At the advice of my aunt (a very successful published career author), I have been working on a major overhaul, if not almost complete rewrite of The Afflicted. It's such a big project that it's taking me several months per each character's segment--in fact, she gave me the line-by-line feedback from which I launched this new revision project back in last April, and I am just now a few weeks into working on part 3 (of 8). It's going to be a while! (Though, having to put that aside for about a month and a half to two months or so to work on a story for an upcoming furry anthology did kind of contribute to that, as well.)

Regrettably, I cannot share what I have so far even though I am thrilled at the almost night-and-day difference in quality, because this version may have a bigger and better future lined up for it (if I can ever finish it.) Simply put, my aunt loves what she's read, and believes in this project so strongly that she wants to get me in touch with some of her connections ... after I fix it up. With agents, I get basically one shot to impress them, so you had better believe I want everything to be as amazing as possible before I submit it.

So, I find myself at this awkward point wherein I'm really not quite as proud of The Afflicted version 1.55 anymore, just because oh my God you should SEE what I've done with it now. But you can't. I'm saving version 2.0 for the agents and such. But then, what do I do with 1.55?

I decided that I had to stick behind 1.55--it is the most current version that is actually available online. I can't just pull it when I have nothing better to put in its place. But since I'm in the process of moving on from it ... well, long story short: price slashing time!

I have lowered the price of The Afflicted (version 1.55) on the Amazon Kindle store down to $2.99, down a dollar from its previous $3.99 price. Which doesn't sound all that exciting, but that's literally as low as Amazon allowed me to go. $2.99 was seriously the minimum price it would allow me to put, so I did. Sorry about that. Blame Amazon, I guess. :( Or, conversely, you can buy it for the low low price of anything you want over at Smashwords! (Also, you should be using Smashwords anyway. They're less evil than Amazon, they have every ebook format in existence [yes, including Kindle], and they don't take as big of a cut of the royalties per sale.) I have enabled Smashwords' Pay What You Want feature with a "suggested price" of $2.99, just because Amazon doesn't support PWYW, and the suggested price is what gets fed to its price-matching "HOW DARE YOU OFFER IT FOR CHEAPER ANYWHERE ELSE" spider bots. But really, it's whatever you want. Free, a penny, $2.99, or more if you feel like being generous and leaving a tip. You're paying for an outdated version of a novel whose current version I can't show you, so you tell me what you think that's worth!

(Which isn't to say 1.55 is bad, mind you. My aunt loved it enough to promise me her support, after all. :D And, well, you can judge the quality yourself from the samples! Hell, you can read 3/8 of the entire novel right here, and then you tell me. I just think that it pales in comparison to the eventually upcoming 2.0, but you'll have to take my word on that for now.)

Anyway! Enjoy your discount 1.55, and wish me luck on this next big push!