Tag: No Expectations

Celebrating Independence with No Expectations

Posted on by Will

Earlier today, the third installment of Miya Kressin’s sizzling novel No Expectations, “No Tears When We Leave,” published on Amazon. You can see the preview below, and purchase it via the preview if you haven’t already.

You can also get the full novel now, for just $2.99. That’s the special during-serialization sale price for all the early adopters; after the fifth (and final) installment goes live, the full novel will go up to its regular price $4.99.

I’m really excited this timing aligned as it did. As America celebrated its independence, so too can authors by working together to operate well away from the corporate environment, working toward better contracts, royalties, and terms.

And the fireworks in the sky might be over, but if you want some more, well, look no further than Jewel and Reed in No Expectations:

 

 

 

No Expectations: Now Live for Preorder

Posted on by Will

You’ll be able to get it in installments starting on the first day of summer, but you can also pre-order the full novel for a discounted $2.99 — and it will be delivered on July 3rd, two full days before the third installment goes live!

This is such news we don’t even have a pre-order embed yet!

But you can get it right here.!

No Expectations News

Posted on by Will

My wife Hannah (also executive editor of Exciting Press) and I went to Manhattan last week to attend the Ippy Awards ceremony and collect Nick Earls’ gold medal for Best Adult Fiction ebook. I’ve got pictures and thoughts on the event and organization, but they’re going to take a bit of attention to wrap up and convey best.

In the meantime I’ve also been finalizing Miya Kressin’s No Expectations ebook and building out a publishing plan.

So far, our plan is that it will be available within the next week for preorder for $2.99.

On 6/21, we’ll publish the first installment of five, with a new one every week. But the preorder will last until publication of the third installment, at which point the full version will also go live.

I’ve long held that my approach to publishing is as a reader first, and that stretches to patience and preorders. I’ll be honest that when I see one announced on Twitter, my response is to pretty much write off whichever book I’d once been interested in. It’s my impatient side; if it’s finished, why not just put it up for sale?! If it’s finished, why not publish the whole thing at once, rather than in installments?!

But on the other hand my wife has been encouraging me to practice more patience, and maybe that’s got to become more of my approach.

Most days I wish that Exciting Press would already be a publishing force to be reckoned with. That straight out of the gate just five years ago, Nick Earls would have climbed to the top of the Amazon charts and rested comfortably atop them ever since.

But on the other hand going from completely unknown publisher to working with an author to produce the best adult fiction ebook of the year — that’s pretty rad, too.

Point is, we’re doubling down on quality. Strategy. The long game.

Look for a preorder and a first installment in the coming weeks.

We’re going to make summer a long, slow sizzle. You’ll want marshmallows and beers.

No Expectations & The True Story of Butterfish

Posted on by Will

At this point, we probably have to call this launch one of the marshmallow variety, given how it’s going. I’m working to tweak and fill in pages behind the scenes while trying to keep up with the publishing (that’s the real work) behind those scenes, and meanwhile there’s life and taxes and housework and day jobs to attend to.

But anything worth doing is worth doing well, and anything worth building is worth building solidly. As my father would tell me.

This summer, Exciting Press has at least two brand new titles on the way: Miya Kressin’s great new No Expectations and Nick Earls’ truly excellent The True Story of Butterfish, as I mentioned a week or so back.

And I mentioned an Easter egg, and now that it’s Easter, I think it’s only appropriate to reveal it.

The astute among you will have caught the “1” there on the No Expectations reveal. And if you didn’t you can see it right there in the cover.

We’ll be serializing it. In five parts, starting on the first day of summer.

We’ll be doing the same thing with The True Story of Butterfish, as well as Nick’s other novel Analogue Men. No cover reveal there, because I’ve been working on the text first and haven’t gotten to the cover yet. You can, however, expect a late summer/early autumn release for that one. As far as I know, both will mark the first publications of those two novels outside Australia and New Zealand (where Nick’s huge).

We’re doing it as an experiment, much as Nick’s Wisdom Tree novella collection was. But keep an eye out, and expect to see installments announcements as we go.

We’ll also be looking at doing preorders.

And I’m saying “looking at” and “experiment” because I’m not yet sure about this format, but I’ve talked to both Nick and Miya about it and both have been encouragingly excited about it.

No Expectations Cover Reveal (with bonus Easter egg)

Posted on by Will

Several months ago, before even the holiday season, Miya Kressin finished her newest novel No Expectations.

I am so sorry you haven’t been able to buy it yet.

Spoiler: it’s so good.

I mean, I knew Miya could write. One need only check out the Asylum Saga to see how well Miya puts words together. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that she’s among the finest prose stylists I’ve ever encountered.

What do I mean by that?

At a word and sentence level, her prose works. And you might say, well, okay, but isn’t that always the case, but no, it’s not. You’ll find a lot of authors whose prose is competent. It gets the job done, keeps the sentences going and the pages turning.

Miya’s words and sentences are something else. Her stories are great, for sure, but there’s an intricacy and craft to her actual writing I find astounding.

With the Asylum Saga, Miya’s prose was working on several levels. Roseen is a complex character with a complex story and complex motivations. There’s a heft to the proceedings; we didn’t call it a Saga for nothing, after all.

In No Expectations, Miya has a ton of fun.

Now don’t get me wrong; I know Miya had fun writing Asylum; I was there for a lot of it, and watched it happen.

But here’s the thing; Miya isn’t just an author I work with. She’s a dear friend of mine, and has been for more than a decade. We met on MySpace and are friends on Facebook, and we’ve played virtual tabletop games and exchanged holiday presents. I’ve never met Miya in person but I know her voice and have heard her laugh.

And that’s what No Expectations is like.

It’s wonderful and funny and entertaining.

It’s also crazy hot and steamy.

Miya sent me a finished draft back in probably October now. I’ll be honest — from August of 2015 through the end of 2016, I was about useless for everything that wasn’t my day job, and even there I feel like I had performed it better in previous years. My wife read it straightaway, so that she could start editing it. There were a couple setbacks there — file losses and transfer weirdness.

And me? Like I said, useless.

But when I was able to start getting back to things, No Expectations was fun. That’s what I was struck by. It’s Miya at her best, great writing and amazing prose and all, but it’s also so much fun. I found myself grinning, laughing. I found myself adoring Julie and aspiring to identify with Reed.

Those names make no sense to you yet, but stay tuned. They’re going to.