As you may know, I’m between projects at the moment and I’ve been tossing some ideas around. One thing I’ve thought about is book pricing and readership. My reader base is important to me, so one idea, in particular, occurred to me.

I decided to permanently lower the price of “In the Valley,” the first book of my original trilogy, to USD 99 cents. This lowers the barrier to people who may be interested in my books, but can’t get over the standard 2.99 USD speed bump.

Well, this morning I instituted the change. The going rate for Valley has been changed worldwide, and hopefully it pulls people along into my original universe, and then to my latest release “The Storyteller’s Heaven.”

A few words about “In the Valley.”

First, it was my initial novel, and I think it shows. There are problems with its structure, and I dislike the cover. It has the look of crime fiction, not military sci-fi, which is what it actually is.

Second, Valley was a pretty raw book in terms of content. How it came into being was that someone, perhaps my shrink, told me I needed to write a book. At the time I was going through the US Army Medical Board and I was bored out of my skull, as well as being really, really sick of being poked and prodded by the docs. So I sat and wrote my tale, using science fiction as a touchstone.

Finally, Valley wasn’t meant to be a trilogy; that just happened. Although I intended it to be a one-off and catharsis, I did leave a hook at the end in case I wanted to continue the tale of my protagonist, Paul Thompson. When the process was completed, and the book was published, I walked away from it for a while. I never seriously considered myself to be an author.

So, I did nothing. I had no website, no FB page, nothing. Just a random book hanging out on Amazon. I maybe sold seventy copies or so, at best. And then, something strange happened.

Out of the blue, a gentleman contacted me from Wisconsin and asked a simple question.

“When is the next book coming out?”

I was retired from the Army by then, and I was touched by his interest. I began to seriously consider the next work, and this time I made a study of what worked, and what didn’t. Also, in this period I made contact with the author John Birmingham, and I read his book “How to Be a Writer.” As a consequence, I decided to take the whole writer thing a bit more seriously.

I started this website, among other things. I also planned and produced the second book in the original trilogy, “The Captain’s Cauldron.” Yes, I planned the second book, and I think it shows. I was still dissatisfied with the cover, however, but it was better than “Valley.” It sold pretty well, so I moved on to the capstone for the trilogy, “Immolation.” IMO this was the best book of the three, and I actually liked its cover.

I’ve moved on since, of course. Yes, there was a five-year publishing gap, but I was not idle during this time. I did a lot of short stories and wrote a couple of unpublished series. Part of the problem was that I had gone separate ways from my original publisher, and I couldn’t crack the code of indie publishing on a budget.

Finally, with a big assist from JB, I produced my first true indie. “The Storyteller’s Heaven,” the first book in the “Promised Land” trilogy, is the result. Oddly enough, it is the most recent thing I’ve written, the two other series, one a series of disaster novellas, and the other an alternate history, remain unpublished.

Unpublished for now. Of course, I have put out “The King’s Ohio Rifles,” the first book in the Ohio Rifles alternate history trilogy, over on patreon.com/jasonlambright. It is in rough draft serial form because that’s how I do things over on Patreon. However, I plan on releasing the ebook in November 2022 on Amazon.

Long story short, “In the Valley” is now available worldwide for 99 USD cents, and it’s going to stay that way.

The writing continues.