Cover art for my fantasy novelette “Ice”
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
Longing to escape the heat of the waning dog days of summer? My fantasy novelette Ice (click that link) will be a free download to your Kindle device from Amazon from Friday, August 5th through Tuesday the 9th.
Here’s the summary:
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
My first self-published novelette Ice was published December 2021, but like a lot of indie and self-published works, it needs all the help that it can get just to let people know it exists.
To that end, and to market my “brand” (as it were), I’ve taken to TikTok, creating little two and three minute videos. No I’m not some cute kid dancing around or making funny movies, but it beats the equipment I’d have to buy to record vids for YouTube.
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
Hooray! Frankly, I’ll take just about any sort of review on “Ice” just so it’s noticed, but I love how all three (so far) are five-stars on Amazon.
Click on the link to find the review and read it. If you’ve read “Ice” and haven’t reviewed it on Amazon and Goodreads, please, please, please do so. Even if the review is less than complementary, I’ll learn more about how to improve my writing.
Here’s my “blurb:”
I just saw that the blog shared by Anita Dawes and Jaye Marie has reviewed my SciFi/Fantasy novella Ice.
I actually saw it in my twitter notifications. I was checking social media one last time before settling down into bed with a good book and a cup of tea.
Yes, I am an old guy. Sue me.
It’s a very nice review, too. I don’t want to spoil it by quoting it here, but they do use words like “exciting,” “dramatic,” and “gripping” so I’m feeling pretty good about it (please write the same thing on Amazon and Goodreads).
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
Screenshot from Amazon
There are certain milestones that I think a lot of authors pay attention to. One of them I chronicled yesterday when I said that Time’s Abyss received 3 five-star reviews on Amazon and Ice had received it’s first five-star review.
Having also created a promotion for Ice where it can be downloaded to Kindle for free from now until Christmas created another interesting effect. It started “selling” much, much better (see image above-right). Well, it’s free and I have been telling everyone on every social media platform to which I belong about it, so why not? Still, it’s pretty satisfying.
Ice just received it’s first five-star review on Amazon, which is a tremendous thrill. Also, Time’s Abyss now has 3 five-star reviews. This is pretty terrific since both of these titles are my initial efforts at SciFi novellas as I emerge from authoring a long collection of short stories.
© James Pyles
Thank you “Ice” (still a free download through Christmas) and “Time’s Abyss” readers as well as those of you who have been reading my work in anthologies such as Winter of Wonder, Meteor Fall, Fall Into Fantasy 2021, Deep Space 2, and those are just my most recent projects.
As in indie writer and an author still relatively new to being published in SciFi, Fantasy, and Horror, I’m “over the moon” that these works are getting this kind of attention. Thank those of you who have read and left reviews and the rest who have read these or are in the process of still reading.
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
As I’m sure my regular readers know, I’ve been actively promoting some of my latest work, which includes my first self-published novella Ice as well as Time’s Abyss, a novella published by Black Hare Press.
To that end, I reached out to some folks I know and Ben and Anthony at Sunday Superversive Livestream agreed to interview me last night.
Here’s the direct link to the interview on YouTube.
Frankly, I have no idea what the image is, but I did have a lot of fun chatting with Ben and Anthony for about an hour. Of course, I mentioned my novellas, but also the Cloaked Press published anthology Meteor Fall: An Anthology of The Collective. I have two stories in that one. Oh, “Cloaked” also accepted my short story “That Which Burns” in their upcoming anthology Winter of Wonder.
If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.
Admittedly, I’ve tried to sell this story in various forms for quite some time without any luck. I even asked a friend for help, thinking maybe he could suggest the proper venue. However, it didn’t take.
So I thought of self-publishing it. Here it is: Ice by James Pyles. No anthologies, no indie publishers, this one is all mine.
Good thing, too. When I went over my submitted story, I found horrible errors I never saw before. I took weeks just reading and re-reading “Ice” until I finally got it to the point where I thought it was ready (I’ll write a separate blog post about my first experience with Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) by the by).
Here’s the synopsis I wrote for Amazon:
© National Geographic – projection of South America if all Earth’s ice had melted.
I’ve been doing a lot of marketing, progress updates, and reviews lately but not so much fiction writing on this blog. The reason is that I’m scrambling between writing the second draft of my first novel and writing and submitting short stories, hopefully faster than they are rejected.
Yes, I’m human, so having one of my tales not make the cut stings a bit, even though it’s totally anticipated and “normal.”
I still don’t like it.
So I decided to regularly (not sure how regularly yet) post a passage from one of my rejected missives that is temporarily out of play for your enjoyment and consideration. Naturally, the excerpt isn’t the story, but maybe it will be enough of a hint to tell you if anything is a bit “off” about it or if you can suggest improvements.
Therefore, without further ado, this short preview from my short story “Ice.”
“You mean to do this, then?” Afternoon of the next day, both the Captain and his First Mate stood on the dock listening to Eralia shout orders from the Star’s main deck, and watching longshoremen bring crates, barrels, and nets of supplies on palates and mule-drawn wagons, loading them aboard and down into the holds.
“In all of our days together, you’ve always followed where I’ve led. Why question me now?” Yong turned to Andrada who was still looking at the ship, the bustle of the crew, the same men and women doing the same work they’ve always done, but for the Mindanao native, it was as if this would be their last voyage.
“A man, a seasoned sailor, killed himself just because he knew we were coming to see him. It bothers me.”
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