Interested in Reviewing “Revenants Abroad”?

I should have posted this long ago, but wanted to say if you’re a book reviewer interested in reviewing Revenants Abroad please contact me for a complimentary copy in your choice of electronic formats. There’s no obligation. You can also check out the first 20% of the book at Smashwords (anyone can do this) to see if it piques your interest. Amazon doesn’t give you quite as much to preview, I don’t think. You can contact me through the “Contact” form (see above in the menu) or email me at fillingspaces (at) gmail (dot) com.

And some recent pics. I saw something on the way home a couple nights ago I’m dying to get a pic of as soon as I get the road to myself and don’t have to worry about some tailgater trying to kill me if I slow down for 2 seconds.

Also, I have a huge bouquet of lilacs on my desk this morning stinking up the place.

Quick Note – Revenants Abroad

Through April 4, Revenants Abroad is on sale for $0.99 at Smashwords. Use coupon code QN94E (it’s not case-sensitive). It’s available in all formats: MOBI (Kindle), Epub (just about everything else), pdf, lrf, pdb, or read it online.

‘Cause I Just Don’t Have Enough To Do

So my latest thing is I’m thinking about doing a newsletter focusing on my book and the upcoming sequel as well as other writing, and offering some exclusive content (backstory on characters, new stuff related to the Revenants series and other projects), contests and giveaways. Yeah I know, like I don’t have enough to do already, right?

If you’d like to sign up you can do so here. Unfortunately with WordPress.com sites you can’t embed the forms so I have to have an off-site page for it. I’ll be moving the blog to a self-hosted site soon, though. I’m not sure when I’ll start sending out the newsletter, and it will be monthly if I can keep up. Otherwise maybe every other month, so you won’t be inundated with stuff every week.

The white flowers below are Oregon’s state flower, the trillium. It’s protected, so don’t pick them if you see them.

Entmoot

Outstanding in its field

The eagle is landing

fine specimen

wild herd of trillium

We’re still getting a lot of fog in the mornings, as you can see.

Revenants Abroad and My Battle with CreateSpace.

Just so you guys know, at this point I do not plan to move forward with paper copies of Revenants Abroad. I’m so disgusted with CreateSpace/Amazon’s destruction of the cover art, I can’t bring myself to sell print copies. I can’t understand why the perfectly good artwork that was supplied to them is turned into a murky mess, and they refuse to do anything about it. Their only solution was to tell me to upload a lighter version of the artwork. I don’t have the original artwork, or Photoshop, to manipulate it in. For comparison, here is the original image:

And THIS is what they did to it. These are the first two proof copies I received, the third is exactly the same. I haven’t even bothered to check the actual text inside. I just want to cry every time I look at this.

I’ve never seen anything like it. If anyone else has had a similar experience with CreateSpace I’d love to hear about it. I was told this was “within acceptable variances.” They also said something about “spacing” which basically meant they didn’t address the issue at all and all I got was a canned response. Obviously they couldn’t care less about the quality of the books they publish.

News and Changes

So, things are progressing with the book. The proof copy is on its way to me, and if all looks good the paper copy should be available on Amazon in another week! The ebook of Revenants Abroad is also now available via Kindle on Amazon, and will remain available via Smashwords, Kobo and Barnes and Noble as well, all at the same price of course. I’m also probably going to be resurrecting my other website that I let slide, ddsyrdal.com, and take all the book talk over there so you guys who don’t care about it don’t have to listen to it here. Having my own site again will allow me to do things I can’t do here.

In the meantime, here are a few recent shots. I swear the rainbow one, while only showing a short section of it, was the widest rainbow I’ve ever seen.

Wind on the water

Fat rainbow

Cherry blossoms

Lonely Mountain at sunset

Evening clouds

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 27

Chapter 27 is up on on Wattpad! I’m getting nervous now, down to the wire before I pull it off Wattpad and launch the paper copy on Amazon. :::chews nails::: The final chapter, 28, will post on Saturday. I’ll give it a week, and then the whole thing comes down so I can make it available for sale on Amazon. Get caught up now, if you’re not buying the book!

And we’re finally getting a break in the gray and the wet we’ve had. The rivers are still way up, water’s lapping at the edge of the road in places where I drive, but we’re supposed to be dry for the next week or so. I was able to get a few shots this morning on the way to work. Oddly it was clearer at my house than further down the road where I was once again swallowed up by the fog. This first shot is from my front porch. It’s a little blurry, but the color took my breath away.

The bright purple and reddish-orange faded very quickly to soft pinks

Unfortunately all my shots of the high water in the marsh came out like this:

Which is what happens most of the time. The point is, normally you can’t actually see the water here. So yeah, it’s been soggy.

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 26

Chapter 26 went live yesterday, sorry to be a day late with the notice! Only two more chapters to go after this so time is winding down to read it for free online. There have now been over 5000 reads of Revenants Abroad on Wattpad, so thank you everyone! 😀

Breakfast Club

Rainfree County

Foggy pond

I heard that

Telling secrets

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 25

Chapter 25 is up now on Wattpad! Three left to go, I’ll give it a week and then pull it to get the paper copy up on Amazon. As I’ve mentioned previously, Amazon’s terms are such that if the book is available anywhere for free, they will make it free as well. So… I am forced to remove it from Wattpad when I put the paper copy up for sale. Hope everyone who wants to has a chance to finish it before then.

I’m making slow progress on the sequel, and feeling sidetracked by a couple of other stories I started and want to work on.

Picture is not compressed, if you care to embiggen. Sunrise dressed in blue and gray this morning.

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 24

Chapter 24 is up now on Wattpad! This may be the longest yet, at 12 Wattpad-pages. If you’re snowed in this weekend, or it’s just too cold to be outside, it might be a good time to catch up on your reading. Four more chapters to go, then I’ll give it about a week and pull the story from Wattpad to get the book up on Amazon. It is still available as an ebook from Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Kobo.

Here’s our lonely mountain (sans dragon) at sunset, an eagle perched in the next-door neighbor’s tree, last night’s moon, and a spider web in the power lines under the streetlight.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

 

Revenants Abroad – Chapter 23

Chapter 23 is up now on Wattpad! Only five more to go. And as I’ve said I will be removing it from Wattpad entirely about a week after the final chapter posts so I can make it available on Amazon, so not too much longer until the paper copies will be for sale.

So today started out incredibly foggy, cleared later, then the fog was starting to come back on the way home. I really liked the clouds that look like a halo around the tree. It was so odd, lined up just right for that shot.