Some New Reviews for Hazel!

Greetings all,

I was ill last week and glad to have some reviews to share.

Well, this week I feel better, but I’m still also glad to have some more reviews to share!

Hazel is still going strong. Oh, I’m not selling hundreds a day or thousands a week, but I am selling a pretty steady number that I’m not quit ready to estimate until she’s been out three full months. The good news is that the sales are also yielding reviews, and that’s fantastic.

So I’m happy to share this three-star review from Goodreads and this five-star review from Amazon.

As always, if you’ve tried some of my work (even it you hated it), I’d be grateful if you’d be kind enough to leave a rating and review on all the bookish places. It means a lot. We’re coming up on the end of the year, which means the State of the Weech is coming and some other general news. So we’ll see if things calm down enough this week to allow for more news-based posts on Saturdays. Until then,

Thanks for reading,

Matt

A 5-Star Review for Hazel

Hey all,

I’m going to talk about last week’s comic convention in a few weeks. For now, I just wanted to quickly share with you this kind five-star review for Hazel.

Hazel is still doing wonderfully (by my standards), and I’m hopeful any of you who tried it will be kind enough to leave a review in Goodreads, Amazon or both.

I’m always thankful for you all. This post was quick and short, even for a review post, but we’ll be back on track after the holiday.

Thanks for reading,
Matt

Hazel Is A Hit! Please Help Keep the Momentum Going!

A while back I did a post on this huge goal of getting 60 sales in a month. The idea was that if I could hit that mark, I’d start seeing a profit. At that time, I was selling maybe eight titles a month. My record since then rose to 15 sales in a month. I need you to understand that was a blessing. God’s grace provided even then. At that time, I thought 60 sales a month was something like two years from now.

Before you get mislead, I did not sell 60 copies of any title in October.

I sold 52!

To say that Hazel had a great start is a horrific understatement from my point of view.

The things to celebrate:

Hazel (all by herself) sold 39 copies and had 989 pages read. The best part is that she debuted about halfway through the month (October 14).

She reached as high as #37 in the Top 100 for Science Fiction Graphic Novels. She more or less stayed in the Top 100 throughout October. As I type this she’s at #208 in that category, but she bounces up to the Top 100 every now and then.

These are all easily the best numbers I’ve ever seen. I’m not positive I’ve sold 52 books in a convention, and if I did, I don’t know if that number of sales was enough to make back what I spent on the table (I just honestly don’t remember).

That means I sold another 13 copies of my other books (which brought me to that ridiculous new record).

Hazel has four ratings and three reviews, all four-star or higher.

Thank you. Those words aren’t very sufficient for this, but they’re the ones I have. I thank God first above all, and I am thankful to you all who supported this graphic novel and this silly little dream of mine.

Now for the context (things to remember):

First, I can’t stress enough how significant it is to sell that many copies and get that high in the Top 100. Caught spent a little bit there on opening day, but that’s about it. To hold in that category (more or less) for weeks is just amazing.

The context is that that many of those sales is a surge that many new releases have, and Collin, who created Hazel and was kind enough to let me tag along, has a better following than me. Our two followings together helped get the word out. Hazel started out strong with a few double-digit sales, and again, we can’t thank you enough.

The challenge now is to keep the momentum going. Since Hazel’s last “big” day of sales (she sold seven copies Nov. 1, she’s tapered off a bit. Sure, we’d like Hazel to increase from week to week, but the fear was she’d just fall off a cliff. That hasn’t happened. She’s steadily sold two copies a day so far. We need to keep that momentum going for a number of reasons. Of course we want to sell more per day. Collin and I both dream of doing more stories with Hazel. We’d both love to quit the day job and be storytellers full time, but to do any of those things, we need to put in the work to keep this arc going.

The marketing is slowly moving in the right direction. I’ve just finished a pass of all my titles. I have to keep a close eye on Hazel because she’s a very unique title in terms of sales and royalties. I’ll be monitoring all of my campaigns for the next three months to let things develop.

Even now, things are going better than ever. I’ve already sold 15 titles this month! (Remember when 15 was a huge new record for me?) Fourteen of those are Hazel of course. This means that Hazel is just doing a lot of amazing things. I hope she continues to do this well, and I hope those who try Hazel out decide to give more of my work a try.

This is honestly a big step in the right direction. I have a realistic shot of hitting 60 sales this month. Now things are a little weird. As great as that is (it’s still a goal met), the marketing for Hazel costs money; the royalties for Hazel take a big hit from Amazon, and Collin gets his well-deserved and rightful portion of those royalties. So while I have hit a major benchmark, one that will definitely help, I still need to work more on the other titles, and I will.

I’m working on The 1,200 right now, I’m pretty close to finishing the read through I’m doing, and then I’ll get to work on the first draft of Discovered, Book 3 of the Oneiros Log. Don’t let that panic those of you who don’t follow me a lot. I have a draft of Discovered done. It’s just a (very) rough draft, and the first draft is where I iron out all those issues before I send it out to Alpha Readers. Discovered is still my main project; I just want to keep the coals warm on other projects, too.

Again, please let me offer you my most sincere appreciation as well as that of Collin’s.

Please help us keep this momentum going. If you haven’t picked up your copy of Hazel, please give it a try. If you have, please leave a review and ask your friends to try it out as well.

Thank you so much for reading,

Matt

We Got Some Reviews to Share!

Greetings all,

First, let me please thank you for the reception Hazel has received thus far. Even as I type this, things are looking good. I don’t know if we’ll hit our goal, but things are already going pretty darn well. But I’ll have more on that next week. For now, what I do have are some reviews for Hazel and one for Bob.

Since we only have one for Bob, let’s start with that.

Here’s a five-star review from Cowan on Audible:

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What a journey

Such a great book! Felt like a trilogy all wrapped into one book. So much heart put into this book and I can’t wait to get my hands on the other ones. This book has it all and takes you through a full range of emotions. Highly recommend picking this one up!

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As for Hazel, well she has two reviews. Check out this four star review and this five star review. Neither of them have a lot of words, but I promise they both have a ton of value. If you’ve read Hazel in some form or another (or any of my books), we’d appreciate a rating and review. Also, if you haven’t tried Hazel out, maybe these reviews will inspire you to check it out.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

The Paperback Version of Hazel Is Now Live

Greetings all,

No review today, sorry about that. The reason there is no review is because I finally have the paperback graphic novel of Hazel out in the world!

You can get your copy right here!

So I’m a man who believes in goals, and I like talking about those goals. I’m asking for your help and, honestly, your money.

I’m hoping you loyal readers are comic fans and know some comic fans. My goals for this book for this week (Oct. 27 – Nov. 2) are: 110 sales and 50 reviews. I can only do that with your support.

Why those numbers? Well, my handy Publisher Rocket tells me that’s the number I need to hit to reach number one. I think that might be electronic sales (meaning the $7.99 ebook), but man, if I sell 110 copies in a week of anything I won’t care what rank I am, I’ll just be stoked.

The 50 reviews is old news. I’d do backflips for 50 reviews on any of my titles. That’s when Amazon starts helping a little bit in terms of visibility. So if I can reach those goals, this product would be easily off to the greatest start any of my products have ever been on.

Are you willing to help me? Do you like comics? Will you buy ours? Will you share this post and link with your friends and get them to read and review it?

It would mean to world to me. If you do, post a comment here so I can thank you.

Regardless, I’m always thankful for your support.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

The Paperback Edition of Hazel Will (Hopefully) Be Out Next Week!

Greetings all,

Well, I wanted the paperback to be live as you read this, and I actually had this blog set up for that news. However, it wasn’t to be. The paperback got pushed back to me for some very minor (but numerous) corrections. Most of them have to do with the trim and the page size. They really are minor, and I’m confident I’ll be able to make those last changes in a timely manner. So my hope is the paperback will be out before next week. The paperback edition of Hazel’s graphic novel is will be available for $15.99 on Amazon.

It’s just about 90 pages. The price has way more to do with the cost of printing full color pages and trimming it to the right size than anything else. It is thinner than a lot of books, but you’re getting a lot of art for your money. I certainly hope you’ll consider trying it out.

Thank you so much for reading,

Matt

We Proudly Present To You: Hazel!

A while back, I mentioned I was so happy to be working with Collin Fogel, my best friend from Junior High and the cover artist for The Journals of Bob Drifter, on a comic limited series.

Then the comic was picked up by a small press Hazel got put with a comic containing content I couldn’t support or endorse, so I stepped away.

Time passed, and Hazel’s run with that series ended. The company kindly gave Collin the green light to publish Hazel elsewhere.

After some time, Collin and I decided to make Hazel available on Amazon. Here we are!

As you read this the electronic version of Hazel is now available on Amazon for $7.99.

Here are some things to know though. This is the first time I’ve tried to publish a comic online. I think I did everything right, but I could have messed up. If you’re willing to try it, would you please e-mail me to know how it works, I mean that literally. Obviously I hope you enjoy it, but I’m worried something in the data or in how it runs might make the comic functionality poor, and if that’s the case, I’m hoping someone will tell me.

Another note: Comics don’t exactly work the same way as regular books. The page-by-page style of the written word is easy. Hazel has at least three full-spread pages (two pages that combine to make one big page). It reads left to right, but between two pages. One page is vertical. These are things that I can’t do anything about. When I’m done with the paperback (see below), you’ll be able to twist and turn it just like any other comic trade paperback.

I wanted to be forthright about these things because I’m hoping feedback will let me know.

This is honestly the fulfillment of a childhood dream. Collin and I have known each other for decades, and we always talked about having a comic out. This is really his project. He’s the creator, and he did most of the work. I feel the need to say he also (rightly) gets the bulk of the royalties, but I’ll keep the actual distribution private.

There is a chance that the paperback will be troublesome. Again, with a comic, some pages are designed to be vertical, and Amazon can be pretty challenging for things like that. We’re giving it a shot.

I hope you’ll choose to do the same. I’m really hopeful this project does well, and you’re the ones who can help me with that.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Book Review: White Sand Volume 3 By Brandon Sanderson

Spoiler free summary: In White Sand Volume 3 by Brandon Sanderson, everything comes to a head as Kenton fights for the title of Lord Mastrell. He must earn the respect of his peers, preserve his guild, and discover the reason for the murder of his clan.

Character: I appreciated Kenton’s progression here as a rebellious son to one who better understands his father. That might even be my favorite part of this trilogy, but that’s actually a bad thing. The final fight was pretty cool. I’ll mention more about that below. I think I saw a bit more development from some of the other characters, but my issue is with one of the side characters. He has a pretty big shift in the story, and I didn’t really feel like it was natural. He had a very minor role though (in a manner of speaking), so it didn’t have that big of an impact on my opinion. It was just something worth noting.

Exposition: I think this is where the exposition was the roughest. There was a lot of data to share, and it either came up in exposition/narrative boxes or in dialogue that was a bit more Scooby Doo than I would have liked (see below).

Worldbuilding: Most of the worldbuilding was established in the previous volume. There’s a bit of a reveal here that I thought was interesting, and the political reveal (which is an aspect of worldbuilding) was believable if not satisfying.

This portrait of Mr. Sanderson was taken from his About page on his website for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Dialogue: So the aforementioned Scooby Doo. There really was a scene here were the Kenton calls someone out, and the guy gives a speech very akin to a villain’s Scooby Doo speech. The only thing missing was, ” … and I would have gotten away with it, too.” That one scene was certainly a bit corny, but the bulk of the dialogue was crisp and witty. It might have been enough to bring the quality down a few pegs, but it didn’t ruin the whole story.

Description: This was probably the place where the graphic novel adaptation was at its best. Sure, there were other scenes that looked cool to see in the other volumes, but the pace and style of this final volume. That fight was cool to watch, and the scenery and scope was brought to life as well.

Overall: I think I’m being unfair, but I can’t help it. I’m used to epic storylines with vivid description that lets me play the movie in my head. I’m used to prose and style that pull me along. I’m used to deeper plots that let me get to know a character, and this format just doesn’t allow for that. But, if I were being fair, I wouldn’t have bought this graphic novel if it wasn’t Sanderson and Cosmere, so I wanted something that felt like one of the other Cosmere books. Maybe I just wish it was a longer series. Maybe I wish the plot wasn’t centered around political intrigue (the assassins and sand magic were tertiary devices at most). It’s not a bad story; it’s just not what I love about Sanderson’s other work. I think fans of the Cosmere should still pick it up to know what happened and get to know the magic system, but it’s not his strongest story.

Thanks for reading,

Matt





Book Review: White Sand Volume 2 By Brandon Sanderson

The cover image for this graphic novel was taken from its Amazon buy page for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Spoiler free summary: In White Sand Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson, Kenton ends up Lord Mastrell by default, but the Sand Masters who are left aren’t necessarily fully supportive of him. The ruling council is out to end the guild. Oh, and did we mention the assassins? The only person he can trust (if only a little) i s Khriss, a visiter from the dark side of the planet who has her own goals. Can these two work together to save the Sand Masters guild?

Character: Kenton’s growth here is more as a leader and a negotiator, but the man who strove to earn his father’s respect is starting to see his father in a different light. I stand behind what I said in last week’s post, but character growth is definitely something we see here. Not only does Kenton grow as a character, but his journey as the Lord Mastrell causes him to grow in literal power as well. This is one of the strengths of the trilogy.

Exposition: I feel more or less the same about the exposition in this volume that I felt for the previous. The exposition blocks were more scene and background portions of exposition. The story moved fine, but it didn’t pull me along.

Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding picks up in this volume. It’s more political than any other aspect of worldbuilding, but there is some development in the magic system. That’s probably the part that interested me the most. I have to say it wasn’t quite as prominent as I’d have liked, but it was enough to keep me interested in a story that more politically driven than by mystery or action.

Dialogue: Once more the graphic novel format allows Sanderson’s typically witty dialogue to shine. It also helps drive the plot even if it’s harder to hide the expositional dumps that are normal in dialogue. The story is at it’s best when Khriss and Kenton are talking, though there are some other conversations that stand out.

This portrait of Mr. Sanderson was taken from his About page on his website for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Description: I felt like this volume was oddly (strangely) segmented. The idea may have been to weave the political intrigue alongside the assassin plot. So there were some incredible skirmish panels, but there weren’t the fight scenes that normally carry a graphic novel. So it’s good art that lacked the truly epic imagery that we normally find in these limited series.

Overall: This was a setup volume, and I think most trilogies would have this same style, so you can’t really hold it against this particular story. It sets up the drama and establishes a bit of mystery. I still affirm this story would be far better in a longer medium, but it’s an interesting story.

Thanks for reading,

Matt

Book Review: White Sand Volume 1 By Brandon Sanderson

Spoiler free summary: In White Sand by Brandon Sanderson, Kenton aspires to be a master, but he’s barely able to control on stream of sand. That doesn’t stop him from taking on a challenge only a master could overcome. No test, however, can prepare him for the events of the future. His guild is devastated by betrayal and murder, and Kenton must rise up despite his lack of power.

Character: Kenton is a fine enough character. I like his drive and effort. The most interesting part of this book is that Kenton is weak. Most stories reveal a main character who discovers a great power. Kenton is probably the best part of the story.

Exposition: So it’s here that I’ll I’m not a fan of the graphic novel format for Sanderson. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it since I finished reading it a few months ago, and I can’t really identify it except this: the graphic novel deprives a reader of Sanderson’s prose and perspective. So while the story was ok, it lacked the life Sanderson writes with even with the quality of the art. The story didn’t drag, but neither was I pulled along the way I was with nearly every other Sanderson book. Yes, I’ll probably check out Dark One, but I was surprised to realize how much I missed Sanderson’s writing.

Worldbuilding: This is a strength of Sanderson’s, and lack of prose didn’t diminish that. The world is interesting. The way the magic system works within the society is interesting. I feel like this got right what Elantris didn’t do so well for me. I am of the opinion that Taldain has a much bugger role to play in the Cosmere than it currently has, so I may think more highly of some aspects of White Sand’s worldbuilding than is justified, but at its worst, the story’s worldbuilding is comparable to most Sanderson stories.

Dialogue: Where I really missed his prose in some areas, I think the graphic novel adaptation did Sanderson’s dialogue justice. The characters were unique. The conversations weren’t just vaguely hidden expositional blocks. The dialogue was even charming in some places.

This portrait of Mr. Sanderson was taken from his About page on his website for review purposes under Fair Use doctrine.

Description: This was the other area I felt hurt the story for me at least in regard to Sanderson. Sure, the art was well done, and it was cool to see the power work in a visual format, but I felt like my imagination was deprived of its ability to visualize the story. It’s kind of unfair to say about the format, but it is how I felt. I think another aspect was actually how there weren’t a lot of fights. White Sand is more of a political drama than an adventure story. It has fight scenes, but they aren’t what drive the story, so a graphic novel loses some power without a lot if great fights to give it that cinematic feeling.

Overall: I’m glad I read it, and it was an OK story, but I hope Sanderson doesn’t release that much stuff (especially Cosmere stuff) in an exclusive graphic novel format. The story doesn’t have the same power it would have in a fully fleshed out Sanderson book. However, I’d take a graphic novel version as opposed to nothing.

Thanks for reading,

Matt