johnwilker.com

Writing

Let It Snow 2020

by Leave a Comment

Audiobook fan? This is your chance to stock up (or at least try). I stumbled onto this awesome industry-wide, cross genre audiobook giveaway. It goes all month and is just getting started (as of my posting this)

All you have to do is search for #snowaudio2020 on instagram, twitter, facebook, tiktok (Guessing) to find hundreds of authors offering free copies of their audiobooks.

I’m giving away ten copies of The Adventures of Wil Calder as my entry into this giveaway/raffle.

Just enter here.

Best of luck! May the odds be forever in your favor.

An Update on Audio

by

You’d think ACX (the back end of audible, owned by Amazon) would be solid, fast, reliable, somewhat user friendly, etc. You’d be wrong. It’s a bit of a mess, and with everything going on this year, has more or less ground to a halt.

Space Rogues 1 has been live on audible since mid-April 2019.

We finally got everything done for Space Rogues 2 only to realize I had set it up against a version of Space Rogues 2 that I pulled from production, replacing it with a new edition. Think ACX could just move the audio production from one entry to another? Nope, I’d have to re-submit and re-contract with my narrator. Because, you know, why have a system that works well?

That was the final straw.

I’ve been eyeing taking my audio wide for a while. Until recently Audible was it, they were on Amazon and iTunes. Now there’s a lot of other options.

So I pulled the trigger. I’ve bought out my Narrator, the awesome KC Johnston for Space Rogues 1 & 2 and we’ll be producing the rest of the series free of Amazon/Audible nonsense and making the series available on all audiobook platforms!

I’m STOKED!

Space Rogues 2 Audio cover

Space Rogues 1 and 2 are now in Findaway voices system, working through quality control.

Sadly, in the end I had pull Space Rogues 1 from Audible to re-upload because they don’t have a clause to get out of exclusivity early if you did royalty share. All reviews lost :(

Such is life and lesson learned (again), Amazon is not your friend if you’re a business person. I cannot wait! to share the wide availability of Space Rogues 1 &2 with everyone!

Finish a Book, Get Free Beer

by

Space Rogues 8 WIP – Done

So, this is a new one, and I have ZERO objections :)

Given that we’re moving into winter, and that Denver (and CO, and most of America) are racing towards new COVID-19 surges, Nicole and I went to one of our favorite breweries to do some “work from a patio, with beer,” work.

I was almost done with the first draft of “Here There Be Monsters” the 8th book in the Space Rogues series. An hour or so after we sat down, I typed “The End” and so took the above picture to celebrate, posting it to my instagram feed. Of course, being the good social media citizen I was I tagged my location, Empourium Brewing.

A few minutes later one of the staff comes out to offer virtual high fives and elbow bumps. It took me a second to realize she’d already seen my post!

We hung out for a bit more (hours and beers) then headed to our next stop (another brewery that was doing a sushi pairing!).

When the crew brought our bill out, they also gifted us a 4-pack of the beer Nicole and I were drinking!

A first for sure, and a trend I have no complaints with continuing forever. Might have to have the crew visit if they make it back to Earth again.

So anyway, that made my weekend!

Scrivener for iOS (NOT iPadOS) needs some love

by

I get it. Software is hard and takes time. I’ve never begrudged developers taking the time to release good software and good updates.

Scrivener might be the exception to my “Don’t complain” policy.

Scrivener is still an iOS app, with an iPad interface. We’ve had iPadOS now for over a year. iPadOS 14 came out last month. In that time, Literature & Latte has released 2 updates to Scrivener iOS, the last being 9 months ago.

I get it, Scrivener isn’t the only application they have, and I don’t know if it’s even their most lucrative. I also don’t know if it’s trivial or not to recompile as an iPadOS app. Maybe if L&L was a bit more transparent I’d know.

What I also know is that now that I’ve moved to a more iPad Pro centered workflow, for my writing, Scrivener is becoming more annoying than not. Especially it’s antiquated way of viewing files in your project.

Have a document in your research folder? You have to back all the way up to the top level of your project, then go down from there to your research file. Find what you need, then reverse those steps to get back to the scene you’re writing.

The pain of looking up your research when writing in Scrivener

I’m normally very very pro Scrivener. If someone asked me today, I wouldn’t recommend the iOS version. The Mac version, yes, it’s great.

I use it daily. There have been times where I’ve needed to move things around and rather than deal with the clunky mobile interface, I come back to my office, wake up my computer, open scrivener after Dropbox has synced, and move things. Then I close it all down and go back to my iPad. It’s tedious, to say the least.

More and more DabbleWriter which I love overall, is looking more attractive as my main writing project app for iPad and desktop. I tend to move back and forth right now between the two tools, but maybe I’ll take a break on Scrivener and go all-in on Dabble for a bit.

Oh, by the way, I write Thrillers too.

by

Island of Secrets Cover

Lesson learned, release two books really close to each other, while also running conferences, means something will not get the love it deserves.

In this case, it’s my action/adventure thriller ‘Island of Secrets‘

I decided to branch out a bit from science fiction to write something a little more down to Earth. A team of treasure hunters going where they’re paid to go to find treasures and secrets long lost.

It came out last week, go grab it if you’re a can of Clive Cussler style adventures

WIP Thursday – Different Sizes and Shapes

by

The droids have a homeworld now. We’ve seen all kinds of droids throughout the adventures of the crew of the Ghost. Not all of them look like Gabe.

Wil notices that Gabe is pointing to what he thought was a powered down load lifter. It was a load lifter, but not powered down, just sitting motionless. It rumbles to life shifting to turn it’s flat optical sensors toward Gabe and the others, “Hello, Gabe.”
“Interim Governor, Mitch,” Gabe replies.
“Mitch?” Wil whispers to Cynthia who elbows him in the ribs then shrugs.
The load lifter droid rolls toward the group as they arrive at the bottom. “It is an honor to meet friends of Gabe the Liberator.”
Gabe makes a choking sound. His friends all smile.
Zephyr inclines her head, “The honor is ours, you’ve accomplished so much in a short period.”
“It helps that we do not sleep,” Mitch replies. The load lifter is at least three meters tall and two wide. His scuffed and warn body is yellow with black stripes. “We expect to have phase one completed in forty of fifty rotations.” Wil whistles. Mitch continues, “We owe a great debt to Ben-Ari Vulvo. You might find this strange, but his technical skills rival that of many of our technical droid citizens.”
Bennie blushes a deeper green. He rocks on his heels, “My, uh, my pleasure.”
Wil steps closer to the governor, “Listen, uh, Mitch, we actually have a favor to ask you.”

Space Rogues 8: No subtitle yet, is proving to be fun. We get to visit the new droid homeworld for a little, and without giving too much away, there’s a heist.

Your Cart