The BN link is now up in the previous post. Waiting on Kobo and iTunes.
Audio and Print?
Yes and yes. Audio might come out a bit later than print. The preorder for print will go up closer to the release date.
Who will be reading the audio?
Right now we are leaning toward a male reader. More information as we go along will be forthcoming.
The poses in the shoot don’t match the pose on the cover?
The photoshoot was for all 3 covers, which is why there were a variety of hair and clothes. It took place over roughly two hours. 🙂
Is that a real sword?
Yes. It’s battle ready, real combat sword. We bought it for Hugh.
What do you mean this is a trilogy? Is there a cliffhanger?
No cliffhanger. It will be more like Kate Daniels books, where a single story line is complete in each book, with the overall arc.
But is is like BFM?
No, it’s not like BFM. We don’t want to spoiler it. The first book focuses more on Hugh. The second book will focus more on Elara. Iron and Magic is 105,000 words long. It’s a big book, but even so, there is only so much we can do with that word length and we have a lot of things left to explore.
Is the book appropriate for teenagers?
This is a loaded question. We’ve never steered the kids away from reading controversial or adult books. In my experience, kids self-censor. If the content of the book is not appealing to them, they skip it and sometimes pick it up again, years later. That said, Hugh doesn’t do anything halfway. There is sex in this book, and more important, there is violence. The book is R rated. Firmly R rated. If you’re in doubt, read it first before passing it on.
Galleys?
Probably Netgalley. More on that later.
Interviews? Guest posts?
Yes. Usually we don’t do that much online publicity, but because this is a self-published release and we do not have any obligations to a publisher regarding promotion, we will be happy to talk about it. Please email Brandi.Bolden202 at gmail. Because of the volume of requests we typically receive, it’s first come, first serve, and we apologize in advance if we will be unable to accept your invitation. We will do our best.
Beta Read?
We are looking for very specific beta readers. We need a physician to help us with Hugh’s medical terminology and a person familiar with Deaf community, because one of the characters is Deaf and uses sign language. For the purposes of the narrative, we went with SEE rather than ASL, because the richness of ASL and its unique grammar do not translate well to the written page. We want to make sure we did the character justice.
If you have these specific skills and would like to be considered as one of the beta readers, please email to Brandi at address above.
I only have one comment. If you choose a male reader, please by all that’s holy get one that can actually do a creditable female voice. So many can’t. Even if the voice sounds ok, some don’t understand female emotion and viewpoint (even when it’s being served up for them) and the female characterization ends up as unsympathetic and unrelatable. Overall I find most women doing male voice overs are far more capable of doing a first class masculine voice and attitude. One that comes to mind is Angela Daw’s who masterfully performs the Psy-changeling series written by Nalini Singh.
Something that might interest–many people in the Deaf community actually sign PSE (Pidgin Signed English). PSE uses English word order like SEE, but with ASL signs (so no SEE-esque linker words and morphemes like ‘and’ and ‘-ing’, etc. that can be cumbersome). It’s especially popular with younger signers.
You realize, of course, I’m going to have to stalk my Netgalley account to find it. Yes, I know it’s not there yet, but it’s on my stalk list. I mean my to watch for list.
I have signed both SEE and ASL and I prefer SEE over ASL. I am really happy to see that ya’ll went with SEE I hope that this will rise awareness for the SEE programs out there.
Jay Crow is s great male voice actor. His voice is nice and deep, has a broad range of emotions and his female affectations don’t make want to hurt someone ?
Dang, how did I miss this? I am reasonably fluent in sign and have a background n deaf education from before I switched to audiology.