As I’ve made it known for a while now, I just released Legacy of the Argus, the 7th and concluding chapter in my initial Corrosive Knights series.

Now, getting this book ready to be released required plenty of steps beyond simply “writing” the book itself. For the Kindle (digital) release, I had to prepare the manuscript properly along with the cover art, etc. For the print copy, the same had to be done but, as I’m very careful to make sure everything works out fine, I request a “proof” copy so that I can hold the book in my own two hands and see that everything on it is proper.

I did this with Legacy of the Argus and once I gave it a good look I approved the book and now both Kindle and paperback versions are available.

Now, for those who order things from Amazon.com, you may be aware that once you do order something from them, once in a while you’ll get an email pointing out your purchase and asking you to rate it on a 5 star basis. I’ve had books, household items, etc. ordered through Amazon and now and again get these emails asking for me to review the item.

This is the first time I received a request to rate a proof copy of one of my books!

So… I’m being asked to give a review for a product -the proof of my novel- for… what reason exactly? The way this is presented is not me telling Amazon they’ve done a good job… indeed, they already knew that when I approved the book for sale!… but instead this form email is being sent as if the proof of the book is a product in and of itself and is available for purchase through Amazon to all clients…!

Only, of course, it isn’t. The proof copy is something that comes only to me and, should I wish it, to others I may want to get it and see it. But now that the book has been formally approved, the proof copy is a thing of the past. If people want Legacy of the Argus, they can order it and it will come without that “Not for resale” notation over the cover/backcover. If I want to get copies of my book, I will likewise order the approved version and don’t have to worry about proof copies anymore.

I wonder… if I were to “review” the proof, would my review appear on the book’s listing itself? I suspect it will.

And how obnoxious would it be for the author of a book to give his own book five stars?! 😉

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat: It’s been an incredibly busy month plus for me.  I’ve finished off Legacy of the Argus, the concluding chapter in the Corrosive Knights series (but there will be more stories set in this universe to come, stay tuned!).

Because we were reaching the end of this seven book series, I wanted to go back and re-do all the covers to the various books (all but one, we’ll get to that in a moment) as well as do something different with the cover to Legacy of the Argus.  I found the ebooklaunch.com company and they’ve done a smashing job getting the covers done for me.

Along with all that work, I revised Mechanic because a) it is the first book in the series and I wanted to make sure it was as good as it could be and b) because it was the first book in the series and I did so much work since that point I was certain I must have improved as a writer if only a little and therefore it was worthwhile to give the book one more -quite possibly final!- revision.

So I did that but, afterwards, felt there was one more thing that needed to be done.  Of the various Corrosive Knights books covers I did, Mechanic was my favorite and, even when I hired ebooklaunch.com to do the covers, I wanted to keep Mechanic as it was.

The problem, though, was that as I got all those other covers done, the cover to Mechanic began to look less and less like it was part of the series.  I wanted to make the book’s spine and back cover fit into the work of ebooklaunch.com and decided, several days ago, that I would also do a slight change to the Mechanic’s cover.  To wit: Have the logos on the cover fit in with the other covers.

So, without further ado, the “new” cover to Mechanic!

Now, all the covers together…

I’m as happy as I am exhausted but the work is done.  The complete seven part Corrosive Knights series is finalized and, as a very welcome bonus, I’ve got time to enjoy the remainder of the Holiday season and New Years without having to go back and work on these particular books!

But that doesn’t mean I’m doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the year.  Remember the Epilogue book I promised, the book that would be #8 of the Corrosive Knights series?

Suffice to say, I’ll now get to focus on it as I wanted to.  Properly!

A few days back (you can read it here) I noted that I was revising Mechanic, the first novel in my Corrosive Knights series…

I wrote back then that I’d announce when the book was revised and listed at Amazon and that day has indeed come.

The Kindle version of the book is online and available (if you bought the book before, you can “reload” it and the new version will appear).  I just posted the paperback version and, hopefully, later today or tomorrow the revised version will be the one available for purchase.

As I noted in the previous column, I decided to “revise” the first book because it had been many years since I last looked at it and figured there were likely things within it -mostly be grammatical/spelling issues- needed to be addressed.  After all these years, I reasoned, I’m likely a better author and given that this is the first book in the series and should be as “good” as it can possibly be, it was incumbent on me to give it one more, and perhaps one last, revision to make sure it was as absolutely good as I could make it.

But what worried me, and what I absolutely DID NOT want to do, was make any major changes to the story.  I also didn’t want to do what George Lucas did with his revisions of the original Star Wars trilogy, add a bunch of new nonsense that didn’t necessarily add to the story and might well slow it down.

I feel I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.

Mechanic, as it stands now, is a slightly shorter novel (the final page count was exactly 1 page less than the original page count!).  The vast majority of things I fixed were small, usually involving unnecessary or awkward words/phrasing.

There were also two pieces of information, one presented in the opening chapter and one later on, which needed to be revised because they didn’t fit in with the continuity I established in later Corrosive Knights novels.  Again, nothing HUGE, just stuff I originally wrote in Mechanic which, as the series played out, was refined for the better and needed to be fixed so that it fit in better with what was to come.

Believe it or not, the dialogue in this book remains at least 95-98% unchanged.  There was one tiny paragraph where a character thinks about something and I feltit  would be better for the character to say this out loud and then have someone else react to the comment.  Humorously, I hope!

But, again, really small stuff.

If you’ve read the book before and you were to read it now, I suspect you’ll wonder why I bothered since, in the end, the changes are smallish.  Its a fair question, but as I also mentioned in the previous posting, I always felt Mechanic was a shark of a novel:  Lean, muscular, without an ounce of fat and slicing through the water like a machine.

The changes made to this book, smallish though they may be, I feel makes it even more like that proverbial shark.

And I couldn’t be happier with the end result.

Give it a try if you haven’t.  It’s a blast! 😉

Lev wrote the following:

Love your series, just bought book #7. Will there be a book #8 – the epilogue and when?

First and foremost, thank you so much for the very kind comments you offer as well as the fact that you’ve decided my work was worthy enough for you to spend your hard earned money on buying it!

Will there be a book #8?  The short answer is: Absolutely.

But…

Here’s the thing: The 8th Book in the series is, as I’ve noted many times before and you’ve noted, is an “Epilogue”…

…as such, the Book effectively closes the door on stories featuring at least two of the major characters I’ve introduced in the series (I’ll not say who they are!) and I’m not sure I want to close that particular (pardon the pun) book on them quite yet.

Author Agatha Christie, during the heights of World War 2 and the London Blitz of 1940 and fearing that England -and she- would not survive the war, wrote the novel Curtain, which was the “final” and “concluding” story featuring what was arguably her biggest, most beloved creation, detective Hercule Poirot.

Ms. Christie put the novel in a lock box, intending it to be released only should she not survive the bombings and/or war.

Ms. Christie, England, and the world survived the war.  Ms. Christie kept writing new novels at an astonishing rate, including new novels featuring detective Poirot, but she kept Curtain in that lock box.  The novel would not be released until 1975, very shortly before Ms. Christie passed away in January of 1976.

Now, without sounding too obnoxious, I sometimes think that maybe Book #8 in the Corrosive Knights series, or what I call the “Epilogue”, once fully fleshed out (I already have most of the novel written, believe it or not!), should also be kept in my own little lock box and released when I’m certain I don’t want to write any more Corrosive Knights novels.

So the short answer regarding Book #8, “Epilogue”, is: I WILL write this novel in the next year.  It WILL be done.  But it may not be released right away.  I may give myself a few weeks/months to think through the whole thing and see if I do want to release it or, perhaps, work on a different Corrosive Knights #8 novel and, in time, release the Epilogue when I feel its worth doing so.

Moving along, Lev, I hope this answers your question!

To you and those who have read my books and enjoy them, I ask a big favor: PLEASE write reviews for the books and post them either to Amazon or, at the least, offer a star review for Goodreads (if you read the Kindle edition of the books, you get the chance at the very end to click how many stars out of 5 you feel a book merits).

I jokingly say that if you loved my books, write reviews praising my oh-so-magnificent work.  If you didn’t, then don’t bother! 😉

Seriously, though, tell your friends about them, write reviews.  If you want to see more of my works, make them successful enough for me so that I can devote even more time on ’em!