Just a heads up for everyone that we’re finally starting to get the new print editions of the Reflections & Dark Reflections books coming together. It’s been quite a learning curve to get the details all right, but I think these new editions are gorgeous.

So far we have Broken, Bound, and Hunted all live on Amazon, and they should also become available through your local book store sometime in the next few weeks.

I just approved the proofs for Torn and Shattered, so they should likewise  start showing up in the usual places over the next little while.

Thanks,

Dean

For anyone who bought Touched by Love and enjoyed Ednah Walters’ Runes, the next book in the series has been released!

You can get Witches:
From Amazon
From iBooks
and all other major retailers.

Time has once again gotten away from me. The last time I did a status update was back in November and a lot has happened since then. In 2013 I wrote just over 581,000 words and released 3 novels. In 2014 I wrote a bit more than 795,000 words and released 7 novels.

My goal for 2015 is a million words. That’s a lot of writing, but with my recent changes to my workflow, the incorporation of speech recognition software into my process to save my wrists, and trimming away some of the less-valuable tasks that I’ve historically spent time on, I think it should be possible, but it means that I’m going to have to make some changes that I’ve been considering.

The main change is that, I’m going to stop publishing a release date for most of my books. I can see situations where it still might be worthwhile to announce a release date 6-9 months in advance of a book going live, but right now it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. My release schedule has a couple of months of slack in it so that I know I can make the release dates even if I get sick, have an emergency in the family, or life otherwise throws us a curveball.

Eliminating the pre-announced release dates means that I can just release each book as soon as it is finished with the editing and formatting process, which means that all of you will get to read the books sooner than you otherwise would.

That means it’s more important than ever to sign up for my mailing list as that will be the main channel by which I let all of you know that I’ve released another book out into the wild.

As of right now, I have all three of the Awakening Series books finished (as far as the writing side of things goes) and am working them through the editing and formatting process. I also have the 5th Dark Reflections book written and I’ve also finished the 1st and 2nd books in a new, dystopian series that I’m very excited about.

I’m currently coming around the home stretch on the first book in a new YA PNR romance series (like Broken or Reborn) (the working title right now is Stoneskin) that I’m hoping to finish up before the end of the month. Once that happens, I’ll have a rather tricky decision ahead of me.

I still need to write Jess’ story in Reflections, finish up the dystopian trilogy, or write the second and third book in the new PNR series (Stoneskin) I’m working one. There are positives and negatives to all of those options, so I haven’t been able to pick between them all yet—I suspect it will just come down to which book feels the most ready to write in the back of my mind.

Katie and I are still hard at work trying to get all of the Reflections books in out print, which is still turning out to be much more involved than we expected given that we’ve done other print books in the past, but I think we’re starting to close in on having the first 2 or 3 just right.

I’ll try to keep you posted on where I go from here.

Thanks,

Dean

This one feels like it’s been a lot longer coming for some reason, but I’m incredibly happy to announce that Reborn is now available on all major platforms!

I hope you all enjoy it, I’ve left the price at just $.99 to start out.

The Setup:
True love never dies.

In just a few days a new arrival at Selene’s high school will turn her entire world upside down. She’s never met anyone so attractive—or so mysterious—before this, but Jace’s unyielding insistence that they’ve known each other for decades can’t be denied—not given how familiar he feels to her.

In the hidden world of gods and fairies what you don’t know can get you killed faster than anything else and only those you love have any chance of saving you.

Reborn is a 101,000 word novel. Reborn is followed by Immortal.

Buy Reborn as an Ebook:
From Apple iBooks ($.99)
From Amazon US ($.99)
From Amazon UK (.99 GBP)
From Barnes & Noble ($.99)
From Smashwords ($.99)
From Google Play ($.99)
From Kobo ($.99)

Just a quick post to let everyone see the cover for Reborn! I think that Katie did another fantastic job with this one.

I’ve got a blog post that has been sitting on my hard drive for nearly a month, that I still need to get posted, but one of the key points is that I’m moving away from a previously announced release schedule as that mostly just results in me having finished books sitting around waiting for the release date to arrive.

Based on that, I’m excited to say that Reborn should go live in the two weeks, and I’m excited for all of you to see it!

Here’s the setup for Reborn:
True love never dies.

In just a few days a new arrival at Selene’s high school will turn her entire world upside down. She’s never met anyone so attractive—or so mysterious—before this, but Jace’s unyielding insistence that they’ve known each other for decades can’t be denied—not given how familiar he feels to her.

In the hidden world of gods and fairies what you don’t know can get you killed faster than anything else and only those you love have any chance of saving you.

Thanks for all that you do to help spread the word!

Dean

Some of you know that my father, Larry Murray, has written several books. The first book in his Chet series is currently free everywhere but Amazon.

Chet takes all of the best elements from books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Where the Red Fern Grows, and combines them into something uniquely heartwarming. I’ve read both Chet 2 and Chet 3, and the series just keeps getting better and better with each book, so if you like Chet 1 you’re going to want to stick around to see what happens next.

For those of you who usually get your books on Amazon (where Chet currently isn’t free) you can either pay full retail for it (it’s worth it), pick up a free .mobi from Smashwords (just like you did with the free copy of Torn you get for signing up for my mailing list–just without having to worry about the coupon code), or you can let Amazon know that you’ve found Chet for a lower price somewhere else and request that they price-match the other retailers.

Here’s a screenshot of where you would go do that on Amazon:

Here’s a link to Larry’s website and the product page for Chet 1 with all of the links to the various retailers.

Thanks,

Dean

I realized late last night that I never actually put up a blog post announcing that Shattered is live. Most of you probably already got the email indicating that Shattered is live, but just in case you’re not on my mailing list, here’s the official blog announcement–Shattered and Marked are both live now 🙂

Shattered Product Page (with links to everywhere you can buy it)

Marked Product Page (with links to everywhere you can buy it)

Update: I’ve got quotes picked out for all of the books, but I haven’t managed to get a hold of all of the reviewers in question, so if you  want to try and bump one of the quotes with something you provide you’re welcome do so 🙂

Books that I know I absolutely won’t be changing:

Bound, Driven, Lost, Hunted. Everything else could potentially see some changes before everything is said and done.

Here’s the latest mockup for the new Torn print cover:

Arriving at a cover concept for a now series is always a very difficult process for Katie and me.

The cover for any given series needs to look good as a thumbnail, feature my name prominently, and convey the genre so that readers get what they were expecting when they open the book up.

That would be tough enough all by itself, but Katie and I are both also long-time readers and sometimes a concept that looks fine when evaluated in a vacumm will get vetoed because it reminds of something else that we read back when we were teenagers.

We knew when we decided to re-brand the Reflections series earlier this year that it was going to be a lot of work, but we didn’t expect it to take this long to arrive at a wrap around cover we both liked.

Two days ago Katie put the finishing touches on this piece of art and I thought we were there until we realized that quote at the top (Intense, Violent and Intriguing) is actually for Bound rather than for Torn. Dang it.

If you blow up the cover you can see that the middle contains a couple of other reviews about The Reflections Series (it should read Reflections Universe). That’s a trick that publishers use when they have a really good quote about one book in a series that they want to use to sell another book in the series. In our original version of the cover, all three of the reviews (called pull-quotes in publishing speak) were down in the middle of the cover, which worked because we’d attributed them to the Reflections Universe.

We can’t do that if we pull a quote up to the top though–it needs to be about the book the cover belongs to. So the back half of this cover works for Bound, but not for Torn.

I really like the layout Katie has put together here, and I’d like to use it for the rest of the books in the Reflections Universe (the blurbs and pull quotes will obviously change some from book to book) so I’d like to ask for help from those of you who want to see each of the Reflections & Dark Reflections books reissued in print with new covers.

We need pull-quotes that will work for the top of the print books, separate pull-quotes for each of the books other than Bound. The perfect pull-quote will be 2-5 words so that it will fit at the top of the cover at a similar size to what you see in the Torn mockup. If you think you have the perfect review though and it needs to be bigger, don’t let that stop you. Katie could always do 3 words on one line really big and then a follow-on sentence in much smaller text to round out the quote. Just remember, the best pull quotes are really punchy/short.

If you’re willing to help out and don’t mind having your name on the back of one of my books for at least the next several years, please leave your reviews here in the comments to this post, one review per comment, being clear which book you’re reviewing.

If I use your quote, then once I’ve got the final proof from the printer, I’ll sign it and send it to you (anywhere in the lower 48 United States–sorry international shipping is brutal).

Bonus points if once you’ve written your review you copy it over to Amazon 🙂

A big thanks in advance to everyone who’s going to help out!

-Dean

I’ll post one more teaser on Monday when Marked goes live–we’re almost there. It’s been a long wait, but I really think you’re going to love the next installment in Alec and Adri’s story!

Two more days until Marked goes live!