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Fashionably late, the paperback version of Voice of Mars is now out! Currently available on Createspace and should be available on Amazon shortly.
Two weeks in is also a good time to speak to how well Voice of Mars has done, and the simple description is spectacularly. Voice peaked at #180 on Amazon.com, making it my highest ranked book to date. It has exploded to a level I find almost unbelievable, and dragged Starship’s Mage and Hand of Mars along with it.
I am… humbled and grateful for its success. (I’ll admit to hoping that Battle Group Avalon duplicates it, though!).
Thank you all.
Happy reading!
Glynn Stewart
On amazon.de it’s ranked number 1 in ‘space opera’ in foreign language books and in English language books. It’s ranked 43 in the kindle shop for popular English language fiction.
When is the audiobook version coming out?
I have signed a contract with Tantor Media for an audiobook version of Voice of Mars. I’m not certain of the planned release date as yet, but based on earlier projects I would guess sometime in June.
Brilliant – knowing it’s likely to be later (June) rather than earlier (now) means I can stop torturing myself by searching for your books on audible every few days! It’s worth the wait if it means keeping consistent quality of narration (and the same narrator)
Your writing is good and certainly interesting. But you should try to avoid the cheese so many authors fall for – to paint the world and characters in black and white instead of shades of gray.
In your Caste Federation series it has already started to manifest with the stuff that was going on in the second book, some events are just not very plausible and reek of evil politicians that do risky things that will end p with them crucified.
The ending of Voice of Mars implied that something similar is going to happen, it’s already somewhat cringe-worthy that you made the Hands universally good and one big happy family but if yo add more brush strokes of black you will turn into one of those authors that never catch on.
Look at Peter F Hamilton and his early work, it’s flawed but one thing he avoided like the plague was creating black and white characters and making up implausible conflicts, it’s the sort of thing that throws off above average IQ readers – they seek escapism but don’t get it when they have to call bullshit on a story element.
There are, obviously, layers of white, grey, and black that have not yet been shown in both universes.
All factions have their extremists. All factions have their dutiful soldiers. All factions have their heroes.
Only the first and last tend to stand out.
I’m not here to write the next Game of Thrones. I write intentionally escapist fiction, which means that I do intentionally paint the heroes and villains in somewhat stark tones.
That is not for everyone – but it works very well for a sufficiently large number of people to keep me employed!
Or just keep writing the way you want to Glynn – it’s clearly working, the sales figures don’t lie, and one person telling you what to do (who, unless they’re omniscient AND a bestselling author) is just expressing an opinion. The minute I ever read or hear the word “should”, I always think “should according to who?” before I consider responding.
P.S. Jack – over 30 highly respected editors and agents told J. K. Rowling that she should give up writing and stick to teaching. They were all (obviously, though only with hindsight) wrong, and your suggestion therefore bears as much weight as a Hand travelling to Mars (without gravity turned on)
more please