Remaining original copies available for sale: 8

Attention, readers!

Restoration: Book 1 - "Awakenings" has been re-released with a new cover, a lower price, and a list of the first four book titles on the inside!




Isn't it pretty?

This is part of an effort by our publisher, OakTara, to streamline the series and make it more of a series in anticipation of Book 2's upcoming release (we will certainly post more details on that when we get them!!)

One of the things this means is that v 1.0 of "Awakenings" is now a collectible. Any order placed through an online distributor will now likely be the updated version.

Ergo, if you are interested in having a piece of history (namely, one of the few remaining original copies of Awakenings), Laura and I have a special offer. We have taken inventory and decided to sell exactly twelve of our remaining stock first come, first serve. The price we have agreed upon is $15.00, plus shipping costs (estimated on USPS website). Also let us know if you would like your copy signed (the books are divided between us, so it will be signed by whomever sends it, more likely Laura). If you want both signatures, just include double the postage and we'll mail it to each other first. Preferred payment is via paypal, but check is also accepted. Payment must be received before shipment of book.

Anyone who is interested, please contact us privately (if you already have a preferred means) or email us at twelvespeakers@gmail.com. We will update this post with the remaining book count as we receive orders.

As a refresher, here is what the original book cover looks like. Smiling author and stuffed otter not included. ;-)

My amazing, talented friend Holly is doing some characters sketches for Awakenings, and she did Anathriel today and I LOVE IT SO MUCH and am now posting it everywhere I can.





Artwork © Holly Robbins
Anathriel © Faith King and Laura Josephsen

And the signed book goes to emmy_roo.  Thanks for helping spread the word! ^_^

Just a reminder that there are two days left before the close of the contest. ^_^

We are having a contest! The prize is a signed copy of Restoration Book 1: Awakenings.

Rules:


1. The contest is open to everyone, including internationals. It begins today, February 14th, and ends on Sunday, February 20th. In order to enter the contest, there are two things you must do.

First, change your primary LiveJournal icon, Facebook profile picture, Twitter picture, DeviantArt profile pic, Blogger photo, or other social networking photo to the cover of Awakenings and keep it until the end of the contest. Links for the icon will be provided below.

Icon links for the cover of the book (save to your computer and upload):

Smaller icon (66 pixels X 100 pixels)

Larger icon (165 pixels X 250 pixels)

Second, embed the book trailer or post a link to it.  (Embedding is preferred, but I understand that some places, such as Twitter, embedding doesn't work.)  Each place you do this counts as one entry. For example, if you change your picture on Facebook and embed the book trailer, that counts as one entry. If you also change your profile picture on LiveJournal and post a link to the book trailer, this counts as a second entry.  If you do the same thing on DeviantArt, this is a third entry.  Do it again on Twitter and this is a fourth entry.

Link to the book trailer (to be linked or embedded in each entry): Book Trailer


2. You must come back here and post your links in a reply to this journal entry in order for them to be counted. If you do not have a LiveJournal account, you can still reply anonymously. But you need to leave a link for each place you posted and changed your picture, and we must be able to see it.  (This means if you have privacy settings on Facebook, you would need to select to post to "everyone" if you put it there.)


3. At the end of the contest, all of the entries will be entered into a drawing and a winner will be randomly selected. The winner will be informed on Monday, February 21st, and we will request contact information so we can mail out the book. We will also post the winner here on our LiveJournal blog.


If any of your friends might be interested in participating, feel free to link back to this contest. :)

Faith and I have been discussing the fact that between December and January's craziness, we have kind of fallen off the wagon at keeping our blog/facebook page going.  I have no idea how the time disappeared so fast.  It was December 1st and then all of a sudden we're into February.

Things have been hectic, but we're determined to be better about updating this.  Since we haven't really planned anything special for it yet, I decided to go ahead and talk about a few 'could-have-beens' in Restoration Book 1: Awakenings.  Otherwise known as "things readers might not have suspected."  Also known as "the things that the authors had planned, but the characters refused to do."

This will have some spoilery stuff for Awakenings, so I'll put it under a cut.

( What might have been...Collapse )

The lesson I learned from all of this?  Never underestimate the sneakiness of your characters.  Or never think you have control of your story.  Or you know you and your co-author work fantabulously together when the characters insist on the same things to both of you.

For you writers out there: have your characters ever completely flipped on you to be something you didn't expect?

For you readers: when you're reading books, do you ever think about the way it could have been different?  Do you like to imagine alternate ways a story could have gone or are you usually happy reading whatever the author gave you?

(And if you have anything you'd particularly like to see in this blog, feel free to let us know so we can consider it. ^_^)

You can now read the beginning of Awakenings (prologue, first chapter, and beginning of second chapter) online at our website, which is now up and running  (though still under construction).

Link to the website: here

Link to the beginning of Awakenings: here

Just wanted to let everyone know that Awakenings is now available for the Kindle on Amazon. :)

Awakenings for Kindle

First, I realized I haven't posted in this community that our book is now for sale!  Right now, it's only available on Amazon, but it will soon be available elsewhere online.  (Also, I had one friend say she ordered it from her bookstore, so I'll find out more information about how that works.)  

For now, if you want to take a look at it on Amazon, you may do so here: Restoration Book 1: Awakenings

I also wanted to post a screenshot of the results of our buy a book day on Friday.  We hit this ranking on Amazon thanks to all of you and your support!

Restoration Book 1: Awakenings is off to the printer.  Which means sometime in the next few weeks, it will probably pop up for sale on Amazon, followed by other online booksellers.  (Amazon tends to be where it shows up first.)  We will, of course, post a link whenever the book is for sale. :D   It will be available in the USA and Canada, and we'll try to work something out for international sales.

Here we have the front and back of the book cover for Restoration Book 1: Awakenings. :)



You can see it here: "Awakenings" Cover



In other news, Faith and I are almost finished reading through our proofs.  Our voices are very worn out from reading back and forth to each other since yesterday, but we're compensating by drinking lots of water and tea with honey. ;)

Very exciting news on our end.  We have solidified a book cover for Book 1: Awakenings and this morning, we received the proofs for our book.  Now we get to read through them, make any last minute corrections, and send them back to our editor.  After that, we'll get one more chance to look through it, and if there are no more changes, then our book will be going to print!

Hello!

Why yes, this book does, in fact, have two authors. Thanks to one fleeting moment of stupidity on my part and LJ's rather tedious policies regarding the renaming of an account, I have not been visible in this community heretofore.

So. This is me. Faith. The other evil megalomaniac creator of the world of Restoration and its characters. I love seafood, goat cheese, avocados, singing show tunes, almost any fictional TV show with the word 'Star' in it, Chuck Bartowski, and really, really good books.

I am kicking off my debut with a bang.

As Laura reported some months ago, we have commissioned an artist, Jacob Grant, to do some promotional artwork for our series. Well, he has been hard at work since that time, and many emails have been swapped, and the art we asked for is ready!

Jacob's deviant art page, if you'd like to see some of his other work

So here it is, in all its stunning detail. Below the cut for the sake of your browsers, though in some ways, I confess, it kills me to do it)

( Meet our heroines (and one heroine/brat)Collapse )

( Meet the Twelve BrethrenCollapse )

IMPORTANT NOTE: This artwork is copyright of Jacob Grant. DO NOT REDISTRIBUTE. Feel free to link as many people as you like to this LJ entry (and to our website, when it is up and running), but please don't make/post any icons, wallpapers, or hotlinks. Only Laura and I have the rights to distribute. I know it's tempting, but we'd love for Jacob to do some more art for us in the future, so please respect his rights.

And on that note, let us know what you think? Anybody want to read it now (that hasn't already?) I hope so!

Soooo I realize it has been quite a long time since Faith and I dropped an update in here.  Just to keep everyone in the know, we are still waiting.   (As evidenced by the not-so-clever subject heading.)

Our publishing company is still chugging along on publications.  They have also hired new editors and design team, and have spent the beginning months of this year training their new hires, while getting two ebook lines up and running.  They are now getting to the rest of the still-unpublished books they have contracted.  Which, of course, includes our books.

That's all for now.  Stay tuned for further updates. ^_^

~ Laura

I got in touch with Ramona yesterday (Faith's and my head editor at OakTara.)  This weekend, we need to resend her all of our documents--acknowledgments/dedication, etc.  She also wants the most recently tweaked version of Book 1: Awakenings--she said they've done some preliminary editing, but they want the most recent version.  Also, we're getting cover information to her so she can have the design team start brainstorming.  Faith and I have an idea of what the base of the cover will probably look like, which is very cool. 

So...it looks like we might finally be starting to move along toward publication of Awakenings.