Hey there! I've been sitting on a major secret for the last month, and you get to know about it first.

I am super excited to announce that The Second Bond series has been picked up by Podium Entertainment! I signed the contract this week, and they will professionally produce the audiobooks for the entire series. Podium is one of the largest audiobook producers on the market, and I cannot wait to see how this all turns out. The biggest thing I'm most excited about is that we're thinking about using not one, but TWO narrators, a man for Soren's POV chapters and a woman for Kala's POV chapters.

I'm still in shock that this is actually happening.

As for Book 2, production is coming along nicely. I'm at 88.1k words now, but I noticed something a few weeks ago: Soren only has two chapters while Kala has the rest. I wrote it this way because the story was told better from her POV, especially for those emotional scenes. Now that the series will have audiobooks, I decided to go back and add some more Soren POV chapters to even things out; even came up with a chapter that adds a ton to the story from his POV. However, Kala will still have the majority of chapters; I love her interactions with Lily too much to remove them.

When it comes to editing, my motto is that if you can remove a paragraph, scene, or chapter and it doesn't affect the overall story in any way, then it should not exist in the final draft. That way, I'm left with a tight book that isn't full of fluff or scenes that bore my readers.

I got the first draft of the cover for Book 2 earlier this week! My cover artist and I are working to make it the best that it can be, and it already looks spectacular. I still need to work out a title for it, though; that's always the hardest part for me.

Oh! And one more thing! I've been waiting to share the results of my recent Bookbub Featured Deal for a while now because I wrote a very detailed article and submitted it to the Bookbub Partner's Blog. It's eight pages long, and contains all the prep work I did, my strategy before and during the promotion, and what happened to the book and its sales stats after. It's very in-depth, and I really hope they accept it. I wrote it with the theme that it's perfectly okay to submit your only book for a Featured Deal, and how it can impact your future as an author. It's really more of a guide for other indie authors. They got back to me a couple of days ago and they are in the process of reviewing it. Got my fingers crossed!

Bookbub Results:

1. 815 ebooks sold at 99 cents.
2. 20.2k kindle pages read.
3. Highest category rank was #6 in Dragons and Mythical Creatures.
4. Highest overall rank was #449 across the entire kindle store.

If Bookbub decides to not publish my article, I'll likely publish it on my website. Either way, I'll let you know! Maybe you know another indie author who could use all the tips I wrote about.

On a side note, I also made a new logo, wrote a punchier author bio, and edited the backmatter of my book. As I work on Book 2, I'm considering starting a blog on my website talking about all the books I'm reading along with sharing some helpful indie author tips. I've seen far too many books from other indie authors fail to get the recognition that they deserve, and I'd like to help in some way.

Pssst! If you read Chapter 1 of Book 2, I'd love to know what you thought of it! It's in my dropbox link; if you need it again, I'd be delighted to send it to you. <3

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Sincerely,

Luke