Hello and welcome to the April 2015 issue of Aphelion Webzine!

Once again it is time for a new issue to go live for you to enjoy. Everyone on the staff is waiting on me to get done with the editorial so we can flip the April issue. I've been getting zapped with so much overtime during the past three weeks that I haven't had time to do much of anything when I do get a chance to be at home. Of course, I've been concentrating on publicizing the book as heavily as I can during that time, too. So it is really my fault that I didn't get an editorial ready ahead of time.

Another consequence of the book coming out has been Mare Inebrium writers finally getting a chance to read the newest stories I've written for the series. Why is that bad, you may ask? Because, it seems that I have shot down some of their ideas and works-in-progress with some of the background material within the new stories. Mea Culpa, but that is the nature of the beast, so to speak. No one was allowed to look over my shoulder as I was writing. As you regular readers know, I enjoy having a story I'm working on accessible to my partners in prose so that I can get running critiques of the tales as they develop. I wasn't allowed to do that with the new Mare stories in the book. My publisher wanted all the new material to be a surprise gift to the readers, so I kept everything on the down low.

Now the book is out and all the secrets are out, too. My timeline of the history of the planet the Mare Inebrium is located has several spoilers for past, present, and even future stories. Readers can now see some of the hidden details and secret history behind the series. Other series writers now know where I was going and what I had in mind for all the regular characters. Knowing those details forces them to change some of their own story ideas. Even on stories they have already begun writing.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, as the saying goes. Well, I accept any blame or curses congenially tossed my way for whatever damage the new stories and hidden reveals my book may have caused other writers in the series. But hopefully, any changes anyone makes to their own Mare stories will lead them to even greater flights of fancy than they anticipated when they began participating in the series.

As for the book itself, I'm finding it difficult to obtain hard and fast numbers as to how well it is selling. My ranking on Amazon goes up and down like a roller coaster. I can tell that SOMEONE is buying copies, mostly e-books--which is good because I get paid better for e-books than I do for hardbacks or paperbacks. BookScan will only tell me how many hardbacks and paperbacks have been reported as sold. Only my publisher can obtain the numbers for e-book sales. All I can say is that neither Larry Niven nor Spider Robinson are staying awake nights worrying about how my sales might be cutting into theirs, LOL!

The book was released February 4th. My Publisher, Dark Oak Press, worked overtime to get it out that quickly. It is now available in hardback, trade paperback, and e-book formats on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The ISBNs are listed on my author page on Dark Oak Press: Tales From The Mare Inebrium.

I've been autographing the hardbacks and paperbacks whenever someone asks. I autographed four copies at AnachroCon last month, Two copies at work last week, and several other people have mentioned that they want me to sign their copies whenever we can meet up. LibertyCon, in June, will be another opportunity for me to sign copies. One Aphelion Staff member was lucky enough to mail me a copy early enough to be the official First Autographed Copy Ever, so I made a note of that when I signed it. He's got a collector's item on his hands, folks!

As my publisher is supposed to cut me royalty checks quarterly, I will find out the answers to all my sales questions around the end of this month. Until then, I will be as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as Granny used to say. I will keep you posted as to what numbers are revealed, rest assured.

Now, lets not forget the real reason that you readers and writers are here on the Aphelion website. There is an amazing selection of stories and poetry on tap for you again. Time for me to shut up and let you get to the zine!

Dan

BOILERPLATE:

First off, if you do the Facebook thing, feel free to join us on the Aphelion page there. The link is Aphelion Webzine. As an aside, the Editorial Mafia and I have found Facebook to be useful while we transition between e-mailing lists. Given our different locations and schedules, it's come in handy as a way to discuss production details of new issues. Sometimes there are several of us using Facebook at the same time, so it's almost like the old chat room days.

Dan's Music Page This is my promo page here at Aphelion. All the links below, and more information about the albums, are located here.

The Never Bank On A Learning Curve CD on the Create Space website. My first album, with a wide range of styles and genres, covering the past three years of my working with the MAGIX Music Maker programs.

The Second Helping CD on the Create Space website. My second album, with just as wide a range of different musical styles, showing just how much I've learned in the past three years.

Dan's Studio-D Page on the Bandcamp website. Digital downloads of the albums, or each individual song if you prefer it that way. Just click on the album cover thumbnails and you'll see a list of each song on the album. Next to the song titles are links to read the liner notes, or to download the individual song. You can listen to each song for free. There is also a link to download each entire album at one go. I cannot say enough about Bandcamp! This is an amazing website. I have Rob, and many other friends, to thank for finally talking me into checking it out.

Here are some links to pages I have up promoting my music. When my book comes out I'll add those links to the promotion page, too. So far, there are links on that page to the Create Space Preview songs, the Create Space page for each album, the Amazon.com listings, and the link to the digital downloads page.

And here's a link to my Sound Cloud page:

Dan's Sound Cloud Page where all my music has been stored for your free listening pleasure. These are not as high a quality recordings as the ones on the CDs or on Bandcamp. But SoundCloud does have the virtue of having everything collected together in one place.

Check those links out, buy a CD or download if you like what you hear. And once again, thank you for your time,

Dan all my music has been stored for your free listening pleasure. These are not as high a quality recordings as the ones on the CDs or on Bandcamp. But SoundCloud does have the virtue of having everything collected together in one place.

Check those links out, buy a CD or download if you like what you hear. And once again, thank you for your time,

Dan