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A Minor Change to The Inventor’s Son Collection

A Minor Change to The Inventor’s Son Collection

Hi, everyone! Very briefly, I wanted to let you know that I have made a slight change to the title of the digital boxed set edition of the first three books of The Inventor’s Son. It will now be listed in the eBook stores as The Inventor’s Son Collection (Books 0-2) because that is a much more accurate description of the contents. “Book 0” is commonly used for numbering a prequel book, but I’ve never been able to use it in the stores since they would not allow me to use anything but whole numbers. Since this set contains the prequel novella, Book 1 and Book 2, I wanted to make sure that the title of the set reflected that, now that I have gone and made sure the numbering of the volumes in all stores all correctly corresponds to the correct books.

The set includes:

  • The Inventor’s Son: The Beginning, book 0, which has added material and is exclusive to the set (or to the mailing list).
  • The Inventor’s Son, book 1 of the series, a full-length novel.
  • The Scientist’s Son, book 2 of the series, a full-length novel as well.

The new retail price will be $4.99 in all stores, and in the coming days, there will be a pre-order set up for The Traitor’s Son! Watch this space.

Posted by SB James in The SB James Author and Artist Blog, 0 comments
The Next Steps with Changes to The Inventor’s Son Series

The Next Steps with Changes to The Inventor’s Son Series

Hi, everyone!

It’s October 1st now, and I have delisted The Inventor’s Son: The Beginning from all sales channels. Google Play books, again, will probably be the first one to have it removed, followed by Amazon. Then Kobo, Nook, and iBooks will probably have it delisted by the end of the day tomorrow. The version they all were selling was the original version, and I’ve since added some material and revised a few things. The revised version is exclusive to The Inventor’s Son Collection Books 1-3 or to subscribers to my mailing list. I’ll be updating the book tables and all the book pages to reflect this change. Any older versions of the eBooks might have links to the Amazon pages, and I’ll try to track these down and redirect them if possible to this page.

There’s more coming! As I come up with the changes, I’ll be posting about them here. Stay tuned…

Posted by SB James in The SB James Author and Artist Blog, 0 comments

5 Ways Moving to a New Place Gives You Perspective About Writing

After an epic saga of massive proportions, I have finally moved to a new home. I have been renting for years, but I decided it was time to buy a house, not the least of which because the rents in my area are growing way higher than the properties are actually worth, and I did not want to be subjected to such fluctuations in rent. I moved to a house that had been unoccupied for about four years, since the previous owner allowed the house to go into foreclosure, and in Florida, these type of proceedings go for years through the courts. Without getting into a load of details, I will simply say this: it takes a lot of perseverance to try and buy a bank-owned property that is in decent condition.

As I quickly packed my belongings to move out of the rental in order to take possession of the new house in a timely manner, I started seeing some parallels between moving and writing and editing.

  1. Discovering things you didn’t know you had = discovering things you didn’t know you actually knew. I unearthed items in my closets and other storage areas that had been tucked away and long forgotten. And I’m not talking about old bottles of shampoo, either (we’ll get to that). I’m talking about items, some of them valuable, that haven’t seen the light of day in a long while. And old journals, handwritten ones, that I hadn’t looked at in many years. Many of these journals had been done right out of high school, where I was supposed to keep a journal in my Junior and Senior years. I took what I had learned from those classes and was applying them to my writing out of high school. How much has my writing changed? How much has it improved? Was there something I was doing then that I don’t do now? I do notice that one thing hasn’t really changed since those days; I didn’t and still don’t really write in first person. About the only things I write in first person perspective are these blog posts.
  2. Dust gets all over everything, no matter how well you store it = Even the best stuff I write needs a little cleaning up. Someone I told about my moving difficulties likened moving to the Ultimate Spring Cleaning. I like this analogy, and this made me think about my writing and marketing, and what kind of “spring cleaning” they might need. At the beginning of 2015, I had lofty ideas about Pulp Speed and getting much more writing done. I got to thinking about just what might be lurking on my hard drives and cloud drives that, with a little more “dusting off” might well supplement my future writing plans. I’ve already started this reclaiming words campaign with my The World Of The Inventor’s Son project on Wattpad. I included one deleted scene from The Inventor’s Son featuring Dr. Colbourne and his evil lackeys that almost made the final cut, but makes a new home as a supplementary passage in the chapter introducing him. I’ve also got a great deleted scene featuring Marcus Stanwood that I need to find the exact right place for.
  3. Moving furniture around = Finding inner strength to write. During the worst of the mortgage paperwork hell, I was participating in CampNaNoWriMo. April 2014 Camp was a disaster, that you can read about right here. (Interesting to realize that I was even talking about moving back then as well). I was determined not to let April 2015 Camp end up the same way. How can I do PCamp-Winner-2015-Web-Bannerulp Speed if I can’t even write a measly 20,000 words in a month? How can I move to a new place if I can’t even lift a box of books? Of course, it took a lot of loss of sleep, an aching back and shins that felt like rocks every time I took a step, but I got it done!
  4. Rearranging your rooms in a new space = Figuring out what’s important to your story and what isn’t. Everything is arranged differently in this new place. My slider doors are now off the kitchen, rather than the living room. My cable jack for the tv is right near the front door, instead of deep into the house. At first I thought this was going to be terrible, because I’d gotten so used everything arranged the other way, but now, since the cable jack is in the living room, so is the WiFi and that’s SO much better than having it in the bedroom. (This might also have to do with the fact that I’m no longer a Comcast customer, heh.) Similarly, my main character has been through the wringer in these first two books, and I’d run into a wall with him in Book 3 insofar as his state of mind. I knew I was going to have to dump the plot bunny of his deep depression if this book was ever going to get done. As a result, the final draft is getting worked on as I write this!
  5. Moving to a new place is prime time for redecorating = Publishing a new book is a perfect time to re-brand! I’ve already made a couple of changes to my small patch of front yard, all without running afoul of the Home Owners Association, and once I’ve sold a lot of books replenished my bank account , I’m planning on getting some new furniture. The good news, as far as The Inventor’s Son series is concerned, is that I don’t need to wait long to get the changes coming. As soon as I can, I’m getting a PO box, so that I can get my long overdue mailing list started. As you may know, authors tend to give a goody to anyone who signs up for their mailing list, and naturally I’ve got what I think is a pretty sweet mailing list goody prepared for anyone who signs up. I’m also working on revised covers in time for the launch of The Explorer’s Son. I’m revamping the e-book files so that they look even nicer. I’m going to upload to Smashwords so I can get into Oyster. And last but certainly not least, the print versions of all the books, which has been delayed long enough. I also realized that it’s been one year since I published The Inventor’s Son! While this momentous occasion has largely gone unheralded, I decided I’d slowly build up the hype for Book 3 and let that launch be the big deal this year.

What other kinds of experiences can someone draw a parallel to the writing experience? Has moving to a new place affected your writing goals?

Posted by SB James in Older Blog Posts, 2 comments

The Inventor’s Son Prologue has been Released!

The Inventor’s Son Prologue has been released in the Kindle Store

This prologue to The Inventor’s Son series begins with a seemingly innocuous meeting during which a promising new technology for amputees and soldiers is demonstrated. However, it is soon discovered that the mastermind who created those miraculous prosthetic limbs has only one true intention. He wants to discredit and then destroy the family of his former student, Marcus Stanwood.
A brilliant but flawed inventor and scientist himself, Marcus knows firsthand how ruthless and pitiless his former professor and mentor can be. He sets a desperate plan in motion, and the fate of his son Ethan will hinge on his success or failure.
The Inventor’s Son Prologue is an introduction to a Victorian London that could have been, and a young boy whose life is destined to change dramatically overnight.

Posted by SB James in The SB James Author and Artist Blog, 0 comments

The Joys and Perils of Owning a Paperback Book

UPDATE: As of this morning, I have sold two copies of my book, and had one person borrow it with their Amazon Prime account. Yay! Baby steps, my friends, baby steps. And as you can see, my makeover of this blog is ongoing.

Recently I was looking through my bookcase. It’s a real, raw wood one that I’m not sure you can get anywhere anymore. Over the years, there have been books that have been “keepers” as well as ones that had a temporary place on the shelf until I would trade them in or donate them to Goodwill. One of the ones that I kept, for some reason, was this one:

pearl in the mist book cover

Pearl in the Mist, Book 2 of The Landry Series, by V.C. Andrews


The foil on the cover is a bonus. I don’t think you can get anything like this anymore, even if Pearl in the Mist is actually still in print. One thing you really can’t get with an ebook is this:
inside of pearl in the mist cover

The peek-a-boo cover, exclusively available with paperback books.


Yes, I suppose one could upload two covers… Although I’ve never seen this as an option. Oh, I know, you’d probably insert the picture right into the text of the book. I’m not sure. I’d have to try it for myself. Anyway, I used to LOVE this when I was reading V.C. Andrews’ books, and would go out of my way to find ones that had this kind of cover, usually the first edition in paperback.
But there’s a price to pay for the glitz… I opened the book and was shocked by what I saw:
inside back cover

Look, they even gave you a cool bookmark that you could detach from the back cover for free!


When I did this:
inside back cover opened completely

Terrible acid burning!


I am not certain whether it was only that I kept it in a raw wooden bookcase. For most of its life the book was in a climate controlled (air conditioned and heated) environment, was not put out in the sun… But this is what happens to many of the mass-market paperback books. This copy was $6.50 full retail price back in the day (copyright 1994) so even by 20 years ago standards, that’s pretty expensive! Was this book published with cheaper paper made with a lot of wood pulp? For $6.50 you’d think you’d get at least paper that had the acid buffered out of it.
Now, of course, if I wanted a permanent copy of this book, I’d get the ebook version, fancy covers be damned. The ebook, so long as I own something on which to read it, will be there forever. All my paperbacks will eventually suffer the same fate as Pearl in the Mist.
Just something I thought about.

Posted by SB James in Older Blog Posts, 4 comments