Tag: ebooks

General

The Aven Cycle Continues… Today!

CassMorrisWrites

Today’s the day! The Bloodstained Shade is officially out and in the world!

Book covers of FROM UNSEEN FIRE, GIVE WAY TO NIGHT, and THE BLOODSTAINED SHADE against a white marbled background

I’m so excited for y’all to read it. I’m incredibly proud of this book, not only for the determination it took to produce it, but also because… it’s really good, though I say it myself! I hope you find as much delight in reading The Bloodstained Shade as I did in writing it!

Here’s where you can get it: 

And yes, you’re reading that right — the book is available in both ebook and print format!

In case you missed the big announcement last week, the entire Aven Cycle (thus far) is back out in brand-new paperback editions, featuring their gorgeous new covers. The matched set is definitely lust-worthy.

Paperback editions of FROM UNSEEN FIRE, GIVE WAY TO NIGHT, and THE BLOODSTAINED SHADE, standing upright and overlapping on a wooden table

And if you’ve already ordered — awesome! Now help me spread the word to readers who don’t yet know how much they love the Aven Cycle.

Readers sometimes ask me where’s the best place to buy my books, if I get any more money from one retailer or another. In general, the answer is that it doesn’t make a ton of difference. The retailers with lower royalty rates tend to have higher volume, so it evens out in the long run. 

I will, however, always recommend asking your local indie bookstore to carry them, if possible. You can also request them at your local library! Or, use this Bookshop.org link — then I essentially get to double-dip, since Bookshop gives me a li’l somethin’ as an affiliate.

And, because I just can’t help myself, if you haven’t picked up the e-copies yet, I’m having a this-week-only sale on From Unseen Fire and Give Way to Night! Just $0.99 at all your favorite ebook retailers, for a limited time.

As I’ve been preparing for this release, I’ve been giving a peeks inside the process over on Patreon and Ko-Fi! Here’s a round-up of what I’ve been doing on those channels recently: 

  • Sneak peek of the print cover From Unseen Fire
  • First pictures of the proof copies of the print editions
  • Book-bub ad testing and geeky data analysis
  • Mages of Aven microfiction — we’re up to 250 snippets!
  • A look at using AutoCrit to assist with editing

You can join on either Patreon or Ko-Fi and get access to the same member-exclusive content! 

My wonderful supporters are, truly, what have enabled me to get The Bloodstained Shade into the world. Patreon and Ko-Fi funds allowed me to commission that wonderful cover art, to put the books into print, to hire my amazing editor, and to put effort into marketing and promotion. I truly could not be more grateful.

General

Newly Amended and Improved

CassMorrisWrites

Today’s the day! It is Rome’s 2,774th birthday, and in honor of the Eternal City, today is the day that the new e-book editions of From Unseen Fire and Give Way to Night are released into the wild!

You can acquire them from your favorite purveyor of digital fiction* at the hot-hot price of just $2.99 each.

*The Kindle version may be slow to appear, because AMZ chooses to be difficult if you upload through a third party rather than through them, but it will be there soon if it isn’t at the moment you see this!

Why am I calling them “newly revised and improved”? Well, it’s mostly a joke. Early modern books would put that on the cover to sell second editions of their quartos. Sometimes the revisions really were substantial, as when Q1 Hamlet became the version most people know today. Sometimes… enh, not so much.

What’s the case for the Aven Cycle? Well, From Unseen Fire most definitely is amended, augmented, and, I think, improved! I trimmed over 6,000 words from the final draft! And… you won’t miss most of them. A lot of that was tightening verb forms — getting rid of extraneous “had/were/was” constructions — and trimming clutter. Amazing how much of that bloat there can be in a manuscript!

I would remiss not to mention the software that helped me do all of that, AutoCrit. It is genuinely such a helpful tool to help a writer think about choosing the best, strongest words. I’m really loving it, and I’m looking forward to using it on my books in the future!

I also did trim a few full paragraphs out of From Unseen Fire. Not many, but there were a couple of places where I bounced into the head of a character who I once thought might’ve had potential to grow, but who never ended up developing into a full POV, or where I foreshadowed something that will never come to fruition. It happens! And one of the advantages afforded to me by these strange circumstances is the chance to go back and tweak, which many authors never get a chance to do.

So, like I said, it’s probably not anything you’ll even notice if you read the first edition of From Unseen Fire and decide to revisit the story in the new e-book edition, but I hope it will make for a more satisfying experience, even if subconsciously. Give Way to Night, I pretty much left alone, as it was a tighter book to begin with. I learned a lot between 2011 and 2018, as it turns out!

I would really love for these new editions to have a solid re-launch, so if you have $2.99 to spare, or even $5.98!, I would be thrilled and delighted if you bought a copy.

Thanks to everyone who’s been so supportive as I’ve careened my way through these rough waters!