It’s been suggested by some of the people over on my forum that I open up submission for email questions so that we can do a kind of crowd-sourced interview.

I’m almost always up for talking about Alec, Adri, Va’del, Jain, Geoffrey and the rest of my characters, so here’s your chance to ask me whatever questions you might have about the series, my process or anything else writing related.

I’ll accept e-mail submissions at my gmail address (deanwrites) for roughly the next 2-3 weeks and then once I’m done with my current manuscript I’ll draw up responses to as many of the best questions as I can fit in over the course of an hour or so and post the entire interview here on my blog.

In case some of you are on the shy side and need encouragement, I’ll be sending an autographed paperback copy of Broken (in the continental United States) to the reader with the question that I like the most out of all of the questions I receive.

Thanks,

Dean

Just a quick update to let you all know that there is some great discussion going on right now over on my forum. If you haven’t stopped by to check things out, you’re missing out.

I’ve been adding a few comments here and there to the discussion, and there are some pretty big hints about where the series is going if you know what to look for inside of a few of those posts.

Dean

I’m pleased to announce that Bound (previously called Disillusioned), the first Dark Reflections Novel, is now available for purchase at all of the major retailers!

The Setup: 
The only thing worse than having no family at all, is having a family that is out to hurt you. That would all be bad enough for a normal 17-year-old, but it’s even worse for Alec Graves. A shape shifter’s pack, his family, is the only thing stopping the other preternatural creatures out there from killing them.

Alec’s pack isn’t just neglectful, he’s pretty sure that his father wants him dead. Alec is about to be sent to the front lines of a war between his people and everything else that goes bump in the night. His only chance of survival is to convince everyone around him that he’s the perfect soldier, but there are lines that Alec won’t cross, not for any price.

Publisher’s Note: Dean Murray’s ongoing Reflection Series has been a stunning success with hundreds of thousands of copies in circulation, and a rich, complex world where choices—right or wrong—have real, profound consequences. Unsatisfied with the restrictions imposed on him by writing inside of the conventional series structure, Dean has returned to Sanctuary and the characters so many fans have fallen in love with.

Bound is the first in Dean’s new Dark Reflections novels, an alternate timeline set in the same world and featuring many of the same characters, but with a profoundly different backstory.

Dean finally answers many of the questions that his most dedicated readers have been asking themselves for years. What would have happened if Alec’s father hadn’t been murdered by the Coun’hij, how would Adri’s life have changed if her family hadn’t been shattered in a horrific accident?

The answers may surprise you, but one thing is for sure; you’ll see new sides of familiar faces and when all is said and done, you’ll never be able to look at some of them the same.

Readers new to Dean Murray’s writing can start with Bound in the Dark Reflections Series or Broken in the Reflections Series.

Buy Bound as an Ebook (only $3.99 or local equivalent for the first week):
From iTunes
From Amazon US
From Amazon UK
From Barnes & Noble
From Smashwords
From Google Play
From Kobo

I’m personally thrilled with how the Dark Reflections books are turning out. I think that Bound is both a great addition to Alec & Adri’s story, and a great start point for people who may not have had a chance to read any of my work yet. My advance readers are telling me that they think Hunted (book 2, due out in March) is the best thing I’ve ever written, and I think that book three is going to blow everyone away.

I hope you all enjoy Bound as much as I enjoyed writing it! I’ll be paying more attention than normal to my forum over the next few days if you want to swing by and discuss Bound at some point.

Dean

So the title to this one sums things up even better than usual. I’ve gone ahead and decided that the title for the first Dark Reflections novel has to change.

I’m starting to wonder if there are any writing and publishing mistakes that I’m not going to make before all is said and done. I hope so, but I guess only time will tell–I’m certainly on track to make a lot of them.

Katie and I have spent a lot of time over the last week trying to come to something we both like that could serve as the cover for the book we’re releasing on the 23rd (maybe I’ll do a post later with more of the background behind what’s been going on over the last few weeks to put us so far behind our usual schedule).

We’ve looked at several thousand fonts, separately and together, and Katie has mocked up something like two dozen different covers, but nothing was working like we thought it should. I’ve also recently looked at scores and scores of covers for other urban fantasy and paranormal romance books in an effort to get a better feel for what is typical for those genres, and Katie has done the same.

In the end I just kept coming back to the fact that at 13 letters long, the title itself was part of the problem, so Disillusioned will instead be released as Bound.

I’ve learned some lessons from this exercise. I’ll be sticking with titles that are shorter (probably 8 or 9 letters max) and I may very well hold off announcing a title until we have a cover done when it comes to future releases.

One of the things that has added to the stress this time around is the fact that we’re trying to brand the series more tightly. We’re trying for more homogeneous cover art and we’re hoping to settle on a standard font so that down the road a reader will be able to pick out one of my books from a lineup without having to actually read my name on the cover.

I think we’re both finally in agreement on which cover we want to use, so without further delay, here is Bound:

The Setup:
The only thing worse than having no family at all, is having a family that is out to hurt you. That would all be bad enough for a normal 17-year-old, but it’s even worse for Alec Graves. A shape shifter’s pack, his family, is the only thing stopping the other preternatural creatures out there from killing them.

Alec’s pack isn’t just neglectful, he’s pretty sure that his father wants him dead. Alec is about to be sent to the front lines of a war between his people and everything else that goes bump in the night. His only chance of survival is to convince everyone around him that he’s the perfect soldier, but there are lines that Alec won’t cross, not for any price.

Publisher’s Note: Dean Murray’s ongoing Reflection Series has been a stunning success with hundreds of thousands of copies in circulation, and a rich, complex world where choices—right or wrong—have real, profound consequences. Unsatisfied with the restrictions imposed on him by writing inside of the conventional series structure, Dean has returned to Sanctuary and the characters so many fans have fallen in love with.

Bound is the first in Dean’s new Dark Reflections novels, an alternate timeline set in the same world and featuring many of the same characters, but with a profoundly different backstory.

Dean finally answers many of the questions that his most dedicated readers have been asking themselves for years. What would have happened if Alec’s father hadn’t been murdered by the Coun’hij, how would Adri’s life have changed if her family hadn’t been shattered in a horrific accident?

The answers may surprise you, but one thing is for sure; you’ll see new sides of familiar faces and when all is said and done, you’ll never be able to look at some of them the same.

Readers new to Dean Murray’s writing can start with Bound in the Dark Reflections Series or Broken in the Reflections Series.

I think that Katie has created a number of really gorgeous covers, but out of all of them, the cover for A Darkness Mirrored has been my favorite.

You’ll see some common characteristics between A Darkness Mirrored and Bound. Negative space off to the side where the spine is/will be, and a single individual as the focus of the cover.

I had a hard time letting go of the font that Katie used on A Darkness Mirrored, but ultimately I think the fonts on the cover for Bound are a better match for other books in the genre(s) I’m trying to write in.

Here’s the runner up cover and the runner-up back copy:

Alec Graves has lived a life of privileged luxury; at least that’s what it looks like from the outside. The truth is that all of the money in the world can’t make up for an existence where he doesn’t know who to trust.

If that was the worst of things Alec could have learned to adjust, but as a shape shifter, he also has to constantly worry about being dragged into a dominance fight by one of the other alphas in the pack.

It’s only a matter of time before Alec gets sent down south to fight in one of the many border wars currently raging against the vampires or the jaguars. If Alec is killed in the fighting then his friends and sister won’t last the month.

Publisher’s Note: Fans of Dean Murray’s Reflections Series will enjoy this alternate timeline novel that examines what would have happened if Alec’s earlier life had gone differently. In this timeline Alec’s father wasn’t murdered by Agony and the pack wasn’t broken into multiple pieces. In this timeline Alec’s dad joined the Coun’hij and nothing has been the same since.

I suppose this isn’t a vote in the traditional sense, but I’d love to hear from all of you in the comments on this one. Do you think we chose right with the cover and the blurb? Do you think that the ones we are going with will make new readers want to pick up the series? I certainly hope so, I have some really big plans for Bound.

Thanks,

Dean

Wow, it’s been a rough couple of weeks. I’ve added a new page to the blog (Progress tracker). Hopefully having my daily word count numbers up there where everyone can see them will give me the little extra push I need to get moving on Isaac’s book.

The cover for Disillusioned has been a real beast for a number of reasons that I’ll hopefully get into tomorrow. I think we are just about there though, so hopefully tomorrow’s post will have a cover reveal component to it. Which reminds me that I need to go take another stab at writing the back copy for Disillusioned.

I hope that you are all having a much better week that we are having here at the Murray house.

Dean

Hi, everyone.

Another quick update to let you all know that I didn’t give up on the mailing list and resolving the issues roughly a third of you were having with the signup process. My apologies that things have dragged out this long, I’ve been sick since Christmas Eve, so I’m not firing on all cylinders. Nothing that some rest won’t fix now that Katie convinced me to go in to the doctor this morning.

I’ve got a question in to tech support, which will hopefully help, but from experience in my past lives I know that intermittent problems like this are always the hardest to troubleshoot. Because of that, I’ve gone ahead and changed the e-mail list over to a single opt in configuration. That means that there isn’t any confirmation e-mail to worry about. Once you enter your e-mail address into the form on my site, you’re on the list and you should receive the e-mail with the coupon codes for Torn and Thawed Fortunes a few minutes after that.

That should fix the problem of people not being able to sign up, which only leaves the question of what to do about everyone who tried to sign up over the last two weeks but had problems with the confirmation link.

I don’t want anyone who tried to sign up for my mailing list to miss out on the free books that I promised them, so I’m going to go ahead and manually subscribe everyone who has tried to sign up for my mailing list but has not completed the e-mail confirmation step. Once that is done, I’ll send them an e-mail with the coupon codes on it and hopefully at that point everyone will be sorted out.

Thanks again for your patience during this process,

Dean

Hi, All.

Just a quick post to let everyone know that the new mailing list seems to be ticking along more or less as planned, but there are some people who have only completed the first step of the signup process.

My list is a double-opt in list, so if you haven’t received a confirmation e-mail asking you to click a link that points back here to my site, or if you haven’t received your e-mail with the coupon codes for Torn and Thawed Fortunes on it, then you aren’t actually signed up yet.

Manually adding people is a little work on my end, but I’d much rather do that than have someone miss out on their copies of Torn or Thawed Fortunes. Just e-mail me (dean (at) deanwrites <dot> com), let me know what e-mail address you were trying to get signed up with and I’ll do my best to get you squared away.

Thanks,

Dean

For all of you Christians out there, Merry Christmas.

For everyone else, Happy Holidays!

I hope you all have a great few days and a wonderful new year.

Dean,

My original blog was hosted on blogger/blogspot. It only took a year or two for me to start bumping up against some of the limitations on the platform, at which point I set out to create this blog.

I initially tried to move the posts from the old blog over here, but than didn’t end up working out, so I’ve just left them there. If you are interested in my posts that predate this blog you can go here to read my old blog.

Thanks,

Dean