Made it to the Finals!

Thanks to all who voted in the initial go-round, my novel has made it to the finals! I am in the top 5, and so now is the time to get the votes in and make all the effort count! Even if you voted in the initial voting round, you CAN vote in these finals, and I would greatly love you all if you vote for me one last time!So PLEASE, vote one more time -- this time it counts towards the ultimate winner, which I would dearly love to be!http://www.ursamajorawards.org/voting2014/

A copy of the directions, for anyone confused by it: "Please select 1 for your first place choice, 2 for your second place, and 3 for your third place. It is not necessary to choose all three places - you may choose only one or two, or none at all. It is not necessary to vote in all categories. Just leave all nominees set to (None) if you wish to abstain from that category. You may add to or change your votes any time until close of voting on April 15th."

Vote for "Forges of Dawn" now!

I am up for the Ursa Major Award for 2014's best anthropomorphic novel, and now that voting on winners is open, I would like to ask that those of you who liked the book enough to think it would qualify for that -- meaning, you think it deserves that distinction -- to vote for it on the website: http://www.ursamajorawards.org/nominations.htm

No pressure. If you can't say you liked it enough for that, don't vote for it. I won't hold that against you. But if you CAN, I would be most happy!  Voting ends on the 28th of February, so don't wait too long to do it. And absolutely do NOT create numerous accounts to make multiple votes -- just vote once and leave it at that (you can, however, ask friends and family to vote, though).

If I win, cool -- if not, it was nice to be nominated in the first place ^^

And tell your friends and family to vote, too! I need all the help I can get, and would love to be able to win, with all you guys' help! Thanks in advance <3  E. M.

Sorry for the lack of updates recently! Got caught up with frivolous stuff (short stories and such), but am restarting work on the sequel. I have 14 pages so far, but Chapter One doesn't sit well with me and likely will get a massive overhaul. I AM happy with partial Chapter Two, and the prologue. ;D Hopefully I will be able to commission my second book cover soon, and have that for you all (because I DO know what I want that one to show. ;D). Gotta get some money together first, though -- Amazon takes a LONG time to send me any checks XP

The book is OUT and available for purchase! Time to order your copy! I am providing the link for the US Amazon store, but if you live outside the US, you'll have to see if you can find it on your Amazon site (I selected for it to be available worldwide, so SHOULD be there). And it won't come u[ by just searching "Forges of Dawn" -- put in "Forges of Dawn Kinsey". Otherwise you get weird titles of not even the right name. If you have problems finding it, let me know and link me to your Amazon site and I'll see if I can pull it up for you. The Kindle version is also supposed to be out sometime today (said it can take 12 hours or so to appear for sale), so if that's the one you're wanting, you can buy that one; I'll put a link up as soon as I have one. But before I post any links, I first want to ask that if you read the book, please leave it a review on Amazon. It will help other people make a decision on purchasing it, and it's always good to see feedback! If you DO leave a review, please do not refer to myself (if you refer to me at all) by any other name or nickname except my professional one: E. M. Kinsey. If you don't want to type that, or won't be able to remember not to call me something else, just put "the author" xD NOW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LE LINK OF DOOMY DOOM GOODNESS: http://www.amazon.com/Forges-Dawn-Iron-Lyons-Volume/dp/1500977063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410626976&sr=8-1&keywords=forges+of+dawn+kinsey

Here's a nice little goody for you all: the finished cover and how it will look when it arrives at your doorstep. You know you want a copy. You KNOW you do. Look at it! So sexy and sleek! Did I do a good job with layout, ya think? I think it looks snazzy. All art is Whiluna's, but I cropped and edited it some for the spine and back cover. I am so excited and I love this cover you have no idea. I think it looks really professional and non 'this-is-clearly-a-self-published-thing-so-eww-a-turn-off'. Please say you agree? I hope you do. I hope it's not simply my ego being out of control and it really does looks as awesome as I see it. :3 YOU WANT A COPY, DON'T YOU? ADMIT IT: YOU DO. Also, feel free to reblog this to help me with promotion! ;D

So I have submitted the manuscript (all properly formatted and crapola) and cover to Amazon for review, and within 24 hours they're supposed to respond to me whether or not I did everything correctly, and/or send me proofs. Once I ok the proofs, it will immediately go up fro sale. So cross your fingers, hope for the review to come back as a total thumbs-up, and maybe it will be out for sale tomorrow or Friday! Prices are going to be: $18.50 (US) £11.35 (GB) €14.24 (Eur) I do not choose these prices. I would have LIKED to have offered it to you guys for $10-15, but Amazon says the bare minimum they will allow is $17.00, and that won't get me any royalties. So I did $18.50 (so I can have SOME profit...), and they told me what that would "convert" to for other currencies. Please don't hate me for the price. I just hope it does not drive any of you off from purchasing a copy. I really hope it doesn't. Because it's an ugly price, I agree. *weeps* No word yet on what the Kindle/e-book price will be, because they don't let me set that or even know my options regarding an e-book until they review and approve my novel for sale. XP I'll let you know what's what with that when I can, and my next text update (after the official cover I'm going to put up here in a second) SHOULD hopefully link you to the book's page so you can buy this sucker.

Final Phases!

Okey doky ladies and gents! I have just about finished all my final edits and formatting (just need one last run-through to make sure the numbering stayed correct!), and then I can start uploading everything to Amazon.com. So expect an update in the next few days with a link to where you can buy the book. That's right -- it's going to be on sale REAL soon! ;D

A few people have asked me whether the book will be available in hardcover or not. I checked into it, and the only options I will be able to offer right now is paperback or e-book. There are a few websites out there that would allow me to make a small run of hardbacks, but they are quite costly unless ordered in larger numbers. So I would need at least FIFTY people who were DEFINITELY going to order one, in order to have it even remotely be do-able for me. If at least 50 ordered one, the cost for you would be $20 per hardback. Not sure yet what the cost of the paperback or ebooks will be.

Here's the second page. I'll post more pages as I do them! Kamaria, Kudisan, Oduor, story, and all art © E.M. Kinsey Please do not copy, alter, trace, or reproduce in any way, shape, or form without written permission from me. Thank you.

So I decided to do a short comic -- sort of a prequel to the novel, if you will -- both because it's fun, and because people pay more attention to comics and stuff that to just words or even just pictures. :3 I hope this will help promote the book better, and get more people interested in my work! 8D **You can reblog if you think it will help! Kamaria, Kudisan, story, and all art © E.M. Kinsey Please do not copy, alter, trace, or reproduce in any way, shape, or form without written permission from me. Thank you.

Hit a bit of a snag: my editor's computer died on her, so the editing process may get held up a bit. Here's hoping it won't be long until she can send me more edits to work on! *frets* I hate computers sometimes, man. Better news: I have a tentative title for Book II, which I will announce at a later date. Much easier to title this one than the first!

Started plotting out book two of the series. I have a very rough outline for it. Had to be a little more in-depth with this one than the last. The first book I knew right off the bat what the story was going to be and where it would go -- this one will take a bit more smoothing, methinks. But the longer I ponder it, the better it starts feeling and the better handle I get on where it should go. Yay for plotlines that begin to coalesce out of the fog filling your head! And yay for imagination!

Just got back the first third of the book from the editor. Time to make corrections and discuss what I don't agree with with her!

Inept At Internets..

I tried using different themes for this page, but although I copy/paste the coding from the free sources, when I try to edit it to use backgrounds and stuff of my choosing for it... all I get is a black screen of death. No matter WHAT I upload for background, etc. Why is the internet so hard for me? xD

Lookie here! This is the cover for the first book in the series, done for me by the artist Wiluna on deviantArt. Hopefully it will be out in a month or two (depends on how long the final editing process takes). :3

Reblog it if you want to help me promote it to the world!

Nearing Completion!

So the first draft of "The Forges of Dawn" is written, and just gotta wait on edits from my editor! Then once I correct everything to her satisfaction, it's off to the printers and onto your shelves! The graphic novel, "Empires of Sand" is going a little slower, owing to the schedule of the artist and to recent computer troubles she had -- a whole disk wipe that caused her to lose a lot of her work. But we shall persevere, no worries, and get back on track! ;D