Hi all, so I’ve been working on writing and revising a YA fantasy adventure novel since 2019 and been preparing to self-publish it for the past month and a half. Uh, way more than that, actually, if you count drawing the cover art. Blurb and details available here.

All the files are finally all prepared and uploaded to Amazon and Draft2Digital (an aggregator that can push a book out to various online retailers). Into the Gloamwood will release on March 30th! It’s already available for preorder on multiple platforms, including Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Kobo, and several others. Here’s a universal book link (UBL):

Into the Gloamwood – Vendors for E-Book and Paperback

The UBL lists several common vendors but is non-exhaustive. You may find the e-book on your preferred platform for book-shopping, even if that vendor isn’t listed. Note, Amazon does not support preorders for paperback, so if you prefer to purchase the paperback through Amazon, wait until March 30th.

If this book interests you, you can also read a sneak preview of the first three chapters for free now. That should be enough to get a sense of the tone of the story, the writing style, and a few of the key characters. I figured folks might like to do that before making a purchasing decision.

Oh, and here are the early proof copies I ordered from Amazon and Draft2Digital. Pardon the odd photograph lighting; I think it looks better in person:

Left is from Amazon, right is from Draft2Digital. They have slight differences in color contrast and saturation, I believe due to coming from different print-on-demand sources.

I used Amazon’s and Draft2Digital’s in-platform cover creators, respectively, to add the spine and back blurb text, so the styling of that is slightly different on Amazon versus everywhere else, though I tried to keep them similar. If I figure out an easier method for adding blurb and spine text to a paperback cover source file, I’ll do that for future projects to ensure consistency across platforms—to the extent that I am able to, anyway. I’ve no control over the variance in saturation from the different print-on-demand services.

Showing photographs of the spine text below. Top is Draft2Digital, bottom is Amazon:

And the back cover blurbs. Left is Amazon, right is Draft2Digital:

You can see the font styling and amount of margin around the blurb is subtly different, and the two distributors placed the barcode in different places, corner versus center. Note also that the blurb is a smidge out of date. I edited it later.

But the interior is, or should be, identical across both distributors and all vendors. I supplied the exact same content files. Same manuscript and front and end matter. I selected the same paper color (cream), thickness (the thin/affordable option), and black-and-white printing, too. It’s a 6-by-9-inch trade paperback.

Anyway. I just wanted to share that this is coming up. I’ll make another announcement once it’s actually released, and I intend to write a retrospective of what all went into crafting and publishing this later. Maybe a week or two after release. Maybe a little later. I have this thing called a full-time job, and a martial arts hobby I’m very enthusiastic about, and a creative-fiction-writing hobby that I’m also very enthusiastic about and would like to refocus on once Into the Gloamwood is out in the world. My latest novel draft has been languishing. Languishing, I tell you. That poor little dragon.