It all goes back to The Stand

Today I've been editing the sound files for the audiobook version of my short story If You Believe in Love At First Sight. Got to thinking that it was somewhat ironic that this was the book of mine I'm working with right now. Mainly because a lot of it came about from my love of The Stand.

If you don't know, The Stand is an awesome Stephen King book about the world falling apart in the face of a terrible plague. It Is where I fell in love with the evil character Randal Flagg years before I ever heard of The Dark Tower. Now my story is nothing like any Stephen King book I've read so I can't claim my books are any fair comparison.

It's just that when I first wrote The Speed of Darkness I had recently read The Stand, and so the idea of setting my story in Nevada amused me. now The Speed of Darkness is the name I've given my convoluted werewolf series because it somewhat describes the super-power my nerdy hero Nigel Hunter controls. You can read about him and the start of the series in The Illumination Query

If You Believe in Love At First Sight Is surely nothing like The Stand, it's actually quite short. I don't have much of The Speed of Darkness written down, but my idea for the fourth book (I do plan to write them all eventually) somewhat came from my other favorite character from The Stand, Larry Underwood. Rereading The Stand not long ago made me decide that my series needed a musician, and my character Joel Shine was born.

I got approved to put my books on Google Play

Three of my books are now on Google Play.

And to celebrate, I've made them free for the rest of July.

http://play.google.com/store/search?c=books&q=Sarah+Baethge

I'll be putting the others on there too. :)

Fixing up my eBooks

  

                             And I Was Hungry       Right Now    If You believe in Love at First Sight

I went and found new images for my 99 cent short story ebooks.

I also changed the price of my two full-length books to $2.99 and $2.50.

Amazon seems to be updating slowly so if you hurry you may be able to save yourself 49 cents on the more expensive one.

And of course, if you really want to not pay the whole less than $3.00 prices, they're all still free at Smashwords for the rest of July.

Finished filling out my Kindle X-ray

Now I've filled out the X-ray for all 5 of my books on Kindle.
So if you like the author's personal reasons and commentary on why parts of the book exist as they do, check out my books at Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Sarah-Baethge/e/B009WVBI0O/

I finally have a copy of the book I've been perfecting for the last 5 years

Yes, I'm just silly-happy to finally have this in my hands but look:
http://amzn.to/2JTEehc

Reviews

Anthony Avina reviewed some of my writings.
 Here's a video review of my book Right Now. https://www.instagram.com/p/BkG9XZHF2D4/?hl=en&taken-by=authoranthonyavina
The written review of Right Now https://authoranthonyavinablog.com/2018/06/16/rightnowsarahbaethgereview/
And a written review of The Illumination Query https://authoranthonyavinablog.com/2018/06/16/theilluminationquerysarahbaethgereview/

Underground Book Reviews

Interested in Underground Book Reviews?
Please go to their page and click on the (check-mark/word vote) thingy to convince them to review my book The Illumination Query
https://www.undergroundbookreviews.org/book/the-illumination-query/

The Illumination Query is now on Kindle

Latest News on The Illumination Query

Well.... I got a bit too excited by the interest by that Total Recall Press showing interest in The Illumination Query.
I had already signed their contract that left me responsible for only $15 and canceled the whole publishizer campaign when yesterday the TRP guy comes back to tell me that they can't get started on processing my book until I agree to another contract where I owe them something like $267.
When I objected they did at least let me out of the first contract.
So now instead of redoing the whole publishizer attempt to attract a publisher (I've already had the book turned down by all the agents I pitched it to) I'm going to go ahead and Self-Publish. Hey, I still like the story and have multiple sequels planned and partially written.
I may be big-headed enough to tell myself that The Illumination Query is equivalent to The Gunslinger and my Speed of Darkness books will be loved as much as The Dark Tower books, but whatever the truth may be, I am going to get it published. Probably in the next week or so, once I'm completely satisfied with the formatting.

I was interviewed!

I was interviewed about The Illumination Query at Beach Bound Books.
https://www.beachboundbooks.com/author-interviews/author-interview-sarah-baethge2077204

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 1-30, 2018 | http://publishizer.com/the-illumination-query/

Visit http://booklaunch.io/22niel/tsod1 for current book and author info

Crowdfunding for The Speed of Darkness, Book 1: The Illumination Query

is Going Live this June

Sarah Baethge is using the launch of her werewolf novel to bring attention to Protect the Wolves

(http://protectthewolves.com/)

What happens when you discover that you are helping evil, and when you can only turn towards the

people that you have hurt in the past when you need help?

‘If the only people wronged are monsters, does that make hurting them Ok?’ -Sarah Baethge

About the author: Sarah Baethge was born in Houston in 1982, and grew up in Texas and

Louisiana. She was an intern for Lockheed-Martin fresh out of high school when she graduated

with a National Merit Scholarship in 2000.

After a traffic accident in 2000, she began writing and self-publishing short fantasy and

science-fiction stories, starting with the original Speed of Darkness book. She soon took the book

down from Amazon and Smashwords because it began a bit too abruptly. Now her intention is to

improve the story with a prequel or two.

As her book/series is sympathetic towards werewolves, Sarah decided that the idea of raising

money to help wolves in the real world would be interesting to try. She found the organization

called Protect the Wolves and admires their efforts to defend the wildlife in Yellowstone and t

hroughout North America. She is curious to see if any of her fans will take advantage of the

opportunity she presents of making a small donation towards the protection of real wolves when

buying her book.

Overview of the novel: First, the book of The Illumination Query follows the story of Ronald

Carpenter as he gets help from a secretive company called The Eclipse. This company takes a

shine to him and lures Ronald into working for them in their attempt to capture and imprison

supernatural creatures. To prove his loyalty, The Eclipse has Ronald help them take their scientist

Dr. Nigel Hunter captive. Ronald and Nigel come to find out that The Eclipse is keeping unusual

animals that the average person would not consider real. The Eclipse is keeping these creatures for

medical testing because they have no legal protections and many of them, like werewolves, are

nearly human.

The story is now told from Nigel’s point of view. We see that he was working in a lab owned by

The Eclipse, but he was unaware of the supernatural test subjects. Nigel had recklessly tested a

procedure upon himself. The Eclipse higher ups decide that Nigel is as good as a test animal now,

and get Ronald to take him captive. Being held with the test creatures, Nigel becomes friends with

the beings he is being kept among. He and his new inhuman friends decide to try standing against

The Eclipse. Nigel’s only chance now is to get past Ronald.

Author Blog: http://sbaethge.blogspot.com/

Sarah Baethge’s Twitter: @22niel

Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/SarahBaethge

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/22niel/

Request an electronic review copy: http://goo.gl/nQs9RT

###

Set up a pre-launch page

Ok, now I have set up a page to help prepare for when I re-launch the pre-order campaign for my book Ihe Illumination Query: http://booklaunch.io/22niel/tsod1 If any of you can help me, please sign up here so I know that I need to to get in touch with you.

Redoing this the right way

If anyone was even paying attention, yes I ended that pre-order campaign for my book. At least I postponed it...
I realized that I set it up too fast without preparing any way to get the word out about what I'm trying to do.

The Illumination Query on publishizer.com

Okay, I've finished editing the video and my crowdfunded publication campaign is live at http://publishizer.com/the-illumination-query/
I humbly ask you to pre-order a copy and to share the link.

Video on YouTube

Today I spent too much time putting together a YouTube video. I've just about given up on finding an agent for the first book in my Speed of Darkness series. I just keep telling myself that Stephen King's book The Gunslinger first came out through a minor publisher so I assume it had no agent either. And that is the first book of his Dark Tower series. So it's not hopeless for my Nigel Hunter character.

Roland Deschain eventually made his way into books that sold multi-millions of copies!

I've been looking at a website that I can use to pitch it to multiple publishers without an agent. One of the things that they require is a description on YouTube.
So for a couple of days I've been collecting free Chromebook programs to make YouTube videos. I already posted one trial that I made with a program that pastes a huge ad for themselves on top of the video, but that was bugging me, so I found a better editor that has no watermark.
And now I've made my video that's just over 2 minutes.
I still need to edit it a bit, but I'm pretty happy with the video now, and I think I can stop video editing for the day. Here it is:
https://youtu.be/v3aFFQ1nsHE