167,858!

167,858: That's the rank "Abyss" currently enjoys in the Amazon kindle market. I'm in the top 200,000! Hey, at least it HAS a rank, right? It's out there. People are reading it. 8 of them so far. Only one of them was a family member.

Hopefully you can tell that the above is all tongue in cheek. I didn't expect my short story to become a huge seller. The hope is that I'll get my name out there, some people will read it, maybe later some more will. Eventually, if I put something significant out there (say, one of my novels), they'll recognize my name and buy it, and the fan base grows from there. That's the idea, anyway. Who knows if it'll work.

Now that "Abyss" is out there, most of my writing efforts have been concentrated on Kricket's Key. Progress is moving along nicely. I'm about one-third of the way to my word-count goal. This book is probably going to need even more rewriting and editing than the last one. I don't think I'm doing as well with describing the characters or the action. It's hard to put a lot of effort into it, when I don't even know if I'll be able to get an agent for the first one. The querying remains the most frustrating task of this whole business, the one thing that seems to be holding me up.

But...have to keep writing. It's the only way to get better, the only way to have a chance of getting published for real.

Thanks for reading my blog. And if you're one of the 8 people who've read "Abyss" and you enjoyed it, please leave a review on Amazon! That's really the only way I have to drive sales there right now. I'm still learning about marketing. More later!

"Abyss" Published on Amazon Kindle

The time since my last post here has been busy indeed. It is with great pleasure that I announce my science fiction short story "Abyss" has been published and is now available for sale on Amazon Kindle! See the link at the bottom of this post to buy it from Amazon.

Following is a short description of the story:

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"After witnessing the horrific death of her best friend in the vacuum of space, Macy Jensen is ruled unfit for duty on extra-vehicular missions. As a technician for the Accelerator Bridge--which spans a starless region known as the Abyss--this means the end of her career.

But when the Bridge suffers a catastrophic malfunction before she's shipped out, every single technician is recalled to duty. Macy is assigned to fix Accelerator Ring 7. The malfunctioning Ring has already destroyed an ammunition carrier, and next in its queue is a star liner carrying five thousand passengers.

If she wants to save all those lives, Macy will have to race against the clock, dodge unexploded ordinance...and face her fear of a cold, lonely death in the starless void."

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"Abyss" is approximately 7,500 words long, and is the first of my works published on Amazon Kindle. Awesome cover art was provided by the talented Kalen O'Donnell. Hopefully, there will be more stories to follow, if this proves successful.

In addition to getting "Abyss" formatted, securing quality cover art, and publishing it on Amazon, I've also been writing steadily on Kricket's Key. Chapter Ten was finished two days ago, and I'm officially past the one-quarter mark on my way to 90,000 words. As with the book's prequel, Kricket's Song, it may run a bit longer, but shouldn't by much.

Queries for Kricket's Song continue to make the rounds. I did receive another rejection the day before yesterday. It was difficult to tell if it was a form reject or a more personalized response. The agent stated he had a full client list at the moment and was being extremely picky about new projects, so his rejection was not necessarily a statement about the saleability of my work. In other words, I just arched an eyebrow and moved on. That leave six queries still in the wind, and I'll be sending more out eventually.

And that's about all I have to report for now. Following is the link for "Abyss" on Amazon.com. If you read it and like it, please leave a review on Amazon! Thanks.

"Abyss" by Bryan R. Durkin