Report from the Code face

I’ve been hard at work reworking my website behind the scenes. I’ve got a new theme coming which you should see a sneak preview of if you log in… Although I can’t guarantee how it will work on mobile yet (I need to build a single mobile variant rather than having it vary I feel) so sign up and take a look.

Variant 1 of the new website… Adding a little punk to the steam

I’ve got some new features planned for the new site, hopefully including some regular blogging features and some better reblogging and twitter follow ups. I trained as a physicist and in multimedia technology, so unlike a lot of authors with websites I actually can roll my sleeves up and herd cyberpixies with the best of them. I’m planning on adding a ‘Science for Science-Fiction Writers’ and ‘html for ebook authors’ regular feature – but we’ll see how well I manage to keep up with that regime when I’m up to my ears in ‘Tricky Fourth Novel’ hell.

I’m also still staring at my video editing software almost daily trying to work out how to proceed with my book promo video for ‘An0ma1y’ – which along with its sisters for the rest of the trilogy I’m going to get finished before I reveal them all as part of the new look (and feel) site.

Currently my next Novel the Steampunk extravaganza “Iron Master” is languishing untouched since I drew some broad strokes about some of the characters and stories I want to tell, but I’m hoping to get back in the writing saddle sometime after Easter and get a rough draft put together which I’ll share some of here. This back-burner is because I’m currently concentrating on putting together a role-playing game on this site (sign in and you can look at the work in progress status on that too!), mainly because I want to run a new game set in the Iron Master universe to help flesh it out for me, before I sink into the real writing. The game (called Terminal Thirteen [T13]) is based on the original game that I ran the Paradox War story in in 1994 – it has evolved a little since then, and is now probably the only roleplaying game capable of running ANY genre without any extra books. And due to some sort of brain aneurysm I’m planning on giving it away free here (I might sell a Kindle version or even…)

Which brings me to my next problem, I want to get the Paradox War into print and more ebook reader formats. More formats means more readers and more exposure which translates into more sales, which is after all, all any indie writer really cares about, once you get beyond the artistic merit arguments and lack of censorship (well of anything other than paypal [!] of all people). But at the moment I’m not sure how I should proceed with that. I’ve looked at Smashwords (I know, but lots of ebook formats), but their policies towards non-American authors do not fill me with delight, I’ve thought about selling through Goodreads, but right now that’s not actually an option; Amazon are shockingly bad at sharing formats across platforms but they do do print (sort of again very American centric way of doing it), I’m guessing that due to lack of alternatives I’m going to go Lulu.com – anyone got any horror stories to put me off that choice too (or does someone outside of the states want to leap to Smashwords’ / Amazon’s defence or have a better alternative). Basically I’m looking for advice here people, anyone got any?