Back to Work

Vacation OVER.

To celebrate the release of my first novel in both digital and print versions, I gave myself a little bit of time off. Sure, that’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do when you release a book… you’re supposed to hit the ground running, doing marketing, guest posts, interviews, endless tweets, and general book-pimping. But all that stuff is bothersome.  

So I’ve just been lazy for a while. My wife and I are speeding through Naruto Shippuden on Hulu, and I’ve been eating lots of potato chips and French onion dip. Well, today begins a divided and re-doubled effort. So, like Naruto, I hope to master the art of the Shadow Clone Jutsu… ‘cause I’m probably going to need about three or four of me to get everything done.

This week I’ll be sending out Press Releases (yep… just now) and hope to set up some book signings at a few different locales. I’ve also begun putting together my experiences into a presentation regarding the road to self-publication and, specifically, the pros and cons of the Amazon KDP program. 

I’ve made a few harrying strikes at book 2, and it stands at about 5 or 6 chapters currently with a full outline on the side, but tonight begins the full-scale carpet-bombing, SEED strike team invading, flagship orbital striking, lemon-soaked paper-cutting, TPK’ing, all-out hissy-slapping attack that will drive me through the completion of the first draft. So if you see me anywhere (outside of work) and I’m not writing, feel free to give me an atomic wedgie, a purple-nurple, AND a wet-willie and tell me to get back to work. 

Truth be told, I haven’t been completely idle in the past few weeks. I’ve nearly completed the design for the 144: Champions of Hope strategy game board. I hope to post pictures of it here in a few weeks. I’ve been tweaking the rules to make the game a little more fast-paced and dynamic, and I hope to have a legitimate art plan put together by this summer.

Until then, buy my book, or if you already have, review it (the more stars the merrier), or tell your friends about it (works way better than any marketing I could do anyway), or shoot me a comment like, “Hey, keep it up. I’m looking forward to what’s next,” or “How’s work on book 2 coming? I can’t wait to read it,” or “Keep at it. Don’t get discouraged,” or “Does this look like a boil to you? It itches,” or “Here, I got you this replica Infinity Gauntlet just because I think you’re swell.”

Kindle Edition Now Available

The Kindle Edition of 144: Wrath is now available on Amazon.com. You can order your copy here.

The list price is 4.99... less than a a gallon bucket of ice cream. In fact, you could cozy up with the book AND eat a bucket of ice cream for less than a movie ticket for one.


The print edition will be available in a few weeks. I had some issues with the proof copy they sent me. So I'll have to address those through customer support before I'm ready for phase II.

And remember: if you like it, be sure to leave feedback!

About the Author

I’m in a strange place right now. I have to write an About the Author section, but I have absolutely no idea how to go about it. I’m finding that I just don’t know how to write about myself. It’s weird, too, because I love talking about myself. You would think it would be a simple matter of writing all those wonderful words down. No polyhedral dice.

I could write about all sorts of other people: my daughter, Napoleon Bonafrog, that guy who works at the copy shop and doesn’t know how to use a computer and almost formatted my flashdrive instead of opening it. Heck, I could even write a really great biography of my wife. It would go something like this:

Jenny was born, blah blah blah, met Dallas Caldwell, blah blah blah, married Dallas Caldwell, probably died in a starfighter mishap in 2062 because her contacts dried out.

See? That was easy. So why is it so difficult to sum up my life in a paragraph in such a way that people don’t think I’m a smarmy d-bag… without lying to them? I’m tempted to bet on the idea that no one actually reads the About the Author page and just throw in a string of garbled words, but even that would take effort to craft it in such a way that it looked purposefully chaotic. I can’t talk about High School Dallas who was into sports and Star Wars and making fun of people to make himself feel better about his own shortcomings. I can’t talk about the Dallas that spends inordinate amounts of time thinking about the combative superiority hierarchy (CSH) of Captain America, Captain Planet, Captain Kangaroo, and Captain Caveman (the top’s not who you’d think). And I definitely can’t talk about the Dallas with a birthmark below his right nipple that has completely disappeared in a sea of manly curls. 

Which, if you take those things out of the equation, leaves me with very little interesting fluff. And without fluff, my core shouldn’t really be about me. But then again, neither should my writing. I will never be a visionary evangelist like C.S. Lewis, but I hope that, like him, I can hide a little bit of truth in stories about swords and magic and unusual creatures. Fantasy, to me, is about faith in something greater and acceptance that we, the protagonists, are not the end-all, be-all of the universe, but that we can find significance through the opportunity we have to be part of a much bigger story.

Trailing Triple Banana Peels

The new year has only just begun and already I am behind on like ninety-three things. No, the book isn’t finished yet, I’ve got a huge list of home repairs waiting, it’s our busiest time of the year at work right now, I’m only at 60% on Harry Potter Lego Years 5-7, and I forgot to bathe this week. Needless to say, my life is feeling a bit frenetic right now (which is currently my favorite word… “frenetic” not “now”). I’m using my lunch break to squeeze out this blog post, and I’ve got some wicked bad acid reflux working (I blame the Totino’s pizza I had for dinner last night). 

Over the Christmas Break, I was able to develop pretty nice momentum. I worked about 4-6 hours per day on my book, hung out with my wife and daughter, started IV breeding modest Ludicolos named Ludikulus, and even thought about cleaning out the garage. I also spent a lot of time reading self-publishing guides, getting advice from pros like JA Konrath (via his blog… he hasn’t called me personally… yet), and watching my Twitter-enabled self-publishing-colleagues announce their new books every other day. Which, of course, made me feel like I was sitting on my butt doing nothing despite my forward momentum. 

It was then that I realized I needed a pacing car… and it sure as heck couldn’t be JA Konrath or Amanda Hocking. They’re way too successful. No. What I need is a ghost-me-pacing-car, like on Mario Kart when you do the time trials the second time. It doesn’t matter how fast Donkey Kong is on the straight-a-way or how easily Dry Bones takes curves, it only matters that I push the throttle a little bit harder than last time, and that I hug the corner a little bit closer this time. 

So, while I don’t have a release date set for my book, I do have small goals that I am setting for myself, completing each lap as it comes. It’s very close, and I’m getting more excited every day, but I also want each step to be taken purposefully and not rush headlong over a cliff because I get too excited about my Invicibility Star. I just have to keep reminding myself that if you go too fast and break out to the front of the pack you quickly find a blue turtle shell crammed up your tailpipe.

As an added bonus (for those of you working on your own books), I decided to give a small piece of advice regarding formatting your e-book… or rather converting it for use with a Kindle. Any document can be dropped into your Kindle. All you have to do is convert it to HTML using Word’s Save As Webpage function. Amazon has a pretty nifty program that will do the rest of the conversion. However, it is not so easy to use. The guide on Amazon suggests that you use the Command prompt to run your KindleGen with the associated HTML file for conversion. This didn’t work for me… at all. It was 500 times easier just to drag the HTML file onto the KindleGen. 

I don’t know why that option isn’t listed (there’s probably a good reason, but I haven’t seen any drawbacks yet… all my image files transferred properly and it retained its formatting). Anywho, hope that helps.