Welcome back for your (belated) Weekly Update! Sometimes life gets in the way. Between the new baby and a sick toddler, we were feeling pretty squeezed inside the Lorimer house. But the publishing cycle stops for nothing and no one. This week, we’ve got some exciting news to report and two great giveaways to share.

Ardent Wings on Jealous Skies is now less than six weeks out from publication. It’s go time! If you are a reviewer, librarian, bookbuyer, or other publishing industry professional, you can access the ARC on NetGalley until October 13. For everybody else, the most helpful thing you can do at this point to help boost visibility is to add the book on Goodreads as a title you “want to read.” 

If you’ve already read the ARC, you can leave your honest review on Goodreads at any time. Reviews at point of purchase will be open on November 11 after publication (don’t worry, I’ll remind you).

For the uninitiated, NetGalley is the leading industry database where reviewers, bookbuyers, librarians, and other publishing industry professionals can sample a new book pre-release to make purchasing and content decisions. Many indie authors shy away from NetGalley. Partly due to the cost, but also because it places your work head-to-head with all the top releases from the major publishing houses, who obviously possess far greater resources vis-a-vis editing, design, and PR. 

With HTP, I’m not just trying to compete in the indie marketplace (though many indie writers have carved out a sound living with this business strategy). I don’t have the marketing budget of Penguin Random House or even Tor Books, but I think the content speaks for itself and compares favorably to bestsellers within my genre. For that reason, I decided it was essential to toss my ARC up on the rostra for professional examination. 

We’ll see how it shakes out. The download data tells at least the first chapter of the story.

• 120 reviewers, librarians, and bookbuyers have requested the ARC so far, with the set weighted heavily toward professional reviewers.
• The cover art is overwhelmingly well regarded, with professional critics complimenting the design at a 4-to-1 rate.
• Most interesting to me, 14% of the industry folks requesting the ARC did so because they “keep hearing about this book.” That tells me my guerrilla efforts to build hype and increase visibility pre-release are starting to work.

After October 13, we’ll get the final data set from NetGalley. Happy to share those results here with my people.

Follow HTP on Facebook

In other news, my generous PR consultants finally bullied me into setting up a Facebook page for High Trestle Press. As many of you may know or now realize, I’m a big social media-phobe. I have a personal Instagram that I use entirely voyeuristically, and that’s it. I find social media–Facebook especially–distracting and mentally toxic. I decided to take a social media vacation back in 2019 and the results for my productivity and mental health were so profound that I never looked back.

Until now. Thanks, HTP. 

At the time of this writing, the HTP Facebook page is sitting at a gentleman’s zero followers. I do plan to put some exclusive content and giveaways up over there, so if you are a regular user, please consider giving us a follow. This newsletter and the HTP blog will continue to be my primary points of contact, so as long as you’re subscribed here, you won’t miss anything. But the follow over in Zuckerberg’s domain is definitely appreciated 🙂

Progress Report

This week, I unearthed Tales of Ciel Book 3: The Mark of Cain from my desk drawer and dug in deep on the second draft. I was pleasantly surprised…with most of it. As the final book in the trilogy, there are some pacing challenges that I need to get my arms around before I send it off to the editor.

While I believe strongly that each book needs to have its own cohesive shape, a bespoke trilogy also has a larger shape that needs to hold fast across all three books. As a result, most trilogies tend to reach a climactic bottleneck in the third act. In The Mark of Cain, I’m not only resolving the principal conflicts of that novel, but also bringing the longer story arcs begun in Ardent Wings on Jealous Skies to a pat landing. In the first draft, that resulted in a bit of a languorous opening followed by a breathless 150 pages of climax. 

In the abstract, that might make the end of The Mark of Cain sound like a real page-turner, and in some ways it does move quickly, but readers need time to digest major revelations and frenetic action sequences. The major overhaul I’m working on now threads a little more character work and interiority between the major action set-pieces that currently dominate Act 3. The good news is that most of the material is in there already. I just need to move a few scenes around and blend for logical flow. 

By the end of this process, I’m confident The Mark of Cain will offer the satisfying conclusion that Tales of Ciel readers deserve, while also opening the door to the second trilogy.