Tuesday, March 22, 2016

I Have Published My First Book

The Ballad of the Emerald Bard: Opus 01 - The Suite of Seduction, Lost Love, and Revenge.  Is Available Now!

It has been a very long time in coming.  Beyond a long time, really.  So many folks had expected me to publish something right out of high school.  And indeed, I have written quite a bit.  It has been a long road, with life constantly getting in my way.

With the start of the blog, I knew above all else, that I was going to write a fantasy story and put it out there.  The Ballad of the Emerald Bard was wonderfully received, yes, but let’s face it, this blog is more of a hobby.


Yes, I pour my heart and soul into it, and no, I’m not giving it up, but it is by no means successful.  I have a ton of page views, but I’ve discovered that page views are worth nothing, SEO is worth nothing, unless people click on ads or leave comments.  With a few exceptions, I rarely get either comments or ad clicks.

Knowing that The Ballad was going to be put on a website that was going to have ads, and I was going to market it that way, I edited the hell out of it.  I toned down the themes to make sure that they were going to be family friendly.  I hated it, but in the end, people still came around an enjoyed the story.  In fact, some of the stories were in the highest viewed parts of the blog.

Some of my dedicated blogging friends came by and left some comments, constructive criticisms, or said hi, but beyond that, nothing.  There was also a glaring flaw in the two starting stories of the series that needed to be fixed.  So, awhile back, I decided that I would collect them all into a series of novel length short story collections.  I knew for a fact that I was going to write new content for these collections and reedit the original stories so that they were, not only the way I wanted them censorship wise, but also more connected together.  The chopping up of the stories to fit the serial format was sometimes not kind….

Through all my research through all the different ways I could publish the stories, it became more and more evident that having the stories on the blog was going to prevent me from truly publishing the stories in a way that allowed me to be as profitable as I wanted.  Biggest example was Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing program.  To qualify for the Select, which allowed for sales, giveaways, and other promotions, only a certain percentage of the book could be available anywhere else online.

All this led me to the conclusion that I needed to go “All-In” on this book thing.  Meaning no more Deeya stories on the blog.  Having said that, I can still do other things with The Ballad.  Such as the poetry Deeya uses as songs in the books will be available here.  As will be in depth character analyses and timelines.  As the book series progresses, I plan on adding quite a bit of ‘background’ information through blog posts.  So the blog will be a handbook, or guidebook, to the world of the Emerald Bard.

So, on March 20th, I removed all the stories of the Ballad of the Emerald Bard from A Brainless Nod.  It hurt, sure, but I am going to do this 100%.  I believe in these stories and characters passionately….  As do the beta readers that have helped me fine tune Opus 01.

Speaking of Opus 01, it is available now!  It is available in two formats.  The paperback format is 6x9 inches and 330 pages.  It is also available in Kindle Format (the actual live date is Wednesday the 23rd).

Opus 01 contains 3 stories.

The Concerto about the Deal at the Crossroads.  This is a brand new story written as a better introduction to the character of El’Mindeeya Do’Katal.  It starts out with Deeya playing a concert at a wayward inn.  Sure, she has many secrets, but so does the owner of the establishment.  Tessa has owned the Deal at the Crossroads far longer than any human should have been able to live.  And Tessa…she has a request of the Emerald Bard.  What is it?  Will Deeya be crazy enough to say yes?  And if she does, how will she survive?

A Symphony of Old Debts.  This was originally available on the blog as Old Debts, and has changed considerably.  Ashengrey has requested Deeya’s help.  But how can Deeya help the woman who broke her heart as much as Deeya had broken Ashengrey’s?  And what will it cost her to help?  Deeya’s bardic reputation is on the line, and her reputation is everything in this world in which she lives and dies by her ability to be an unassuming traveling minstrel.

The Sonata of Buried Secrets.  This was originally available on the blog as Buried Secrets, and the edits to this one have made it considerably better.  With Deeya walking into a trap, after her cover of some of her secrecy has been destroyed, all her plans simply fall apart in the blink of an eye.  Will she survive the night?  And if she doesn’t, who will arise to seek revenge?  The moral of the story?  Never underestimate the Bard.

Anyways, I hope you will take time and check out this new book.  If I could in any way guarantee that you would love it, I would….  If you love adult fantasy, you will this book.

--

Ballad of the Emerald Bard: Opus 01, The Suite of Seduction, Lost Love, and Revenge
By Dan Bonser

Availabe from these links, and elsewhere!


Dan Bonser’s AmazonAuthor Page (which has direct links to both versions)

--Dan

Bloggers.com

A Brainless Nod - Find me on Bloggers.com

BlogCatalog

Blog Nation

Writing Blogs

World Bloggers Community

BumpIn

powered by
Bumpin

ReadABlog

Blog Search Engine

RSS and Link Directory

Blogdash

prchecker.info

Alexa

Select

Infolinks

RSStop10

RSS Feed Directory - Search and read RSS Feeds without any RSS reader.

Plazoo

RSS Search

Blogroll

Submit Blog & RSS Feeds

Blogdigger

Facebook Fanpage