch Day is actually the beginning of my book’s life in the world, not the end. I’ve stopped obsessively refreshing—it’s going to be a little while before Amazon recommendations and new organic sales start kicking in, even if that happens. And I’m ready to move on.

This was fun, but it’s all in the service of a bigger goal: a life spent writing. Now that the bulk of the work on Stone & Song is done, I’m finding it’s oddly pleasing to let it go and get back to business on the next big thing. Today’s goal is 1,000 words on Frobisher and, if I can swing it, uploading the next chunk of The Dream World Collective for free reading on Patreon. I really enjoy the strategy and the friends and the energy of a launch, but I love the writing.
Cheers!
Ben

Last Chance to Pre-Order!

The Stone and the Song, coming Feb 21, 2015 (!)

The Stone and the Song, coming Feb 21, 2015 (!)

The Stone and the Song releases tomorrow!

Pre-order now before the price goes up from $0.99 to $2.99.

You can also subscribe to my new mailing list for news on upcoming projects, including a possible audiobook version in the works as we speak!

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In a world where words are power and magic is song, a voiceless girl must defeat the sorceress who betrayed her.

But soon she will find that the evil touches more lives than her own. A sculptor of near-living statues, a fakir with the power of sight, and a band of children chasing dreams in the desert all play their parts. And at the center of it all lies a heart of stone that may hold the secret of unending life.

The Stone and the Song is a story of betrayal and of sacrifice, of love and of dreams, of strength in weakness and life beyond death. Wrapped in lush imagery and poetic language, it is a tale that will draw you in again and again.

150211.0655 Stone & Song Rank - 14 FT, 9405 Overall