May Update

There will be no Flash Fiction Friday piece today. I've been swamped with projects left and right, so I'm going to take a break from the flash fiction until next week. I also decided it was time to give everyone a quick update on what I'm up to.

The Crossover Alliance

I started The Crossover Alliance community to pull together readers and writers of edgy Christian speculative fiction. I originally built the community on a SocialGo network, but after running with them for a while, decided I wanted to move the community over to a Ning platform. Unfortunately, I wasn't aware that Ning had just shifted to its 3.0 upgrade - which had almost nothing in place in comparison with its old version. So, I've spent the last few months trying to mess around with their design tools and profile features and realized that they don't give me nearly enough to work with for the $30/month price tag they have on their product.

In response to this, I've decided to shift The Crossover Alliance to a static website that will incorporate the same great profile pages for the books that fall into this spectacular genre, and I'm going to attach a ProBoards forum to keep the community element intact. Since I'll be using Wix to build and host the site, my cost per month drops to nearly 1/3 what Ning has been charging me. I plan to roll out the new site in a matter of weeks, so stay tuned for that announcement.

The LZR Project

This is my pride and joy right now. I finally finished writing out all 40 episodes of my short-story mini-series, and my plan is to do some hardcore editing over the next few weeks so I can roll out the first episode before the end of the month. Right now, the plan is to release one new episode in digital format each week. The episodes will be released via Gumroad, and each will cost $1. They will be crafted in PDF format, so they can be read on any current Ereader or PC. I'll be putting out some more info for the series in the next couple of weeks, including character info and some of the plot arcs that you'll be seeing through the series.

Other Various Projects

With the release of my non-fiction book, Of Dreams and Faith, I realized that I really like the new matte cover options for the paperback format of books created through Createspace. All of my books up to this point have been done in glossy format. On that note, I am going to be redoing all of my current paperback versions in matte. I will also be reformatting all of my ebooks to make sure they are clean and easy to read on the current digital platforms. On top of that, I am going to be redoing the covers to Endangered Memories, Lost Birth, and Picture Perfect. I know those covers have been redone nearly to death, but I've been reading up on some tutorials and articles on cover design, and I think I have a good gauge as to where I want to go with all of the covers in my Expired Reality series. Also, I'll be creating a brand new Double Pack for the second two books in my Black Earth series - as I already have one Double Pack available for sale for the first two books in the series.