Using Gumroad For Short Story Episodes

A little while back I mentioned in a post (and possibly in my email newsletter) that I was thinking of using Gumroad to sell episodes of my upcoming short story series, The LZR Project. After reviewing the fine print of their website, I've decided this is definitely the route I am going to be taking once The LZR Project is ready to release - which should be sometime next month.

Here are some of the awesome things I am looking forward to taking advantage of with Gumroad - 

Royalties

As far as payment goes, Gumroad only takes 5% + 25¢ per transaction. There are no setup or monthly fees, and payment is every other Friday for all sales up to the previous Friday. They also allow direct deposit into your bank account.

File Formats

Gumroad allows creatives the ability to post their work for sale on their website, but the service of Gumroad goes far beyond just offering up a display case for your creative talents. Gumroad allows you to post almost any file format - including these ebook file format: ePub, iBook, Plain text, PDF, HTML and .MOBI

Subscriptions

Gumroad allows your customers to subscribe to your content - such as weekly short story episodes - and once new content is released, Gumroad allows you to email that new content to your subscriber. This allows your readers (customers) to sign up for a subscription and then just sit back and grab that latest episode from their email inbox without having to go to the website and purchase each episode every single week.

Pre-Orders

Gumroad enables you to setup a pre-order of a particular upcoming project. Once that product is released, Gumroad charges your customer and then automatically sends them the item that was pre-ordered.

I am really looking forward to using Gumroad for the release of The LZR Project. I will blog on my experience with them after I have released a few episodes, and if all goes well then I may be using them for future projects.

August Update

I know it's been about a month since I last posted - and I do apologize for that - but I've been knee-deep in some personal matters, and I've also been taking a long hard look at the projects and tasks on my plate and have had to make some hard decisions on what is worth doing and what is worth forgetting about. My first and foremost priority is to write. Write. And beyond that, I want to reach people with that writing using my website, social media, and word of mouth. But those things have to come secondary to the writing.

First off, time to celebrate because I actually finished Camp NaNoWriMo! This was my first year doing the campy summer version of National Novel Writing Month, and to be honest I didn't think I was going to reach my goal of 43,112 words to get my third Expired Reality novel past the 100,000 word count mark, but I did it! And now I have a legitimate amount of story material to craft my novel from, so hopefully I can get this third volume in the series - which has been in the works for a few years now - onto the bookshelves soon.

The second piece of news I want to share is that I've made the executive decision to move the genre community - The Crossover Alliance - to a Ning based network. Since it's creation, The Crossover Alliance community has been residing on SocialGo. And while SocialGo is a really great company to start out on, Ning has many more options for social networking and content which I think will only benefit the community once things are moved over. The new site will be ready in the next couple weeks, and ample notice will be given to give time for the shift from one platform to the other.

And the third solid piece of news I'd like to share is the decision to merge the two blogs that I currently run. Right now, this blog is my main blog where I talk about my writing projects and the writing process, but I also have another blog - Of Dreams and Faith - where I've been blogging about my faith and the incredible journey God brought me and my family through to get us here to the Bay Area. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no reason to keep my faith and my writing separate from one another, especially if everything I am writing nowadays is either edgy Christian speculative fiction or a non-fiction account of my faith walk with God.

Aside from those three major announcements, and the work I am currently doing on my non-fiction book, Of Dreams and Faith, which chronicles my faith walk with God, I also have some side projects that I need to start tackling - such as the resurrection of my email newsletter, some revamping of certain items on my website, and some episodic and short story writing I want to start cranking out.

Simplicity

As most of you have noticed, I've been MIA from social media for a while now. For the last couple months, I've been focusing on getting settled here in the Bay Area (Daly City) for the church plant we are a part of - (Canvas) - which should be launching publicly in late September. With all of this time away from my projects, I've had a chance to think about what direction I want my marketing efforts to go. And the one word that keeps coming to mind is...

Simplicity.

After months away from the old version of my website, when I did jump on to see what could be fixed, I was pained to see how cluttered and messy my website looked. The colors were all wrong, the graphics and text were a clustermess, and some of the links didn't even work. Aside from the website, my business cards have needed a facelift, as has this blog, and even my Facebook pages. I've even become unhappy with the face I've given to The Crossover Alliance, a social community I created for writers/readers of edgy Christian speculative fiction.

With the realization that all these facets of my author platform need to be simplified (and overhauled), I did something about it.

I am proud to introduce to all of you my brand spanking new website. This site has been rebuilt from the ground up. While I've somewhat enjoyed using WebEasy Professional for the past 8+ years to build my site, the time consuming glitches and issues within the program have forced me to find a different avenue through which to build my website with. So I turned over to Wix.com and came up with a fresh, new design that is easy on the eyes and simple to update...

On top of that, I created some new business cards which I am in the process of ordering...

I also updated my author Facebook page with a new graphic. More changes to all my FB pages will be coming down the line in time...

And, you have probably already realized that I also update my blog's theme. Simplicity is the common theme running through these designs. Solid brown color schemes to go with the soft blue of my tree and star logo. I've also changed the font that my name is written in to be a little less 'fancy' and a little more professional and writerly.

And last but not least, I created a brand spanking new logo for The Crossover Alliance. Something that resembles the edginess of our fiction but at the same time represents our professionalism in the writing community...

I'd love to hear what you think of the new changes!

My Problem With Social Networking

I've been self-publishing for quite a few years now - probably too many to count seeing how I was dipping my toes in the self-publishing field and the ebook market before digital readers were even around and everyone read digital files on their computers in PDF format. And over the course of this long while, I've come to the stark and disappointing realization that I STILL struggle with marketing and social networking. It's probably my very least favorite part of self-publishing, and I cringe every time I have to delve into either of those two fields.

That being said, I wouldn't trade the ability to self-publish for anything in the world. The fact that I have control over my written and graphical content is a power I will not easily - if ever - give up, especially considering I write in the niche genre of edgy Christian speculative fiction - a crossover of mainstream and Christian fiction that has fans and haters on both sides of the fences.

Now that we've entered 2013, I've decided to sit down and take serious stock of where I want my energies to be placed over the next year. Being a self-published author in combination with being a work-from-home dad doesn't allow me ample amounts of luxury time to just throw to the wind - even if that's what I've been doing these past few years. Case in point, why in the world do I have so many social networking connections to other authors? Authors aren't going to buy my books. And to be honest, reviews from other authors aren't always all that objective. This isn't to say that self-published authors shouldn't read/review other self-published author's books, but is that really the best use of an author's time?

I remember when I first started out on this self-publishing journey, I had many other self-published authors clamoring my email inbox and my social networking feeds with requests to read/review their work. I said yes at first to a few of them, realizing later that it was a mistake to commit to such a task. It left me no time to write, no time to promote my own work, no time to read for leisure - which isn't to say that the work I read from those authors was sub-par, it just took up the time I should have been spending getting through my own to-read shelf which has been lingering here in my office for a few years now. In fact, I'm almost certain my to-read stack has grown legs and is now hiding in my office closet, waiting to strike when I least expect it.

So for 2013 I decided to be more vigilante in streamlining my efforts. Instead of shoving my face out there and focusing all my efforts on reaching other authors, my goal will be to reach readers. READERS! I've decided to stop lurking in Red Room - not because there aren't readers over there, but because in order to get decent exposure for my books there, it seems I have to pay a membership fee. I've decided to stop messing around on Writing.com - which is a great site, by the way, but I find it hard to navigate sometimes, and in order to secure the storage space there necessary to promote all of my writing, I would have to have a membership as well. I used to be on AuthorNation, but for some strange reason, the site has undergone some serious problems over the last year or so and now no longer exists. At least, I can't find it. And my profile there is gone. So, that problem took care of itself.

One of the biggest changes I made was to my Facebook profile - my personal one, not my author page. I had over 1500 friends in a mixture of unknown authors (most self-published like me), friends, and family. It became quite difficult discerning what I should or should not be posting on there - such as pics of my one year old son, status updates on what coffee shop I was hanging out in on a certain day, or what was going on in my life on a personal level. It was even difficult to post about my novels because most of my messages in that regard were being repeated on my FB pages anyway, so some people were seeing shout-outs about my books two or three times in their newsfeeds.

To this end, I took a few days and purged all but 115 of those friends. 1500 to 115. And that 115 is a mixture of friends, family, and authors who I truly respect and have had great interaction with over the past year or so. It's been quite liberating, to be honest, and now I can focus my writing announcements and whatnot over on my FB pages. I also made the decision to stick with Goodreads, and make my presence more prominent in the Kindle and Nook forums, where readers who own Nooks and Kindles go to find great books - especially by self-published authors. I'm also going to be posting/interacting more at Self Publishing Review. And, of course, you'll be able to find me at The Crossover Alliance, which I'll be working on building up more this next year.

I feel much better now that I streamlined things. Sometimes you just have to cut the fat, and with the way things are on the internet nowadays it's becoming difficult to find the will power to step out of certain circles because many of us are being taught that the more exposure we have the better. I disagree. I think we need to be more focused on the exposure we actually want, and take steps to enter into that, and step out of the exposure that is only going to waste our valuable time.

Fall Project Goals

Fall is my second favorite season of the year. It's the time of year Arizona finally starts to cool down, although we're still left with 90+ degree temperatures scattered throughout the forecast here and there, but nothing like what we get in the summertime. I also love fall because it ushers in my first favorite time of the year - winter. It is these next six months of the year that I absolutely cherish, and this year will be no exception because there are a lot of exciting things going on.

In my personal life, my wife and I are getting ready for our move to San Francisco after the New Year. Our most recent updates to this move and our involvement with the Canvas church plant can be found at my other blog - Of Dreams and Faith. Needless to say, we have the boxes out and are getting set to start packing things up.

In regards to my writing career, I have some exciting things on the horizon. First, Black Earth 4 will be release next month (December) in both paperback and ebook formats. I really wanted to release it this month, but it's taken me just a tad longer to get the book finished and edited than I initially planned, and by the time the book is ready to roll out the door, we're going to come up on Thanksgiving, so I'll just wait until after that holiday and plan on releasing the book in the beginning of December. An exact date will be announced soon.

On the same topic, Black Earth 4 - originally titled Black Earth: Bridge to Anaisha - has been renamed Black Earth: Exodus. This name change happened for a few different reasons: the title describes the book better than Bridge to Anaisha did; the shorter title mirrors the shorter length of the book; I am going to use Bridge to Anaisha as my NaNoWriMo novel title.

This brings me to the subject of NaNoWriMo. I've decided to start my initial story over from scratch. Even after the month of preparation via the Writing.com October Pre NaNo Challenge, I am finding that I have no interest in the Black Earth: Spectrum storyline or any of the characters. So, they go on the back burner for now. Instead, I'm going to work on what will later be titled Black Earth: Bridge to Anaisha. The story will cover characters from my Black Earth series with details as to where each wound up after the events of Black Earth: Exodus, and will overlap with some of the characters from the Expired Reality series, essentially tying the two series together.

Other projects set for this fall are the release of my newly redesigned email newsletter (which I had to overhaul when I created my new author logo and design of the website), a list of new Compendium entries that will be release this winter, and some exciting things for The Crossover Alliance including a panel discussion on edgy Christian speculative fiction with Giovanni Gelati from Gelati's Scoop (November 28th at 1pm AZ time), and a great big giveaway of works from various edgy Christian speculative fiction writers.

And winter will bring its own slate of great projects, including (FINALLY) the LZR Project, the third Expired Reality series novel, and some other great literary goodies.

Time to break out my jacket and get ready for the cold!

October Update

So, for the past couple weeks, I've been working on a number of different projects, all of which have been taking up the majority of my 'work' time so I haven't had too much time to network socially. My plan is to get a lot of these things off my plate in the next week so I can get back into the swing of things and start getting more activity rolling in my social networking and on The Crossover Alliance community.

First, I've been completing edits to and reading through Black Earth: Bridge to Anaisha - the fourth and final full-length novel in my Black Earth series. My hope is to release the book next month. This weekend my wife and I will be working on some of the cover design. And, there's a small chance I may change the name of the novel - not sure about that yet, but I'm definitely giving it some serious thought for reasons I may get into if I do decide to change it.

I've also been tinkering with the design of my website and attempting to clean it up a bit, make the Compendium entries a little easier to read and just make it easier to see a lot of my content at a glance. The new and improved site should be up next week - along with Heather Rhodes' profile, which I wanted to put up this week but couldn't because of the design delay.

In the world of writing, I've been working on the daily NaNo Prep activities over at Writing.com to get myself prepped for a November full of writing for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

I also have a new email newsletter to go out, which will match the design of the improved website. The newsletter should be going out toward the end of next week.

Next week I plan to do a small series of posts on the 7 years I've done NaNoWriMo, with a spotlight on each year's novel that I worked on with some details as to the future of those projects - the ones that haven't already become published novels.

All in all, October has been hecka' busy, but productive. Have a great weekend everyone!

New Author Logo

If you meander through the dozens of articles on the internet regarding authors, author platforms, and writing in general, you'll probably come across a few posts advising against the idea of an author branding themselves with a logo. Authors should be their own brand and not have to craft an image - other than their author pic - to associate them with their writing platform.

Regardless of this advice, I took some time out last week to craft an author logo for myself. It's no different, really, from a coat of arms in that it symbolizes what I am all about as a writer, much like the coat of arms represents family heritage. And it helps, since I write in different series, to establish myself as an eye-catching symbol that can show attribution to my many different works.

The main thing this logo has in it is my oak tree - originally a photograph that my wife took while we were in California one year. It is also the same tree found on the cover of the first book in my Black Earth series, End of the Innocence. If you've read through the first two novels in my young adult series, Expired Reality, you also might draw a connection to the oak tree mentioned in those books, the one that Carrie goes to to escape her reality. The oak tree is found in both of my series, and an oak tree represents stability, strength, and firm rooting. Seeing how my firm rooting is found in God, I thought the oak tree symbolized my relationship to my faith quite well, and so that's why the oak tree is found in my logo. Oak trees also drop acorns (seeds), which can then spread to create other oak trees. In this way, the oak tree represents my ability to sow creativity and influence, both through my faith and in my writing.

The second thing you'll notice are the multitude of stars hanging above the oak tree. The stars really represent a multitude of different things, such as creativity, science fiction/fantasy (the genre I specialize in), and the limitlessness of our universe. There is no meaning behind the number of stars in the logo, just in case you were wondering. I simply put in as many as looked good.

In the end, I have a great representation of who I am as a writer. Grounded in faith, in the strength equivalent to an oak tree, crafting creative works of science fiction/fantasy and other relevant genres, I am a writer who seeks to bring imagination to the pages of each of my literary works. I'll be incorporating this logo and a few new design elements to my main website later this week, so stay tuned.

New Blog Design

This week I've been working diligently on some new design aspects to almost all of my social networking hubs. This blog was the first to get a makeover. For a while now I've had my sights set on Blogger's new dynamic templates, and so I decided to give it a shot.

So far, I like how the daily posts are set up so you can see the last week at a glance, and then scroll down to see older posts. That's in the Magazine view, and if you want to change how you view the blog, you can click on the drop down menu near the top left of the blog and change it to something else. I have it set at Magazine by default though. You can hover over the right side of the blog to bring out tabs that show info about me, my blog followers, the post archive, and other things. The only drawback to using the dynamic template is that I'm limited in the number of Blogger gadgets I can use, but I like this new design enough to put up with it for now. And you can still access my pages at the top of the blog to find out more about me, my books, and the genre I write in.

The next design element I'll be rolling out is a new logo - for my writing empire as a whole, and for me as an author. I know it's usually frowned upon for authors to brand themselves with a logo, but I've never been good at following the status quot. Besides, I sort of already have a logo - the white oak tree - at my main website, I'm just sprucing it up a bit and putting some more meaning behind it.

After the logo, I'll be cleaning up my main website a bit - making things easier to read, polishing up the format of the Compendium entries, and cleaning up the book pages to be more informative. That will probably take me a few days to a week. In the midst of doing that, I'll also be creating some nifty cover images for my FB pages, and finishing up October's email newsletter to go out in the next week.

The Crossover Alliance

When I first started down the road of labeling my Black Earth series as edgy Christian speculative fiction, I wasn't sure what to expect. The label came out of a discussion I had with a good friend of mine when we were on the topic of ways to market my unique blend of Christian themes and edgy, gritty writing. Themes like violence, sexual content, cursing and the like haven't been widely accepted in Christian fiction, so it almost felt like my writing actually sealed its own fate just by being in existence.

I came up with the term edgy Christian speculative fiction because it seems to sum up EXACTLY what it is my writing encompasses. Michelle Sutton spearheaded the term edgy Christian fiction a while back when she created her Ning community, Edgy Christian Fiction Lovers. And as great as that community is, it seems to be steeped in a female demographic and seems to lean more toward edgy Christian romance - which is what a good amount of Christian fiction in general seems to lean toward. There's nothing wrong with any of that, of course. It's just left me to pursue a slightly different path through the marketing forest.

So for the past few months I've been trying to get this label of edgy Christian speculative fiction out there. Some have argued that labels don't matter. I disagree with this, especially since self-publishing has taken off so rapidly and people want to know exactly what they're investing their time and money into. Some have argued that the term 'edgy' has already been beaten to death by the edgy romance writing community. And some have tried to come up with their own labels, like alternative or inspirational. Inspirational was taken a long time ago, and alternative makes it sound almost New Age in comparison.

On the other side of the coin, though, I've had certain individuals crawling up out of the woodwork to tell me they have either been looking for fiction in this type of genre to read, or that they write this same type of fiction and haven't had much luck marketing it. This has in turn created a need. A need for a community of readers/writers of this type of fiction, where both camps can come together and help support each other and bring more exposure to this genre.

So I've taken it upon myself to see what I can do. Using a community builder called Social Go, I've created The Crossover Alliance. Anyone can join the Alliance and post their edgy Christian speculative work, start topics in the forum in regards to this type of fiction, and invite other members to come support their work. I've also started an ever-growing resources tab in the site which will contain lists of online reviewers willing to read/review this type of work, and links to great self-publishing tools to get newbies just jumping into the fray some tips on starting into the world of self-publishing.

As additions to the social community, I have also created a Twitter account - crossoverally - and a Facebook page - The Crossover Alliance.

I invite you to check it out. And if you like it, please invite your friends/family/pets to join in!

Black Earth and the Genre That Almost Wasn't

I’ve been frustrated lately. Mostly with myself than with anything else.

See, I’ve been writing since 1992. I’ve been self-publishing since at least 2004. And I’ve been working on the Black Earth series since 2007, when it began as a short story in an anthology I wrote for National Novel Writing Month that November.

My aim with the Black Earth series was to tell a story about the world falling into darkness, with the main focus being on a few major characters who were attempting to navigate through this darkness by relying on their relationship with God. That lonely little short story – which was originally created under the umbrella of my young adult series, Expired Reality – quickly became the baseline for an entire series of its own: Black Earth.

Black Earth: End of the Innocence – the first novel in the series – was the most challenging manuscript I have ever penned. Why? Because it contained content in it that I knew would be frowned on by friends and family, fellow Christians, probably even my church. But I felt led to write the story found within the pages of End of the Innocence, a story filled with rape, cursing, sexual promiscuity, aliens, superpowers, violence, demons, witches, time travel, and other realities.

Needless to say, the novel was completely out of my comfort zone. In fact, it broke the very foundation of the shelter I had been living within my whole life.

But after I wrote the story, after a great friend (and mentor) of mine edited it, after I formatted it and placed it between beautiful cover art my wife created, I realized what I had done – I had created a hybrid of sorts. Edgy Christian Speculative Fiction. I came up with that genre title because I have no other way to describe what I write. Black Earth is a mixture of science fiction, fantasy, a dash of horror, all encompassing themes of redemption, forgiveness, revenge, and betrayal.

At first I made the mistake of trying to hide Black Earth under the science fiction/fantasy genre. I failed because reviewers started pointing out that Black Earth had Christian themes and that it should be placed under the Christian Fiction umbrella.  The book also got lost in the massive genre of science fiction/fantasy, buried underneath the likes of Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Game of Thrones series.

So where did it belong? Where could Black Earth call home?

In all honesty, I dreaded carrying Black Earth under the Christian Fiction banner. Quite a bit of Christian Fiction – and I stress quite a bit, not all – contains watered down stories that encompass 'clever' sermons about Jesus and how to live a ‘proper’ life. Most Christian Fiction ends on a high note, and not much of it explores ‘real’ life. Much Christian Fiction avoids the dark and gritty side of life. Prostitutes, drug addiction, the inner struggles of sex addicts, the moral dilemmas one faces in high school. Even science fiction/fantasy elements are frowned upon most of the time, including extraterrestrial life, time travel, magic and witches.

This dilemma I faced forced me to really think about what umbrella my work, especially Black Earth, fell under. I didn’t want to enter the Christian Fiction scene with my science fiction/fantasy/horror novel that was filled with rape, violence and cursing. I would be ostracized. And I didn’t want to continue skating through the swamp of science fiction/fantasy, hoping reviewers wouldn’t have issue with the fact that my stories contained Christian themes.

And that’s when it hit me. I’m a self-published author. I’m in control of my marketing efforts and the genre I want to place myself in. I did some research and found that not many authors were attempting to craft the type of genre I had concocted with my Black Earth series. That isn’t to say there weren’t some trying, but with it being such a narrow market, they were getting lost in the shuffle or were giving up because they were being opposed at every angle.

Unfortunately, since creating the banner of Edgy Christian Speculative Fiction, I haven’t really pushed myself out there with it. I haven’t tried hard enough to bring attention to this unique genre, or to get my own face as the author of these books into the public spotlight. When it comes to marketing and promotion, my first instinct is to go extreme introvert and open the door, throw my books on the lawn and shut the door in hopes someone will serendipitously stumble upon my fiction. This is a horrible way to try and reach readers.

Interestingly enough, most of the reviews for the books in my Black Earth series have been positive. There are non-Christians who love the books for their stories, characters and themes. Some have even commented that even though they recognize Christian themes within the novels, they don’t feel like they are being preached to when they read them. Some readers from the Christian camp praise my stories for crossing the line that was mysteriously drawn in the sand eons ago and creating ‘real’ characters who are forced to face a dark and (nearly) hopeless reality. It seems I have written something they haven’t been able to find or have had a hard time finding – edgy Christian fiction.

I know that I have something here. Something fresh. Something unique. Something that could be big, if I put the time and effort behind it. It’s akin to rolling a boulder up a snow-packed hill, but it can be done. And I’ll do it – with God’s help of course. ;)

Get ready, folks. I’ve been working hard the last couple days sketching out a battle plan to bring more attention to work of this caliber. In the very near future, I will be starting some blog post series here that will take time to explore many of the characters and themes found in my Black Earth series. I’ll reveal why certain themes are present in the series, and what they mean for the Christian/non-Christian community. I’m going to be more vocal about edgy Christian fiction and the need for this type of work in the art community on Facebook, Twitter,  and some other avenues. And I may even start a Facebook group in the near future for those who are eager to support and get underneath this intriguing umbrella of mishmashed goodness.

There are many edgy characters and themes present in my Black Earth series and I plan on drawing most if not all of them out. Not to sound too clique, but the Bible didn’t hold back when it came time to discuss many – if not all – of the dark sides of humanity. That’s not to say I’m going to get too crazy, but I think it’s time themes like redemption and self-destruction are explored in an open arena instead of being kept to Sunday sermons or salacious novels.

I have a little more info on what the term Edgy Christian Speculative Fiction actually encompasses, at least to me, at my website – davidnalderman.com – just in case you’re curious or you want to pass the word along to your friends and family. And if you want updates on the projects that I currently have in the works – such as book releases, website updates, and other goodies, you can subscribe to my free monthly email newsletter.

For the time being, stay tuned to this blog and get ready for some serious discussion to spark up in the coming weeks.

Another Website Sneak Peek...

I didn't post anything here yesterday because, well, I've been knee deep in web design for the past couple weeks now and I really found some breakthrough Tuesday night, so I rolled with it until past midnight and totally neglected to write a Wednesday post.

So here's a Thursday one. And since I've had my head in this website so much, I figured I'd give everyone another sneak peek at what I've been messing with. To check out my earlier sneak peek from last week, head here.

So if you did check out the earlier sneak peek, you'll know that I settled on a certain design and was trying to implement it throughout all the pages of my website. And then I found out that I wasn't happy with it in the least. But that's how it's always been for me and web design. I can be very fickle, mainly because I'll create a site design and then look at other site designs of other authors/web designers, and get jealous and toss mine out the window.

I finally realized I needed to come up with a design that was what I wanted, and not compare it to other website designs. That's when I came up with a better version of the black and blue design of the old idea. I'll give you a glimpse of what I have so far for some of the major pages of the website, but keep in mind this is all subject to change. Although I will say that the design itself is one that I am DEFINITELY sticking with, it's just some of the positioning and alignment that may change, not the major color scheme or most of the major elements, like the paneling and the navigation set up. That being said, you'll notice some things are off alignment and a bit out of place here and there, but that's something I'll address after the major parts of this site are put together.

Here's a peek at what I have so far for the home page. The top left corner has some space in it because I'm going to have an author picture there. It will help to personalize my website, but I just haven't picked out the right one yet.









This next screenshot is of the main page for the Black Earth series. On the left will be the novels of the series, and on the right the additional stories, such as the flash fiction pieces. I have the tree from the cover of End of the Innocence as a watermark against the background, and the comet from the same cover in the top corner to spruce things up a bit.

Next is a peek at the main page for The Compendium, which has been altered to fit the black and blue theme.














Here's a glimpse of one of the actual Compendium pages, this one referring to Pulse Science, which is found in both my Black Earth and Expired Reality series.












And lastly (for now), here's a glimpse at the sales page for Black Earth: End of the Innocence. I plan to have samples of my novels that can be downloaded in PDF format straight from my website, reviews from readers, and links to other books in the same series and of course links to purchase the book.


Well, that's it for now. I'm going back to work on this beast! Enjoy your Thursday. And for those curious, I use WebEasy Professional 9 to build my site.

My Experience with Pinterest...So Far

I read an online article a couple weeks ago (I would link it here but I can't for the life of me find the bookmark) which gave ways that authors could use Pinterest to promote themselves and their books. Not really needing ANOTHER social networking outlet, I was hesitant to jump into the Pinterest craze, but I figured I'd at least give it a shot. As a side note, I'm already tired of Twitter and am probably going to move away from using it in any kind of decent capacity. Most of my time is spent on Facebook, this blog, or at other random spots around the web, but I just can't seem to keep interest in or understand Twitter's purpose.

So, I signed up for Pinterest. That in itself was a strange process. You first have to request an invitation FROM Pinterest, wait for them to invite you, then go through the process of accepting the invite and setting up your profile. Seems unnecessarily difficult and time-consuming, not to mention just a bit pretentious. It's sort of like requesting to be invited to a party I wasn't initially invited to. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

That irritation aside, I signed up and started creating boards. The main boards I have at this moment are: Books I've Written,  Guild Wars 2, Black Earth: Dark Masquerade Cover Design, and Geektastic. I've managed to get a few images pinned in each and even had one of my followers repin the cover to one of my books into her own board, Books Worth Reading, proving to me that Pinterest does have some potential for self-published authors.

For the most part, the process of pinning and re-pinning and whatnot is all fairly fast and easy, making this a user-friendly networking platform for people like me who don't really have time to spend hours online trying to convince people I have something important to say. An image IS worth a thousand words, right?

If you want to follow me on Pinterest, here's a link to my profile -http://pinterest.com/davidnalderman.

Website Sneak Peek - The Compendium

First off, I usually post on Monday's, so I'm sorry this is a day late. I went camping this last weekend and I usually use Saturday's to sketch out my posts for the week.

So, I've been working on the website the last couple weeks, redesigning some elements, omitting others. The main thing I've been working on though is what I'm calling The Compendium (formally named the Database). This will be a comprehensive guide to many of the characters, environments, technology and creatures found in both my Black Earth and Expired Reality series. Broken into categories, The Compendium will have profiles filled with information on some of your favorite 'things' from my stories. The whole point of building it into the website is A.) give you a reason to go to my website - The Compendium will be updated with new items every week or two, B.) explore my book series deeper, C.) give fans of my series what they want.

Building The Compendium isn't a small task though. After creating the categories, I have to sit down and write out the history, applications, stats, and other various realms of information for each of these items. And the information given will vary depending on what is being showcased. For example, if I am talking about a character, then I will go into their history, their interests, and any relationships (family or romantic) that they might have. For technology and science, I will go into the origins of the particular item and then list some of its current and/or future applications in the world.

Right now I am planning on starting out with a handful of items when the new website goes live (which will be in the next month or so), and then I'll add new items every week or two, slowly building The Compendium into a handy reference guide to those who want to dig deeper into my universe. Eventually, as I said before in a previous blog post, I have plans to turn The Compendium into a self-published book, but that will be later down the road when I have added enough material to warrant such a project.

Okay, so without further rambling, here's some screenshot sneak peeks I figured I'd share with you all. These screenshots are taken from the program I use to create my website - WebEasy Professional 9. I know the images look a bit small in the post, but if you click on them, you'll get to see the full size, which is significantly larger. These changes are still  a work in progress, so if certain things don't look lined up or something seems a bit off, it will more than likely be addressed before the site goes live. I just wanted to give you all a glimpse of what I've been up to lately.

This shot is of the new home screen design. As you can see, Carrie Green from my Expired Reality series is there to greet visitors to my website. I have columns set up to showcase featured books, relay important news like book release dates and updates to the website, and showcase Compendium additions.







This shot is of The Compendium main page. As you can see, right now I have seven categories: People (Characters), Worlds, Science/Technology, Artifacts, Businesses, Otherworldly Beings, and Locales.










This is a shot of The Compendium's People category main page. This page is the hub for all of the profiles I will have created for the site. They will be listed in alphabetical order by first name, because some characters don't have proper last names. All of the category main pages will be done similar to this format.








And this shot is of one of the character pages, specifically for Nathan Pierce from the Black Earth series. Each of these pages will look different depending on what category the page falls in. Since this one falls into the People category, there will be various facts on the person of interest in the left side of the page, and the main information (character history) will be in the center. I have a handy link underneath The Compendium logo that will take you back to the category main page that you came from, so you don't have to link back to The Compendium main page and go through that again.

That's what I've been up to lately. I have some of the profiles already sketched out: Calamiro (Worlds), The Vine Magnate (Otherworldly Beings), Rhodenine (Science/Technology), and Nathan Pierce (People). I'll have more than these when the new website overhaul actually debuts in the next month or so. If there's anything in particular from either of my series (Black Earth or Expired Reality) that you would like to know more about, drop me a line or comment and let me know and I'll see if it can be added to The Compendium.

Check It Out...I'm Over At Reader's Den Today!

I'm guest posting over at Reader's Den today. For those that don't know, I've been taken on by the wonderful Tiffany Cole as a contributor to the blog. Head over there and read my post on Microsoft OneNote and how it can be an author's best friend - http://www.readers-den.com/2012/02/microsoft-onenote-authors-best-friend.html.

Mid-Month Update

I can't tell you all how happy I am that it's Friday. I love weekends, mainly because my wife is home with me and my son, and I get more solid time to work on writing/self-publishing/marketing related projects.

Speaking of which, here's a little rundown of some of the things I'm currently working on.

For starters, I'm trying out a new schedule on myself to see if I can get be more productive. For a while now I've been trying to squeeze writing and other related projects into the time my son is down for a nap during the middle of the day. It works, just not all the time. As anyone who has a kid knows, they don't always follow the schedules you set for them. The problem with this, is that if my son decides to have an off day, my work suffers for it. I try to use my evenings to compensate, but most of the time my wife and I have plans.

So, to rectify this quandary, I've decided to do something some may think is drastic, but really isn't. I'm going to return to my night owl roots and set 2am as my working punch-out time. This means when my wife and I get done with our plans for the night - or even if we don't have plans at night - I'll have my butt here in this black leather office chair writing - or something relevant to writing - until 2am.

I've been getting up every day at 6am. Sometimes I'm woken even earlier if my son (who has club feet and constantly has issues with his feet hurting him) ends up having a particularly rough night. Mathematically, this means I am only - at best - going to get four hours of sleep. So, I'll be using the naps my son takes during the day to catch up on my Z's, instead of trying to get so much work done during those times.

In essence, I'm simply pulling a switcharoo with my work habits. I used to live and breathe night owl, so this won't be horribly difficult to slide into, but I have gotten older since those days, so it will take a little bit of getting used to - and maybe a bit of Mountain Dew. But it has to be done, because these books/projects HAVE to get finished.

One of the projects I'm working on, as everyone who reads my blog already knows, is Black Earth: Dark Masquerade - the third novel in my edgy Christian speculative fiction series. I've been getting more candid with my writing process and have already posted two major draft excerpts from my work on the novel:

Hortus Tenebris - The Dark Garden 
(a scene with Daisy and a surreal environment called The Dark Garden)

The President's Dark Advisor
(a meeting between President Amanda Stone and her dark advisor, the Man of Shadows)

This book is due in my editor's hands by the 15th of March. And when I send it to her on or before that date, it will be the first deadline I will have kept to without having to alter it because of my poor work habits.

Next project on the list is the Expired Reality Double Pack. Just like I took Books 1 and 2 in the Black Earth series and put them in an ebook double pack, I'm going to do the same for Endangered Memories and Lost Birth - the first two books in my young adult series. I just have to create a cover for it and do some formatting and then a release date will be revealed. I plan on it being soon though.

Another project (well, you can call it a project I guess) that I decided to take on is to be a contributing writer over at Tiffany Cole's website, Reader's Den. I am really excited about this because it will give me the opportunity to reach a crowd of readers/writers that I may not be reaching with my own blog. And I get to contribute to a wonderfully crafted website dedicated to readers and fans of writing. I plan on making my debut post over there in the next week or so, and I'll announce it here before it goes out.

I am also proud to say I am on track with my reading schedule for the year. I have 20 books on my to-read list on Goodreads, and I've already read two of them and am currently on my third. Here's a link to the review I posted for the first book in the Han Solo Trilogy, The Paradise Snare. I still mean to write a review on Awakening Evarun Part II by Thomas Barczak, but know that I gave it five stars. He is an incredibly talented author/illustrator that everyone should be watching very closely. 

The third book in my to-read list, which is the second book in the Han Solo Trilogy, The Hutt Gambit, will be finished and reviewed around February 25th. These Han Solo books are easy to review because I originally read them back in '97 and am rereading them because they were just that flippin' good!

One side note I'd like to include is in regards to my website, davidnalderman.com. I have some ideas running through my head on how I want to add some additional content to the website, like character profiles, exclusive downloads, and even a timeline/chronology that will fill readers in on where each of my books fit into the master timeline of both my series. I'll keep all of you updated on those elements via this blog and the email newsletter.

Well, there you have it. A little update from little ol' me. To boil it all down - I'm right on track with my projects so far. This makes me very happy. And I'm sure it will make those of you who have been waiting for more from the Black Earth series - and my writing in general - happy.

A Day in the Life of a Stay-At-Home-Writer-Dad

It's 11pm on the dot. I've just finished making myself a tall mug of hot cocoa - chocolate graham flavor - and I've settled into my desk, ready to work for the next hour or two. Even though I have to be up at 6am if I want time to take a shower and eat breakfast before my wife leaves for work and I start my shift with our five-month-old, I am determined to squeeze the midnight hour of all it can give me tonight.

There was a period years ago when I was easily able to stay up till all hours of the night. On top of the many midnight goof-off visits to the local Wal-Mart, early breakfasts at Denny's with friends, or the late-night 'crate surfing', I also remember one particular job that I enjoyed quite a bit - inventory specialist for RGIS inventory services. The job was a breeze - if not a tad tedious. I would help take inventory of a wide variety of stores during their dark hours, and the stores ranged from Victoria's Secret to Super K-Mart to Home Depot. Those were the days of my youth, when a cup of coffee went a long way, and when I didn't have a second thought about how much time I had to sleep.

Nowadays, at 32/married/with child, I find my strength waning by three in the afternoon. Being a stay-at-home-writer-dad, I bounce between changing diapers, to changing character wardrobes; feeding my son, to feeding my muse; keeping my son entertained, to entertaining my readers. The variety of tasks makes for a fairly quick day, but I am worn out most days before the end.

It all inevitably leads up to my wife coming home in the evening, us playing a quick game of Tetris together, eating dinner, and then we're either in for the night - at which point I will get back to work and continue do to so late into the evening - or we'll pour some bottles, pack up the baby, and head to a friend's house, Bible study, or to do a bit of grocery shopping. As soon as the wife and kid are in bed, the darkness is mine to do what I will - I can sit and enter my world away from this world. I can mingle with the characters I tried so hard to mingle with during the day, amidst the distractions, the screaming kid, the noisy neighbors. I can build and construct and design entire continents, governments, and societies. By day I am a dad, by night I am a ruler.

Some days I lose my motivation much easier than I would like to admit. I procrastinate, I fail in the mission to push my novels out there, get the reviews, get the sales, and get the bills paid so my wife can come home and do what she wants to do most - watch our son. Sometimes I skip blogging, I neglect to post blurbs on Facebook, I intentionally shy away from interacting with anything to do with social networking, simply because 'I just don't feel like it'. I'm sure we've all been there, but it's not a place any of us want to be.

Right now though is my time. The darkness shrouds the distractions of the day and lets me do some work on my latest Work in Progress - Black Earth: Dark Masquerade - the third novel in my edgy Christian speculative fiction series. My deadline to get the story to my editor is March 15th. At that point, my editor will work her magic, destroying my darlings, tweaking my grammar faux pas, and polishing that dirty gem into something credible.

There's more to do than just write though. It's funny how when you tell some people you're a writer, they think that's all you do is write. I have a laundry list of additional tasks that need to be done - this blog post, for one, needs some polishing. I have to accomplish my daily goal of submitting my work to at least one book reviewer so I can start making waves in the online markets. There are data inconsistencies with my books on Goodreads that need to be fixed, a chapter that needs to be read of the latest book I want to review, and somewhere in all of that are the daily things such making sure bottles are clean, dishes are loaded, dinner is ready, trash is out, cat is worshiped, sanity is intact.

This is the life of a stay-at-home-writer-dad.

It won't always be this hard. We'll get to the point where my book sales are paying the bills to allow for my wife to come home and watch our son during the day so I can write/blog/self-publish/format/critique/social network/read/etc/etc/etc/etc/etc.

For now though, I'll just take the next hour and thank God I have it to finish up another scene, to rescue another character, to put another period at the end of another 'award-winning' sentence. And I'll enjoy my steaming mug of hot chocolate all the while.

A Year of Possibilities

Well, the holidays are over, the new year has come, and I have a desk full of projects to get done and very little time to do them - conditions that usually help me work better. There's something about a deadline - especially a seemingly impossible one - that moves me like nothing else can out of procrastination and into a massively productive mindset.

So here's my list of projects for 2012 and the deadlines to go with. And these are deadlines I will reach, regardless how many nights I have to burn the midnight oil. The past couple years I've made a lot of deadlines that I didn't even come close to reaching and that behavior is being put away in the trunk, wrapped in iron chains, and dropped to the bottom of the Hudson river. Or the Salt River, since I live in Arizona.

Lost Birth - an Expired Reality novel -
This book, the second in my Expired Reality series, has been an elusive project that just hasn't cooperated with me in regards to getting edited and published. I'm happy to say it's finished, ready to be published in ebook format (paperback to come soon), I'm just waiting for opinions to come back on the back cover copy.

Black Earth: Dark Masquerade -
The third book in my Black Earth series, Dark Masquerade (tentative title), is my current WIP (Work In Progress). I wrote out a skeleton draft of DM during NaNoWriMo 2011 and plan to turn the final product (final according to what I can do with it) into my editor's hands in March.

Black Earth: Bridge to Eternity -
The fourth - and final - book in my Black Earth series, Bridge to Eternity (tentative title), was also built into a skeleton draft during NaNoWriMo 2011, and will be worked on starting in late February, once I have the majority of Dark Masquerade written out. I plan to hand Bridge to Eternity to my editor in May.

Email Newsletter -
I've been fickle and wavering in my attempts to keep an email newsletter going over the past couple years, but 2012 will be different. Starting in February, my email newsletter will be back with a vengeance. I plan to release a new issue each month and each issue will be packed with updates to my writing projects, writing tips and advice, links to writing/self-publishing resources, and various reviews on books and video games.A sign up box will be placed back on my website in the next couple weeks and I'll announce it here when it's up. *I want to extend a special thank you to those who have waited out my spontaneous behavior with the newsletter*.

Blogging -
I'm going to be more consistent and serious with my blogging. Before the holidays, I noticed most of my posts were about updates to my projects. I'm going to try and put more substance into my posts from now on. Some things I am interested in blogging about on this blog in particular are writing, self-publishing, Christianity and it's impact in fiction, book reviews, and my thoughts and comments on certain video games. (I'm a huge gamer, I just can't find enough hours in the day to entertain the hobby.)

Reading -
I set myself up with a goal to read 71 books last year. I read four. That's right. It took me an average of three months to read one book. Can't do that again this year, especially since I'm actually a fast reader. I'll set my book reading goals to a more realistic level though, the list of which I will be posting soon, both here and to Goodreads. Needless to say, I will be first reading the books that have been stealing all of the space on my office desk before I go venturing out in search of new horizons.

And, last but not least, the most important project I am going to be working on this year is...

Business Restructure - 
My ultimate goal this year - especially at the beginning of this year - is to restructure my business model. As a writer, when I first started self-publishing, I was (and still somewhat am) overly eager for people to read my stories/purchase my products, with little to no regard to how much money I'm bringing in. The simple fact is, my writing is a career, a business, and this is what I do for a living. I don't have a '9-5' job. My wife works full time so I can stay home with my son and write. I need to treat it as little more than a hobby, despite that some people I know think of it only as such. Sorry haters, but writing is more than a hobby, regardless if one is making money off it or not. However, I need to restructure my business model to start a) reaching more people, and b) bringing in more residual income. Those two things are what I will be focusing on over the next couple months, during which I'll be taking a closer look at what works/doesn't work in my website and blog, how I'm influencing people through my social networks including Facebook and Twitter, and how I can reach more people through product design via Zazzle and my own literary creations.

Along with the business restructure will be a new pricing model for most - if not all - of my books. I'm not going to go with the 99 cent business model for my ebooks anymore, unless it's a novella - in which case I might make an exception. Making 30 cents off every ebook I sell isn't working out too well when I'm still paying off the book's editing and cover design out of that 30 cents, and I'm selling less than 100 ebooks a  month. I'll be raising the prices of my 99 cent ebooks to at least $2.99, and I will also be raising the prices of my paperback novels as well, although I'm not sure by how much yet. As far as the ebooks which are already $2.99, I'm not sure if I'll raise the price of those or not. I kind of like the $2.99 staple. Don't worry though, I won't be charging an outrageous $9.99 for my ebooks like some big name sellers. If one is paying that much for a digital copy of a book, they better be getting a dinner at Jack-in-the-Box to go along with it.

There you have it. My yearly goals - at least for the first half of 2012 - out there for the world to see. As soon as June hits, I'll be reevaluating my business structure and literary progress once again and come up with another set of goals for the second half of 2012.

A Little Bit of Restructure

I know I've been MIA for a while and that's mainly because of the holidays, my 3 1/2 month old son, and other personal matters. But even though I haven't been writing or marketing much, I have been thinking, long and hard, about where I want this writing career to go in 2012. After carefully watching the success of other self-published authors, reading plenty of tips and tricks from social marketing gurus, and doing some intense soul-searching in regards to my own direction as a published author, I've come up a restructuring plan to implement in the new year -

- Price changes to some of my books, ebook and paperback. This means if you have been wanting to grab a copy of some of my 99 cent ebooks or $10 paperbacks, you best do it now before the prices are raised. My reason for raising the prices on these will be explained in an upcoming blog, but you can expect the dollar amount on some of my currently cheaper books to go up shortly after the new year. (Head over to my website, www.davidnalderman.com, to snag my books at their lower prices now.)

- The five hundredth reincarnation of my email newsletter. For reasons known and unknown to me, my attempts to run an email newsletter in the past have failed miserably, but it will be back on track and ready to leave the station in January.

- The end of the Black Earth series. During National Novel Writing Month this year I managed to crank out two, 50,000 word drafts, for the third and fourth (final) book in the series. Expect them both to be available for purchase this Summer.

- The release of Lost Birth, the second novel in my young adult series. Lost Birth has taken me months to get the editing, cover design, and other details right and it will finally be released in ebook format in January, with paperback to follow shortly after.

- Swag. I've been meaning to update my Zazzle storefront and create some new products that tie in with my Black Earth and Expired Reality series, but I haven't had a whole lot of time lately. This is something that will definitely be snowballing as soon as we cross over the New Year's weekend.

- New writing projects. Once the Black Earth series is tied up, I will be focusing a majority of my writing prowess on the Expired Reality series, including the third novel in the series and the shorty story episode series - the LZR Project - which I wanted to release more than a year ago.

There will be other changes as well, some to streamline my business practices and others to help me write more, interact with my fans/audience more, and read more. (On a side note, I had a goal to read 71 books this last year and I'm just about to finish number 5. I kind of fell short on that.)

As far as the holidays go, I will be taking next week off for some rest and relaxation. I do my best to take a little time off of writing toward the end of the year to give me time to reflect on what I did right/wrong with my writing career over the last year and prepare myself for what I want to do great in the coming year. It also gives me time to spend with my family, now that I have a little one to share Christmas/New Years with.

I'll see you all on the other side. Once New Year's weekend is over with, I'll be crawling out of my hole to bring this list of changes to fruition. Have a safe and merry Christmas and a happy New Years!

What's in a Name?

Occasionally I like to read various blog posts and online articles on marketing, self-publishing and anything that falls in between. Over the last few months I've been seeing a lot of posts on the value a name holds to an author. The advice goes a little something like: Self-published authors should sell themselves, as authors, and not just sell their books. This way, backlists aren't ignored and if an author wants to change tracks and write something fresh, their following will (hopefully) do what they do best - follow. Selling yourself also brings your personality to the table, something that can help garner more readers and more book sales.

In this regard, I've been meaning to change the URL of this blog to my name, instead of A Broken Reality. The title, A Broken Reality, was originally used to describe the content within my blog, but it doesn't really make as much sense now as it once used to. I picked it because it had a connection to my novel series and time traveling and alternate histories. However, my intention is to start covering topics outside of just my novel series, and so I'll go ahead and move the blog URL to fall under the umbrella that is my name.

As of this coming Monday, December 12th, my blog address will be http://davidnalderman.blogspot.com instead of http://abrokenreality.blogspot.com. I don't think changing the URL will drop any of you as followers, nor will any of my posts disappear, but I will need to update my blog link in some different areas like my website, my ebooks, and social networking sites.

Lost Birth Cover Peek

I am finally on the right track to finishing Lost Birth, the second book in my Expired Reality young adult series. Here's a sneak peek at some of the cover art for the book, illustrated by my good friend, Jelani Parham - www.akinink.com.

And here is an image of the timepiece from the books to be used for the back cover art when the paperback cover spread is done -

My goal is to finish the ebook edition of the book by Christmas and release it right after the start of the new year. After that, I'll work on the paperback edition, which always takes a little longer to format.