Hello there!

Thanks for joining my author network. I am trying to figure out how this social networking works, so please forgive me while I fumble my way through.

The Confederate Star Trilogy began as a single book, combining my life-long love of history with a similar love of writing. I have likely written thousands of pages of technical material over the course of over thirty years as a software engineer. But I always had in the back of my mind the idea of being an author and writing fiction. About four years ago, with retirement looming in the not-to-distant future, I began putting some attention on what I would do after bidding a fond farewell to software development and the corporate world. As a result, the idea of becoming an author and writing stories about history started percolating in my mind. The American Civil War has a particular fascination with me, so I began creating a story in my mind about how the alteration of in a single historical event would change the outcome of the war. After musing over many, many possibilities, I settled on changing the one, single event that I believed would make for a great story.

Having never undertaken such a project before, I feared that I would not be able to write enough to compose a reasonably sized book. I discovered that the opposite was actually true. I soon realized that the story I would be telling was too massive for one book. Hence, the entire work product will consist of three more reasonably-sized books.

The first book, Confederate Star Rises, has been completed. It is currently being read and edited by a small group of readers. Many thanks to those of you who volunteered to undertake that task. So far the feedback I have been receiving has been very positive, and I am encouraged by this. After getting back all comments from the readers, I will be going over the manuscript another time to clean it up. It should then be ready for publishing.

I am well into the second book, Confederate Star Strengthens, which I hope to complete within the next year or so. The third book, Confederate Star Shines, is still a "twinkle in my eye", so to speak. As I previously stated, there is no loss of words waiting to be put to paper. If anything, I need to hold myself back from writing too much!

We are at the beginning of a new paradigm in the publishing world. Like buggy whips from times past, traditional publishing is being replaced by eBooks and self-publishing. The internet, Kindle, Nook, and Notepad technologies are altering the publishing landscape as well as changing the way people purchase and read books. As a matter of fact, eBook sales at Amazon now exceed sales of the more traditional hard-cover and paperback books. This is therefore the route that I plan to undertake. That is, to self-publish my work and initially put it out as in eBook form for sale at Amazon, B&N, etc. In preparation for this, I have begun work on my new website, www.ConfederateStarTrilogy.com , which I hope to launch in conjunction with the publishing of Confederate Star Rises. I also have plans to start a blog and use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media to promote the book.

It seems that writing is the easy part, while getting the word out and marketing effectively is the real challenge!

Do you think any of your own personal LinkedIn connections would enjoy being connected to this account? If so, why not let them know about it and invite them to connect up as well.

I thank you all once again for joining my network. I plan to send you "the inside scoop" about my work in future postings.

Regards,

Richard Small