Hello everyone!
This year I’m working on refreshing my newsletter to make it more appealing, so they might look a bit different over the months as I tweak things and test out the format.
For this quarter’s newsletter, I mainly want to focus on two things: 1) some updates for things I’ve been working on lately, and 2) sharing what I’m currently reading.
Let’s get into it!
QUICK UPDATES
Audiobooks: Personally, I’m not someone that listens to audiobooks as I prefer physically holding a book, but I’ve been learning how big of an audience DOES prefer audiobooks and that I’m limiting myself by not having audiobook versions of my books. SO, I’m looking into my options of creating an audiobook for my first book, “The Portal to Aardon,” and if that goes well I’ll put one together for Book 2. I’m using Audible (ACX) to audition narrators, and if I find the right person, I’ll hopefully have an audiobook to offer later this year or early next year.
Prequel Story: Some of you might remember from my traditionally published days that I had a short story/prequel to my Mark of Ember series that was included in an anthology with other authors. WELL, since I’m on my own now, I want to take that short story/prequel and breathe some new life into it, aka modify some scenes, extend it to more of a novella length, and then offer it as a free download (known as a book magnet) to subscribers of my newsletter. I’m not sure how long that will take, but there’s a chance it will also be done later this year so stay tuned for more updates!
Book 3: Of course, Book 3 is (slowly) being worked on, which is set to be the final book in my series/trilogy. The targeted release window is sometime in 2028 so a ways away, but I will hopefully have some updates to start sharing over the next year as the story is fleshed out and developed.
Book Events: I mentioned this in my last newsletter, but I really want to get back into doing book events with local bookstores/libraries. The last one I did was back in 2024 and I had a great time, so I’ve already reached out to several bookstores around me to ask about opportunities with one of my big goals being attendance at BookCon in NYC in the near future.
READING CORNER
Now, in my last newsletter I also talked about wanting to highlight other people’s books and not just my own all the time. I prefer to spotlight other indie authors, but for now I just got into reading “Sunrise on the Reaping” in the Hunger Games series. I got this last year when it came out, but have been putting it off until now.
With the movie coming out later this year, I’m on a time crunch now to finish it before then, and WOW this book has one of the best first chapters I’ve read in a while. Probably the most engaging in the whole Hunger Games series. I’m really enjoying it so far, and will share a full review once I finish it.
“You can’t count on things happening tomorrow just because they happened in the past.” -Suzanne Collins
And with that, please check out all my social media below if you’re not already following me there. I tend to provide updates on those platforms faster than through newsletter.
Thanks for your time, and for the Star Wars fans out there…
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All the best,
Matthew J. Stott