Finallly!

Whew!  It took me the better part of a year, but the 2nd edition of The Dragon Gem is finally complete!

Lessee . . . there's been a bunch of changes:

• New Cover Art
• Major grammatical editing
• Major rewriting(though no significant plot changes)
• About 10 - 15,000 words of new-ish content, much of it tying the book in to the sequel a bit more
• Restructuring of chapters and adjustment of chapter breaks
• This one is due to my personal distaste for extremely long chapters, something I was highly guilty of in the first release of this book.  With no major story changes, the chapter count has gone from 26 to 47!

So, my plans for spending a couple months doing a thorough grammatical edit kind of veered into vastly different territory.  However, I am incredibly happy with the results!

Now, the update has been submitted to Amazon, and is currently for sale in ebook format.  I have contacted Amazon to ensure the update becomes available for previous buyers.  The process for that can take up to 4 weeks (hopefully shorter, though).  Should they deem the changes significant enough, an email will be sent out to anyone who downloaded the book before.  If not, the update will be available, but you'd have to A) manually update it by going  "manage your kindle" under your Amazon account options, find The Dragon Gem, click actions on the right side of the screen, and then hit update, or B)set your kindle up under "manage your kindle" to automatically update books.  I'll let you know the moment I hear back about how they plan to handle it.

For anyone who has not downloaded the book before, it will be free for download on Amazon on Saturday and Sunday (December 14/15) to celebrate its release.  Besides, who needs monetary compensation for a labor of love . . . Hm . . . actually, maybe I need to revisit the price point on the ebook.  

I have submitted everything for the print copy on CreateSpace tonight, so as long as the proof copy looks okay when I receive it in the coming weeks, it'll be up on Amazon soon as well.  I'm hoping to have some giveaways once all is said and done, probably in January.  

As for what's next on my plate, I am working on my Alinor's Shard novelette, giving it a good run through before sending it JJProofing  and will hopefully have it available for download before Jan. 1 with print copies shortly after.

I plan on using January as my NaNoWriMo (since  November was dedicated to my rewrite of The Dragon Gem ) to get the first 50K words down on the first draft of Book 3 of Korin's Journal.  My wife and I are expecting our second son in March, so no telling if I'll be able to pull this off or not.  We'll have a lot going on in the beginning of the year!

For now, though, with the rewrite out of the way, I can get back to writing without it feeling like  chore.  I've almost forgotten what that feels like in the past couple months.

I'll update soon on the availability of print copies of The Dragon Gem, when those who have downloaded the Kindle version already can get the update, info on giveaways, and info on Alinor's Shard's release. 

So, to end this up-way-too-late-at-night/too-early-in-the-morning post, I give you the front and back cover for The Dragon Gem rewrite, as well as the front cover and a sneak peak of one of the illustrations for Alinor's Shard.  Enjoy!

 

Brian Beam