Yeah, I know what you mean, mouser.

We'll let you guys pick out some "flavor text" from two or three exciting scenes. Those will come after "Blurbs" and before "Title Page".

Smashwords creator Mark Coker has done extensive research showing that books priced at $2.99 and 50% preview sell the best, even better than $0.99 price-point.

Once the novel is published, I'll make a large portion of it available to hook the reader (I have already had over 200 individuals read Prologue through Ch. 4 and most tell me that the Prologue stirs their interest but that the ending of Ch. 4 is where they really got hooked.

I have sent Perry an email with the completed manuscript for the novel. It weighs in at 72,164 words of actual story (excludes front-/back-matter). This is a full-length novel. Smashwords defines 50K+ as full, but most publishers like to see novels in the 70-80K words range.

I apologize to Perry and 4wd for going ahead and working on the manuscript, because I'd said I'd pause until we caught up with proofing the existing material. But when inspiration struck, I had to get it written while it was fresh in my mind. Hope my two proofreaders will forgive me.

Now, over the next few days, Perry, 4wd, and I will continue to work jointly using Google Docs as a realtime online collaboration tool, to ferret out typos, misplaced commas, missing quotation marks, etc.

I hope to have the proofed book to mouser as a .mobi file within a few days. Being realistic, it may be 10-14 days (Perry or 4wd may increase that estimate, but I think we can do it in that time frame).

I also have four previously published authors who have agreed to accept a gratis ebook copy to read and review/blurb.

Stay tuned...


Samples downloaded

From DC hosting: 207
From Scribd: 37 reads, 50 followers
From Issuu: 4 reads, 113 impressions, 1 Like

Total words (front-matter + heart of the novel + back-matter): 73,322

Blurbs page: 185 words
Title/Copyright: 21 words
Dedication: 106 words
Acknowledgments: 30 words
Smashwords License Notes: 85 words
Epigraph: 4 words
Quote: 18 words
-------------------------------------
Front Matter: 449 words

Afterword: 719
-------------------------------------
Back Matter: 719 words

Main body of book (excludes front-/back-matter):  
73,332 - 449 (front-matter) - 719 (back-matter) = 72,164 words

I apologize to Perry and 4wd for going ahead and working on the manuscript, because I'd said I'd pause until we caught up with proofing the existing material. But when inspiration struck, I had to get it written while it was fresh in my mind. Hope my two proofreaders will forgive me.

No need, I was going to tell you to keep going today

It's also better this way due to the time difference, another reason that it would have good to have someone from USA/EU also.

Perry and 4wd, I'm gonna do a read-through on my tablet's Kindle app. I seem to spot errors easier that way. I'll coordinate my fixing of the manuscript with updating the Google Doc (you guys will have already spotted the errors anyway, most likely). Tomorrow, I'm taking my dad to another city to see a couple of specialists, but I should be able to dig into the Google Doc over the next few days.

I was thinking of the following excerpt being placed before the blurbs on the first page, to snag the browsing shopper. What do you think?

    The alien almost danced upon his tentacles, so pleasurable were the psychic emanations of terror pouring off of Eddie Hasser. Veins pulsed in its head, torso, and each massive tentacle. The alien snaked closer to Hasser, who had run out of breath, and was leaning forward, holding his gloved hands against the sharp pain in his chest. The man’s eyes bulged, and his mouth formed a helpless “O”.
    “Let’s see if we can increase your terror without killing you,” the creature crooned. It’s head deformed and then quickly reformed into a bulbous, hooded thing that, as it turned out, Eddie Hasser’s heart couldn’t tolerate. The good doctor collapsed forward, helmeted head bouncing once on the corrugated aluminum mesh floor.

I draw a distinction between a blurb and an excerpt. I meant the above as an excerpt, but perhaps something like the following would give a better overall idea of the book:

170 years from now, aliens decimate Earth. A relative handful of humans survive, hidden in deep subterranean enclaves that offer some protection from surface radiation. Although the main attack is now seven years in the past, one alien ship remains in orbit, and the conquerors are not content merely to let humanity lick its wounds. See the depths of courage and ingenuity this crisis brings out in the heroes of post-apocalyptic Earth.

Oh, okay, you did understand my meaning Yeah, I'm thinking of just putting something brief at the very beginning to summarize the book, kind of like paperback's have on the back cover.

Beta version has been sent to proofreaders.

>>He grunted in remembrance. and sat back down.

Fix:

He grunted in remembrance, and sat back down.

Yikes, near beginning of Ch. 3, found "skull" misspelled "skll". Fixed.

Chapter 5 done. Whew, that was a long one!

Chapter 6 done. Found a sentence repeated 

Will start with Chapter 7 tomorrow.

I took down the previous version and am waiting until you've ready to give me the next version 

Here's what I posted yesterday on my FB author page:

As you know, the first draft of a story or novel is called the rough draft. We took my rough draft and scoured it for errors (typos, grammatical, logical, etc). This resulted in the 2nd draft. Now, I'm reading the 2nd draft cover to cover and making edits, polishing, leaving some stuff on the Cutting Room floor. When I'm done, we'll have the 3rd draft. This will be the Release Candidate. Me, my two proofreaders, and some beta-readers will decide if anything further needs tweaking, and then I'll publish. I'm currently up to Chapter 6 in this process.