Join us in Chicago in August at Comic Con!

So, now that the book is ofiicially sort of out, I am planning on going back and doing some of the blogging that I wanted to do over the past months but have been too busy to do. So, look for little tidbits most days, and longer posts about fun stories, important events, and other news at least once or twice a week. I'll try to have something really fun on Mondays, so stop by and check it out! I am including a link to the Chicago Comic Con website. We will be there August 9 through the 12, in our own booth hanging out and selling copies of our book. It is the big event of the summer for us, so if you are in the area stop by and come visit us!!! If you scroll near to the bottom of the page, you will see Mike, Jaren and Jed, all individually, with a blub about us and our book. It is near the bottom because they have actors first, and then comic drawers / toy makers / authors (there aren't a lot of us authors there) below, and it is in alphabetical order. But, we will be hanging out with Stan Lee, William Shatner, John Cena, The Situation, Draco Malfoy, Scott Bakula, James Hong, Bruce Campbell, and Luke Perry, amongst dozens of other important people. Just the fact that my name is on the same website as those people is pretty cool! Anyway, look for a longer post on Monday all about how to write a book with two other people at a distance!

The book is available on Amazon.com!

Here is the URL to check out and hopefully purchase our new book!!! It isn't available to ship yet, but should be soon. I love that it says our publication date was June 8th. Why not!
Amazon.com site for Hade's Gambit

How our original prologue became six chapters, a different prologue, and 83 pages long!

So, a while ago I promised a short blog post about how our "prologue" became six chapters, and a prologue. Unfortunately, if we would have realized how we worked together back then, we could have avoided a lot of pain, suffering, and probably about 240 pages of our 847 final pages. Basically, we really wanted to focus on character and character development so we started with six main characters. We had Owen DiConte, an honorable young man who really wants to do right by the world, Xanadu, a young African basketball player (who was later named Gideon), Petr, a Russian mafia member, Father Dalacourt, a Vatican priest, David Livingston Sumbawanga, an old African leader, and Alexis Kennedy, a young woman and love interest for Owen. So, we thought it would be great to introduce all of our characters with just a little snipet. We also wanted to make sure that we got Hade into the introduction, if only briefly. So, we started writing little pieces about each of them so that the reader would know who the main chracters were and how they were connected to the story. So, we started building up our prologue, thinking it would just be a short thing, perhaps six to ten pages. Wow, were we wrong. We soon realized that many of these short vinetes were becoming longer and longer. Eventually, we made the decision that we had to break them up into individual chapters. Some of them kept growing and growing as we worked on the book. We would realize that Petr needed something else added to the beginning, or that Dalacourt wasn't quite right and we needed to change something there, and so they grew and grew and grew. I was the worst offender with the Petr chapter, spending perhaps ten pages explaining Catherine's Palace (which, I found out on our last round of edits that I had gotten much of it wrong anyway!!!). So, even after cutting huge parts of these chapters, they still ended up being 83 pages! And, we added a prologue about our character John having a vision of the future, which is a few pages as well. So, honestly, we completely learned our lesson, right? We have to be careful about adding too much and making the book too long... Well, we are working on Book Two right now and just had to split two chapters in half because they were too long. So, obviously we are still cursed with the problem of writing too much. But, at least looking back at it, we know that it was a problem we have had from the beginning. And, hopefully, we will continue to have for the rest of our time writing together! :)

Here are some photos of our completed book. Doesn't it look amazing! 847 pages of pure gold! We are busy working on book Two and are putting our summer reading/signing tour together. At this point, expect to see at least some of us at Belle Plaine on July 3rd, Iowa City on July 13th and 15th, and in Chicago at Comicon August 9th through the 12th. We are looking for a few more places to sign our book, so as soon as we know more we'll post it. The book should be available within a few days!