Finally a COLLECTION!

So, after nearly a month after our departure from California, we're finally starting to settle down in our new home across the country.

It's such a weird change too, weather-wise, because I'm so used to September being the hottest month of the year for California. Here in Pittsburgh, I've been staring wide-eyed out our windows at these autumn-like clouds with autumn-like rain and autumn-like winds giving me autumn-like chills I don't know what to do with myself.

But now that we're here with our own address, I was FINALLY able to order a proof of the redone FtSW's cover. If you didn't know, the original first two books' covers were done in lamination with a default Createspace spine. More recently, however, I went back through these covers and redid them with a MUCH better spine, plus the newly added matte cover option.

I love cradling the matte book covers to my face and making sweet cooing noises, yes I do.

On a separate, less embarrassing note, books two and three also tell you on the cover now which book comes next in the series. Book series that don't make their chronology obvious have always been a pet peeve of mine, but after working in a bookstore for most of a year, I developed a stink eye for them too.

An ugly, ugly stink eye.

But take a look at these spines. Look at them. Just look.

Sighs contentedly.

Anyway, also now that we've started settling in, Victoria and I have been able to sneak in some writing time. Book 4 of Marionettes is at about 95% completion. Yes, almost done. Just a few scenes are left, and then the end. It's definitely the biggest book of the series so far, and begins an arc I'm reeeeally excited about.

As mentioned before, book 1 of Monsters is currently with betas, and book 2 is already about a third of the way completed. It's totally wild.

(Victoria laughs at me whenever I say "wild", because I say it about everything. "That floor display is wild." "That cloud formation is wild." "That part of the wilderness is wild.")

So, up soon is going to be the cover and preview of book 1 of Monsters, aaaaas promised. I just want to do some slight final tweaking with the cover before I finally debut it because I'm never satisfied.

It's gonna be wild.

Book Two Poster Art!

So, after months of working on these two on and off, in-between writing and working, finally I've decided to divorce myself from this tumultuous relationship. Er, in short, I'm counting these as done enough. I found myself starting to obsess, so I knew it was time. Time to move on. Time to meet new people.

Eheheheheh, seriously though! I was driving myself crazy and repainting over and over again. But, I did learn a ton while painting these four kids. I mean, a LOT. Part of the reason why it took so long to finish these two posters was because I was learning so much -- I could see all kinds of flaws and things that I could do better.

In the end, it just came to a point where, if I tried to improve upon what I had, I'd have to start almost all over. That's totally counter-productive.

But, just looking back at book 1's poster, which I finished a year ago this month, crazily enough, I can see all kinds of improvement, and that makes me feel all floaty.

When I first started these two posters, I did preliminary sketches for both of them, but I finished the obvious two characters first:

Let me just say that, wow, I learned a lot about both skin color and hair in this painting. Darker skin reflects light and color differently, and this required an incredible amount of learning and repainting. I even took a long break, painted some other things, then came back and retooled a LOT. And I'm glad I did, because it made a total difference.

Also, hair? Forget it. I suck at hair. It's my own fault for spending so much time learning face and skin while giving no attention or practice to hair beyond basic squiggle marks.

I threw together a finished look at the end, which is why there's a ton of things still wrong or could have used a bit more touching up, but gosh. I was probably going to step on all ten of my toes if I kept going.

So, I started and spent forever on the second poster:

To me, personally, I can see a huge difference in skill level between this poster and the first one. It's almost embarrassing. Eeeeeee.

But, here I learned more about sculpting different faces, and then even more about HAIR. I tried so many different ways of painting the hair that again, totally embarrassed. Hair is so tough!!!! I studied techniques from other artists and ended up wanting to shave both of these guys by the end.

I'm glad I didn't.

I can't imagine either of them really pulling it off.

You can get a closer look with the detail shots I put up on the Tumblog (which is also another way you can see such a difference in skill level between the first and second painting ahahaha sob). I'll make a post with process shots of the second poster since I totally obliterated the pre-painting levels of the first one later, because that had an extra step than book one's poster.

I have an idea what I'd like to do for the third books, but for now, a much needed break.

And by "break", I mean working on something else about the series.

It never ends.

More to come soon!

The Paperback of Book 2 is Available on Amazon!

The paperback of Fracture the Spider's Web is all up and available in the Amazon store! It looks nice, right? All bright and shiny and freaking awesome.

So far, for some reason, Amazon has the digital and the paperback as separate listings. You can search by title or series name and you should get both listings, so make sure to scroll a little bit down and the paperback listing should show up.

The first round of revisions for book 3 are done -- all I need to do is go back, tweak a few more things, and then it's off to the betas! There's also, of course, Interlude, the novella that I've just started revising. Compared to these massive manuscripts I'm used to, the novella will be easy-peasy.

That's all for now. Stay awesome.

Some Updates and Another Announcement!

WHEW. It's been a while since our last update, and even longer since we talked about anything fun. It isn't for lack of fun things -- noooo way. In fact, we have a ton of new things. Let's start with the most exciting:

Yep, the Marionettes series is going to have its very own little novella set after the events of Fracture the Spider's Web and before book 3, and we'll have more details about the story later on. Here's some of the things we CAN tell you about it:

• The release date is tentatively set for this upcoming October. We're chugging along on it and we REALLY want to have it out by then. Why? Well...let's juts say it's perfect for October. 
• Just like the Dance in Shadow and Whisper & Fracture the Spider's Web, the novella will feature multiple character viewpoints. The best part? Everyone will be in FIRST PERSON, just like Kali.
• The digital editions will be only 99 cents, but for a small window at the end of October, we'll be giving away digital copies for free. 

Writing this story happened spontaneously, but we've been having so much fun and laughing and crying our faces off. We're so excited to share this piece of the world and let you all get closer to the characters you've already gotten to know.

We'll update again when we have the synopsis, release date, and Goodreads page! Make sure you follow the Tumblog for piece-by-piece updates.

Next up --

The proof for Fracture the Spider's Web finally arrived!

It looks pretty awesome, but I'm going to make it look a tad awesomer before we officially make the paperback available. I'm even really proud of how the back cover came out?? It's pretty slick.

Now, I have to go through each page and make sure everything's beautiful. Once that's finished, I'll announce on the Tumblog that it's finally available!

If you haven't yet, you can add FtSW on Goodreads. Still gotta update the sidebar with new links herpaderp.

Added two new sprites!

Ave and Elliot are official additions to the Adoptables page in celebration of the second book. Geez, so many of the boys are just so unamused at being a sprite. Perk up, guys.

Revisions of book three have begun!

We took a brief vacation and now we're back to work. This book is my FAVORITE -- it's a secret I can't really keep. Events came together so naturally and the pacing was thrilling to work. Seriously, even I wrote myself into nervousness and anxiety of, "Holycow, what's going to happen next?!???" The characters are fantastic in this book, and they came out in ways I didn't expect them to. I'm really excited just to READ it again.

The tentative release date for book 3 is December, and if we finish with time to spare this time, hopefully we can send out actual digital arcs. Luckily, I don't think we'll be making the types of changes to book 3 that we had to make for book 2 to be as brilliant and complete as it is, which is super exciting.

I just really love the third book, okay. Don't judge me.

Anyway, that's it for now! More fun stuff later!

Fracture the Spider's Web Release Day!

Carmi is really just the go-to guy for adding a splash of excitement to anything.

ANYWAY! SO, HERE'S THE DAY! I'm posting this into the future, so, as a head's up, I hit the "publish" button on both Kindle and Nook, but it can take anywhere from 12-48 hours for it to become active.

If it doesn't show up in your Amazon/B&N search, check back again later. When I see both links live, I'll make another little update on the tumblog.

So, in short, I hope you guys enjoy! As soon as I can, I'll submit the book to Goodreads and announce when that's live as well! Thanks SO much for everyone's support -- it really makes us feel just all warm and fuzzy inside.

♥

Cover Talk pt. II

So, I've finally finished the fourth draft of Fracture the Spider's Web (AH, I can finally use the whole title now instead of the ambiguous "book two"), and now Victoria's in the process of copy edits, which means we're on schedule for the super exciting September 1st release date.

Since I talked about the cover of Dance in Shadow and Whisper, I thought it'd be fun to go into the process of this cover. The process was actually a bit different from how I though together the first cover, because now I had to think about how to carry the same theme of the first to the second.

An important part of covers for series is that they have to look cohesive. There's got to be some visually unifying devices that clearly identifies this cover as definitely part of the series.

I mean, that's totally daunting. Let me tell you.

When Victoria and I took our trip to Pittsburgh, I photographed everything. I got every angle of different buildings and cityscapes so that I had a wide range of pictures to choose from. Here's what the original base image of the cover looks like:

On its own, it's painfully ordinary, right? But, by the end, I had transformed the base image to look like this:

Up close, the building basically looks like a vector, but for Pittsburghians, the PPG building is easily recognizable. The building is such an awesome design, so how could I resist using it for this particular cover?

What I ended up doing was making a "sketch" of the second and third covers to make sure I could manage some key similar characteristics (yes, that means I've thrown the first draft of the third cover together already too!), so here's what the sketch looks like:

Welllll, I got the basic idea down, and that was the point. One of the first noticeable differences, of course, is that "web" was originally sketched out. I ended up scrapping that halfway through drawing out the letters because "web" was just hogging way too much of the composition. The letters were very heavy, stealing so much of the spotlight that the other letters seemed almost out of place.

So I decided to use regular Georgia for "web", and in the end it worked out well because I was able to place the series name much better-like.

This time around, I also decided to use an image for the back cover, since Fracture the Spider's Web has two sides. Here's the image I took out in the middle of Nowheresville:

I took a bunch of pictures of these trees, but the clouds were moving so fast that each snap is different from the next. I loved this one in particular (the first one I took, actually) because the cloud shapes mimic the shape of the trees, forming a lovely composition on its own. Here's how I transformed it:

It's TOTALLY distorted  by this point -- and also flipped. I did this so that the colors matched the front cover as closely as possible, and I flipped the whole image in its final form to get the right kind of symmetry.

Like this, the picture doesn't look very cool. At all. Looks like novice Photoshop farting around. BUT, with all the other layers on top of it, here's what the final product looks like without text:

Textures really make a difference! And the sunburst? Well, you'll have to read and find out!

(And, for the record, I loved being out in the middle of Nowheresville. It's so different from the smoggy California I'm used to!)

Book 2: Fracture the Spider's Web - COVER REVEAL

So, as we mentioned, today's the big day for the cover reveal of BOOK TWO. I've been SO EXCITED to show this to you all since I finished it last month, I only hope it meets the expectations that the first book set!

And since you probably skipped right over this, here, just take it already:

Fracture the Spider's Web is the sequel to Dance in Shadow and Whisper and will be out in Kindle and Nook formats September 1st (barring no setbacks from a higher power, since we definitely can't plan ahead for that).

And, if you haven't yet gotten your copy of Dance in Shadow and Whisper yet, we'll be discounting the digital versions to 99 cents. We set the price to change, but it can take up to 24 hrs for it to set in, so make sure you check first!

Like, holy cow, 99 cents, that's pretty sweet. BUT, we'll only have the discount until 11:59 p.m. on the 30th of August, a day before the release of the second book. So, if you've been waffling on getting your copy, now's a darn good time to do it.


Here's what the paperback will look like:

Eeeee I can't wait to put this up on the sidebar! We'll have the official release date of the paperback later. Updates to come!

Also, if you've read the first book, you can find the summary of the second book in the "read more". If you HAVEN'T read the first book, ohmygosh, don't read the summary. It'll be spoiler CITY!

Preparing for Shipping & Book 2 Stuff!

We've got a PILE of things to ship out after the giveaways. Unfortunately, two of our winners did not reply within 48 hours, so I had to draw two new names. Hopefully I'll hear back so we can finally announce the official winners on Rafflecopter and then take our load of envelopes and drop some serious cash getting these into the mailosphere.

At least then we're done on spending money for marketing this book (especially since we don't have much!), but then we're going to repeat the process all over again when book two comes out. Sigh!

Speaking of which, some updates.

Revision Two of Book 2

I'm already a third of the way through the second revision and working out all the issues Victoria and I pulled out of the initial draft. I've also been adding new scenes while cutting down on fat -- and the new scenes add that little extra dimension to this book that I've always thought was missing. I'm soooo glad for that. It's a big boost to the story.

It'll probably take me another week or so before I finish the second draft, and then it's off to beta readers, which is also, indeed, very exciting. Then, depending on the feedback we get, I may have to do another revision and an edit or just a half revision along with the edit.

Which brings me to my next point!

Book Two Cover Reveal and Release Date

THIS is going to be soon. Very soon. The cover is completely finished, and I'm thinking of setting the release date at a more comfortable time so we're not racing and struggling to get everything finished. I want us to be able to take our time -- and also to get the paperback out at the same time as the digital versions.

Hopefully I'll also be able to contact more book review bloggers in that time, too! And also be able to send digital ARCs to the lovely bloggers who've already read and reviewed and loved the first book.

Then, it's onward to book 3! Holy cow *sweats*.

Sales of DiSaW

We've been very lucky so far to have sales at all, and even a few superfans. It's been such an honor and we get so awkward but happy but also awkward. But, like we've said before, we also know this is going to be a marathon, and it's going to take time to build up some momentum!

So here's approximately how it's all been going down:

June
Nook: 5
Kindle: 13
Total -  18

July
Nook: 4
Kindle: 9
Paperback: 5
Total - 18

Grand Total: 36

Seriously, we're super privileged to have had this many sales in our first two months. When I did my indie pub research, I found a large majority of authors who only sold in the single digits, pretty much just to friends and family. We'll see how August goes! STAYING OPTIMISTIC!

Adoptables!

Oh, I also forgot to mention that I added an adoptables page! That way you can add your favorite characters to your blog or what have you. I mean, how cute are they??

How could you not want to have these guys on your page? There's other icons as well, so go check out the page!

Shout-out!

Thanks x's 9000 to Kristen for the awesome shout-out on her blog! She's a long-time friend of ours and we've been a follower of her blog since it was a little baby thing. She also gave us a sweet review on goodreads!


That's been what's up recently. We'll have a cover reveal and release date SOON! (Really, I'm just excited to have the little cover icon on my sidebar. Eheheheh.) Until then, stay awesome.

Some Awesome New Reviews

And by awesome, I mean awesome. We now have five ratings and five reviews on Goodreads for a joint score of 4.4, which is pretty damn stellar.

We've been so lucky to have so many great reviews this far, it's a total honor to hear all these positive things from such fantastic bloggers, and you guys should all go check out our awesome reviewers and their blogs! Spread the love.

Dabin of So Many Books, So Little Time

Rating: 4 stars

Our favorite line: "I found Kali's lack of social skills hilarious at moments, it was adorable to watch her blunder around :)" [via Dance in Shadow and Whisper Book Review]


Reena of Starlight Book Reviews

Rating: 5 stars

Our favorite line: "Dance in Shadow and Whisper is easily the best book I have been asked to review so far. I can't wait for the release of the next book" [via Dance in Shadow and Whisper by Sarah Godfrey & Victoria DeRubeis]

Reena also interviewed us!


Ana of Chibi Reader

Rating: 4 stars

Our favorite line: "Dance in Shadow and Whisper is a great book that will leave you laughing hysterically  or crying your heart out." (Although, a close second was definitely, "By the end I was bawling like a baby. Yeah… I’m not proud of that.") [via Book Review: Dance in Shadow and Whisper]

Ana also hosted an interview with us!


Kristin of My Life as a Teacup

Rating: 4 stars

Our favorite line: "Dance in Shadows and Whisper revolves around such an intricate and imaginative world that you can't help but get sucked into the quirky characters, and adventurous situations." [Via Goodreads]


Some other awesome blogs have helped us out as well, both with interviews and featuring the contest, such as Jackie from No Bent Spines. Hopefully we'll get to post her and other reviews soon!

As as second update, the cover for the second book is finished. Victoria finished her read-through of the second draft, and now I need to do another round of revisions and send the third draft to critique partners. After we get word back from them, we'll have a better idea of when we can debut the second book -- maybe an actual date. So excited!

Lots of Awesome Things

Definitely been needing an update for a while now. Lots of things got in the way the past couple of weeks, including someone stealing our wallet and phone -- including my driver's license, our debit cards, and even my social security card, which is really scary. We've been picking up the pieces one at a time, and today we were finally able to get some pens for signing!

Here's all the updates for the past few weeks!

The paperbacks arrived

This means we can put together the contest really soon. We'll have signed paperbacks, bookmarks, and even a couple posters. You can see us trying to practice our signatures and totally failing. Why is signing stuff so hard?

Also, the paperbacks are available for purchase via the Amazon store. The one thing I love about using Createspace was how low I could make the price -- definitely couldn't do that with Lulu. The downside? The shipping quality is just as expected of Amazon: sucky. One of the books we received looked like someone had dropped it. Dented the corner in, creased the cover. This one won't be going into the contest, maybe into the hands of a book review blogger that only takes physical books. We'll see what happens.

The first revision of book two is finished

And it took me almost two weeks thanks to all the things that happened here. It seems like, with every book, whether I'm writing or revising, I'm going to hit the same four stages:

First quarter: YEAH, this rocks, this is going to be good, I'm so stoked.
Second quarter: Okay, well, things are moving, I guess.
Third quarter: This sucks.
Final quarter: ...

I wouldn't have gotten through it without Kesha's accoustic Harold Song, Fall Out Boy's The Mighty Fall, or The Wright Brothers' Blood on My Name. Those songs kept me pumped up and I guess slightly delusional in a way?

From here, it's Victoria's turn to read through and help me with the problem area's I need to fix, plus whatever else she can find or wants to change. Once I make those changes, it's off to our betas!

The goal is to have the second book out by August. I'm thinking it's probably likely we'll have it available halfway through August at this rate, but ideally sooner. We'll see how crazy I'm willing to work myself.

Dance in Shadow and Whisper has a 4.67 on Goodreads

Which is SUPER exciting. One of our lovely book review bloggers is Dabin from So Many Books, So Little Time. She gave us a very nice four stars, which we are definitely glad to have. It was sort of affirming for us, that there's a realm beyond our friends that can enjoy this book and these characters, too!

Our second five star rating comes from Reena of Starlight Book Reviews, and she'll have a full review up soon! We're so excited, ahhhh.

We're waiting on a couple more bloggers and we check about a hundred times every day for news. It's no wonder I've been running low on sanity points recently.

New author pictures

Which isn't anything special, really. Just makes us feel more official. We set aside a day to do stuff with our hair and faces that look good in picture form and these were the results.

It was unreasonably hot that day (not even as hot as it WILL get by the end of summer). I'm just glad it didn't show in our faces!

So, hopefully I can throw together an official "about the authors" page soon instead of the one that redirects to the page on KSW. But that's low on the priority list right now.

Anyway, that's it for now (as far as I can remember, which is never very far, because "remember" and "I" are two words that never go together with me). More updates and random rambles as they come to my brain. Until then, I'll be working on KSW and finishing the cover of the second book. I can't wait to reveal both the cover and the title!

Oh, and I should probably eat something, preferably adult-like. Kraft mac and cheese. Yeah.