Gregory Mahan's Blog

David Stifel David is narrating my audiobook (to be released through ACX on Amazon). We have a release schedule for the end of May, and he’s about 3/4 of the way finished, so I’m pretty jazzed about the whole thing.

David is a character actor, seen in such films as Minority Report (as Lycon the drug dealer)

The Number 23 (as the hotel clerk)

Gods and Generals (as Rev. David Jenkins)

And in other movies and TV shows, such as A Life Less Ordinary, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and many others.

What is less well known is that David is one of the original Blue Sky Rangers, the programming team for Mattel’s Intellivsion Entertainment Console System. After Intellivision closed its doors, he worked with several other game companies, such as Activision and Jaleco, working on such games as Return to Zork, Maniac Mansion, and Game Factory. Honestly, I think I get more geek thrills out of the fact that I’ve played some of his computer games than I get out of having seen movies he’s been in.

In other news, I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but you will be happy to note that I’m currently working on Ch 20 of the sequel!

I’m truly sorry about not keeping everyone up to date on the sequel.

I’ve suffered a bit of slow down due to real life happenings but I’m still working on it (maybe my chosen title was a tad bit prophetic. Heh)! I’m in the last stages of the story, and then I’ll need to do the editing/rewriting cycle, but hopefully it won’t be too much longer.

Like most new authors, I have a day job. One day, hopefully, writing will bring in enough income to cover all the bills. But until that day, I have a 9-to-5er just like most folks. I work hard at my job, and almost never take any time off for sick days, or vacations.

This month, I was in danger of running into my paid-time-off cap, and losing PTO accrual. So, I was ‘forced’ to take a week’s vacation in order to keep from capping out on PTO. I’m a workaholic, and have already logged into work via the VPN for a few hours this week, but OMG, so much free time!

I’m almost ashamed to admit how much time I’ve spent in that Facebook game, Chefville. But cooking digital recipes can only interest me for so long. I keep finding myself pulling open my word processor to get out more of Randall’s story. I’m in the ’2nd act’ which is supposed to be the boring, hard-to-write section of a story, but there’s so many interesting things happening it just keeps sucking me back in. I’ve already completed 3 more chapters this week! If things keep going the way they’re going, I’ll be finished with chapter 15 or 16 by week’s end. And from there, it’s only a stone’s throw to the end of the book.

I still don’t think I’ll get done with editing and rewrites in time for a Christmas release, but I still feel mighty good about a 2013 Q1 release date. Keep your eye on this space!

I’ve been a busy beaver lately. I’ve found someone that I think will do a great job narrating the audiobook version of A Touch of Magic. I hope to have everything wrapped up and production completed by early December. In other news, I’ve recently finished another 10,000 words on the sequel, so things are moving along, and things still look good for a first-quarter 2013 release.

..it’s turning out awesome!

I love seeing the changes from one submission to the next. Alexander’s doing a really great job with the detail and capturing the scene I wanted on the cover!

Alexander’s fleshed out the detail a little more for the 2nd book cover. Things are starting to come together

As a self-published author, one of my challenges is getting physical copies of my books into people’s hands. My kindle version is selling, and selling well, but the paper version lags far behind it in sales. Everything I hear on the subject says that this is to be expected. After all, one of the things that publishing houses do well is pushing your books out to bookstores. If you want to sell physical copies, that’s where you have to do it–in the bookstores. And for most self-publishers, that’s a practical impossibility.

But still, I love the idea of a real, tangible expression of my words being held in someone’s hands. I love the idea that you can’t “delete” a physical book as easily as you can a digital one–that years from now, young hands may find my book on a parent’s bookshelf, or in an attic, or in a thrift store. Recently, I discovered that the Loudoun County public library has a system in place for local authors to get their books onto the shelves. A week after getting copies of my book to the library, I was tickled pink to see it listed in their online system.

Since then, I’ve been stalking my listing like an obnoxious ex-boyfriend stalks Facebook status updates. Until today, when I saw this:

I’ve sold literally thousands of books on Amazon. So, why does it bring me so much joy to see that one person has finally checked my book out at the library? I dunno. But it feels freaking awesome.

I’ve recently set up a discount code for my blog followers: If you order my paperback through Createspace’s e-store, and use coupon code 5H9QYCDH you will receive $3.00 off of the list price. This puts the book cheaper than Amazon’s current list price, though sadly, I can’t do anything to match their Super Saver Shipping. So if you’re buying $25.00 worth of stuff, Amazon is still probably the cheaper way to go.

http://digitalbooktoday.com/2012/08/08/weekly-featured-great-reads-ebooks-for-the-kindle-882012/

A Touch of Magic was featured today on the Digital Books Today Great Reads list. Getting on the list requires meeting certain criteria, such as having a decent number of reviews and high satisfaction rating. Thanks everyone for all the 4 & 5 star reviews on Amazon