All About Eve...

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Writing like crazy on three items at the same time. And then, as if there was nothing better to do, I would stumble tonight on the TV over "All About Eve". It had been a while since I last saw that one and I was immediately riveted again. Witty dialogues, wonderfully atmospheric, carefully staged and incredible cast. I am usually not a nostalgic, but 'they don't make movies like that anymore!'

Wikipedia "All About Eve" under Fair Use Policy

Wikipedia "All About Eve" under Fair Use Policy

So what is going these days? My rom-com chick lit start-up novel got the treatment a second round. I put in a lot of work in order to complete and edit and then decided to stop once more. The story is good, but not good enough yet. There are three women who in the course of the story will fall in love with three men. That is the easy part. But I have not figured out yet how to make the three fall-in-love cases unique. So far all three cases are pretty much the same. The male is the dominant one, making the female realize that her way is the wrong way and that she should put trust in steady relationship. Once is fine. Two maybe with a little variation acceptable. But three in one book in one fifth act is too much. As I ran out of ideas and lack the right tactic, I decided to shelf the book for now. 

What happens in the meanwhile? The next Teen Monster Hunter novel is in the making. Teen Vampire Hunters is going well, I am not measuring yet, but all chapters are defined and in place, so it is all a matter of writing and sticking to the formul. The first Teen Monster Hunters book was indeed the first one, introducing the main characters and the story format. But Teen Vampire Hunters will be the first one out of the regular story stack that will be sequence agnostic, meaning: you can read them in any order you like. There will be no overlap and no development that makes it necessary to stick to a sequence. All in "the formula". 

And then there is the German translation of "Teen Monster Hunters". Mostly to the benefit of my youngest son and his school peers. One of my books is always an appreciated gift or token, so the German version will go well with the locls. And maybe gives me opportunity to organize a reading one of these days, locally.

Cover to Cover - Why I needed "Teen Monster Hunters" darker!

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Saturday had been creative change day.

Closed the story line on another RomCom romantic comedy  (What do you think about the tagline: "Three friends, one startup, one vow: no romantic distractions. Yeah, right!")

Decided what to write next, continuing the Teen Monster Hunters series with the next 50K word novel, working title "Teen Vampire Hunters".

Cover TMH1 800px.jpg

Changed the cover of Teen Monster Hunters. What? Why? I felt, the cover was too bright and cartoonish. I like the cartoon concept, to the extend that it will be a recurring theme for the next books and novella short stories. But for monster hunting story, the color scheme and cover should be slightly more edgy and scary. 

Teen Monster Hunters V2 Alex Ames 800px.jpg

Before and after. What do you think?

Five for Forever ready! But not yet out...

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That took a while! September! Suits me right. But a lot of things happened during the four months, mainly around my latest book titled Five for Forever. Wrote the whole thing, finished after a tour de force before Christmas, shipped it to the editor, ran through the whole thing again and back, and I am now ready to publish. The cover is done, too, I'll reveal that in a few days, hopefully.

To market my new book I will turn to a new service from Amazon called "Kindlescout". I submitted my book just a few minutes ago. It goes through three stages, if all goes well. Firstly, a check on Amazon's side for formality. Secondly a nomination process by potential readers like you (and me). If after 45 days a book has received enough votings, the book will be contracted by Kindle Press and marketed in the big mean Amazon machine.
Let's see how that works out.