Welcome to the busiest month of my life.

I've long associated September with new beginnings – kids go back to school, summer holidays are over, the trees start to turn in preparation for the winter. This year will likely cement that association in my mind forever. There's a lot going on, but I'll try to keep things brief.

First, the reason you're probably reading this, my debut novel An Ocean of Others comes out in just two days! Thats the first new beginning: my start as a published author.

Second, less than two weeks from now, I'll be getting married to my wonderful fiancée, Rachel.

Final preparations are well underway, but we're fast approaching the moment when we say our 'I do's! That's new beginning number two, the start of my life as husband.

Third, I put in my two weeks for my current job and will be starting at a new company in the final week of September. So that's new beginning number three, and the last really big change. Somehow, amid all this upheaval I need to find time to eat and to sleep, and of course, to write.

An Ocean of Others Release

If you're seeing this in your email inbox, good news! You'll be receiving another email from me on September 6 containing your download links for the .epub and .mobi files for An Ocean of Others. September 6 is the official release date, and the same day that everyone who pre-ordered the eBook on Amazon will get their copies. It will also be available on Kindle Unlimited, in case you're wondering.

I did, however, mess up a tiny bit...

Yeah, as you can see, yesterday the paperback went live. It was unclear how long the final review would take before the book went live on the site – evidently, it does not take long. I erred on the side of caution and assumed 72 hours, clicked publish 72 hours before the eBook released, and was surprised (and unprepared!) to receive an email within 2 hours saying my paperback book is published.

So, if the free eBook suits you fine, I completely understand that and thank you for your support. But if you do want a paperback copy of the book, you can pick it up here: mybook.to/AnOceanOfOthers

You can also pick up a signed copy of the paperback over at the JoshSE Store, which will come with a sticker and a bookmark.

Both sides of the bookmark are shown

Giveaways

Speaking of signed copies, I'll be doing another giveaway on Twitter, this time of several signed copies. Keep an eye on my Twitter page on Tuesday! If you entered the ARC giveaway but didn't win, you'll have an additional entry if you join the upcoming giveaway.

Also, as a thank you for reading and reviewing book ahead of release, everyone on the ARC Team (you know who you are) will be entered into a separate giveaway to get a signed copy as well. There are only 12 of you, so your odds are pretty good!

That's about it for the An Ocean of Others release. I'm excited to get this book out into the world and hear your thoughts! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Self-Published Science Fiction Competition

To close things out for this month, I wanted to talk about the Self-Published Science Fiction Competion a.k.a. SPSFC a.k.a. "SpaceFic". The competition is in its second year and was created by Duncan Swan (author of Monstre) and Hugh Howey (author of Wool) as a way to promote self-published science fiction authors. If you've heard of SPFBO, Mark Lawrence's Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, then this is a similar contest for sci-fi.

I was lucky enough to be selected as a judge for this year's SPSFC, joining the ranks of Team ScienceFiction.News, named for the blog where you can keep track of our team's progress: sciencefiction.news

We haven't got a team intro post up yet, but another member of our team has already posted a fantastic summary of our team and our allocation (i.e. the books we'll be reading) on her blog. You can read Claire's post here: I am a Judge for SPSFC2! - lecari.co.uk

As the competition just kicked off a few weeks ago, we're still in the slush pile phase of reviewing. We've got 27 books allocated to us, so we're reading 10-20% of each of them to decide which ones we want to read fully. Once the whole team reads those all the way through, we'll put forth three books as semi-finalists.

So far, I've read 8 of our 27 and could see a couple of them winning the whole competition. So, if you haven't heard of this competition until now, it's definitely something you should keep your eye on. If the small selection I've read is any indication, there are some incredible indie sci-fi authors out there whose books you won't want to miss!

Well, that's all I've got for this month! Since I've got him here next to me while writing today, I'll close out the newsletter with a picture of Bradley.

What a good boy

I'll be back with another update in October (if I survive the chaos of September!). Until then, thanks for reading!