Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai ranked at #2 on Amazon
Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai was liberated by Amazon users in the United States and finally made available as a FREE ebook download on April 4, 2014. As a result the science fiction and fantasy novella that serves as an extended prologue to Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity shot up the ranking to #2 for the Metaphysical & Visionary Fantasy eBook category, and shot up to #24 for the Science Fiction category on the Amazon Best Sellers Top 100 Free list.
It is my hope that Amazon users in the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, India, Brazil, and Mexico will also liberate Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai by clicking on the "tell us about a lower price" button on the ebook's Amazon page.
Unfortunately Amazon does not provide publishers and self-published authors the option of initially offering their ebooks as a free download on their sites. Instead we are required to price our ebook at $0.99 or above. The only way around this requirement is if Amazon becomes aware from its users that there is a more competitive price at which point they will lower their price. Since Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai is available for FREE from Barnes & Noble, Google Play, the iBookstore, Kobo, and Lulu, Amazon finally made the ebook available as a FREE download.
Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai at #2 for Metaphysical Fantasy
and #24 for Science Fiction on Amazon
It was quite an exciting experience watching Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai rise to the #2 position within the Fantasy genre and #24 in the Science Fiction genre. I was especially pleased to see the ebook ranked at one point alongside Wool - Part One by Hugh Howey, which can be seen in the photo below.
Wool - Part One and Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai
In other news I have a couple of short stories that I would like to release on Wattpad as soon as I have the ebook covers designed. The first short story entitled The Astor House of Old Shanghai is in the genre of steampunk and was originally published in Peter Saga's Sci-Fi Freedom e-zine a couple of years ago. The second short story entitled White Lion Rising takes place in dystopian Barcelona in the year 2085 AD and is a tribute to MotoGP, Robotech, and the legend of Saint George and the Dragon.
I will begin polishing the final draft of my 2004 travel memoir entitled Travels In the Land of Hunger next week while also getting back to Dark Legacy: Book II - Travels. So stay tuned.
Over the summer I received an email from Gavin Wilson, a prolific writer and Wattpad Ambassador from the UK, who had come across Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai on Kobo. He encouraged me to join the Wattpad community of more than 15 million monthly users as another online outlet to expose and share my written work. I soon created my account and uploaded The End of the Kai and the first three chapters of Book I - Trinity of Dark Legacy. I was happy to discover within a few days of joining the site that authors I greatly admired such as Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tail), Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist), and Brandon Sanderson (The Wheel of Time books 12, 13, and 14), along with indy authors Daniel Arenson (Blood of Requiem: Song of Dragons) and Amanda Hocking (Trylle Trilogy) were members. A few weeks later Gavin connected me to Pam and Samantha Pennington at Wattpad headquarters in Toronto, Canada, to begin the process of having Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai featured on their site during the month of September. It was a very pleasant, encouraging, and professional experience working with them.
Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai was launched as a featured work on Wattpad on September 3, 2013, and within three weeks it hit 70,000 reads and 599 votes.
Wattpad was also kind enough to promote The End of the Kai via their Twitter (https://twitter.com/wattpad) and Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/wattpad/) sites along with a cover-off query on their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/wattpad) where users voted for The End of the Kai cover they liked the best, which you can see in the photo to the left. The majority of people voted for the red cover versionand as a result I may release a free "red cover" ebook collectors edition of Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai in 2014.
As of December 2013 Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai has hit 180,000+ reads on Wattpad. I am very grateful to Gavin and the Wattpad team for the incredible opportunity to have been featured on their site and for their continued support. I strongly encourage any and all avid readers and writers to join the Wattpad community where one can connect, read, write, provide and receive constructive feedback from members from all parts of the globe.
Before signing off I will mention that I have over 200 pages written for Dark Legacy: Book II - Travels. I am very excited about the direction and pace of this book. The sequel will begin right where Book I - Trinity left off. The world beyond Lemuria's western coastal borders will come into greater focus as the political, economic, and military complexities of the Atlantean Empire are revealed. The story and direction of this book has become very clear to me over the past year and provided the time I know I can finish the first complete draft of this book sometime next year.
The very talented Tiberius Viris and I have also moved forward with the details in using his painting Hall of the Dragon Mist as the cover for my 2004 travel memoir, Travels in the Land of Hunger. A final cover design should be completed and revealed in early 2014. All that remains is for a small group of outside eyes and an editor to read through and edit down the completed draft of the memoir before it is to be released for publication.
With Warmth and Gratitude,
Domenico
If you would like to buy Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity please visit:
I apologize for the long delay in updating The Legacy Cycle blog site. It is a beautiful spring day here in Barcelona and I finally have a moment to sit down and write a new post as beams of sunlight shine through my apartment's window.
Over the past few months I have received emails and messages from readers and fans of Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity wanting to know when Book II - Travels of the series will be released. I remember when I was in junior high school going every week to the Waldenbooks store that was next to the music shop where I took drum lessons hoping that the third book in Stephen King's TheDark Tower series had been released. This was before the Internet so there was no immediately accessible means for readers like me to know when King planned to release the next book. It was in the years after graduating college that Stephen King had finished the series, and so I grew up reading each book as they came out throughout my adolescent to young adult life.
In the long spaces of time between each Dark Tower book release I developed within my own mind a story that would ultimately become the Dark Legacy book series. Although Dark Legacy has almost nothing in common with The Dark Tower, Stephen King's series was what inspired me to create my own world of fantasy and my own series of books.
While I waited for King to release the next book I grew agitated that instead of working on the series he had written other books within the genre of horror. I kept thinking, Why doesn't he finish the series? Little did I know of what the writing process was like for an author and how at times it is good for an author to take a break from writing their series by working on other stories and books.
This painting entitled, Hall of the Dragon Mist, by
Tiberius Viris may serve as the cover
art for my travel memoir, Travels In the Land of Hunger
In the time since Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity was released I have written the first one hundred plus pages of Book II - Travels, but I have also worked on a steampunk short story entitled, The Astor House of Old Shanghai, and I have been editing a travel memoir of my 2004 journey through East and Southeast Asia. I have also written an incomplete science fiction short story entitled, Rise of the White Lion. These side projects have been healthy for my writing and leave room for books not within the Dark Legacy series, but within a much wider Legacy Cycle series.
I now plan on working and completing each project before moving on to the next. I have been editing the travel memoir over the past year and will finally finish the first complete edits next week. I will then leave it and focus on Book II - Travels. Ideally, I would like to work on Book II a little bit each day and now that I have my summer holiday around the corner I will be able to accomplish quite a bit. It is my hope that I will have the first complete draft of Book II finished by early 2014, while also releasing my travel memoir entitled, Travels In the Land of Hunger, by early 2014. Once Book II has been released, hopefully by late 2014 to early 2015, I will take a break from Dark Legacy to develop the steampunk short story, The Astor House of Old Shanghai, into a full length novel. Then I'll be back to Dark Legacy to write Book III - Tribe.
I would like to share with you some of the reviews of Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity from the past couple of months.
"This was one of the most unique books I've read in a long time; in style if not always in content. As I read it, I definitely came to the conclusion I was reading some European author, as the style was so different from anything I had read in a long time (he's not :))." - Mitchell Tyler
Read the full review on Goodreads @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/375996637
"Overall, this was a great read ... Domenico has an excellent tale to tell and tells it very well. I am anxiously awaiting further installments in the Dark Legacy series." - George Jaros
Read the full review on Goodreads @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/409215305
"I originally started out with the intro book: Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai, which is basically the first 1/4 of this book. After reading through the incredible blend of fantasy and sci-fi, mixed with Eastern philosophies, I had to buy the full book and finish it." - Mike Pearce
Read the full review on Goodreads @ http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/484677199
"Not only does this book offer a beginning to what could become a new epic story worthy of endless numbers of fans, it exposes humanity at multiple levels. As readers, we can identify with most of the characters at one point or another, thus creating an opportunity to explore our own dark, rejected, and neglected facets coming to terms with ourselves as a whole unit. On a less personal note; it is a story that surprises the reader at every turn. Entertaining, different, NEW. Totally worth it! Can't wait for the story to continue. Hopefully we'll see a sequel soon." - Manu M.
Read the review on Amazon.com.br @ http://www.amazon.com.br/review/R2W9EUJ0B71RY9/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B006VJQCSS&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=5308307011&store=digital-text
I would like to thank each reader and fan for all of their support. It is greatly appreciated!
Now I best be getting back to writing.
With Magic,
Domenico
If you would like to buy Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity please visit:
It is my great pleasure to announce that Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity is now available in five editions from ebooks to paperback to hardcover!
But before I get to the details of those five editions please take note that Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai is available as a completely FREE ebook download on Lulu, the iBookstore, the Barnes & Noble NOOK, Kobo, and Google Play.
Dark Legacy: The End of the Kai is a science fiction and fantasy novella that serves as the prologue to Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity. The FREE ebook download of The End of the Kai includes the first three chapters of Book I - Trinity, and together they amount to 180+ pages of free action-packed e-reading material!
To get your hands on a FREE digital copy of The End of the Kai select and click from the options listed below.
Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity
ebook, paperback, and hardback cover
Now getting back to the five editions available of Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity (this book includes The End of the Kai). I am very pleased to announce that Dark Legacy: Trinity is available for all eReader devices from the iPad to the NOOK to the Kindle, while also being available as a 6x9 paperback on Lulu and Amazon; and--for those die-hard fans--as a 6x9 casewrap hardcover on Lulu!
To get your copy please visit the following online stores listed below.
It has been exactly one year since the launch of my first sci-fi/fantasy novel, Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity. And I am very proud to announce that the book has joined the 21st century by being available as an eBook for the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble NOOK, the iPad, iPhone, and iPod, as well as for most other eReaders.
You can click the following links to get the eBook version of Dark Legacy (sample the beginning of the book on Amazon for free):
During the past twelve months I have been promoting the book through all available internet avenues such as Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads.com, YouTube, and to a certain extent LinkedIn. There is still more virtual terrain to cover such as Smashwords.com and more traditional means of getting exposure through bookstore events and speaking to literature students in high schools to encourage them to also self-publish. But 2012 is the year that I need to take a break from aggressively promoting the book via the web and sit down and focus on the craft of writing. There are four literary works that I hope to hammer out over the course of this year: one is a short-story, two are novels, and one is a travel memoir.
The working title for the science fiction short story I have been kicking around for the past couple of months is Rise of the White Lion. Peter Saga of Science Fiction Freedom E'Zine was trying to put together a science fiction superhero issue back in the autumn of last year. He asked me if I could come up with something with the condition that it be based in the city where I am currently living in (Barcelona). I found the request a difficult challenge as my initial ideas were typical and easily rejected by my wife. Finally, I settled on a concept that I was content with revolving around GP Motorcycle racing, the myth of Saint George, projecting the future outcomes of the current economic crisis on the EU, aspects of Gaudà architecture, Japanese robot technology, corporate espionage, and the rise of China as a significant 21st century superpower. This is all I will say for now. I am hoping to have a final draft of the short story completed by the first week of February after which I will pass the story along to the amazingly talented concept artist, Wayne Haag, who provided the beautiful artwork for my steampunk short story, The Astor House of Old Shanghai.
After writing The Astor House of Old Shanghai as a short story and getting a lot of positive feedback and encouragement from Wayne Haag, my wife, and readers of Science Fiction Freedom E'Zine I have decided to expand the short story into a full length steampunk novel. As a result I have been reading as much as I can on the art and history of espionage, Chinese history, the Boxer Rebellion, the Spanish-American War, and the history of Shanghai during the Victorian period. I am very excited by the evolving storyline of the characters, Nicholas Winter and Sir Vernon George Waldegrave Kell (founder of MI5). A lot of the ideas, values, and concepts I have for The Astor House will in some way also feed into Dark Legacy: Book II - Travels. The storyline for Dark Legacy: Book II is still coming together in my mind and reading up on the Boxer Rebellion, Chinese history, etc. for The Astor House is helping me solidify the details and direction of Dark Legacy: Book II. I plan to finish up the first act of Dark Legacy by the summer of 2012 while working in tandem on The Astor House.
Last, but not least, is a travel memoir that I would like to publish by the end of 2012. The writing is done and it is all up on this blog (go back to entries from 2004), but I need to edit it and format it for publication. The memoir is from my travels in the late winter, spring, and summer of 2004 in Southeast Asia, East Asia, Siberia, Scandinavia, and Eastern and Western Europe. If anything my hope for the memoir is for it to stand as a document for my children, and their children, and hopefully their children; to in some way speak to future members of my family and encourage them to travel far and wide into this world. The memoir also reveals how my wife and I first met at the top of a pyramid temple in the ancient ruins of Angkor Wat on the 21st of May, 2004.
Well, let it begin. Time to sit down and write.
With magic,
Domenico
A steampunk short story I wrote entitled, The Astor House of Old Shanghai, which was beautifully illustrated by Wayne Haag of The Fifth Element, The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers) and Superman Returns fame was featured in Issue 5 of Science Fiction Freedom E'Zine. The E'Zine is free so be sure to check it out at: http://sffezine.blogspot.com
Peter Saga, the Art Director for Science Fiction Freedom, had contacted me at the end of May (or early June if I remember correctly) through Twitter. At that time I was linking up my Twitter account with several steampunk Twitter accounts and as a result Peter discovered my book and website. He offered me the incredible opportunity to write a steampunk short story for his publication that had to be completed by the end of June. But with the month of June comes final exams and the massive amounts of grading to end the academic year at the international high school I teach at. I foolishly considered turning him down but soon decided to take on the chance to get a work published via a new medium - an E'Zine.
Since I had never worked within the realm of steampunk I was nervous as to what I could come up with, but then I remembered a small literary work I had written while I was in the internet and reading lounge of The Astor House in Shanghai back in 2004. I decided to work with what I had written and add onto it to make it fit within the genre of steampunk. At the same time I was teaching my 8th grade students about the Spanish-American War, American imperialism, and the Boxer Rebellion, which all became elements I used for the story. While I researched and began working on what would become, The Astor House of Old Shanghai, I needed a character to compliment the protagonist in the story and the character of Sir Vernon George Waldegrave Kell fell perfectly into place. The story was to take place in Shanghai in 1899 on the eve of what was to become The Boxer Rebellion. The idea of writing an espionage story provided an interesting angle and when I looked up MI5 (the British intelligence service) I was very pleased to discover that Kell was one of its founders and that he had lived in China, spoke Chinese, and fought in The Boxer Rebellion. It was perfect synchronicity. Thus from there the story took a life of its own.
I was able to finish the story about a week before deadline and then it was off to Peter at SFF. Next came the ultimate surprise. Peter soon explained to me that my story had been picked up by famed production designer, matte painter, photographer, and artist, Wayne Haag! I was completely floored. Wayne had worked not only on the films The Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers) but on The Fifth Element. The Fifth Element was such a visually stunning and ground breaking film that to this day I still remember what I was doing the first time I saw the trailer for the film. Never had I seen anything like it and my friends and I were so excited that we counted down the days to it theatrical release. One image that I absolutely loved when I saw the film was the futuristic depiction of New York City, which you can see below.
NYC city-scape by Wayne Haag for The Fifth Element
This image of New York was so unique that I still remember it clearly fourteen years after first seeing it. What I found so interesting about this depiction of NYC was that the sea levels had fallen with the city stretching out further into what had once been covered by the ocean. This was at a time when the dangers of global warming was initially being raised and the possibility of sea levels rising. I found it "cool" that Wayne's depiction of NYC went against the grain as to what was to occur in the future and that instead of sea levels rising, they had fallen.
Kell portrait by Wayne Haag
Working with Wayne on what was to become a beautiful portrait of the character of Kell was a dream come true for a major science fiction film fan. Wayne is, in so many ways, my hero as to what he can accomplish through the medium of his art in creating futuristic and fantastic worlds, city-scapes, and landscapes. I had always wanted to gain the ability of becoming an artist in bringing to life what I could imagine, but gave it up once I took a very good look at the competition and pursued music and later writing instead. Wayne was very supportive and constantly encouraging me and has inspired me to continue work on The Astor House of Old Shanghai storyline to develop it into a full-length espionage, steampunk novel.
As a result, while I was in Chicago in August, I stocked up on as many books as I could find on the topics of espionage, The Boxer Rebellion, British imperialism, and Chinese history in the late 1800s to early 1900s. While I work on Dark Legacy: Book II - Travels I will also be working on this steampunk story.
I am incredibly grateful to Wayne Haag and Peter Saga for giving me such an unforgettable experience over the summer. I invite you to check out Wayne's website at http://www.ankaris.com and Peter Saga's amazing Science Fiction Freedom E'Zine at http://sffezine.blogspot.com
Busy signing books at The Book Stall in northern Chicago
The second book presentation and signing for my sci-fi/fantasy novel, Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity, was held at The Book Stall in Winnetka, Illinois (a northern Chicago suburb) on Saturday, July 30th. The event was organized by my mother and sister who worked diligently in promoting the presentation to as many friends and family as possible. As a result we had around sixty people in attendance and we sold every single copy The Book Stall had in stock.
It had been two years since I was back in the United States (the longest I have ever been away from the country of my birth), and back to my home town of Wilmette. It was a great pleasure to return with my family and present my literary work in Winnetka, which is the town where I went to high school. Although I was nervous before the event, once I got started I had a lot of fun discussing the themes, history, and stories behind the book. But the best part of the presentation was the excellent range of questions I had from the audience.
Two amazing friends filmed the presentation and book signing using high definition cameras, and as a result I have already uploaded the presentation as a four part video onto the YouTube channel for The Legacy Cycle at http://www.youtube.com/thelegacycycle. Check it out and share them with all your sci-fi/fantasy reading friends!
Presentation and book signing of Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity will take place at 3:00 pm on July 30th at The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, IL.
The Book Stall at Chestnut Court is a fantastic book shop located in Chicago's North Shore that is now celebrating 75 years of independent book selling! Come and join us on the 30th of July.
Just a quick note: as mentioned on my May 30th blog post a review of my sci-fi/fantasy novel, Dark Legacy: Book I - Trinity, by S.J. Wist is also available on her Fantasy Cookie blogspot at the link below:
Cover(June20,2012).jpg)
