This is fun. It is REALLY cool seeing my book available on Amazon, seeing it actually selling a copy or two to total strangers, holding the paperback proof in my hand, and being well past the Girl Scout Cookie stage of knowing sales are likely to family and friends. And, this morning, I went INTERNATIONAL, with my first sale to some bloke across the pond in Merry Ole England.

I know, I know. NOT a big deal in the day and age of the interwebs, but cool nonetheless for yours truly.

And, what is also cool is that What Remains of Heroes is OUT THERE in a contest, the Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off, or the #SPFBO for those on Twitter. My book is still in the running, having made its way to the top five short-list of Fantasy Book Review. If it ends up being their Chosen One, then it will be circulated among nine other fantasy fiction bloggers (each of whom will have whittled their stack of self-published fantasy titles down to one) to see which of 10 books (from an original 250+) is the collective favorite. It is a cruel yet brilliant (and quite generous) death-match courtesy of the great Mark Lawrence, author of the excellent Broken Empire series.

Blogs will be written, songs will be sung.

The SPFBO has given me the chance not only to get my book OUT THERE, but also to discover a few gems. Reading a couple of them now, and I can’t help but be impressed by both prose and plot. There is a LOT of good stuff “out there,” not just stuff published by the Big Five.

Let’s face it, the industry has and will continue to change, and there are many talented authors deciding to self-publish rather than endure the agent courtship process. And I do mean “deciding.” “Vanity publishing” is an antiquated notion reserved only for the stuff that is truly crap. Authors have a new power, a new independence in this new market. Authors decide now, and I am happy to have decided to get my book OUT THERE.

Now go flog yourself for having wasted so much time reading this.