August 2014

My featured author post has appeared on Fantastical Reads. It includes my author bio, info on the first three books of the series and a short interview.  You can check it out right here.

I just finished writing book 12 of the series, Emissary.  I’ll start the proofreading and editing process later tonight.  This is the longest book in the series, with the first draft coming in at 113,177 words for just the story itself before the editing.  During the editing process I’ll typically add around two to three thousand more, so I’m expecting it to end up around 116K words when all is said and done.

I have an idea of what’s coming in the next book, but I haven’t chosen a title yet.  I’ll decide on one by the time I finish editing this one.

Anyway, that’s it for now.  There are a couple of new characters in this book, one of which I had an absolute blast writing.  She’s very sharp, intelligent and endlessly enthusiastic.  I’m really looking forward to writing more of her.

Wayne asked me back for another interview on today’s show.  You can listen to it in the embedded player below.  We touched on a variety of things including book covers, social media and ways to get past writer’s block.

New Film Internet Radio with Wayne Clingman on BlogTalkRadio

I made my first trailer for the series.  It’s nothing special, but I think it came out ok.  You can view the trailer below or at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-07kTppKfy0.

I just added myself and all of my books to AuthorsDB.  It’s like an IMDB for authors.  The author profile is active.  I’m just waiting for all the book listings to go through moderation as well, which should happen within the next twelve hours apparently.  Here’s the link to my profile: Duane L. Martin – AUTHORSdB

Normally I’ll start a book near the end of one month and have it done and published by the end of the following month, and then I’ll start the whole cycle over again.  With this latest book, I’ve had some delays that were caused by various things in my life, so I won’t be able to finish it by the end of the month.  Since I won’t be able to keep on my usual schedule, I’ve decided to just keep working on it and finish it whenever.  I’m anticipating it’ll be some time during the first week of next month.  After that I’d like to get back on a normal schedule, which means starting the next one toward the end of next month.  That will leave me about two weeks or so in between.

Now, here’s what’s cool about that.  I’ll be using those two weeks in between to pound out some more bonus scenes that I’ll be adding here on the website.  I really enjoyed writing the first one I did, and what I loved about it the most was that it allowed me to fill in details on something that had only been mentioned before, but not elaborated on.  Some of the bonus scenes will be like that, while others will be things that are more independent, meaning they’re not relating to something that was mentioned.  I already have some ideas rolling around, including the following:

• Alicia and Joseph’s experiences after being taken.
• Jonathan going on the run after he escapes from the slavers.
• Charles, Richard, Savaric and Giles’ escape from the scientist who’d brought them to the human dimension, starting with their work in the lab.
• Giles and Savaric on the run after their escape.
• Derek’s experience at school before he met the others.

There’s lots of things I could do.  Those are just a few of the ideas I have currently, so there will definitely be more bonus scenes coming in the future.