Jason Lancour's Blog

Storm Cloud Rising is now available! Yes! That’s right. Finally published after 23 years of labor. Amazon has Kindle, paperback, and hardcover versions, or, if you are more of a Barnes & Noble fan, Hardcover and the “pocket-sized” paperbacks are available there! Links below.

Amazon Kindle

Amazon Paperback

Amazon Hardcover

Barnes & Noble

The marketplace automated algorithms are currently scurrying furiously to get the links to all link to the same page, but for now, here they are.

In other news…

*In appreciation for your interest in my writing, I will be sending out a free short story to my newsletter subscribers. The newsletter is also a great way to stay on top of book updates and get occasional free stuff. The first draft of the story is nearly complete, and it should be ready to go shortly. {In the interest of full disclosure, it has already slipped past the semi-official 17 thousand-word mark, meaning it will technically be a novelette or novella. I’m not sure which, as long as we are being honest}

*As another way of thanking you for supporting me, I’m offering you a chance to be part of the creative process. Once the story is available, I will put out the word via the newsletter, and you can snag your very own copy of the currently untitled not-so-short story. After you have read the piece, I am opening the floor to you, my most ardent supporters, to suggest a title for the new work. The best title wins.

*The next volume of the Storm Cloud series will be titled Storm Cloud Breaks. It was sorta finished-ish… (but not really – who am I kidding?) I am currently in the midst of a major overhaul that I have been avoiding for 20 years, so it won’t be ready before the fall. The changes were necessary, and the book will be significantly smoother as a result. Thank you for your patience.

I am beyond pleased to announce that Storm Cloud Rising, my first full-length novel, will be released on May 25th of 2023. (After two decades of fiddling with the thing, it’s about time.)

It will be available in Kindle format on Amazon, both for purchase and on the Kindle Unlimited program. Also, on Amazon, there will be a paperback version as before and a proper hardcover version once I can work out the distribution kinks. If you’re more of a Barnes & Noble shopper, I will have the pocket-size paperback (a smaller page size to fit more easily in one’s pocket, depending on the size of said pocket.) The hardcover may also be available on other online retailers in the near future, but that remains to be seen.

If you intend to read this book, first of all, please accept my thanks. Secondly, be aware that this is very much a “part one” of a series. The ending is not a conclusion. (Don’t get mad. You were warned.) The next book was completed but is currently undergoing a series of major renovations. I hope to have it ready to go before the end of the year.

*I’ve added a page to the website featuring links to articles written about Rise of the Red Hand and various places where you can show support, such as Book Bub, Goodreads, and the like. Click —> Here

*The website as a whole is overdue for renovation. Stand by for updates. Until then, it looks like this —> Website

*Wandering Bear Creative is the imprint under which all of my books are published. Expanding into an LLC and potentially branching out into other projects is currently under review. For example, I know a guy who has accumulated a fair catalog of photography and is ripe for a photo book. Stay tuned.

*If you’ve read Rise of the Red Hand but have not yet had the chance to give me a review, please consider the advantages of doing so. Rating and Review opportunities are available on Amazon, Goodreads, Book Bub, and Bookwire, to name a few. More reviews = better standing in the Great Algorithm, which translates to the overall success of my efforts as an author. When the level of success translates to free time, I can write more and faster, thereby providing more for you, the reader, to enjoy. It’s a win-win.

I want to finish with my heartfelt thanks to you for supporting my writing endeavors. Without your support, it’s unlikely that I could summon the will to continue writing. As always, you should feel free to contact me by any channel that suits you. —> Contact me!

Rise of the Red Hand is now available on Barnes and Noble .com in paperback form. If that’s enough for you, here is a link!

Click here to go straight to it!

You might recall that the book has been available in both paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon since October.

Amazon is still currently the only place to get your e-Book version, which you can either purchase outright, or you can enjoy it as part of the Kindle Unlimited program, if you choose to participate in such things. And, as a side note, you don’t even need to own a kindle device. You can download the Kindle app from wherever you download apps and read it on any of your devices that run apps.

As for paperbacks, you can now buy online from either Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Depending on any rewards programs you participate in, perhaps one retailer may be preferable to you over another. I’m looking into additional outlets as well. Stay tuned.

The Amazon paperback is 5” x 8” and 135 pages – a slim, unassuming trim size. Amazon has a limited number of options for the physical size of the books they print, so that was the one that I liked best. The Barnes and Noble paperback is 4.25” x 7” and 180 pages. It’s all the same words, just a smaller trim size. It matches more closely with genre trade paperbacks, and personally, I like this size better. (If you saw any of the advance reading copies that I had printed before the release, this size matches that one.)

If you have already read the book, and I’m hoping you enjoyed it, I’d consider it a personal favor if you drop me a review on Amazon, Goodreads, BookBub, or any other place you can find.

Or, if you haven’t yet picked up your copy of Rise of the Red Hand, you now have two choices. Links Below.

Choose wisely.

Buy on Amazon!

Buy on Barnes and Noble

I’ve had some folks asking me how the book thing is going, so this feels like a good time to share a general progress update.

Rise of the Red Hand was released on Amazon on October 28. If you haven’t managed to pick up your copy yet, feel free to do so. Sales are a little slow, but I’m competing with literally millions of titles, many of which have the marketing wing of big publishing companies behind them, so I’m trying to keep it all in perspective.

It’s also helpful to remind myself that Rise of the Red Hand was intended as a promotional piece. The sole purpose of the book is to make fans, not to make a fortune. I’ve got another 20 books or so floating around in my brain that are loosely based around the same subplot – I’ll use those to make a fortune. (Or just make a living. I’m good either way.)

I’m running a marketing campaign on Amazon presently, which is delivering a noticeable increase in sales. Targeting specific keywords seems to be doing the trick.

The next book, Storm Cloud Rising, is essentially finished. I’m in the process of a final tech edit – fixing punctuation errors mostly, and perhaps the occasional tweak in word choice for clarity. I’m sharing it with my Beta reading team (which right now is a team of one – if you’re interested, hit me up). I’ve gotten good feedback from my Beta team in the past, so depending on the results there, I may do an additional round of minor changes.

However, I don’t plan on releasing Storm Cloud Rising until I have reliable data on different marketing and advertising strategies. The way the algorithm works on Amazon emphasizes sales over time. A book that sells 50 copies in one day will receive a higher “rank” than a book that sells 1 copy a day for 50 days. Once a book has the algorithm solidly behind it, the sales begin to snowball, and momentum takes over. My goal is to acquire solid data on the effectiveness of as many marketing tools as I can find and then apply those tools all at once when I release the next book. Then if my understanding is correct, with a lot of sales over a short period, the algorithm would kick in, and Amazon would begin to push my book(s) forward on its own.

That’s the goal. The snag at the moment is a lack of reviews and ratings for Rise of the Red Hand. Amazon’s dreaded algorithm leans heavily on reviews and ratings to decide how to rank a title. I am aware of two other platforms that I could utilize for book promotion, but both require a book to have a certain presence in the marketplace – meaning more reviews and ratings.

So… if you are reading this and you’ve also managed to read my book, in addition to my deep appreciation for your choice to spend time reading my work, I would also extend further appreciation if you could find the time to drop me a rating or a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Bookbub. Especially if you want to see Storm Cloud Rising released anytime soon. I don’t think I’m allowed to do any kind of giveaway or reward-based appeal for reviews, so I hope my admiration, thanks, and respect for you will be enough.

Beyond that, my goal is to increase subscribers to my newsletter (found on the website) and get some more followers on the ol’ Instagram page. Having a measurable audience gives me an idea of how many sales are occurring due to advertising and how many are from social media and other such networking.

I will finish with my deep gratitude for you who have expressed interest in my work and say that your support means more to me than I can express.

P.S.

Sharing is caring! If you liked the book, tell your friends. If you hated it, tell your enemies you loved it. Make them suffer too.

P.P.S.

I’m posting this on my blog as well as in the newsletter. My apologies for any redundancy.

My debut novel, Rise of the Red Hand, is now available on Amazon. Yes, that’s right. I finally did the thing. There is a little more to this post, but if you feel like you’ve already read enough of this blah blah blog, and you’d prefer to get on with reading the book instead, here is the link…

But first, a little background. I began writing a novel back in the year 2000. It was mostly finished within a few years. (Or at least I thought it was.) In any case, life got away from me, and I only picked at it every now and again; sometimes as much as 3 years would go by without me even thinking about it. Here comes 2020. Pandemic. Lockdown. Pathogen awareness year. Stay and home and occupy yourself, they say. Once it became clear that the “two-week break” from work was going to be a lot more than two weeks, I decided to actually finish the book. I was able to knock the dust off of the poor thing and get it finished. (Or so I thought.) (Again.) After smashing my head on the desk repeatedly, I landed on the title Storm Cloud Rising.

After doing a rather exhaustive analysis of publishing options available in the year 2020 to a fellow in my position, I opted to go with Amazon Direct publishing. I’ll spare you every step of the thought process, but in my estimation, it seemed the best choice for me. Now that it had become apparent that I’d be doing my own marketing, I dove into some more research and became aware of a concept known as the “reader magnet.” This is a smaller thing, usually a short story or some such, meant to be given away for free, to attract and entice readers and hopefully future fans.

With the idea of “Short Story” (17,000 or fewer words) in my head, I set out to create what has become Rise of the Red Hand. I kicked around a few ideas, and finally settled on a prequel of sorts – highlighting a character from my primary work. (Though, one could argue that because the so-called “prequel” is published first, then it’s not actually a prequel per se. I’m not obsessed over the terminology here.)

I sketched out the bones of it with that in mind. However, as the story unfolded, I blasted past 17,000 words fairly quickly. Well, a novella is 17 – 40,000 words. Looks like I’m writing a novella now. I crested 40,000 before it was all finished and decided to keep the final word count where it landed at just under 48,000. I felt I had kept things concise and didn’t see much logic behind trimming 8,000 words simply so I could refer to it as a novella.

Now that I’ve got an actual novel, I have come across the phenomenon where just about every marketing tool that I’ve come across only works if you’ve actually got something to market, that is in an actual market. So, I decided to publish Rise of the Red Hand, on Amazon rather than give it away for free in exchange for a place on my email list. I’ll utilize the marketing tools that I had discovered to push this novel, keep the price low, and use the entire thing to get people interested.

Now, I’ve got a long novel, Storm Cloud Rising (which is actually now the first of two mostly finished novels in what will likely be a series of four) and I’ve also got a short novel, Rise of the Red Hand. But still no reader magnet. So… I’m planning on writing a short story. A bit of a prequel for another character from Storm Cloud Rising. I’ll offer it as a freebie to anyone who wants to be on my mailing list. Sound familiar? Until that is ready, the free items that one can receive in exchange for a place on a mailing list are limited to sample chapters from my finished novels. A short story is on the way.

Enough chatter. Check out my Published Novel and if you’re feeling particularly generous, drop me a review once you’ve finished.

Thanks!!!

How’s the writing going?

Glad you asked. As you may be aware, I have two projects underway currently. The larger project entitled Storm Cloud Rising, has been in progress for quite literally 20 years. When finished, the entire story will span several volumes, and branch off into a number of parallel stories a well. I have had the entire primary story arc sketched out in varying levels of completion since the very beginning. The first two volumes in the series have been in a very-nearly-mostly-almost done condition for several years, and this last year I finally was able to get volume one to a place where I was happy with the text, and ready to move forward.

So, here’s the rub. I was going through a final series of technical edits when I decided to take a peek at my notes for the final volume and to my chagrin, I discovered that the ending as originally planned just didn’t make any sense. There was no sound reasoning behind the characters decision making and several big questions were left unanswered. I’m happy to say that I have fixed the issues, but to do so required some larger changes in the first volumes (Yes – the same ones that I said were finished, but now totally aren’t.)

As a result, this is where we are: I am combing through what has already been written with the new changes in place. I’m checking on continuity and looking for unintended consequences of the changes. Once that is complete, I’ll be able to set volume one loose for some beta reading. (with the understanding that it would still need a few passes for technical errors.)

When last reported, the cover art for the Storm Cloud series was in a bad spot. It looked weak and for lack of a better word, janky. I’m pleased to report that after rethinking the idea, and attacking in a slightly new direction, the cover has landed in a good place, and I’m in a holding pattern with that until I have something to actually wrap a cover around. The map is a work in progress, but I’ve got a solid draft (which you may have seen on my Instagram).

But wait, you said you have two projects going?

Yes. Yes, I do. The other is a short novel – Rise of the Red Hand. This book is a prequel to the Storm Cloud series, focusing on one character. I wrote it to serve as a promotional piece – a reader magnet so to speak. An electronic version is available for subscribers to my newsletter, and if you have somehow missed out on that, Click Here. The cover art is complete, as well as the map. I did some “just for fun” promotional print copies that have circulated around and I’m pleased to say, received some good reviews. The next step for this is to get it through the Kindle / E-book formatting software and make it available on Amazon. Also need to put together a file for a print version, but that process is admittedly a bit vague to me at the moment. Once it’s there, I can pursue other marketing options.

If you have already read Rise of the Red Hand and haven’t had a chance to share your impressions, I’m always open to feedback. I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can reach out to me either thought the contact tab on my website or via Instagram.

So, here is where things stand.

Volume one in the Storm Cloud series is essentially finished. I’m letting it sit for the moment for a few reasons. Firstly, I need to do a once over through the manuscript for typographical errors, punctuation, and whatnot. Also need to fix a small item or two – terminology, clarification of a few vagaries – that sort of thing. I have found that because I have gone over and over the text so many times, I know in my head what I want it to say, and therefore as I’m reading it, my mind inserts the proper text, even though there may be an error actually on the page. experience has taught me that if I gain a little distance from it, I am able to see these issues more clearly. Also, this will be the LAST go through. Any problems that I miss are going to go out in front of the world. I’ve got to get this part right. The second reason for the delay in release I will cover below.

The Cover. Ugh. I’m not happy with what I’ve got so far. (The rough idea is currently viewable under the “Books” tab on the website.) As of right now, I’m solely responsible for every aspect so far. The concept, the layout, the font, and most troublesome – the illustration. I like the idea of keeping it simple and iconic, but the illustration just doesn’t… feel right. It feels a little cold. A little empty. I’ve got an idea for an alternative but nothing worth talking about currently. Stand by.

The free stuff I promised you. Right now, subscribers to my newsletter will get a sample from the opening section of Storm Clouds Rise. It’s in PDF form, but I have been toying about with the Kindle editor and I can do a file format for your kindle if needed. BUT. I am writing a novella currently (clocking in at 36K words – probably land just over 40K). It’s a prequel bit for one of the characters in the primary narrative. I intend to make that the free gift that newsletter subscribers will get as a reward for your interest, but as of yet, it’s not ready to go. I will still send it out as a freebie to any and all existing subscribers once it is finished, so there is no reason to delay signing up for the lovely newsletter.

The final reason I’m holding back the primary novel is marketing. I have been doing some sniffing about, and I am led to believe the following with regard to Amazon publishing. There is a very large number of titles being published via Amazon’s Kindle Direct program. As a result, a new novel from a first time author will have a hard time gaining any level of distinction amongst such a crowded field. One of the way that Amazon determines which books to suggest to its customers is by using an algorithm that factors in sales. Not just total sales figures but more so change in numbers over time. So, if a book sells a lot over a very short period of time, it will get the attention of the algorithm before another book that sells just as many copies (or more) over a longer period of time. So the goal is to build an audience – either by mailing list, or social media followers – to the point that once you have a number of people anxiously awaiting the release of the book, when you finally release it, it sells a lot at once, and the algorithm kicks in and (hopefully) the sales begin to snowball from there.

So, follow me on Instagram. Sign up for my newsletter, read the sample and tell your friends. The sooner I can build a fair following, the sooner this book can hit the ground and you can read the whole thing. It’s a win-win.

Thank you for your time.

Click this Instagram Link! Or the other one! Or type in @jasonlancourauthor. Your call!

So as you can see, the website has been launched. Hopefully all of the stuff works. I am still testing the idea.

I might also mention my old Blog that I wrote in a little bit back in the day.