It’s here! The cover for my new novel, Divided We Fall, coming this spring!
Divided We Fall is the sequel to We, The Watched. The manuscript was a quarter-finalist in last year’s Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards and received a great review by Publishers Weekly.
Belinda Pepper, who designed the cover for We, The Watched, has returned to do Divided We Fall with brilliant results! Please let me know what you think in the comments.
Divided We Fall by Adam Bender. Coming this spring.
Quick status update: With the cover finished and the book fully edited, we’re nearly there! I’ve still got to get the interior text formatted for the print and eBook versions. Then it’s pretty much just a matter of clicking “Publish.” Keep your eye on this blog for more updates!
Wow, there goes another great year of music! There were some great comeback albums (Saves The Day) and at least one big disappointment (MGMT). Today, the last day of December, I thought I’d highlight my favorite LPs of the year.
Please keep in mind this is not a definitive “Best of 2013” list since there was no way I could have listened to every single album out there. Also, my tastes are mainly within the indie and alternative rock realm. In other words, just take these recommendations!
SavesTheDay
This eponymous release was the Saves The Day album I had been waiting for. Combining the bright spunk of early 2000’s hit StayWhatYouAre with the mature soundscapes of its underrated followup In Reverie, this is 21st Century pop punk at its best. Read my full review here.
CloudControl – DreamCave
Cloud Control play sunny harmonies against dark grooves on their mesmerizing second album. That might sound heavy but rock anthem highs like singles “Scar” and “Happy Birthday” prove that this is a band that wants to have fun, too
Snowden – NoOneInControl
Haunting synths and echoing vocals take the listener on a journey. Hope shines through the gray in the catchy and immediate “The Beat Comes.” While the brilliance fades in the second half, the strength of the first five tracks more than cover the price of admission.
MinorAlps – Get There
Matthew Caws (Nada Surf) and Julianna Hatfield (Blake Babies, Some Girls) join forces to spellbinding effect on this excellent debut. Side projects often disappoint but Get There showcases a pair of rejuvenated musicians performing at the top of their game.
TheDodos – Carrier
While they have always showed talent, The Dodos demonstrate growth through control on their most recent LP. Carrier conveys tragedy and triumph through tight guitar-and-drum rhythms and powerful lyricism.
The popularity of the Kindle and tablets like the iPad have driven eBook sales in recent years. Their beautiful screens, light weight and anywhere, anytime store interfaces have convinced readers from around the world that digital books can be just as nice to read as the traditional paper version.
As an author, it’s been great. When I first released We, The Watched online, most people didn’t have eReaders and the best I could expect was for people to read my novel in their web browsers or–maybe, if they had the ink to spare–download the PDF and print it out. Now, with eReaders widespread and my self-published book available on all of the major eBook stores, I have a much wider potential audience than when I began.
Of course, the essential problem with self-publishing remains: how to convince people to give my book a try when I have only a limited marketing budget. Why take a chance spending money on my book when you haven’t heard of it and there’s plenty of other books out there that your friends have been talking about?
It’s a good point. Sure, I could spend all day telling you how great my book is, but why would you take my word for it? I’m no LeVar Burton.
This is why I am so excited about a new wave in eBook publishing: subscriptions!
Following the model of Netflix and Spotify, new sites are popping up promising readers unlimited reading for a small monthly subscription price. These include Oyster and a revamped reading service from Scribd.
Oyster charges $9.95 per month for unlimited reading through an app for the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Scribd charges $8.99 for unlimited reading through its own app for those Apple devices plus Android phones and tablets. Both have promotions offering the first month for free.
The Oyster app running on an iPad Mini. Credit: Oyster
While I’m not sure I read enough books to make this worth it for me personally, I know a lot of people who do. And the ability to discover new books without any risk is pretty cool.
This means that readers can try my novel–and read it to the end–and not pay a penny more than the subscription price they would have paid anyway. And I even get about the same royalty as I would have from a traditional sale.
It’s an exciting concept, and I am hoping it is the beginning of a trend. Perhaps in the future, we will see the bigger eBook stores try similar price models. It is certainly a great development for authors and one that will make an even better business case for going self-published.
The new album by Saves The Day might be the most fun record I’ve heard all year.
On their new self-titled album, the New Jersey band brings wave after wave of infectious pop punk. On first play it’s all sunny and sweet, but repeated listens reveal honest lyrics about lost-and-found love and run-ins with racist drunks (see: “Xenophobic Blind Left Hook”).
It’s all over in just over 30 minutes, but Saves The Day pack a lot into these 11 tracks. It’s not easy to write a three-minute song that actually feels complete–with a few verses, chorus and bridge–but these boys seem to pull it off effortlessly. There’s not a dud on the record and when it’s over you want to play it again.
I hadn’t seen it before, but singer/songwriter Chris Conley reminds me a lot of John K. Samson from Canadian indie darling, The Weakerthans. Both Conley and Samson come from a punk background, and yet both stand apart from others in the genre with clever, observational lyrics that fit big literary words around instantly catchy hooks.
As someone who first heard this band in high school (back in the early 2000s), it’s very cool to see Conley has matured so much as a songwriter. Saves The Day isn’t writing exactly the same kind of songs they used to, but they have harvested the best elements.
Some other reviewers on the Web say that Saves The Day have overdone the cheerfulness on this one, but to them I say, “Lighten up!”
It’s refreshing to hear music with such positive energy. It’s not a concept album. There’s no political agenda or “screw you” to the mainstream. It’s just a bunch of guys having fun and hoping their fans will come along for the ride.
I avoided print for years, not because I was on a crusade for eBooks or anything, but because I knew there was a lot more formatting and appearance details to consider.
Finally, this year, I decided to go ahead and pay a few professionals to help me with that. It turned out not to be as expensive as I thought, and the result is amazing! Much thanks to Belinda Pepper for the cover design and Lis Sowerbutts for interior formatting.
