November has been eventful for my series, to say the least.
Forged In Death's November promotion on Amazon turned out to be a big success, with Book 1 going as low as 500 or so and staying beneath 2,000 for the entire month. My short story,
Torg's First Death (a tale from The Death Wizard Chronicles), also went well below 1,000. And book 2 titled
Chained By Fear, which was released on Nov. 28, is also selling well. Plus, reviews -- mostly positive -- are starting to roll in. Overall, the momentum is building, and I'm confident it will continue to build in the months to come.
I do see one potential problem-spot. I think that a lot of today's fantasy
readers, more so than in year's past, really like the gritty stuff with
heroes that are half good/half bad, as opposed to the loftier, more
black/white tone that I've taken, which is more like Tolkien and less
like, say, Martin. A few have said that my hero is too strong and that he's not realistic.
Well, here's my argument against that. Let's say you've got three kind
of sassy/dirty heroes running through a cave to escape some bad guys.
And they find a troll blocking the entrance. It ends up taking the three of
them about an hour to finally find a way around the troll, which is
fine and fun. But in
the meantime, the bad guy's army has about a thousand of these trolls
in it. So, how in the world will the good guys stand any chance at all
if the toughest of them can't even take on one of the trolls? That to me is as unrealistic to me as a loftier story is to others.
Still, it's a matter of taste, and when a person spends hard-earned time and money on a book, he or she has every right to say whatever they feel about it. It's an honor to the writer, regardless.
