What a month May was! A lot of things came together which were already announced but at least you’ll get some commentary outside of the official announcements! Plus, I have a couple of things I haven’t announced yet just so you can get something new!
Final Hope
In the last update, I said that Final Hope was completely transformed into a web novel. Now, as of the time of this writing, there are eight chapters posted online for you to read for FREE!
There will be 54 chapters total when all is said and done but you can enjoy tri-weekly updates to move things along at a pretty good pace. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday a new chapter will drop giving you an 18-week re-experience of my first light novel series if you’ve read the original or a brand-new experience that, hopefully, gets you interested in my stories and makes you want to check out more!
I initially settled on Royal Road and Webnovel.com but I discovered that Webnovel doesn’t allow you to format your chapters unless you are under a contract with them. Because as such, I made the tough decision to pull Final Hope from Webnovel, meaning the only place you can read it, for now, is on Royal Road.
If there is a preferred platform that you would like to see Final Hope on, let me know and I will look into it. Unfortunately, Honeyfeed will not be one of those options.
I will say, though, that it was fun revisiting Mikomi’s story. As I said last time, seeing my writing style back then versus now, I knew that I could definitely make some improvements and fix some of those errors that I had completely missed the first time around. I wasn’t as meticulous back then as I am today so I know a lot of embarrassing errors slipped through the cracks.
Heck, who am I kidding? Even after reading my books three times over before publishing and passing them through Grammarly, Google Docs spellcheck, Microsoft Word spellcheck, and InDesign spellcheck, I still miss stuff! I hate it… but, I would like to think that I have gotten better since then.
Why not just hire an editor? Money. That’s why.
I’m a Brand Now
One of the big announcements was the launch of Meteora Press, my own personal publishing label.
This has been a decision that was a long time in the making. I originally thought of this back when I was helping other independent authors format their books for physical print. I thought about creating a service to do that as a side business as another way to help out the Original English Light Novel community.
Not to sidetrack, but as an aside, even though the post isn’t pinned anymore, I still do maintain and accept applications for the OELN Database on The Outerhaven, and the offer to submit a press kit to The Outerhaven to have your work advertised for free is still there. It has never gone away so if you’re an OELN author, please make use of it! I’ve never stopped being committed to pushing OELNs out there for the world to see!
But back to the backstory behind this brand, I realized that if I did that under a label rather than under the table, I would have to become a legit company… most likely an LLC. That would mean having to deal with forms and taxes and I didn’t really want to push myself in that direction just yet.
As time went on, I thought about how I could still make use of a brand. That’s when I did some homework and saw that I could file for a trademark and then use said trademark to categorize my books under. The thing is, it takes $250 to register the trademark in the United States so I needed to find a good time to pull the trigger without killing my finances.
Well, I did, and… I soon discovered that it is going to be a very long process. As of right now, I can use the TM symbol on Meteora Press which shows that the trademark is officially filed with the U.S. government. I now have to wait EIGHT MONTHS for a review of the trademark to see if it passes. If it does, I’ll get my R (registered trademark) symbol. If not, then, it’s over and I’m out the $250 as it’s non-refundable. I made sure to do my homework first to make sure there wasn’t anyone else out there using Meteora Press and unless there are just not made public, I didn’t find any other trademarks registered using that name.
So, chances do look good that towards the end of this year or early 2024, I’ll fully own the name. All future works will be branded under Meteora Press, as well! Final Hope and MyGF are the first two under the umbrella.
What about A.R. Dragonfly and From Ashe?
I could easily represent them but that would also mean updating the covers with the logo. I already went through one rebrand with From Ashe, and I don’t want to do it again out of respect for my readers. Perhaps when both series get old to the point where it won’t matter as much anymore, I’ll pull the trigger but for now… I’ll keep things as they are.
Going Wide
Last time, I stated that one of my side projects had been completed… turning all of my books into a proper ebook (EPUB format). EPUB is the most widely-accepted ebook format on the market so getting my books to that point was a necessity.
Plus, I canceled my exclusivity contracts on all of my books with Amazon. I had to wait those 90 days for the contracts to expire before I could put those books elsewhere.
Now that everything is in the clear, I went nuts. This is something that I’ve been wanting to do before but I just didn’t have the time to get everything into an EPUB format. I am a firm believer that more options are better for the consumer so I’m excited that I was finally able to get this project across the finish line!
Now, you can find A.R. Dragonfly, From Ashe, and MyGF (when it launches) on the following platforms:
- Google Play
- PayHip
- Barnes & Noble
- Apple iBooks
- Rakuten Kobo
- Smashwords
- Tolino
- Baker & Taylor
- OverDrive
- Vivlio
- Borrow Box
- Palace Marketplace
- Scribd*
I put an asterisk next to Scribd as they are pretty slow about adding all of my books. I believe only 6/14 titles from A.R. Dragonfly are available while none of From Ashe has gone through yet. They are also slated to be on hoopla as well but their processing times are PAINFULLY slow.
The book pages were updated with links to every platform you can get my books on. That’s a nice segue into the next topic
Site Updates
If you noticed, the top menu on the site shrunk a bit. I did a review of my site and found that there was just a lot of unnecessary dead space on it. Namely, under the Book Series section. With so many new options, it made me think about a slight redesign.
So, Buy Books is gone and dead. That was the first step.
Next, I went to the Book Series section and decided to get rid of the flyouts for each series. Having a page for Synopsis and Characters was a bit much when all of that could fit on just one page.
So, I went to the meta-pages for each series and actually did something with them aside from just having them blank.
Each meta page now features the synopsis for the book, a link to the page to learn about the characters (the same as before that used to be in the flyout), and a listing of all of the books in the series along with links to buy them!
So, essentially, I combined the Buy Books and Synopsis pages for each series and populated that information in a bunch of barren pages. The result makes more sense, is less cluttered and less confusing for the reader, and centralizes all of that information in one place per series! There’s also something else on From Ashe’s page which is my next project…
Book Trailers
I made mention of this last month but during the month of May, I made two trailers… one for From Ashe and one for MyGF!
From Ashe’s trailer is out and… well… it’s basic. It was the first time I had ever touched Adobe Premiere so I was as new as new can be (and still am). Then, I decided to mess with some templates and I created the trailer for MyGF.
Is it still basic? A bit, yes but is it a lot fancier? YOU BET! It felt great working on it BUT… you can’t see it yet! The trailer will make its debut on June 19 when MyGF officially launches!
Well… unless you’re a part of my Discord server… then you’ve already seen it! Probably another good reason to join 🙂
MyGF Launch
Well, I already said it above but, yes, Alex finished the last art piece and My Girlfriend Was Delivered by 2-Day Shipping will be launching on June 19! By the time this post goes live, there will be only one day left to pre-order an autographed copy. This time around, you will get a bonus gift with your pre-order: vinyl decals of Miko Kioshi and Daiki Kenjimaru!
But that’s not a lot of stickers!!
You’re right. Those are the samples. I have 25 of each in stock, plus the 4 samples.
I plan on doing more decal giveaways with future releases of From Ashe, too! I may or may not already have the decals in hand and in stock. *shifty eyes*
From Ashe Vol. 8
Now, for something I haven’t previously announced yet.
From Ashe Vol. 8 has been fully outlined! All seven chapters and the bonus chapter are fleshed out and all that is left is to start writing it. This will be the beginning of the second major story arc in the series. The first arc, in addition to Jase’s story, focused on Ashe starting out as a writer and establishing her world.
The second arc is going to focus on her getting a taste of being an author, her trials and tribulations, her successes and her failures. While this seems like an arc that can go right into the finale, trust me… it’s not. The third arc will take Ashe in a different direction but let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.
The first arc spanned seven volumes but I cannot say right now how many the second arc will span as I am still exploring some options on what to do with the arc and its main plot points but I will give a bit of non-spoiler teaser of things to come in Vol. 8
First off… Aubrey! She’s been left out for so long but her story was given some hints here and there. Vol. 8 is going to see the culmination of those hints which will lead to a more in-depth story arc for her.
Also, we got to meet Cora in Vol. 7… she will have a slightly smaller role but her moments will be a bit more significant, having a more indirect effect on Ashe and Renji all while fleshing her out a bit more as a character. Plus, we will see her Nekohime-sama debut so look forward to that!
Ashe is FINALLY going to visit the Swag Shack where we will meet 1 new character and 1 other character you all may have forgotten about (Yes, just like with A.R. Dragonfly, simple small mentions of characters can lead to bigger things. You met this “new” one back in Vol. 1 and that’s all I’ll give you as a hint).
Also, we’ll meet some new characters as we open up a brand-new location in Ashe’s world!
There’s a lot more planned but I am excited to write it! I hope you look forward to checking it out!
Character Birthdays
Another thing I started doing was celebrating the birthdays of my characters! Just fun little social media posts to help raise awareness of my characters and hopefully get people interested in my stuff.
If you’re curious, you can check out the current calendar!
Until Next Time
Hmm… am I forgetting anything? Nope… I think that about covers it all.
Yes, I did all of the above in the month of May… needless to say, I’m a bit wiped but not burned out. In fact, I have the itch to write and I can’t wait to tear into From Ashe Vol. 8 which will be my 26th book!
I guess this means I’ll be back to complaining about having to work and not being able to write my books again.
Ah, the life of an author.
If nothing else pops up, I’ll see you all back here on June 19th for the launch and trailer debut for MyGF!
Until then,
Ja ne!