MK's LJ ... OK!

Welcome to the launch of
 

LEGENDS: The Fall of the Atlantean Empire

Book One: The Winds of Chance

At last ... fully edited, impeccably proofread, perfectly formatted for your ebook reader, desktop, laptop or netbook ... no typos, no shuffling from one blog post to another ... just read and enjoy, as a fully-featured ebook from DreamCraft!

In an era of storm and chaos, One will be born who will command the Power, but the ancient magic that flows in his veins like blood is his curse as well as his gift.

In this time of cataclysm and ordeal, the upstart Empire of Vayal has placed a bounty on the heads of all scions of the lineage of Diomedas, for the oracle foretold the doom of Vayal, and it rides on the shoulders of the One.

He lives and breathes already, hiding the old city of Zeheft and in the slowly drowning outlands. He is Faunos Phinneas Aeson, still dangerously young -- and he has one dread: the witchfinders of Vayal, who are charged with the hunting of those like himself.

Twenty years, Faunos has hidden and learned, until the gods of sea, storm and earth destroy Zeheft --and one night destiny brings Vayal's young witchfinder to the camps of the water gypsies, where a youth like Faunos should never have been. Galen lies dying; the City of the Sun is celebrating the coming of age of Soran -- althlete, hunter, beautiful as the night,  Vayal's heir and greatest witchfinder ...

The Empire of the Atlantan has one slender chance to survive, and its struggle will begin on this night.
 

Read the first four chapters, on GLBT Booshelf!

See the Legends art gallery -- art by Jade...

And save 30% ... indulge yourself in the "blog special," right on this page!

• Published by DreamCraft
• Ebook edition: July 2009
• 98,370 words
• For PC, Mac, Laptop, desktop, netbook, BeBook, iLiad, Sony Reader, Palm Pilot, Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, Microsoft Reader, smartphones.
   

Download the PDF for BeBook, Iliad, PC, Mac, desktop, laptop, netbook: $6.95 -- save $3!

Download the Mobi, PDB, epub and LRF files, for  Palm Pilot, Sony Reader, Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry etc., for $10.50

Like to see more of the Mel Keegan novels? Start here:

Preening a few feathers here:

http://www.bestgayblogs.com/2009/05/featured-celebrity-blogs/exploring-literature-with-mel-keegan

...Best Gay Blogs ran the story in Featured Celebtiry Blogs.

Celebrity?!Is that cool, or what?!

And writers, editors, publishers -- check out the wiki: GLBT Bookshelf ... Keegan's gift to this community.

Hi guys. I've been gone for about a month ... long enough to have 'flu, get better, get sick again, get buried in work, dig myself out and ... like that. It hasn't been (quite) the kind of killer 'flu that has been wreaking havoc and panic across the north, but it's been bad enough.  Other than being sick, it's been a fun time (not), with too much work and other STUFF, some of which I brought upon myself.

Someone once said that the key to success is to "bite off more than you can chew, and then chew like buggery."

Suffice to say, I've been chewing. Hard.

In fact, I think my jaws are worn out.

I did make some headway:

Exploring the Outer Reaches of Literature with Author Mel Keegan -- the Smashwords interview is being run on GaySocialites, and also on Best Gay Blogs, and with a bit of luck this should attract some attention. Thanks to Mark Coker of Smashwords for making this possible. He and his wife, Lesleyann, do a hell of a job. They're something of an inspiration...

But it was actually the whole AmazonFail situation which inspired me.

You might remember (if you have a terrific memory), when it was all happening, I said at one point that I didn't trust Amazon as far as I could throw Sasquatch, and that I had the glimmerings of an idea which might be unspeakably brilliant??

I just launched it, guys:

GLBT Bookshelf is a wiki ... a real, genuine, full-on, fully function wiki, by, for and about GLBT writers, editors, publishers, booksellers, reviewers, artists, readers. Mainstream books belong elsewhere. Inside this wiki, "genre" doesn't mean "gay," it means "historical," or "SF," or "crime thriller," or whatever.

A month ago, I was exploring the possibility of having the thing built in Joomla and MYSQL -- and it's perfectly possible to do this. So long as you don't mind  dropping a couple of grand and waiting six months for the programming!

Then the solution hit me: make it a wiki instead of a Joomla Interface.

How about a GLBT wiki which is also a bookstore ... and which has the potential to grow into the biggest GLBT bookstore on the web?

Please -- go over there and check it out.

Right now, it's still living at this address; http://bookworld.editme.com ... I called the beast "bookworld" as a working name, because at the time, for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what to call it. I also have NOT yet registered a domain for it, because a tiny part of me still needs to be convinced that other writers (THIS MEANS YOU!!) will participate and help to build the damned thing.

Meaning, I can set it up on my own, but I can't build it on my own. It's a Community. A wiki.

So ... GLBT Bookshelf  will have a domain when you guys have also seen the potential in this, and have helped to build it up. Then?

THEN, we open it to the public.

I'm covering the running costs, and I'll pony up for the first couple of ad campaigns too, to get it launched ... you're most welcome. It's my gift to a community that has actually given me a lot in the last 20 years or so.

Aricia got involved early, with reports of reviews from her own site; Jade had been doing help-desk consultancy and graphics; Sara Lansing and several others joined a few days ago, and it;s time for me to invite you guys!

Now, I've already made "holding" pages for some of you:  Erastes, Alex Beecroft, Lee Benoit ... if you can blog, you can wiki. To make and edit pages, embed anything you can think of, chat, blog, whatever, you just need to register and login.

Please do!

I'm STILL working on my pages. I have about half of them finished, and a lot of work ahead of me before I'm ready to call it done and sit back with a cuppa and a smug smirk. It would be great is some of the best writers in the field today could be in, established, with their pages set up and "populated," before we (meaning the growing community) open this thing to the public.

So ... that's where I've been for at least some of the last month. Setting up the wiki turned out to be more work than I'd imagined ... but I'm very glad I did it.

Also, I managed to take an afternoon off and see Wolverine. Pardon me whilst I drool. Here's my review: http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2009/05/wolverine-keegans-take-on-movie-thats.html

With most of the work done, I ought to be back here at LJ a lot more often.

Cheers ... and I *do* hope you'll see the potential of the wiki and be involved! ...
MK
 

• Gay vampires on the phone!
• Independent publishing -- and bookselling -- rock!...
• Couple of URLs for you!
• Swordsman for visually impaired readers ... the pr...
• The Swordsman ... on your iPhone!
• Amazon apologizes profusely ... hands up, anyone w...

• Macro magic
• Vanishing Point: winter fog in the Adelaide Hills
• Camouflage ... spot the wallaby!
• Summer at Myponga
• Focus and contrast: red hot pokers imitate art
• The dome of the sky
• Cafe culture goes way upmarket
• In the time warp ... Adelaide, of course!
• Fossils, front and center!

This is great ... the new Meatgrinder at Smashwords is just clockwork:



NOCTURNE was "up" in about 30 minutes, including the document conversion from Kindle/Mobi ... which gives me a chore. Now, I have to go in and completely redesign my ebookstore to include the "buy now" buttons for Palm Pilot, iPhone, and any device that can read Mobi. Not that I'm complaining, mind you! This is, in a word, kewl. And I'm still drooling over the new typeset of Swordsman ... for som reason, I'd imagined that the publisher-grade paper that was introduced by Lulu.com a few months ago would be below par -- dead wrong. It's actually nicer in appearance and "feel" than the rgular stuff. Highly recommended.

Oh -- if anyone's wondering why I went with Nocturne as the second book to Smashwords: vampires are smoking hot right now. I cannot believe the sales of Nocturne and Twilight at this time. Both of them are selling neck-and-neck with The Lords of Harbendane, which is a new title. It's taken me absolutely by surprise, to the extent where I'm actually thinking about writing another "quick one" before I get stuck into the HELLGATE books --

Anyone remember gorgeous Nick Crane, from Twilight? Heaven on a stick ... and in 1905 he utterly refuses to believe it when they tell him, he's a changeling. By 1966, bet your life he knows he's different ...

1966: the Beatles, the Shadows, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Freddy and the Dreamers ... the Stones were young ... England won the World Cup at Wembley Stadium (I watched it, live -- I was 7) ... mini skirts and beehive hair, early days of Project Apollo, Trek in its second season on the box -- Doctor Who had a Beatles haircut ... Vietnam in fill swing ...  good gods, what a time it was. I was there.

Hey, I get to WRITE A HISTORICAL without doing any research. I'm bloody old enough to remember it all --

I wonder, is that a good thing?

Umph.