Where are the Pressure Tanks?

As could happen to anyone, I was talking to Daria about the cover art for Dropship Down (which is going to be very cool, should have a WIP soon). Obviously, this all involves a crashing Dropship, which naturally leads to fire and smoke. My mind then gets to wondering where the pressure tanks are in the Dropship, so I sat down and drew them into my OpenSCAD model.

About 7000 litres of LH2 and 2000 litres of O2 would fit. Which isn’t as much energy as you’d think. Luckily, Emdrives don’t actually work in the real world, so it should be plenty.

Progress Dropship Down (Cover soon!)

A view of Earth from 80,000 feet of altitude.
Credit: UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering

Work is progressing on getting Dropship Down (Clausewitz #1) ready for publication. Daria is working on the cover. The attached image is a view of Earth from 80,000 feet captured by the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in 2014. The opening scene of Dropship Down takes place at roughly the same altitude, but then over a different planet, named Celestia. The cover art will be a view from a similar altitude over that planet.

For the rest, editing is always hell, but slow progress is being made. Hoping to have it all ready soon ™.

After that, work begins on getting The Value of Nobility (Alagariel #2) ready for publishing. There’s going to be a bit more work involved there as I’ve decided to add some stuff in the first half of the book. I felt the characters were rushing through a large portion of Iurrak that really deserved a little more colour and depth, especially since that area will be visited a few more times in book #3 or #4.

The Half Elven Orphan in Stock

I have enough copies of The Half Elven Orphan in stock if anyone wants to order from me directly. It doesn’t seem worthwhile to put together a whole webshop for just one product, so if you want one, just send me an e-mail (books@jceberdt.eu) or use the contact form (below). Please let me know in the mail roughly where I’ll need so send the book.

I’ll send a Paypal payment request and send you a copy. Currently pricing is 20 euro’s, including shipping (unless shipping costs are crazy for your region but I’ll let you know before you pay anything if that’s the case).

The cover of The Half Elven Orphan, with the protagonist, a femal half-elf, crossing a river at night mounted on a black horse.
Name

Moving Along…

It’s been a while since I’ve added much to the blog. I try to make things that have more than passing promotional value to put on here and the day job has been interfering. What time I choose to invest into the writing experiment has been intended to edit Dropship Down, the first book set in my Science Fiction setting Total War. Of course, I’m only partially successful with that as I often find myself fiddling with other stuff that has nothing resembling an intended release date. Despite that progress is being made and I’m still feeling optimistic that I may be able to release earlier than expected.

I’ve commissioned cover art from the wonderful Daria. I’m exceedingly curious to see what she comes up with. The studies I’ve seen look very promising and I’m very happy with the cover of The Half Elven Orphan.

As far as sales, I still have no idea. I’ve learned that it takes at least six weeks for most sales data to show up in the Ingram Spark back-end. Except, of course, as discussed earlier, for print copies in Germany. That’s such a strange anomaly. There are some signs that there have been sales, but let’s just say I don’t expect to see it on any bestseller lists.

Of the people who have read it, response has been overwhelmingly positive which is wonderful. The German anomaly has led me to look at that market in a little more detail, which led me to believe it would be smart to go for German as the first translated language.

That’s about it from here. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to add some more in-setting stuff to the website. Perhaps an excerpt from something that is planned for far future release. I have not yet decided what’s next.

Publishing Mystery

The Half Elven Orphan is the first book I’ve published and I’ve done it independently, so everything is a new experience. First off, it looks like I’ve actually sold some books. Not enough to buy more than a junk food lunch, but it’s not zero. My primary channel is Ingram Spark and they have a dashboard where you can see where sales have been made. To my great surprise, the first four print books that have showed up there have been sold in Germany. I mean, I do know people in Germany, but them buying more than one or two books when I’ve already told them I will give them copies for free doesn’t make sense. It stands to reason, then, that these must be other Germans. Which is very odd. My website has almost no traffic from Germany that I can’t match to people I know.

Beyond that, I know that there must be some e-book sales too, as the book has a sales rank on some e-book only sites, but they haven’t showed up yet. So, thanks (or Dankeschön) everyone who has bought one. For e-book buyers, there will be another sale over on itch.io starting the 17th of December. I still highly recommend itch if you want the e-book. No DRM, it comes with a pdf with a a Table of Contents and Glossary and files for the artwork and map. Oh, and they give the author a far large proportion of the proceeds.

A Parcel Has Been Delivered

Despite the best efforts of his superiors, a parcel with some books from Milton Keynes has arrived.

I have yet to understand why I was charged for the privilege of receiving 0% tariff book while I have VAT and EORI numbers, but they’re here and that’s certainly something.

I’ve decided to fulfill direct orders. Obviously, I don’t have to pay the retailer 55% like I do on in-store prices, but I do have to ship it. The book is 349g, which means that with packaging it’s quite expensive to ship individual copies. So, it’s the same price as in stores which is €20, but shipping is free everywhere in the EU.