New site bookstore, and other things

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1. The plugin I was using to sell Twenty Palaces directly from my website wasn’t working correctly, so I’ve switched to something else. This new thing is quite complicated, almost like getting an iPhone just so you can tell the time, but I hope soon to have more fiction to sell from my site, so here it is.

The only problem is that I can’t make the PayPal Sandbox work so I can’t test drive the whole thing first. It’s annoying, but if someone wants to buy Twenty Palaces through the site, would you let me know how it goes? I assume I’ll hear from people who have problems, but… you know. It’d be nice to be sure all this works. (Added later: It doesn’t.)

2. [Deleted]

3. I have the first eight(ish) chapters of A Blessing of Monsters ready to send to my agent. My wife is reading them first to catch anything deeply stupid (not that… ahem… there’s anything… oh hell). She’s not what you’d call a fan of epic fantasy, but she’s giving it a go anyway.

4. And having the new book is helping me deal with self-publishing Twenty Palaces. I can’t say I’m pleased to be releasing it this way. Yeah, I’m glad readers who love the series get this story, too, but it also makes me mourn a bit more.

Which is why it’s good to have something fun and cool to work on.

5. If I can get decent cover art together, I’m going to add short fiction to my online bookstore. Assuming the bookstore is any good.

6. And yes, I’m up late. My son is having a bit of trouble getting to sleep.

Error messages

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I’ve received a sudden influx of error messages. If someone out there is having trouble buying the book through my site, please shoot me an email at harry at harryjconnolly period com. I’m not sure what’s happening and I’d like to find out.

Thanks.

Randomness for 11/27

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1) We Watch It For You: Rage of the Yeti. OMG, why didn’t anyone tell me this exists!

2) Walking through doors causes forgetting, study determines.

3) Ultra-serious Amazon.com reviewers take on pepper spray.

4) Reuters Best 100 Photos of 2011. Some of these are gorgeous. Some of these are difficult to look at.

5) Famous paintings with irreverent new titles.

6) “Twe-twe-2016!” A truly terrible trailer for a movie from Ghana. So awful and so compelling. Video.

7) The series bible for the old D&D cartoon.

Twenty Palaces update

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Sales through the website have continued, and I’m grateful to everyone who has bought a copy from me. At this point, as soon as I see the payment notification from PayPal, I’m emailing the file to the reader. I’m sorry that there’s that delay, but I will do my best to get it to you as soon as possible.

 

Also, by this point, everyone who has purchased a copy of the book should have received one. If not, please let me know. I’ll do my best to fix it quickly.

One more thing: if you bought and read Twenty Palaces, would you consider reviewing it, please? I would appreciate the help.

Today I have to get the hell out of the house and work on A Blessing of Monsters. What with the plugin/direct sales ordeal and the holiday, I haven’t worked on it since Tuesday. That’s bad. So I’m going to run some errands, have more pie for breakfast, and sneak out to the Starbucks and the library so I can make a few words. Wish me luck.

For folks ordering Twenty Palaces through my website

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I’m finding that about 15% 20% 24% 50%(!!) of the people who order Twenty Palaces are contacting me afterwards to say they haven’t received an automatic email with a download link. What scares me is that there might be folks who are waiting for me to send it manually.

Guys, if you ordered the books and didn’t receive an email in ten or fifteen minutes (and it’s not in your spam trap) contact me directly. I’ll be happy to send you the files directly.

Added later: Damn. I need to find a new sales plugin for WordPress. I’d tried eShop but it was too complex and had too many screens to click through. That’s annoying. However, the one I chose seems to be TOO simple, and it doesn’t work.

Because this is how I want to be spending my writing days… grumble grumble.

Better yet, when I get the PayPal notifications for the sales, I’ll just email the file to you directly the next time I check email.

Later still: I have some errands I absolutely need to run, but I’ll do my best to find another way to sell these tonight, if I can. Has anyone used http://www.e-junkie.com/ ? A reader over on LJ suggested it as a smart alternative.

The Twenty Palaces post

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As promised, finally, I have the Twenty Palaces prequel ready for sale.

Here’s the cover:

Twenty Palaces cover, small image

Here’s the book: When Ray Lilly was 13 years old, a handgun accident landed his best friend, Jon Burrows, in a wheelchair and turned Ray into a runaway and petty criminal. Fifteen years later, Ray returns home after a stint in prison; he’s determined to go straight, but he knows he can’t do that without making peace with his old friend.

What Ray doesn’t expect is to discover that Jon has just received a mysterious cure–not only is he out of his wheelchair, he seems stronger and faster than… well, pretty much anyone. Worse, his cure has drawn all sorts of unwanted attention: the media are camped out on his block, the police are investigating him for insurance fraud, and weird shadowy figures have begun to draw closer, figures who clearly do not mean to do Jon any good.

Can Ray atone for the biggest mistake of his life by protecting his oldest and best friend? What’s more, should he?

Yeah, this is the book where Ray meets Annalise, creates his ghost knife, and sees a predator for the first time. It’s also going to be the last Twenty Palaces novel for a while.

Buy here:

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Smashwords

Thanks for reading, folks.

Turns out that this year, the things I’m thankful for…

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are the same as last year. Family, talent, readership, friends I don’t see often enough: all of these things are at the center of my life.

But there are so many little things, too. I’m thankful for the other writers who create books, for the sunsets I get to enjoy on clear mornings, for the hummingbirds outside my window, for our local library systems, and for so much more.

Now I’m off to start my day. I hope you folks have a good one.

My Personal Disadvantages (a weight loss post)

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This one will be shorter than the “Advantages” post and will have several of the same entries: Continue reading

Randomness for 11/19

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1) Ten Ridiculous Reasons To Call 911

2) Teens getting drunk on vodka-soaked tampons shoved up their nethers, aka “butt chugging”. I call bullshit on this.

3) A tasteless Christmas gift for the tasteless boozehounds in your life.

4) 16 Unsettling Photos of Twilight Fans. Number four is disturbing as hell.

5) Thirteen Images from National Geographic’s Photo Contest.

6) via Ta Nahisi Coates: Mayor Bloomberg’s long history of cracking down on the exercise of First Amendment rights.

7) The 25 Best Entries for Damn You, Autocorrect in 2011. via mizkit

Question: How are you planning to celebrate World Toilet Day today?

Five Things Make a Friday Post

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1) For folks who are still waiting for the Twenty Palace prequel, I have already self-published a number of short stories and novellas. None of them are in the 20P universe, but one is a historical fantasy set near Seattle in 1879, and the rest are second world fantasies. Some have never been published anywhere else: Kindle | Nook

2) Note for folks who visit that B&N page: I’m not the photographer, and I’ve never published scraped text through Hephaestus Books

3) Today is my tenth anniversary. The traditional gift is an ebook, right?

4) Last night we had our anniversary dinner. We ate steaks from Don and Joe’s, roast beets, green beans, and fingerling potatoes, a fancy cheese that I lost the label for and can’t ID right now, a delicious tiny lemon cheesecake from The Confectional, and a bottle of Beringer Cab from 1997 that we bought for our wedding. Thumbs up to all of it.

5) My son read a D&D comic and now wants to play the game. Do I have time to run a fantasy campaign? Shit to the no.