July 23rd: "Beautiful" Release = Worldbuilders Fundraiser

Official release day and time is Saturday, July 23rd at 4:00PM EST. Our Kindle rush efforts are aimed to get as many people as possible to purchase at that time, so read the whole post for every bit of info!

I'll be liveblogging from JoshuaGuess.com from that point until I fall asleep from sheer exhaustion, and I'll be tweeting as often as I can. You can follow me @JoshuaGuess.

This is the official post for the release of my new novel, "Beautiful". If you haven't noticed by the URL, I'm Joshua Guess. Thanks for visiting my author blog!

Purchase Links: 

Buy it on the Amazon Kindle

Or on the Barnes and Noble Nook

The Smashwords version, which gets distributed across a number of platforms, can be found right here.



Just so I don't bore you too much, I'll give the nitty gritty, and then you can read on if you like:

"Beautiful" will be released on the Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords on July 23rd. I'm organizing an event on Facebook and across Twitter for it, which can be found here.

For 24 hours, from 4 pm on Saturday July 23rd until 4 pm Sunday, July 24th, every single penny I make from the sale of this book will be donated to Patrick Rothfuss' charity drive for Heifer International, Worldbuilders. You may know who Mr. Rothfuss is: Fantasy superstar, literary genius, and beard aficionado.

So I'm going to be pushing my book as hard as I can for two reasons: to run my own little fundraiser for Worldbuilders, a cause I believe in enough to donate not just a day's worth of income, but 10% of what I make from writing year-round. The other is to hopefully build enough momentum that "Beautiful" will gain a larger presence on Amazon and the rest, enough to really get my career going.

That's the blurb. If you're interested, then I hope you clicked on the link to the Facebook event above. If you'd like some more info, please keep on reading.

What is "Beautiful"?


First and foremost, it'll be $2.99. That's important.

I've had a hard time coming up with a description that fits. If I say that it's a book about vampires, your mind will leap to other books of that type. You'll have a preconceived notion. If I say it's about love, magic, sex, violence, the sheer wonder of creation, or pissed-off unicorns, the same problem exists. So let me put it to you in the only way that makes sense to me, which is a short description.

Dan Harrod is an average guy, happily toiling to pay the bills. He's married and in love, and like most guys he'd like to sleep with his boss, Gabrielle. Life is safe and quiet for Dan until he's suddenly ripped away from the careful routine he'd wrapped around himself. 


Suddenly thrust into a hidden world of magic, Dan finds himself in the middle of a war between vampires that's been raging longer than human civilization. In a desperate bid to safeguard the lives of his friends and family, Dan will make hard choices and take desperate actions. 

This little blurb is sort of interesting, but it doesn't quite give the whole feel. "Beautiful" is written in Dan's own voice, which is snarky and sarcastic. This book is a modern fantasy, a paranormal tale told by a main character that knows the genre. Imagine if you were suddenly faced with the truth that magic was real, along with vampires, werewolves, faeries, dragons, and yes, even unicorns.

You'd be scared and filled with awe, but I bet you'd also make fun of it a little.

That's this book. That's this story. It's an action/adventure filled with constant humor, occasional sex, and dotted with happy little trees of introspection and reflection. It's a lot of things, much like life itself.

I think you'll like it.

Oh, and if it helps you can think of it sort of like the Dresden Files but with more sex and less angst.

Why the charity drive for Worldbuilders?


Well, for two reasons. One is that I genuinely love the work Mr. Rothfuss does for Heifer, which provides a variety of sustainable living options for people in need at home and abroad. So much so that I retain 10% of all my writing income to donate when the Worldbuilders drive comes up.

The other reason is that I hope that people on the fence about the book might be swayed toward purchasing it if they know that some of the money will go to charity. In the case of release day for "Beautiful", I'm choosing to give everything for the first day because I think this book is going to take off, and I think the readers who have supported me so far deserve to see a little extra. I can't give them gifts directly, so I will donate some extra in their names.

And obviously, if 10% causes some people to buy the book, 100% might make a larger number do so. I'm happy to help in any way I can, but this is also a career for me, one that I hope to work at full-time before the end of next year. A lot of folks buying this book on day one increases the chance that I'll get some long term sales going.

The end game


Ideally, I'd like to see this book as the stepping stone to writing full time. If I can do that, I will be able to dedicate so much more time to working on my books and stories. Not having to work a full-time job means that I'd be able to crank out a huge volume of material. More books from me=more works sold=more money donated. It's a win/win.

I love to tell stories. I love writing characters and doing things to them, terrible and kind in equal measure. I think "Beautiful" is a strong book and will help me realize that goal. With your help, I can be on my way.

"Beautiful" News

I had intended this post to be the first in a series of analyses on Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss. I've been playing with the idea of comparing these guys, two of my favorite authors, for quite a while. I'm going to get to that soon, likely next week. There's a good reason for the delay, as well as delaying my post about Amanda Hocking.

That reason: I've finished "Beautiful", and I want to talk about it.

First, when I say I've finished it, I mean that I've gotten the body of the text done and I'm midway through an edit and revision. I know a lot of authors edit and edit and editediteditedit until their brains start to cook inside their own heads. I also know that other authors will do huge revisions that add this or that, and for them that works. Not me. I have a pretty clear idea of what I want the story to be, and tinkering with anything too large changes the tone of my work for the worse. I function and write best when I can streamline and make better what I have, and add or alter small things as I go.

That being said, "Beautiful" is essentially done. I've got to finish the edit I'm on and send it out to the Beta readers, after which I will spend a few days working on the issues they find, correcting and further smoothing as I go.

Part of why I don't think this book is going to take a lot more work is because of the strange metamorphosis it went through even as I was writing it. I want to talk about it, since I'm proud as a new father but lacking the requisite vomit stains all over me, so sit down, buckle up, and bask in the stupid happiness that was the six month process of writing "Beautiful".


ORIGIN (all caps makes it neat-o)

I started writing this book as a joke. My boss on the weekend shift where I work as a nurse aide found out I was a writer and pestered me to write something for her. Well, I say pestered but it was all in good fun, really. Gabrielle told me that I should write a story about her, and I (being the classy man that I am) told her that if I did, it would have to be erotica. She laughed and dared me to do it, so I started to write.

I didn't get very far, because I'm not an erotica reader. I had no idea where to go, so I put it to the side. At the same time, I'd been working on an idea for a vampire novel, or at least a modern fantasy that heavily featured them. Somewhere down the line, I combined the two ideas, dropped the genre "erotica" as it was too confining for what I wanted to do, and "Beautiful" was born.

A SLOW START

January was supposed to be when I buckled down and did the majority of the writing for this book. I thought I could do it, since I'd consistently put in 1,000 words or better a day on my first novel. Again, this didn't work out, since most of that month I was really, really sick. I got a little down and soured a little on the project. Gabrielle started asking me about it repeatedly, and slowly I began pecking away at my laptop. A hundred words here, five hundred there. Slow but steady.

THE BLOOM

I guess this part is the most important. Where "Beautiful" had begun as a simple idea, over the first few months of writing it I discovered that I had way too many ideas to fit into the 100,000 word novel I'd planned. As time wore on and I really got into writing the characters, I created more and more canon to eventually draw on. I don't want to give anything away, so I won't be specific here. I will only say that what began as an idea for a novel of 100k words bloomed into enough material for a series of six books. I've actually got ideas that can go past that, but I have solid outlines for the second and third books in the series, and rough outlines for books four through six.

I felt like a lot of pressure had been lifted from me when I decided to expand the series, so I cut a lot of the material I'd wanted to put at the end of book 1, taking it down to a respectable 80,000 words. That's where I am right now.

SO...WHAT IS IT ABOUT?!

"Beautiful" started out as erotica, then added vampire and other supernatural elements, then...I don't know how to explain this very well, because in some ways I don't really understand what happened. Somewhere along the way, as I was writing the main character, Dan, who is based very closely on me, his wife, Anna, who is basically my own wife, and Gabrielle, who is based on my boss, "Beautiful" became something else. Something different.

The original tone and direction of the novel changed. I didn't focus on sex or action as much as I thought I was going to, opting instead to take a more relaxed and informal tone. The story is told in Dan's voice, with his snarky remarks and observations about the world around him thrown in. Imagine if your best friend who was kind of a smartass suddenly found out that there was this whole amazing world of magic hidden just below the surface. Imagine he's telling you the story first hand.

The thing that I really enjoyed about writing this book was just letting go and writing for the sheer enjoyment of it. I didn't worry about sentence structure or timing, nor the other hundred little things I usually fret about. I wrote for fun and to tell a rousing tale of love, sex, violence and hope. Like life itself, this story has all of them, plus a HUGE dose of humor as the narrator alternately makes fun of and celebrates the magical world around him.

I don't know if this makes sense to you, but I hope so. This book was written from my heart in a way that I've never managed before. The style, very personal and honest, is something like my zombie blog, Living With the Dead. It's funnier, and faster paced, and....

I'll stop here. I don't know what the recipe for success as an author is. As time goes by, I think that the only sure way to succeed at first is just pure luck. I don't know that my love for this book means that I'm insanely egotistical, though I fully admit to the possibility.

I'm not saying it's a masterpiece of prose and technical skill. It isn't. It's good, really good, from what I can tell, but I don't love this book for that reason. Painters can have all the technical skill in the world and in the end without creativity and talent, they will never be famous or renowned. Certainly not loved.

No, the reason I love this book is very simple, and maybe only something that other writers might get. I love "Beautiful" so much because whether or not anyone else ever reads it, I enjoyed it immensely. I had fun writing it, and I had fun reading it. I don't know if one word of it will say anything profound or important to anyone else, but I'm satisfied with my creation because it speaks to me. It says many things that have long been in my heart.

"Beautiful" is fun. It's really funny. It's sweet in places, nerve-wracking in others. It has moments of sex and awkwardness, with everything in between. I tried so hard to put the little things in there, the hundred tiny bits that make life interesting and real to us. I wanted to honestly portray what I thought Dan, the main character, would be going through. I think I succeeded. For me, anyway, it works.

This book is lighthearted and fun, but hopefully with a bit more depth than this post leads you to believe. I'm really not an egomaniac, I swear. I'm just thrilled to be finished with the first leg of this journey, and excited to move on to the next step.

Hey, who knows: other people might like it too.

Soon

I'm going to have news for you soon, as well as several new posts that are going to be done one after another concerning my thoughts and outlook on many things. I want to take a look at two of my favorite authors and what their contrasting and differing styles mean to me. I want to talk about the self-publishing wunderkid Amanda Hocking and how she's affecting the world of self-publishing and other sundries.

I want to do many things here, but honestly I've been working my ass off at finishing "Beautiful" as well as at my actual job. I'm hoping to finish the book before Wednesday night. So...looks like new blogs will be going up here very soon. Probably starting this coming weekend. It's gonna be fun, so stay tuned.