New Release: Sins of the Father (Fate’s Haven, #3)

A month ago I stated in a post that I would soon scratch a long-sitting item off my bucket list. Today I submitted the final version to Amazon and am anxiously awaiting its availability to the public.

Sins of the Father, the third and final book in my fictional series, Fate’s Haven, picks up immediately where The Enemy Within left off. While this novel continues to follow Gabriel and the others introduced throughout the series, Varia shares a significant portion of the story-telling.

Direct links are listed below. Links to the rest of the series are available on this page and on my Amazon Author profile page.

Sins of the Father – Kindle Edition
Sins of the Father – Paperback Edition

Gabriel is alone and in Sanctum’s hands. Their leader is determined to execute his plans for tyranny. Varia seeks redemption for her betrayal. The Great War has been raging for centuries but the final battle is on the horizon.

Hunted by Sanctum, Varia has vowed Gabriel’s safe return to Sara. She knows the risks. Sanctum is responsible for countless deaths and years of torture. But Varia owes Gabriel a debt and believes the only way to repay it is by dismantling Sanctum no matter the personal cost.

 

Sins of the Father (Fate’s Haven #3) Cover Art, Release Date, and Free Advance Review Copies

Three years ago I began working on a bucket-list item: write a novel. A year later I scratched that item off and added another: write a series. In thirty days I will scratch that item off also.

Sins of the Father, the third and final book in my fictional series, Fate’s Haven, will be released on March 19, 2015. I expect it to be available for sale later that evening. The cover art is ready and I am putting the final touches on the manuscript.

In the meantime I am offering to send free copies to anyone who commits to leaving a review upon completion of the book on Amazon within the first few days of its release. Reviews on venues are welcome, of course. If you are interested, please sign up for my Advance Review Copies (ARC) mailing list. Information regarding these copies will be sent March 6, 2015.

 

Happy New Year

Good morning!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve made any updates and I do apologize for that. 2014 has been extremely busy and since I don’t write full-time my writing unfortunately suffers tremendously.

As you may know, I work in IT security and my workload between summer and the end of the year is always the busiest time of the year. It isn’t uncommon for me to work over the typical forty hour week. Often times the work comes home so I can stay caught up. Couple that with a three-year-old and another baby on the way and writing just ends up taking a back seat.

So here I am, almost a year after the release of The Enemy Within and I haven’t completed the third in the series yet. It’s a bit discouraging since I hoped it would be a 2014 release. The truth is I began writing it immediately after publishing my Novelette. But about halfway through I realized it wasn’t right. I hit a few points where things weren’t coming together the way I planned and I took some advice to just write and fix it later and it only made matters worse. In the end I had to start over. I spent a lot of time discouraged but after a while I began again and have been working slowly from a detailed plan. That’s the good news.

The bad news is I’m not quite 2/3 of the way through the rough draft yet. Each of the three novels have been planned to comprise of 27 chapters broken into three parts, each containing nine chapters. I finished part one and am working slowly through part two. There’s a lot in the chapters I’m currently working on that I feel has to be perfect. Yes, the entire book needs to be perfect but there are things that I feel have to be handled extremely delicately during this early stage so it doesn’t distract me later. I know I can always go back and tweak things but I also know that if I don’t write it with perfection in mind that I’ll become obsessed with it later on and never get anything accomplished.

So there’s kinda where I am. I know it isn’t much of an update and definately not what some of you were hoping for. Just keep in mind that I’m planning this as the final piece of the series and I want it done the right way. I won’t publish anything I’m not happy with.

As always, your feedback is always appreciated. Your support is the best kind of marketing a guy like me can hope for.

 

Giveaways, Special Pricing, and WIP Updates

I decided to kick summer off by running a few promotions. Starting tomorrow, Friday June 6th, Fate’s Haven will be available free on Amazon until the evening of Sunday June 8th. The second book in the series, The Enemy Within, will also be available at a reduced price starting Friday. The sale price will be $0.99 until Saturday evening and will gradually increase throughout the following week. Also, my novelette, Tales From the Abyss: Paradox, is always available free of charge so you can pick up a copy too.

So spread the news and help me drive sales up. Having a higher standing with Amazon always helps overall sales. Leaving reviews also helps tremendously since many people are easily swayed based on the opinions of other readers.

It’s been a while since I’ve made any updates and don’t want anyone thinking the site has been abandoned or anything. I’ve been busy with my day job (I’m an IT security consultant by day) and my personal life has me a bit busy these days.

I began writing the third installment of my series and am about 20,000 words into what I’m estimating to be a 90,000 word rough draft. After my (long) editing process, I’m expecting the final draft to be about 95,000 words, which will put it about the same length as the other two books. I’ve hit a bit of a slump while I work out some of the details but hope to be back on track soon. I had a couple of really good writing days last month and hope I can regain that momentum.

My slump is a result of a snag I hit last week. I’m not entirely sure how I want to proceed. Since I don’t map out every single action of every scene there are times where I write something that works so well that I just know I have to keep it. The problems arise when I wind up backing myself into a corner. But after looking at what I have and where I’m going I’m back on track and am very pleased with what I have thus far.

 

A Bird’s Eye View of a Rough Draft

Rough Draft – The Enemy Within (Click to enlarge)

A user on kboards.com and I were discussing rough drafts and I made the comment that I once zoomed out my first manuscript to get a look at how much red covered it after tracking changes using Word before accepting the changes for the next draft.

The conversation basically began because a lot of people don’t know just how much effort goes into writing something the length of a novel. The attached screenshot isn’t from my first novel. I didn’t keep a copy. This is actually from The Enemy Within, my second novel. This draft was about 97k words in length, only 1k words or so shorter than the final draft (not including headers, footers, title pages, etc.).

So in case anyone ever wondered what one looked like or how much markup was actually on a draft, this is one of mine. I may see if I can get Word to compare two versions from Fate’s Haven and track those changes automatically. I’d love to share that image. Being my first book, it was a learning experience and as such was littered (I mean seriously littered) with red where corrections were made.

Enjoy.