Artist, Author, Whimsy Merchant
This is the official website of the artist and science-fiction/fantasy novelist, Allen Donnelly.
Time to gird your loins, flex those fingers, and call forth your powers of literary creation - National Novel Writing Month (aka Nanowrimo) begins in just a couple of days.
People around the world (so I guess it should be international, but whatever) will doing battle with empty pages and blinking cursors. 30 days, 50,000 words, no prisoners!
Join us, cry havoc and let slip the word processors of war!
As you can see if you visit the Books section you will have noticed that Crystal Eyes, my debut novel, is now listed on Amazon and Smashwords for the low, low price of 99 cents, or 86p (incl. VAT).
I've decided to leave it up for real money, at least for now, to see what happens (and also to save me the hassle of trying to trick Amazon into making it free).
Now the nerve-wracking bit - can I persuade people to part with actual cash for my novel (even if it is barely more than the price of a chocolate bar) and, once (if?) they have bought it, will people like it?
This is proving to be surprisingly stressful!
It's ready to go, all set to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world, released into the wild!
But...
I had planned to set the price for free for at least the first month. No one knows who I am, why would they risk real money on a novel I've written? So I was going to give it away to try and get a bit of decent rep (assuming people actually like it) but, alas, Amazon won't let me set the price lower than 99 cents (about 75 pence in real money!).
There are already a ton of books on there that are free that I'm trying to compete with for the attention of prospective readers. This is going to make things tricky...
We're edging closer to finishing the cover. My friend, the estimable Kaz, should finish her section in the next few days and I'm making progress on the background (though it still looks a bit flat and cartoony - Photoshop is hard).
Hopefully, sometime in the next 2-3 weeks, my debut novel, Crystal Eyes, should be available from your local eBook store!
Turns out, putting together a cover for a novel is a bit tricky!
We have a little cottage industry type thing going here, combining talented artist types and my childlike scrawlings (which I will post up at some point for the amusement of all), so hopefully the cover will be done shortly.
And then all I have to do is try and get the novel through SmashWords formatting software - from what I've read this may be easier said than done...