NEW POLL AND PRICE CHANGES IN EFFECT. (Entry 1 of 3)

Status: On vacation till the end of the month due to a lot going on.

Doing: Writing on this blog; answering e-mails; working out, and well...you know the rest! :0)

Watching: "Look Who's Coming To Dinner."--Battlestar Galactica on hulu.com.

Listening to: "Perpetual"--by VNV Nation; "The Darkness"--by Zombie Girl

Reading: Kushiel's Scion. Page 404. (I blew through 100 pages during my recent 7-hour stay in the ER on the 18th.)

STAR TREK-THE NEXT GENERATION: WAR DRUMS. Page 69.

TOPIC: THE STARCHILD E-BOOK (PRICING OPTIONS)

Over the past several years, I've been dinking with the price payment options for The Starchild; trying to see what will work and what will be more effective.

Granted, most e-books will cost you so little in the pocketbook, but come on guys! lol

This is The Starchild we are talking about! A novel I hope to add to Amazon's Kindle device when it becomes available. (I figure: "What the hell"--right? You only live once.)

Two? This isn't a "shortie" or a "mini" novel that runs between 40-100 pages e-book-wise.

This is over 1,200 pages of intense action, intrigue, mystery, and all sorts of cool stuff going on. There is nothing boring about this book or its future companion novels at all.

This is me giving people their money's worth and then some. Aren't any of you the least bit tired of novels without substance, without depth, without strong and vivid characters, without anything that will make you recall with fondness about how much you even liked that book?

I hope to change that with this book of mine. My brainchild, my flagship novel, my baby.

I can't promise you the world, but I can guarantee that this book won't leave you disappointed one iota.

When I started The Starchild 12.5 years ago, it was based on a dream that I had which I could not explain nor understand in detail. Images like I was in a fog, trapped in some kind of interdimensional "interphase" of some kind--or surrounded by an energy field so vast that I thought I was floating in an expansive void without a beginning or end. I saw...people...dressed in some really exotic and elaborate costumes which I could only begin to comprehend, and voices that spoke to me like I was hearing God for the first time; which left me feeling small, insignificant, and humble.

And a sentence sprung out from the ether which said: "Write about us. Write about who we are. You are special." And it kept repeating for what seemed like ages.

I didn't tell my brother about this, because he would've thought I was nuts.

But it was a powerful enough vision that it got me "hooked" onto developing this unforeseen universe--which currently has no counterpart in today's commercially published books.

It took me awhile just to get a grasp of what I saw that night! And what was baffling, was that it wasn't influenced by anything I read, saw, or could read in books, papers, and even comics.

The whole experience...I could only compare it too seeing the image of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast. A freak occurance which cannot be easily explained.

But how to write what was shown to me in that dream-vision of mine--? It just took a great deal of time just to figure out everything and come up with what I thought was a suitable universe fraught with an astounding array of characters, worlds, histories, and lores.

You would have to understand...that what I've written has been challenged and fought against because The Starchild and its companion novels aren't done by the...well...?

Book.

Commercially-published fiction is so limited in its own rights. Few books published these days can honestly say they've reached out and grabbed the imagination of that said reader--and be able to hold it without.

While there is some commercial potential with The Starchild, that's not what it was intended to become: An engine of perpetual commercialism designed to exploit a hard-fought and hard-written novel.

This book not only bends the rules of the industry, but it breaks them as well. Do you sometimes get annoyed when you simply "rush" through a book--and you find out there's nothing more? Not even a hint of things to come? Or when you buy certain books, they appear to be getting smaller and smaller as the years wear on?

The Starchild is the answer to these questions. There's nothing 'rushed' about the novel because of one important thing: The word count is 4 to 5 times longer than your average 'dimestore' novel.

That means that this book embodies the whole principle concept of a 'full-bodied' novel.

Why it took me so long to get this puppy right. When you're dealing with giant tomes such as mine (including The Price of Freedom), you can't just rush through the process of writing.

You have to delicately walk amongst the fragile flowers of your creation--and start laying down the groundwork for your characters, the settings, the world they'll inhabit, and overall...?

The powerfully moving plot that is sure to grab your reader and hold him or her in place.

You can't do that so well when you are restrained and limited to a certain word count.

If you want to make it as a respectable author and reputable writer, you have to start bending and breaking the rules these days. It's not grand or glorious, but if you want to be taken seriously with your work, then you will have to prove to your audience that you have what it takes to keep them turning the pages of your book.

Stop living the perpetuated lies of the industry. They aren't the least bit interested in the novels we writers write. All they want is money. But they don't take the necessary risks to broaden their horizons, fatten their bank accounts by leaps or bounds.

They are hopelessly stuck in the mindset of 'forward-backwards'. Going farther than their limited scope of imagination will allow is something foreign as well as alien to them.

Thusly, they limit themselves with their choice set of books--and in the end--? Don't reap the whirlwinds of profit.

They are stuck with an unsaleable novel which they believed would get them some suitable traction against their rivals or competitors--but got burned in the end.

The Starchild shatters those misconceptions. Here is a novel that tells of a story behind the resurgent legend behind the Starchild of Ancient Lore; and a 14-year-old girl struggling to hold herself together as the universe's newest guardian.

There's a lot to be said about imagination. And whether or not we all have that potential within ourselves: Our ability to go beyond our own limitations and start tripping the light fantastic in the process.

As much as I keep peddling this bit of advice and philosophy to the ears of the open-minded, there are still some whom are resistant to my approach. They still believe in an obsolete mechanism which can no longer promise them a stable career as a published author.

Or give them the lavish lifestyle they believe they are entitled to.

My choices in the matter came after years of trying and not getting anywhere as a result. I didn't see the point in constantly banging my head against the proverbial wall--so I moved on.

I hired an editor, I got a book cover artist, and now I'm trying the e-book route along with the standard limited print runs (to save on trees and the environment).

But the pricing issue didn't bug me at first because I thought I could attract more flies with honey if I kept things on the low-brow and affordable.

I know that you can set any price for an e-book, but as I've been finding out; the cost of everything is just going up, up, and up.

I had the original price set at $15 until I dropped it down to $7.50 a couple years ago; thinking that might be the ticket. I would've kept it that way, but to be honest? I won't make enough to sustain either myself, nor my wife--let alone afford the high costs of rent and health insurance we are both faced with nowadays.

So I started raising the price of the e-book slowly, and not many objected. I've been thinking about slowly ratcheting it up to maybe $12, possibly $13.50--but it depends on how things are going with the economy.

These changes won't take effect just yet. Maybe in 2 more years--I'll have to see.

Again, this isn't greed ruling my decisions, but the sad fact that we are living in a world that doesn't give one whit about people's state of affairs or personal finances.

I'll do what I can to keep things reasonable, but I also have to take into account my needs as well. I'm not looking to make a whole lot of money, but just enough to give me some much needed breathing space.

Which is why I'm not rushing the production and release of The Starchild too soon. I need to make sure that the book is close to perfect as it possibly can be, and that it will be worth it to my targeted readership in the years to come.

Oh, and if you have a chance? Take a moment to vote. Let me know what you think is reasonable.

Sky