Here’s another chance to get caught up on Inertia and Acceleration at a discount before the release of Velocity! Remember, Velocity comes out March 2, just two more weeks!
Tag Archives: velocity
Velocity Sneak Peek - Chapter One
Those of you who have already bought Acceleration have read the sneak peek for Velocity, but as I did with Acceleration, I’m going to share it here, as well, to add to the Free Reads page.
Filed under Upcoming Releases, Velocity
Cover reveal continued!
So, There’s one aspect of the GORGEOUS artwork Kerry did for Velocity that you can’t see very well on the ebook cover. The convention for the series until this point has been to feature a character portrait of the POV character and then a “couple” shot. Well, Velocity is told from both Derrick AND Gavin’s POV so the portrait feature became a bit trickier, as there’s only so much room on a book cover before thins begin to look crowded.
So, as you can see in the background here:
there IS a portrait of the two of them, but in order to see it fully, you need to see the back cover of the print edition. For those of you who won’t have the print edition, however, I’m including it here.
If you want to see the portrait of Derrick and Gavin without the text over it, you can check it out on Kerry’s DeviantArt page, here.
Have I mentioned how much I love my cover design team? Because, I mean, really!
Filed under Upcoming Releases, Velocity
It’s here! VELOCITY cover reveal!
My lovely cover artist, Kerry Chin, and layout designer, Michael Hart from Booknibbles have been hard at work to get the Velocity cover ready by the end of the month. But here it is and I’m absolutely IN LOVE with it!
REACHING OPTIMUM SPEED
For Detroit handyman Derrick Chance and his lover, Gavin Hayes, the holiday season is filled with the promise of new beginnings. Gavin’s officially moving in, and after the New Year, they’ll begin house hunting. But they both know all the talk of gift exchange, whose holiday ornaments go where, and what repairs and remodels will be needed to put Derrick’s house on the market is only a smoke screen.
Before the month is over, Gavin will have the final verdict on whether or not his dangerously delusional ex, Lukas, infected him with HIV. No matter how good Gavin’s chances appear with the three-month hurdle already passed, neither he nor Derrick knows what the future holds for them.
The holidays have always been a time of loss and mourning for Derrick, but now he has to stay strong as Gavin’s own fears and doubts assail him relentlessly. And when Lukas returns, unexpectedly penitent amid troubling revelations, Gavin has to ask himself whether he can offer Derrick the future he deserves, or whether these first few months of happiness are the best they will ever get.
COMING MARCH 2, 2013
Filed under Announcements
Crawling out from under my rock (with Velocity stuff and other news!)
So! Hi there! Yes, I’ve been very quiet the last month and a half or so, haven’t I? On December 19th I was supposed to participate in the The Next Big Thing blog hop, for which I’d been tagged by Anne Tenino and had tagged P.D. Singer and Leta Blake. Clearly, I completely spaced making that post. I also owe Leta a guest blog post I was supposed to get to her earlier this month.
Though the holidays and the release of Acceleration were a not-insignificant portion of my distraction, the main part of it has actually been illness. Around December 10, a mildly escalating cough became a case of bronchitis that has not wanted to let go. On Christmas Eve, when I was supposed to be getting my house ready to have MIL over for Christmas the next day, I was instead at the urgent care clinic having an albuterol treatment, where they also prescribed for me antibiotics and an inhaler. Two weeks later I went in to see my own doctor because I still hadn’t improved, and she prescribed for me a different inhaler with steroids in it. Now here we are nearly two months since the first cough began and I’m still not over it, though it does appear to be (very slowly) improving.
Despite my illness, the only aspect of my productivity that has taken a significant hit is my blogging obligations. 😀 I did manage a guest post for Chicks & Dicks, which will be up on Wednesday. Their theme for January is New Beginnings and I took an opportunity to discuss how that relates to some of my current projects and also my writing philosophy.
In addition, I’ve been very busy on the writing and editing front. On December 19th, I submitted Velocity to my editor. A couple days later, I heard back from the press to which I had submitted Sooper Sekrit Projekt, which I now feel comfortable letting you all know is titled Strain. I got a Revise and Resubmit letter and did some brainstorming with the editor I’m working with, which resulted in me significantly restructuring most of the 65K I had already written, and adding almost another 40K, making Strain nearly twice as long as the books of my Impulse trilogy.
If you would like some hints about Strain, since it was open on my desktop at the time, I used a couple snippets of it when P.D. Singer and Anne Tenino tagged me for the 7/7/7 game over on Facebook last week. You can find the posts here and here.
Back in August when I was trying to come up with something short to fill in the interim between the release of Inertia and Acceleration, I wrote a short story about Highland lads that I subsequently put on the shelf because I was under a deadline to write and submit Strain. After having Leta Blake take a look at it and assure me it didn’t go off the rails quite as badly as I seemed to think it had, I reworked and expanded it a bit and I’m rather pleased with the results. So finally I polished it up and sent it off, and we’ll see just where it ends up.
Then last week I got my edits back for Velocity. In addition to being ill, I’ve been a bit hesitant to release a lot of news about Velocity because I don’t have any cover art for it yet. Kerry Chin and I had originally targeted the end of December for having the cover art done, but health and RL issues have been plaguing her as well. This is why I still don’t have the first chapter up on my Coming Soon page. Now we’re hoping to have that done at the end of January.
While this has put me behind the ball on the publicity front, on the text front, things are going just swimmingly. I’m really happy that I made arrangements to do the edits so early, so I won’t be caught in a crunch to turn them around and get the ARCs out immediately after I get the edits done like I was with Acceleration, and I’ll have a lot more time for proofreading without hitting that point where I want to gouge my eyeballs out with a spork if I have to look at the text one more damned time.
With that in mind, assuming I have the cover art, the release date for Velocity will be March 2. I may have to reschedule if something goes wrong on the art end, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I will be posting more information as it becomes available.
If all goes well, I hope to release something every three months or so this year, whether by self-pub or through a press. I’m hoping to have the Highland story published around June, and Strain around September. What will I have for December? Well, that is the big question. I have a couple different ideas I’m tossing around that I hope to begin writing once I have Strain resubmitted. Stay tuned!
Filed under Announcements, Other Authors Blogs, Upcoming Releases, Velocity
Less than 36 hours to go to Acceleration!
In the wee-small hours last night, I sent to final proof of Acceleration to Michael at Booknibbles to be formatted and converted. Since the upload and approval process for Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo takes 24-48 hours, I will begin uploading it as soon as he has it back to me (hopefully tonight.)
What this means is that there’s a chance that Acceleration will actually be available for purchase at various times the day before the official release, since I have no control over when the file actually gets approved and posted to the various sites. I don’t know what time zone All Romance Ebooks is in, but I know it’s at least an hour or two ahead of me, so if you bought Acceleration on pre-sale there, it will be available perhaps midnight Central or Mountain time (maybe even Eastern, I dunno.) I plan to upload it and have it live at Rainbow Ebooks and SmashWords around the same time.
I will be posting buy links as they become available.
It may be another week or two for the paperback to become available, as that process takes considerably longer due to the need to ship and approve physical copies.
Now, for those of you who are interested, a little insight into the life of a self-published author.
I don’t usually bother saying stuff like this, because I want readers to buy from the website that is most convenient for them, which is why I have it available at so many places. But, if you’re indifferent to where you get the file and want to know which sites are the most profitable in me (thus enabling me to continue writing once my kid is in school full-time rather than getting a day job) here’s the breakdown of the royalties I get from the various sites:
SmashWords: 85%
Kobo: 80% through Nov 30, then 70% after
Amazon: 70% minus a few cents for the file transfer fee
Barnes & Noble: 65%
All Romance Ebooks, Itunes and Rainbow Ebooks: 60%
So SmashWords definitely pays me the best, though if I had to express a preference for where people buy, it would actually be Amazon and ARe, even though I get lower royalties there. The reason? Because they have bestseller lists (Kobo, Itunes and B&N probably do, too, but my sales on those sites are practically non-existent so I’m not going to hit them anyway, and SmashWords just doesn’t move the volume for it to matter if I’m one of their best sellers.) If I end up on the bestseller lists for Amazon or ARe, however, I will get a lot more exposure and sell a lot more books.
The same principle applies to the paperback. I make about $3 more on a paperback sold through the CreateSpace website than I do on one sold through Amazon, but sales on CreateSpace aren’t going to boost my rankings, thus giving me more visibility and sales.
Of course, the question everyone is going to be asking once they’re done with Acceleration is “When does Velocity come out?”
The good news is, I’m much more knowledgeable about the process going into Velocity than I was going into Acceleration. Inertia was a whole other animal. No one was expecting it, I hadn’t done any marketing beforehand or generated any sort of anticipation. There was no timeline except when I felt it was ready to be released.
I’m actually a bit embarrassed at my own naivete there. 🙂
It didn’t take me long to realize Acceleration would be different, because people were expecting it. I had to set a release date. I had to set target times for cover art and edits and such to be done and ARCs to be released, because people were watching and waiting for it. I didn’t plan ahead enough (for instance, I didn’t lock in my reservation for when my editor would be available until after I had the manuscript written, which meant that a lot of the delay was simply the manuscript gathering dust because it couldn’t go anywhere until my turn in her queue came up. Likewise, the cover art reveal was a little rushed and haphazard because I didn’t schedule a slot for my artist to work on the art until much later than I should have.
What this meant was that if I wanted to get the book released before the holidays (which I’ve since learned wasn’t really necessary as apparently ebook sales aren’t great in December-I imagine it’s actually after the holidays, when everyone is cashing in their bookstore gift cards, that ebook sales take off) I was really cutting it way too close. But even without the factor of the holidays, there was the fact that people were demanding Book Two and I really needed to get it out there before people lost interest and I fell off the map.
I’ve learned my lesson with Velocity and hopefully have my ducks in a much neater row. I’ve scheduled my slot with both my cover artist and editor well in advance this time. I hope to have the cover art by the end of December, preferably for a January cover reveal. The turn-in date for the manuscript to go to my editor in mid-December and I’ll have it back in mid-January.
So when will Velocity be out? Well, if you’re looking at that banner up top here on my blog, it says March 2013. At which point in March depends on how extensive the revisions I need to do once I get my edits back. If the revisions are minor, I hope to have ARCs available at the beginning of February and will release at the beginning of March. If the revisions are more extensive, we’re looking at mid-to-late February and March, respectively. I’ll have a better idea once I have my edits back in mid-January.
So. Keep an eye out. We’re in the final stretch of the wait for Acceleration. If you would like your chance to win a copy, the drawings at Stumbling Over Chaos and The Novel Approach are still open, so be sure to go register. And also, I’m doing my first GoodReads giveaway, too! I’ll be giving away a paperback of Acceleration at the end of December. Be sure to go enter!
Finally, for those of you who are interested, because it’s being released on November 30, Acceleration will still qualify for the Members’ Choice Awards over at the GoodReads M/M Romance group! Nominations close December 5. The award I’m most concerned with there is the Cover Art award, because Kerry and Michael’s hard work deserves to be recognized. Inertia has been nominated there, but Acceleration has not. If you want to know what other categories Inertia and Acceleration might qualify for, I will list them here:
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Romance Book (Inertia or Acceleration)
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Series (Impulse)
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Author (moi)
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Character(s) (Derrick and/or Gavin)
Nomination - Best Debut Book (Inertia has already been nommed)
Nomination - Best Cover (Inertia has been nommed, Acceleration hasn’t)
Nomination - Best Title (Inertia or Acceleration)
Nomination - Best Couple/MC’s (Derrick and/or Gavin)
Nomination - Best Sex Scene (take your pick from either Inertia or Acceleration)
Nomination - Best Side/Supporting Character (Miss Ingrid, LeeAnn, Andi, Devon or Hannah)
Nomination - Best Tearjerking scene (there’s one from Acceleration that just might qualify. You be the judge)
Nomination - Best First Time (this would be Inertia naturally, though honestly, after having read the first time in Frat Boy and Toppy by Anne Tenino? Hoo doggies! I don’t stand a chance.)
Nomination - Funniest Quotes/Best Lines (take your pick)
Nomination - Best book of the year (take your pick)
Nomination - BDSM (sex content) (probably Acceleration more than Inertia)
Nomination - Contemporary (genre) (take your pick)
Nomination - Hurt/Comfort (theme) (maybe? I dunno.)
So. If you decide you want to participate (and this is not meant to be pushy: as I’ve said, the only one that will break my heart to not see the books get the nod is the Cover Art category) check out the rules for the contest, and you have until December 5 to make your nominations.
So excited for people to start reading Acceleration! It’s almost here! Whee!
Exciting news! (and a little bit of pouting)
So I’m going to be sulking just the tiniest bit over the next few days because it seems like the cool kids are all going to play in Albuquerque at GayRomLit 2012, but I got involved in the m/m romance publishing biz too late this year and on too tight a budget to make that happen. SO JEALOUS! I wanna go play! Instead, I’ll be following their tweets avidly and stewing in my sad disappointment.
No, seriously, guys. Have fun and I look forward to hearing the war stories!
In other news, there are some very big things happening in the next few weeks.
The first is that sometime within the next week, Inertia is going to be available in print through Amazon CreateSpace, complete with an all-new cover by BookNibbles. The ebook cover will be updated to match as well. Never fear, I’ll still be keeping Kerry Chin‘s amazing artwork. Only the layout will be different.
And around Halloween, unless catastrophe strikes Kerry, I’ll be doing a cover reveal for Acceleration over at Top2Bottom Reviews, complete with a Halloween-themed snippet from Acceleration itself! So be sure to check back on the 30th for a sneak peak at one of the most entertaining chapters from Acceleration, Impulse Book Two.
Sometime in the near future I’ll also be doing an interview over on the blog of the amazing Brandon Shire, about which I’m very excited. Brandon is a writer to admire, both in the lgbt genre and as a fellow self-published author, and he’ll be sharing an entirely different sneak peak from Acceleration.
If all goes well with the editing process, Acceleration should be released in late November or early December, in both ebook and print format. In early to mid November I hope to release eARC review copies for reviewers who want them in advance.
I was largely quiet through September because I was working on a new project, a manuscript intended to be my first-ever submission to a publisher. I wrote over 65K words in 29 days, which was an incredible accomplishment for me. While of course I hope the manuscript is accepted, even if it’s not, I’m very much looking forward to the learning experience that comes with submitting to a publisher, especially any sort of editorial feedback I might get in the process of the rejection, if it does end up being rejected. I actually take a huge amount of enjoyment in receiving edits and critique, because I’m always looking to improve.
I had intended to work on Velocity, Impulse Book Three for NaNoWriMo in November, but finishing up this manuscript intended for submission ahead of schedule left me with three weeks I hadn’t anticipated having. I’ve decided to use that time to begin working on Book Three so that come November, I have more available time to work on the final edits and release of Book Two. Ideally I would like to have that released in time for the holiday shopping season, though it all depends on how much work is entailed in the editing process. I have a very good feeling about the manuscript, in that I believe it’s well paced, well plotted, and well characterized. My brilliant editor, however, may disagree.
With Inertia I knew there were issues with the manuscript with regard to plotting and characterization, which was why I decided to use my editing budget on a developmental edit rather than a line edit. And I was absolutely right. The feedback I received in that edit resulted in a complete, from-scratch rewrite of 40-50% of the book. Anyone who has remarked that they loved the characters or felt the pacing and development of the relationship worked? They have Danielle Poiesz to thank for that.
I don’t have that feeling with Acceleration, that feeling that it needs a lot of work to be the book I want it to be. I feel like it’s an incredibly solid book, probably the most solid I’ve ever written. I can attribute at least some of that to the learning experience I had during the editing process of Inertia. The wonderful P.D. Singer did a pre-edit beta read for me and seemed very positive about it as well, so I think it’s not just me. 😀 As a result, the editing service I’m paying for this time around is a line edit with developmental features instead of a developmental edit. Unless those developmental features end up requiring a lot more revision than anticipated, the editing should go pretty quickly and allow for a timely release.
So! A lot of REALLY EXCITING STUFF coming down the line in the next month or two! Stay tuned!
Filed under Acceleration, Administrative, Inertia, News for Released Titles, Upcoming Releases
The fiction of Amelia C. Gormley 