Thomas Harwick's Blog

One year ago I made a decision to self publish my novel, Sons of Heaven: The Haunted, for a multitude of reasons. I found lots of helpful resources for editing, formatting, publishing, and marketing my novel; but I also found out a few other things.

1. Though there are a lot of services to help with all these aspects, they tended to all be separate services.
2. The most expensive parts of self publishing seemed to be cover art, editing services, and marketing services like book trailers and twitter services.
3. Getting friends or fellow writers to leave reviews on amazon, smashwords ect... sometimes requires placing bamboo under their fingernails.
4. Even professional book trailer services are surprisingly amateur.

So the question is - if there was one service that took care of all those things for you, and allowed you to just concentrate on writing, how much would that be worth to you?

I spent a massive amount of time learning to do many of those things on my own. The cover art and book trailer I actually lucked out on. As I was chasing my dream of becoming an Indie writer, some friends of mine were chasing their dream of starting an animation studio. I relied upon Utmost Studios heavily during my publishing and marketing process. In a "Duh, why didn't we think of that" moment my sister suggested we pool our talents and networks to help writers in the same position I was in.

We are at a very interesting time in this process. We are still in the beginnings of establishing this as a company, we haven't even picked a name yet. We have experience on both sides, but we would like some projects to work on together to get our feet wet as a company. Basically we want some Beta testers.

The benefit to us will be some more practice at our craft, and a chance to refine our all in one service. The benefit to you will be an extensive service that will work with you as a writer, the way a publisher doesn't but should, at a discounted price.

Here is a breakdown of exactly what we do for you.
- Provide editing services for content, as well as grammar and spelling.
- Provide cover art, both front and back.
- Provide formatting services for an E-book through Amazon as well as Smashwords Premium. We also can set up a paperbook version through Create Space.
- Create at least one book trailer, which we will post on youtube as well as other sites.
- Twitter and Facebook posts to the degree that our networks will be begging for mercy.
- I will personally provide a review, an honest one, on my site www.thomasharwick.com
- We will also provide at least four honest reviews of your book on amazon and smashwords.

Also, you will have us working with you for at least three months getting your book out there. We can't guarantee sales, but we can guarantee that we will be doing everything in our power to help you succeed.

We are looking for Authors that believe in their work as much as we believe in ours, and we want books we can get behind. We will need to read the manuscript, at least partially, before we put our resources behind it. Of course we can give you samples of our work as well. I will give a free editing sample of up to 3000 words. Also, here are links to our previous work:

My book trailer can be found here http://youtu.be/3Jhcns01AqE (keep in mind that we not only did the video, but the music is our own composition... we are also all musicians)
My E-book on Amazon http://amzn.com/B008ZTD5LO
Paperback on Amazon http://amzn.com/0615685943
The Utmost Studios Website www.utmoststudios.com
My Website www.thomasharwick.com

Also, I can provide you with a free E-Book version of my book through Smashwords, so that you can see my previous editing work.

If you are interested in this service and would like more info, please e-mail me at harwickt@hotmail.com

I look forward to working with you
- Thomas

I thought this was a pretty unique marketing tactic, but I'd love to hear what you guys think. Airplane Book Odyssey http://wp.me/p2iQUT-3P

"I followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow and his bright black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting, far gone in the rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he- the captain, that is- began to pipe up his eternal song:"

"Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest -
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

This excerpt from Robert Louis Stevenson's classic high seas adventure "Treasure Island" was brought to you by National Talk Like a Pirate Day

Enjoy me Hearties
Yarr!

An apocalypse is coming unlike anything the world has seen before. This is the day the world begins to tear itself apart. This is the beginning of the end. This is the day of The Haunted.

“This is not the movies, and this is no zombie apocalypse, this is something far worse. Those of us surviving still in this nightmare have taken to calling them the Haunted. Some of this story you have heard already - The terrible virus, the private corporation’s groundbreaking treatment; the cure that made mankind’s dream of immortality possible, and the moment when that dream became a nightmare. From that moment on however, our accounts may begin to differ. Whoever you are, and however you came to be in possession of this account, you should know that you have been lied to. There is no disease. The cure is the disease.”

Isaac is a survivor trapped in the Southern California Quarantine zone. He retells his story, starting from his wife’s death, through his discovery of the terrifying truth of the “Haunted”, and the mystery behind a secret society known only as “The Sons of Heaven”. The following is his story told in his own words.

Semi finalist in the 2012 William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition “Sons of Heaven: The Haunted” is the first installment of the Science Fiction series “The Sons of Heaven Experiments” by Author Thomas Harwick.

Paperback $11.99 http://amzn.com/0615685943

Kindle $2.99 http://amzn.com/B008ZTD5LO

Smashwords $2.99 http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...