Just wanted to make a quick update on A Soul Worth Taking's release date. The cover is just about finished. I've been working with the cover designer, going back and forth, checking out different fonts/sizes/styles...and I think we're just about there. Once it's finished I'll release the final cover on here. I was thinking it might be kind of cool to see the progression of the first cover and all the different variations until we get to the final one.
Editing should be finished within a week. It's been a little slower than expected as I was dealing with some personal stuff that sidetracked me. I still want to get the book in the hands of some bloggers/reviewers to get some reviews up on release day, but I'm not sure if there will be enough time. There seems to be some interest in the book so I'm not going to push the release back again. I did it once and won't do it again. The idea was to have some reviews up on release day to help with additional sales and help push it up the charts. Even if they're not up by release date, whenever they get up they'll help with sales, so I'm not really worried about it.
Be back in the next few days with another update.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Beta Readers
I'm once again putting out the call for beta readers. This time it's for my fantasy book...right now being called Empire (thinking of other options). Will probably start sending out copies sometime next week for those interested. Here's a little info on the story:
(not an official blurb or anything as I haven't worked on it much)
Drobania is on the verge of a rebellion. The leader of the rebel forces is a great warrior named Todel and was once the comander of the empire's elite guard unit, The Protectors. It's decided the best way to end the rebellion is to eliminate it before it starts by killing their leader. A small band of soldiers is sent to the mountains to find Todel and kill him. The man in charge of this band, Taidyn, is the only man capable of killing Todel in battle. He is also the current commander of The Protectors. Taidyn is unsure whether he is capable of killing Todel. The reason....Todel is his father.
If interested let me know.
(not an official blurb or anything as I haven't worked on it much)
Drobania is on the verge of a rebellion. The leader of the rebel forces is a great warrior named Todel and was once the comander of the empire's elite guard unit, The Protectors. It's decided the best way to end the rebellion is to eliminate it before it starts by killing their leader. A small band of soldiers is sent to the mountains to find Todel and kill him. The man in charge of this band, Taidyn, is the only man capable of killing Todel in battle. He is also the current commander of The Protectors. Taidyn is unsure whether he is capable of killing Todel. The reason....Todel is his father.
If interested let me know.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
A Soul Worth Taking blurbs
I've had an interesting mix of responses to which blurb people like best so far. As of a couple days ago it was dead evenly split among all three, which I thought was unbelievable. The last couple of days the support seems to be going towards #1 and #3. I haven't made a decision yet on which one I'll be using so if you haven't voiced your opinion feel free to do so.
Friday, February 25, 2011
news
First off is I need to delay the release date of A Soul Worth Taking. I'm sorry to those of you who've been looking forward to it but you won't have to wait much longer. We're delaying the release till mid-April. So only another month or so. We want to try and create a bigger buzz and get review copies out to reviewers so hopefully a couple will be out when it's released...thereby helping sales. Also still doing some minor edits, and waiting for the cover, which I'm supposed to see later today. I just don't want everything to be rushed and the book suffers for it. Plus it will allow a shorter time between book one and book two.
Will be back with an update tomorrow on the blurb feedback....it's been pretty interesting.
Will be back with an update tomorrow on the blurb feedback....it's been pretty interesting.
Monday, February 14, 2011
A Soul Worth Taking blurbs
Been working on the official synopsis of the book and seem to have three choices (unless more spring up from this). Right now I'm leaning towards #3. If you have any thoughts on these...likes/dislikes...feel free to comment or e-mail your opinion.
#1
Hell wants him.
Heaven wants to save him.
After tragedy strikes Mike Moore, the Devil sees an opportunity to acquire another soul while he's in his darkest moments. An Angel is sent to guide him back from the lowest depths of his soul. Will he rise above the darkness or will he give in to hate and anger, seeking revenge for what he's been put through? What transpires is a man's personal struggles to do what's right or succumb to evil.
#2
What do you do when those that are closest to you are ripped away? For Mike Moore, he is caught in a personal struggle between what is right and wrong. Evil torments him, chipping away at his soul, trying to entice him to seek revenge on the tragedy he has had to endure. Will he give in to temptation or can he rise above the darkness with the help of a heavenly friend?
#3
Hell wants him.
Heaven wants to save him.
What would you do when those you love most are ripped away?
After tragedy strikes Mike Moore, he is visited by two mysterious strangers. One sees an opportunity to take advantage of him while he's in his darkest moments and takes him to the lowest depths of his soul, tempting his desires to take revenge for what he has lost. The other tries to help him rise above the darkness, giving him the support he needs to fight against the evil that has come for him. What transpires is a personal struggle between good and evil.
#1
Hell wants him.
Heaven wants to save him.
After tragedy strikes Mike Moore, the Devil sees an opportunity to acquire another soul while he's in his darkest moments. An Angel is sent to guide him back from the lowest depths of his soul. Will he rise above the darkness or will he give in to hate and anger, seeking revenge for what he's been put through? What transpires is a man's personal struggles to do what's right or succumb to evil.
#2
What do you do when those that are closest to you are ripped away? For Mike Moore, he is caught in a personal struggle between what is right and wrong. Evil torments him, chipping away at his soul, trying to entice him to seek revenge on the tragedy he has had to endure. Will he give in to temptation or can he rise above the darkness with the help of a heavenly friend?
#3
Hell wants him.
Heaven wants to save him.
What would you do when those you love most are ripped away?
After tragedy strikes Mike Moore, he is visited by two mysterious strangers. One sees an opportunity to take advantage of him while he's in his darkest moments and takes him to the lowest depths of his soul, tempting his desires to take revenge for what he has lost. The other tries to help him rise above the darkness, giving him the support he needs to fight against the evil that has come for him. What transpires is a personal struggle between good and evil.
Monday, February 7, 2011
release date
MARCH 8!!
Yep. That's right. A Soul Worth Taking will be released on Tuesday, March 8th.
Make sure you virtually start lining up for your copy now, but no line jumping. They'll be enough for everybody. :-)
Yep. That's right. A Soul Worth Taking will be released on Tuesday, March 8th.
Make sure you virtually start lining up for your copy now, but no line jumping. They'll be enough for everybody. :-)
Friday, January 28, 2011
William Meikle--guest post
The Valley
WHY I WROTE THE VALLEY
The origins of the novella "The Valley" are pretty simple to trace. In Fortean circles there have been attempts to find a picture that many claim to have seen, yet no-one has been able to find. This fabled photograph is said to show a group of Civil-War era men standing in a row wearing big grins. Spreadeagled on the ground in front of them is the body of a huge bird, a being that could only come from pre-history. In some accounts this bird is a giant eagle, in others it is even stranger, a leathery, paper thin Pterosaur. Whatever the case, that image was the thing in my mind, and I had a "What if..." moment, wondering what would happen if cowboys came across a Lost World. From that single thought, the initial concept of The Valley was born.
There's a long tradition of Lost World tales, both in movies and fiction. Over the years I've devoured as many as I can find, from Conan Doyle through Haggard, from Tarzan in Pellucidar to Doug McLure in the Land that Time Forgot. Many of these tales involve dinosaurs, but I wanted something different. For a while I didn't know exactly what "creatures" I needed, but that all changed as soon as the setting clicked. Back in 2005 I had the good fortune to holiday in the Rockies. It was while scanning through photographs of that trip that the thought of the high mountain valley came to me, and when Neil Jackson told me about Montana and the Big Hole Valley, I knew I'd found my spot. And the pictures of the ice and snow from my trip also gave me the era from which I would draw my creatures -- the last Ice Age. I now knew that my protagonists would be heading into a Lost Valley where relic animals lived, and that these creatures would be hairy and large. I had an image of a herd of mammoths by a partially-frozen lake, and that was the image that drove me on in the early concepts.
Now I needed some protagonists. I knew in advance I wanted to write a "western" and some research led me to set the story in the 1860s, when something of a mini-goldrush was happening in Montana. The characters grew on me quickly. I wasn't too surprised at that -- my early childhood was steeped in Westerns. I have my Granddad to thank for days watching Wagon Train, Rawhide, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, then later on, The Virginian and The High Chapparal. He also introduced me to Louis L'Amour and others as I devoured his collection of Western paperbacks. As I started the Valley I already knew that I was going to have six men thrown into peril, and that they'd be almost evenly split between white and black hats. Several of them surprised me as the story went on, but from the start they had a "depth" that reassured me that the story would go to all the right places.
I got them to the mining camp, and the start of the aforesaid perils. Then my muse threw a spanner in the works. I've been a Ray Harryhausen fan most of my life, and the creature that now came to mind was a Harryhausen special, one that I could "see" in my mind's eye, scuttling and "snipping". Unfortunately it didn't exist in the Ice Age, but at a time much longer ago. But I wanted it, so in it went. I won't give the plot away here, but suffice to say I managed to fit it in -- I managed to fit a lot of them in. And as a result the rest of the story immediately fell into place, almost as if I was channeling a new Harryhausen movie.
I wrote the while thing in less than ten days, my brain thinking about little else the whole time. It's one of the most fun experiences I've ever had writing, and I hope it shows in the final product. Even now, more than a year after finishing it, I still find myself thinking about the Valley, and the creatures that inhabit it. Somewhere, the story continues, and one day I might go back to find out what happened next.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts and THE VALLEY has reached #1 in the Kindle Historical Fantasy chart. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com
The origins of the novella "The Valley" are pretty simple to trace. In Fortean circles there have been attempts to find a picture that many claim to have seen, yet no-one has been able to find. This fabled photograph is said to show a group of Civil-War era men standing in a row wearing big grins. Spreadeagled on the ground in front of them is the body of a huge bird, a being that could only come from pre-history. In some accounts this bird is a giant eagle, in others it is even stranger, a leathery, paper thin Pterosaur. Whatever the case, that image was the thing in my mind, and I had a "What if..." moment, wondering what would happen if cowboys came across a Lost World. From that single thought, the initial concept of The Valley was born.
There's a long tradition of Lost World tales, both in movies and fiction. Over the years I've devoured as many as I can find, from Conan Doyle through Haggard, from Tarzan in Pellucidar to Doug McLure in the Land that Time Forgot. Many of these tales involve dinosaurs, but I wanted something different. For a while I didn't know exactly what "creatures" I needed, but that all changed as soon as the setting clicked. Back in 2005 I had the good fortune to holiday in the Rockies. It was while scanning through photographs of that trip that the thought of the high mountain valley came to me, and when Neil Jackson told me about Montana and the Big Hole Valley, I knew I'd found my spot. And the pictures of the ice and snow from my trip also gave me the era from which I would draw my creatures -- the last Ice Age. I now knew that my protagonists would be heading into a Lost Valley where relic animals lived, and that these creatures would be hairy and large. I had an image of a herd of mammoths by a partially-frozen lake, and that was the image that drove me on in the early concepts.
Now I needed some protagonists. I knew in advance I wanted to write a "western" and some research led me to set the story in the 1860s, when something of a mini-goldrush was happening in Montana. The characters grew on me quickly. I wasn't too surprised at that -- my early childhood was steeped in Westerns. I have my Granddad to thank for days watching Wagon Train, Rawhide, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, then later on, The Virginian and The High Chapparal. He also introduced me to Louis L'Amour and others as I devoured his collection of Western paperbacks. As I started the Valley I already knew that I was going to have six men thrown into peril, and that they'd be almost evenly split between white and black hats. Several of them surprised me as the story went on, but from the start they had a "depth" that reassured me that the story would go to all the right places.
I got them to the mining camp, and the start of the aforesaid perils. Then my muse threw a spanner in the works. I've been a Ray Harryhausen fan most of my life, and the creature that now came to mind was a Harryhausen special, one that I could "see" in my mind's eye, scuttling and "snipping". Unfortunately it didn't exist in the Ice Age, but at a time much longer ago. But I wanted it, so in it went. I won't give the plot away here, but suffice to say I managed to fit it in -- I managed to fit a lot of them in. And as a result the rest of the story immediately fell into place, almost as if I was channeling a new Harryhausen movie.
I wrote the while thing in less than ten days, my brain thinking about little else the whole time. It's one of the most fun experiences I've ever had writing, and I hope it shows in the final product. Even now, more than a year after finishing it, I still find myself thinking about the Valley, and the creatures that inhabit it. Somewhere, the story continues, and one day I might go back to find out what happened next.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with ten novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series among others, and his work appears in a number of professional anthologies. His ebook THE INVASION has been as high as #2 in the Kindle SF charts and THE VALLEY has reached #1 in the Kindle Historical Fantasy chart. He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out at http://www.williammeikle.com
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