[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]
So, yeah. The plan for the Chesspocalypse was one novella each for the five members of Chess Team. But in the months that it took for Jeremy to collaborate with the other authors, and for me to edit the stories, Sean Ellis was hard at work. And he’s relatively fast. And so is Jeremy. With these stories, when it came Jeremy’s turn to tweak the initial drafts, he either had a lot of work to make the stories adhere to his vision for the Chess Team universe or very little, depending on the authors with whom he was collaborating. He either had a lot of changes to keep characters consistent with who they were shown to be in the first three novels—or who Jeremy had plans for them becoming in his head—or very few changes. Sean Ellis really understood the team, and what Jeremy wanted. So, a perfect storm of Sean being fast, Jeremy needing to alter little, and delays with the other books because of writing schedules or editing process, all meant that a second novella with King was ready before the Bishop and Knight books.
Continue reading
[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]
This one was kind of a slow burn, but that’s what was called for with this character. At the end of the last full-length novel, Rook was exhausted, demoralized, and crushed with guilt over the deaths of a team of men under his command. He was on the run, in hostile territory. So, he slips out of Russia to the north, aboard a boat. He has a fateful meeting with a woman destined to play a huge part in his life. Then he lands in Norway and hikes across the countryside. It’s clear he hasn’t quit Chess Team altogether. But he needs a breather. It’s less a case of him abandoning the team as taking an unannounced and very needed personal break.
Continue reading
[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]
This was the first Chesspocalypse novella where I came on board as editor, and I was pretty harsh on this story by Jeremy and David Wood. And I like the story a ton, actually. Keen eyed readers will have spotted that I’ve blurbed a novel or two in David’s Dane Maddock series as well, so clearly I’m a fan of his work. But I think David chafed a bit at the huge amounts of corrections and changes I wanted on this tale. Hopefully, he’s forgiven me. But the story is now, I think, all the better for that brutal edit.
Continue reading
[“Kane Looks Back” is a series of posts where my editor, Kane Gilmour, will focus on some of my past novels that you might not have discovered yet. Now read on… –Jeremy]
So, for this Chesspocalypse novella, the first, I got to experience it the way the rest of you did—by reading it when it came out. Initially I was not the editor on the book, so I just got to read and enjoy it. (I’ve since gone in and touched up a few typos, but this one was remarkably clean.)
And what a ride it was! High praise to Sean Ellis for his inventive ideas on this one. The story involved a fabled Elephant Graveyard, a malevolent Artificial Intelligence (or was it a malevolent human disguised as an AI?), shootouts, car chases, a helicopter crash, and a woman with the power to end all life on earth by willing it–or by accidentally losing control! King really gets put through the wringer in this one. Jeremy and Sean collaborated on plot, Sean wrote the first draft, Jeremy tweaked and touched it up, and then it was out there in the world.
Continue reading
Just a quick note to let all you Kindle Unlimited readers know that nearly my entire catalog of books is now available on KU. That’s 60+ novels, all for free! The only novels not included are the few I don’t have control over. When the rights eventually return to me, they’ll also be included.
>What does this mean for those of you who are NOT subscribers? Well, nothing good. Amazon requires exclusivity to have a book listed in Kindle Unlimited. That means we’ve had to pull all the books (but not the collections) from B&N, Kobo, Google Play, and iBooks. That sounds like a big sacrifice, but after doing a 6 month experiment where nearly all the books were pulled from KU, we learned that sales on all those other platforms combined did not come close to the revenue earned via KU.
Does that mean we’ve given up on all those readers who don’t bend the knee to Lord Amazon? Hell no. We’re looking at a variety of ways to get books to all of you, too. But for now, the free Kindle app works on most tablets, and the books are still available for sale as e-books at Amazon and in print from Amazon and at all booksellers. The books are also available as audiobooks, which you might have noticed are winning gobs of awards and hitting all the bestseller lists!
So head on over to my Amazon author page and start turning those free pages if you’re on Kindle Unlimited!
QUESTION and ANSWER
I’ve been asked by a lot of people how Kindle Unlimited works in terms of author payment. Basically, I get a fraction of a penny for every digital page you turn. If you read an entire book, those 500 (on average) pages works out to just over three dollars, which is about the same as the royalty from a sale of a $4.99 e-book. So, turn all those pages to the end!
And then leave a review!
And then do some calisthenics, because exercise is important. Builds stamina for all that reading you’re doing now!
If you have other questions about Kindle Unlimited, just drop them in the comments, and I’ll get back to you.
Recent Comments