Alex C. Pierce's Blog

Editing... Done.

Formatting... Done.

All the ancillary prep work... Done

Cover... AMAZING!!!!

Thea Magerand has outdone herself AGAIN. Not only did she create the stunning artwork above, she put up with me while doing it!

What happens when you take a thief and a con-man, that everyone thinks is a monster that should be locked away, and make him captain of the Queen's personal bodyguard?

Gossip, treachery, and paperwork... So much paperwork.

Ren's appointment as Warden, the Queen's personal bodyguard and head of her security has created something of a stir in the walled realm of Lenmar. Opposition to his mere presence within the Crystal Palace is high, and old schemes and rivalries are kindled anew as the tension builds between the nobility and the factions pushing for change.

Ren just wants to keep the Queen safe, solve the mystery of his mentor's disappearance, and figure out why, Haim, who'd saved his life and been his accomplice on more than one occassion, was avoiding him.

An attack on the eve of the Moon Festival, when the Council of Nobles is set to convene, provides the spark to ignite a chain of events that threatens the very foundations that have kept the people of Lenmar safe, and puts everyone Ren cares about in danger.

The Blood of Queens, Book 2 of The Crow's Gambit, is officially set to release on May 3rd 2024 in Print, eBook, and Audio formats.

Where to buy: https://mybook.to/TheBloodofQueens

 

 

Today (technically yesterday, but I didn't sent the file) marks the start of editing on The Blood of Queens, Book 2 in The Crow's Gambit!

I'm super excited to be working with the wonderful Fiona McLaren, who was the editor for The Blood of Crows. I've attempted to take as much of her feedback from the first book into account before sending it to her, but I'm most definitely not perfect (that's where she comes in).

The biggest difference this time around being that no one other than me has even seen the full manuscript yet. I've shared bits and pieces with others, but up until now I've been the only one who knows the how this one ends.

Needless to say, I'm mildly terrified, more than a little bit anxious, and definitely excited to see someone else's thoughts on what Ren, Molly, Haim, and the rest of the gang get up to in Book 2.

The schedule with Fiona runs through December, and I'll try to keep everyone posted. TBoQ is currently on target for an early-ish 2024 release.

I've been on vacation from my day job for the past week and a half. And what does a writer do when they're on vacation? That's correct, I've been writing and revising, with a little bit of going to a big nerdy fan convention in the middle.

Late last week I typed those important words "The End" on the penultimate chapter of The Blood of Queens, Book 2 of The Crow's Gambit and sequel to The Blood of Crows. The revision I just finished is the last "major" revision prior to getting it in the hands of my editor. I'm very much hoping to work with the same editor as book 1 (Fiona, check your inbox, we need to talk schedules).

The revision itself was pretty extensive. Chapters were chucked, created, burned to the ground and rebuilt, plots were rewritten, characters were renamed (leading to me learning far more about the ins-and-outs of Tiddlywiki than I ever wanted to know), and copious cups of coffee were poured onto my brain. But in the end, it all seems to work. The heist at the climax of the book works and feels pretty exciting, and the characters all end up at a place that's very different from where they began.

While I sort things with Fiona I'm doing a polishing pass and fixing all the small issues that I can see, eliminating echoes and crutch words where I can find them. I'm essentially doing that thing that people do before the cleaner comes over, where they pick up all the odds and ends and wash the dishes etc. Then I'll be reaching out to my Beta readers to see who's interested in giving me some tough love.

All told, The Blood of Queens sits comfortably around ~107,000 words, which works out to somewhere between 340-360 pages. So it's fairly in line with the length of the first book so far.

 I'm finding that I thoroughly enjoy this little stint of being a full-time writer. Perhaps someday I'll make enough for it to be a reality, instead of what I do with my vacation from the place that makes it so I can pay the bills.

Book 2 in The Crows Gambit has an actual title now!  The Blood of Queens.

You know that feeling when you know you have a mountain of work ahead of you, and you're all set and prepared for it, then you do something that blows it up and piles a whole lot more work on top of it?

Yeah... that.

I just did that today while revising/rewriting!

There's a lot of good groundwork already done for book 2, with 68K words (as of today) written out. I'm at about the 30K word area of this rewrite, and those last 38K words that already exist? They're a mess for where this rewrite is going, and I'm making them worse, not better. Whatever, I'll roll with it. I'm sure it'll be fine.

Either way, the end result will be better. At least that's the plan. I'm picking up steam as I continue to work on it too, which is nice.

And now some housekeeping!

This graphic will be so much cooler for The Blood of Queens, because people will know some of the characters and I can just put things like "More Molly!" and "More Haim!" etc.
There's a sale on the ebook of The Blood of Crows from June 26th to 30th for 99¢ as a coordinated effort on the part of the SPFBO8 authors. There will be over 40+ indie books (almost 50 as I write this) in the sale from a bunch of great authors.
The Full list of Books on Sale and co-ordination of the sale is all being handled by the wonderful E. G. Radcliff.

No matter how far I get (or don't get) in this competition, the other authors that I'm meeting, and getting to know, really are the best part.
Nah. Buy my book ;P

 I broke blogger... You see, I had a big celebration post scheduled to go last Thursday when The Blood of Crows launched. And... it's still there... scheduled to go at 9am... last Thursday. Every time I go into it I get an error. Every time I try to delete it... it tells me it's not there.

I've opened a ticket. I might need an exorcist.

So, uh, you get some of that fanfare here!

My book is out!!! Like, actually out, and in people's hands. And people are reading it!

I have a cool dashboard that I'm absolutely not obsessng over and refreshing multiple times a day when I should be doing other, important things, like blogging...

It gives me sales breakdowns by territory and format. Right now, it looks a bit like this:

Which I'm certain looks like garbage if you're viewing this on mobile, but the breakdown is cool. I can see how many individual copies are sold, and even how many Kindle Unlimited page reads there are (and multiple someone's are blazing through it in that format).

On the front-end of things, I'm getting reviews! 2 so far, and they're both 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

I've also entered my novel in Mark Lawrence's Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest, which takes 300 entries, puts them in front of 10 judges, and whittles them down to a final champion. I don't know how far I'll get, but it has a great community around it that I'm happy to be a part of.

The Blood of Crows has been assigned to Lynn's Books + The Critiquing Chemist, and looking over their likes and dislikes, and reading through a bunch of their reviews, I think I'm in a good spot.

I was going to give a writing update (there's stuff happening there too), but there's a lot going on in this post already. Tomorrow is a chemo day for Mal, so I'll be spending a good portion of the day in a coffee shop or in my car. I'll likely get some more writing done and post an update on that end of things.

 Tomorrow is book launch day (sort of, the paperback appears to have launched early in some territories? Congrats Japan, Italy, and Estonia)... and I think I have everything sorted?

Needless to say, there won't be much in the way of fanfare or celebration in this post, because I'm saving that for tomorrow, and because I think it's valuable to hash out these last few steps. Mostly for my sake, but others might appreciate it a little.

Amazon says it needs up to 72 hours on a paperback push, so I was arguably a bit late hitting the "Publish" button yesterday afternoon, and it's still early in some territories, and completely or partially missing in others. 

Speaking with some other authors an early paperback launch isn't necessarily a bad thing, as Amazon treats both editions separately for the purposes of rankings, but allows their reviews to be combined. That could translate to a big boost for day 1 of the e-book if there are already reviews in place.

With that in mind, book 2 will likely have it's paperback published a week in advance, so my ARC reviewers have an opportunity to weigh in.

I've set up a mailing list. It's over there on the right, and currently has 3 subscribers: me, myself, and I, with different email addresses as I sorted it out. I hear that's a good way to build a community and keep people interested in future books informed (that's also the purpose of this blog). 

There's a short story featuring characters from The Blood of Crows that I'm cleaning up as a nice little give-away for signing up to an email list that will likely hit people 1-2 times a year. Will it help? I dunno, but I've got the story already.

Then there's the advertising side of things, which is 100% experimental for me. I've watched videos (by both the ad platforms and by external users). I've consulted with other writers. I've even played with a simulation campaign for the past six weeks. I can only hope the real thing is 1/100th as fruitful (narrator: it won't be).

The best advertising I think I can do is getting book 2 done and out there, so I'll be shifting into a higher gear there, though it would be a nice little bonus for The Blood of Crows proceeds to fund the editing and cover artwork if at all possible.

Book 2 is slowly fleshing out and cleaning up. I've written a few new scenes this past week, and hammered a few pointy bits off some of the existing scenes so they fit where The Blood of Crows ended up. I'll be putting in some time with it tonight in a likely fruitless attempt to not think about tomorrow being launch day and all of this becoming that much more real and tangible.

 The Blood of Crows launches into the world for anyone to read in seven days. That's terrifying!

A lot can happen in 7 days. There's tonnes of lore and mythology around the number to back up that assumption. 

The Ring (the 2002 horror movie adaptation of another movie I've never seen and likely never will) was filmed in seven days.

The Beatles, The Ramones, The Velvet Underground,  The Stooges, and Black Sabbath all recorded entire albums in less than seven days.

The fastest speed-runner of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild could do their speedrun of the game that took me three-hundred plus hours to finish, an impressive four-hundred fifteen times and still have enough time to make and eat a really good sandwich.

I mean, from what I gather, in just seven days, Frankenfurter can make you a ma-ahaha-han. Or... something. 

We even built our week around the number seven. Well, the Babylonians did, based on the number of celestial objects they could observe, and the rest of us just inherited it (and our sixty minute hour) from them.

Either way, it seems like a lot can be accomplished in that time.

Publishing a book is the best I can manage, and really, only if you don't count the months and years of work beforehand. It's all scheduled to go, I just have to not break it.

All I have to do at this point is keep working on book 2, try to make some noise about it here and there, and do everything in my power to not freak out.

And convince people to buy it... without being too obnoxious.

 Your mom!

My youngest should appreciate me starting a blog post like that. For everyone else, I'm sorry, but your mom shouldn't be your only reader before you hit "Publish". 

The Blood of Crows releases this month (I'm low-key freaking out), and since the initial draft it's had what I call Alpha Readers (friends and family), Beta Readers (in my case, other writers), and a Professional Editor (the wonderful Fiona McLaren). Every step has been invaluable. They helped with the story, the characters, and the clarity of my writing. Mistakes have been caught, loop holes closed, and pacing improved. 

I cast the net wider and wider for each round of people (except my Editor, that was laser focused). And I did that with intent. It's profoundly important to get as varied and diverse a pool of readers as you can. Each reader brings their own perspective, reading style, and likes and dislikes. And having conversations with them during and after they finish reading your book can help hone in on parts of your story that work, and parts that don't.

I don't think I'm saying anything new or revelatory here: They're even more important if your work covers any characters that aren't "you". 

I'm a firm believer in the #OwnVoices movement. I also believe imagined worlds should have room and representation for all kinds of people, and writers shouldn't completely avoid writing the "other" from themselves. But if they are writing someone of a different backround, gender orientation, sexual preference, or a character that's neurodivergent, it's imperative that they try to include representatives in kind in their reader pools.

I've seen it referred to as "sensitivity readers", and I'm certain there are places to find them if you don't know someone who is representative of what you're writing, that's also willing to be a reader for you. Though, I feel it should be noted (and this is purely my opinion) if you don't even know someone representative of what you're trying to represent, maybe you shouldn't write something that far outside your wheelhouse until you've made some more connections.

From a purely business/writerly perspective, the last thing you should want is to make a charicature instead of a character. Bad representation is arguably worse than no representation. And if you're one of those people who wants to denigrate (it means belittle, or attack) marginalized groups? Well, there's the... digital representation of a door... or something... I guess... just... go.

In the run up to the release date, I've been sending Digital ARC's (Advance Reader Copies), to a number of people in the writing circles I frequent who wanted to give it a read, and I ordered print proofs to make sure I hadn't bungled the formatting, and to catch any last-minute issues.

Those people... nay... those saintly beneficent beings of light and glory...

They...

Found...

Errors...

And not just new errors brought on by formatting in different reading apps on different devices, or introduced in that last round of edits... No... those I could live through without withering into a tiny stress-ball sized anxiety person. They found errors that have persisted in the text through all the above edits and passes. One error... in the first paragraph of the first page, has been around since 2015!!!

They're the little errors... "though" instead of "through", or little extra or missing instances of "the" or "to". The annoying little "nothing" words that our brain fills in on its own and Word's spelling and grammar checker seems to ignore (Hey Microsoft, I'm not even mad. Just... disappointed.).

Thankfully, there's still time to correct these ginormously, massive, apocalyptic disasters before they're inflicted on the people paying for a book by an author they've never met.

In the meantime, I'll be over there... trying to remember what sleeping soundly feels like...

6 Years... As in exactly 6 years since the last time I updated this thing... to the day. Weird how that worked out.
So, how have you been? 
Uh-huh... That's great. Enough about you, let's talk about me.
Where have I been? Well, let's start with that title. It's a lie. I'm lying to you with that title. I was neither dead, nor is there any sort of popular demand for me to revitalize my blog. But here we are.
A lot can happen in 6 years. The latter half of 2016 was... rough, mentally speaking, and the world as a whole has been a fair bit colder, crueler, and darker as a place to live, and that's without taking an entire globe sweeping pandemic into account (and that's still here).
My literary agent left the business to chase what he wanted, that's good for him. I quit writing for a time, that's not so good for me. I didn't think I had it in me to go through the whole query and submission process again, and without a submission list, I would have had to do it all with a different book.
I didn't want to go there. So, I tinkered on and off with different stories. Poured myself into a new role at my day-job. And helped out my writer friends as much as possible with critiques, brainstorming, and in some cases just listening.
Then, the pandemic happened. 
There I was looking at Crow's Blood again and wanting to get it out there. And if that was the goal, then I might as well do it myself.
I strapped in, did a full revision pass, hired a wonderful editor (Fiona McLaren), who helped me get "The Blood of Crows" into a polished state, and an amazing cover artist (Thea Magerand), who produced a truly beautiful cover.
Now, I'm back at work on book 2, and trying to not freak out as May 26th draws nearer.

I've done a few movie reviews in the past, and I think I'll pick them up again. They won't be pretty, and they won't be professional. But they WILL be honest.

Before I spew a giant wall of text, I'll come clean, I'm primarily a Marvel Comics and Independent comics guy. But!!!!! I DO love Batman (most of the comics runs have been fantastic and I've been reading them for years), and some of the Superman runs hold a place close to my heart.

Now, onto the wall of text...

There were parts of the movie that I LOVED, standing on their own, apart from the rest of the movie, because the movie as a whole is BROKEN. I'll give some specific thoughts without going into spoilers (because people can read this before seeing the movie, though I really suggest they don't... see the movie).

Ben Affleck was phenomenal as Batman, and frankly, I had my doubts going in. I believed. He WAS Bruce Wayne, he WAS the Dark Knight. Boy got RIPPED for the role too. And Jeremy Irons was a sassy MF Alfred.

The BvS fight was AWESOME, even if the story that led to there rang false because there wasn't enough of it to make it matter.

Gal Godot IS Wonder Woman, and there simply wasn't enough of her. I can't wait for her stand alone movie.

The reveals of C, F, and A were just right (though I do have issues with some of the hand wavy around some of it). I can't wait to see A's movie right along with Wonder Woman's.

And that's the entirety of what I loved about the movie.

Middle-ground?
Zack Snyder gets a rainbow sticker, because he seems to have learned how to break up long-ass fight scenes so I don't get too bored, which is an improvement. But then I'm going to light that sticker on fire because he can't tell a coherent story.

And then there's the stuff that just blew bloody little goat chunks.

Henry Cavill is a pretty damned good actor, but we're not allowed to actually give a damn about him in this movie (or the last). There was so much potential for the whole story around "do we need Superman" and what that says about us, but it seems like Snyder got bored with it partway through and just started smashing his toys around. The explosion, you know the one I'm talking about, was a great opportunity, and the story started to ask the right questions, and then seems to have dropped them.

The dreams... WTF is up with them? Completely unnecessary and so BADLY done. Were these just Zack Snyder spending all the money they could throw at him?

There's the unnecessary "origin story" one at the beginning of the movie? Remember how it ends? With a certain physics defying act? There's no lead in that it's a dream and not a memory, that gets revealed in a voice over.... yay?

The post-apocalypse one from the trailer? Why? If the supposed purpose was to show how Bruce was tortured by a dystopian vision of what unchecked power can do? So he has a reason to go down a dark path? Meanwhile he's running around unchecked himself? Ben Affleck can act. Let him. The little discussion Bruce had with Alfred did fine on its own.

Then there's the illogical car chase stuff, and the over-equipping of bad guys. Who uses a heavily armed convoy of private contractors to covertly transport/smuggle something into a city? Way to fly under the radar... and there's a part near the beginning of that chase where the hero,
A) stands somewhere really stupid to do something really simple, (because it's dramatic?), and
B) does something no one would do if they were trying to move fast. Do you drop anchor on a ship and drag it behind you if you're trying to catch something? Oh, but look, it magically came in handy... good thing our hero has some sort of bat-precognition.

The final fight scene, how nice that they gave us time to breathe and a few lighter moments that were robbed of their levity by the trailers (haha, is she with you?). It's nice that Snyder watched the Avengers movies, isn't it?

Also... kudos to Perry White, the most powerful journalistic (illuminati) editor in the world. Despite the fact that "no one reads the newspaper any more" he can fly his ONE reporter all over the world, AND serve up a helicopter "ON THE ROOF" at a moment's notice... damn that man's got power.

And last, the part of the movie that drove me batty (pun intended) was Eisenberg's Luthor. Who would let that man do ANYTHING? Oh, wait... maybe it's an allegory, where Lex Luthor is a stand in for Zach Snyder, and the authorities in the world around him are stand ins for DC/WB?

I give it 3 stars, out of 10. There were some absolutely awesome elements to the movie (see what I loved above), but there's just too much crap and garbage packed around it.

It earns the distinction of being the first movie below the threshold of suck on my Movie List