Category Archives: Newsletter

Wild Blue Yonder – Dec 2018

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Welcome to the Wild Blue Yonder Newsletter!

Thank you for all your support and encouragement, and for sticking with me on this weirdly awesome carnival ride that transforms ideas into books.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Plus, No Rest for the Wicked.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

T.A. Barron said, “Every piece of the universe, even the tiniest little snow crystal, matters somehow. I have a place in the pattern, and so do you. Thinking of you this holiday season!”

While that’s deep and true. It’s times like this I like to dip into the Irish part of my heritage and also say, May the best things you experienced in 2018 be the worst of your 2019.

Jodi, Sam, Xander, and I wish you health, happiness, and all the best in the New Year.

Here’s the new social media banner! And a writing update.

The major Baghdaddy edits are complete, and my story is now in the design phase. This is the part of publishing where the manuscript begins to look like a real book. Brown Books calls this an architectural edit where chapters are laid out, maps are added to the section breaks, and graphics and fonts are selected.

While all that is going on my press kit and advanced reader copies are being built and more requests for endorsements and reviews will go out just before the New Year.

In the lull between books, I took a little time off, but while my Cypher book is being read and marked up by my amazing group of readers, I started clearing my board and office to prepare for Cypher 2.0 where the story continues. I don’t want to give too much away, but look forward to an AI growing self-aware, more monsters, and maybe even giant robots.

Baghdaddy should be available everywhere on 7 May 19. I’ll send an update when the pre-order links are live. I’m on Twitter now @BillRileyAuthor. If you’re on Twitter, say ‘hi’ sometime.

Happy Holidays and thanks again for reading my newsletter.
More information on my books and events will follow.

Bill
Find Out More at https://www.billrileyauthor.com 
Find me on Facebook and Twitter @BillRileyAuthor

Wild Blue Yonder – July 2018

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A Newsletter for Books by Bill Riley
July 2018
Welcome to the first ever Wild Blue Yonder Newsletter!

 

Thank you for all your support and encouragement, and for sticking with me on this weirdly awesome carnival ride that transforms ideas into novels.

This edition includes updates on Baghdaddy, Cypher 1.0, and a trip to Hollywood.
Baghdaddy, a Memoir is scheduled for release Spring 2019

It’s been a crazy summer. I signed with Brown Books, met with my novel’s creative team, and brainstormed with my editor.

I’m excited to work with Brown Books. I started talking with Tom Reale, their COO, a year ago at the Idaho Writer’s Conference, but since my manuscript was still under review by the intelligence community I only had a limited amount of approved material I could talk about. When ODNI finally approved Baghdaddy for public release, Tom was probably as excited as I was.

My creative team at Brown not only includes talented editors, but also experts in Public Relations, Marketing, Graphic Design, and Multimedia Publishing. I love saying “I have a creative team.” But, truth be told, publishing a book requires so many artistic and business skills, I’m happy to be part of such an amazing team.

My lead development editor for Baghdaddy is Mike Towle. He’s not only an Army veteran and accomplished author, he’s an amazing editor. After meeting him, I know my story is in good hands. I get his first edits 1 August and by 1 October Baghdaddy will just need a little cleanup and then it’s off to the cover artist and printer.

So far, we’re go for an early Spring release.Cypher 1.0 Ashur’s Tears will be finished and out for feedback September 2018
Their father’s jet was shot down in Northern Iraq. They buried what the Air Force found in the wreckage. He was gone. They did the best they could. Cypher’s are smart, Cypher’s are strong. That’s what Dad always said, but in their grief, they discover a transmission. Their father was betrayed and captured, but he’s still alive. His message said, trust no one. But Cypher’s are smart, Cypher’s are strong, and they will do whatever it takes to find him.

This novel is a wild ride in the near future that tests the limits of science and magic. I love how the story is coming along and I hope you love it too. I’ll be halfway done with the second act early next week. I’m racing to finish the second act before my editor sends me his changes and comments on Baghdaddy. It’s going to be close. I’m shooting to have Cypher 1.0 to alpha readers for feedback in September.
So, I’m insanely busy. But this is what I always dreamed about. For as long as I can remember. Writing stories. After this, I’m on track for writing a book a year. Next year’s goal? Finding readers who dig my stuff.

I was in LA last week. Not because I had a book event in Hollywood. Not even because I love LA, I don’t. I promised my wife, Jo; we’d do whatever she wanted for her birthday. And she wanted to go to the LA County Fire Museum Grand Opening.
I offered to take her and all her friends to Iceland, but she grew up watching Emergency, the TV show and when she heard the original cast was getting back together with their original equipment, we had to go.
Promises being promises.
To be fair, LA can be a vibrant, exciting place. After all, the promise of the premise is if you go there all your dreams can come true. But for me, it’s a little like Vegas used to be twenty years ago, but without all the cigarette smoke. A lot of glitter, a lot of sad. Some amazing parties. Everyone working their next big deal. Now instead of cigarettes people vape their way to cancer. But now they smell like potpourri.

In the end, LA was fun. We met some great and interesting folks and the Fire Museum opening was pretty spectacular with parades of some of the original horse-drawn fire equipment ever made and static displays of more fire engines than I could imagine.

The EMT concept we use today started as a dream in LA to help save lives and that dream grew into the core of all EMT programs used around the world.

Thousands and thousands of lives have been saved from just that one expression of California dreaming.

Thanks again for reading my newsletter.

Bill

More information on my books and events will follow.
Also, the first 50 people to sign up for this newsletter will be invited to the Baghdaddy launch party at a place still to be determined somewhere in or around Boise Idaho.

Wild Blue Yonder – Sept 2018

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A Newsletter for Books by Bill Riley – September 2018

Welcome to the Wild Blue Yonder Newsletter!
Thank you for all your support and encouragement, and for sticking with me on this weirdly awesome carnival ride that transforms ideas into novels.

This Issue: Updates on Baghdaddy, Cypher 1.0, and Sam’s bar mitzvah.

The Hardest Baghdaddy Edit is Complete.

Well, I was overly ambitious. I figured if I was organized, I could work on my new Cypher book while my first book, Baghdaddy, was in the middle of a major edit. But it didn’t go as planned. Baghdaddy is a gritty, emotional rollercoaster, and the editing process, at this stage, is triage. Not every word gets to live. Some sentences don’t survive even after hours of surgery.

My new book Cypher 1.0 is about world building and ‘what-ifs,’ a young adult view and creating imaginary friends in my head. Changing gears between the two books was hard. I did finish a new Cypher chapter, but restructuring a novel is even tougher than it sounds. At the same time, we were pulling together our son Sam’s bar mitzvah.

To put it in perspective, it was like performing ER surgery on a shooting victim while at the same time, trying to deliver a baby. All while trying to get Sam to temple on time. Fortunately, my wife Jo took the lead in Sam’s ceremony.

Sam’s Bar Mitzvah

I grew up Catholic, so I didn’t know everything that went into a bar mitzvah. It’s a coming of age ceremony in Judaism, and Sam had to work hard. He had to learn Hebrew, decode an ancient language, and think hard about an unfamiliar subject. After that, he had to stand in front of the entire congregation and connect those dots to make a biblical lesson from long ago real and relevant to how we live today.

He did a great job.

Sam is a teenager. He grew up in a military family where Jodi and I spent a lot of time away from home in war zones. So, it was almost divinely appropriate that Sam’s Torah portion dealt with the rules of conflict and war.

Anyone who’s ever raised a child, particularly two-year-olds and teenagers, has lived through conflict and uncertainty, where seemingly simple things are frustrating and hard. There are times when you don’t really know what to do as a parent, or as a young man trying to find his way in the world. There are times when you’re angry and don’t always know why. There are times when you just have to do the best you can at that moment, persevere, and have a little faith.

Having done both, raising a teenager is a lot like going to war.

Teenagers are working desperately hard to figure out who they are and who they want to be. To do that they have to step into the shoes of a lot of different kinds of people and live a lot of different lives, at least for a little while, to discover who they really are. And even though I understand that, I don’t always like those strangers living in my house.

Although there are a lot of them, they move on, and we have watched Sam become, day by day, a little more of who he’s going to be. And that’s amazing.

Getting ready for the next flight.

With Sam’s Bar Mitzvah complete I was able to finish editing Baghdaddy a day early, so we’re still on track for a Spring 2019 release. Probably late Spring because I have an ambitious ‘wish list’ of people I’d like to see endorse and review the book and those folks are busy and hard to reach even if they do want to read the story.

This morning was cool and bright and beautiful. I watched big hot air balloons floating over my neighbor’s roof in a jagged line as I worked out the last kinks in my Cypher book. The Cypher kids just fled a place called Stratos, and they’re racing to where their father’s being stored. Imagery of where they’re headed follows.

It doesn’t look like their life is getting any easier.

WARNING – Stratos Infiltration Detected. National Security Data Breach.

Thanks again for reading my newsletter.
More information on my books and events will follow.

Bill