Now at Google Play Books!

A message came from an overseas fan of mine at Wattpad the other day. He was interested in buying my books, but only had access to the Google Play store.

I had uploaded a few of my books to the Google Play store a year and a half to two years ago. I found the experience confusing and clunky, and I was never sure if my books were on sale or not. However, not wanting to lose a possible customer and reader, I decided to give it another go.

The experience has much improved over when I last tried it. Uploading was easy, as was entering in the information. (It helps to always scroll down the windows you come across.) The only clunky part was pricing. Google will discount your books, so you have to adjust your price so that Google's discount doesn't take you under what your price is at Amazon, because Amazon is very aggressive about price-matching.

As of now, most of my titles are on sale at the Google Play store. I'll update the various pages here at the blog over the coming week with links for each title.

Defender News!

Lots of news about the Defender series to get to. First off, the fifth book in the series, Red Raymond, is now out. Here's the blurb:

News from elsewhere has caught the attention of Allan and Nancy, “The Defender” and “The Moon Spirit,” not long after their adventure in Green Hills. A mysterious outlaw known as “Red Raymond” is robbing travelers on the road. Rumors hint that Red Raymond knows magic.

Allan and Nancy head to the dukedoms of West Bend and Whitewood to investigate. Locals tell tales of Red Raymond eluding guards, and giving what he steals to the poor.

Is Red Raymond a mage? Is he giving up what he takes, or keeping it for himself? Should the Defender and the Moon Spirit stop him, and if they should, can they stop Red Raymond?

This is when changes in the releases of the Defender series will start. Red Raymond is only available as an ebook. But there will now be 5-volume print compilations published with every fifth release of the individual titles. Tales of the Defender, Volume 1, is now available in print, and I'll have copies at my events.

There's one last change to tell you about. You can now read the first Defender tale, Elderwood, in its entirety at Wattpad, and the ebook is free, right now at Smashwords, and elsewhere later.

I hope you enjoy the Defender series, and like these changes!

Writing Stats for December 2014

This is the final post for this year, letting you know how much I'm writing.

This has been a decent month for me, even with the holidays and being out of town for an author fair. This month I wrote 154 pages, so, yes, I did end the year with a good page count

As far as the year goes, I wrote 1,281 pages, which translates to about 320,000 words. I know that's lower than I could have done, all things considered. These monthly posts about my page count tell me that, while there are times when I slack off, I do have to take into account that life sometimes gets in the way of writing. Conventions, minor health matters, and urgent grocery runs do come up and will interfere with writing. I think the best thing for me to do, going forward, is to work to make up for those lost days whenever I can. I know I did some of that in December.

I plan to carry on with these monthly posts in 2015. Here's hoping for more productive days!

Happy New Year!