As you may have heard I published my first novel, The Distomos, back in February 2015. Over the past few years, I’ve talked about it, sold some copies of it, and dissected it a little bit.
It’s a great feeling to be able to tell people you’re an author. And it’s even greater when someone else introduces you as one.
Mankind has taken to the stars; maintaining their empires through the belief in God. Peace and prosperity are kept through Church-appointed Templars: the police of the galaxy. But when the Distomos, a secret weapon from the Church falls into the hands of the enemy, two ex-Templars, Kieran Rhet and Normandie Jade, are hired to get it back.
With only a matter of time before interstellar war begins and the Distomos is used, friendships, courage, and faith will be tested when all seems lost.
So to celebrate this momentous occasion for myself – and just in time for Christmas – The Distomos will be on sale for a limited time!
Ebook Copies $9.99 70% off
Now $2.99
Physical Copies $24.50 20% off
Now $19.60
I’m told the sale prices will take a short amount of time before they appear on these other fine retailers, however you can get the books and Ebooks from me directly, or from Lulu.com for the sale prices right away.
Mankind has taken to the stars; maintaining their empires through the belief in God. Peace and prosperity are kept through Church-appointed Templars: the police of the galaxy. But when the Distomos, a secret weapon from the Church falls into the hands of the enemy, two ex-Templars, Kieran Rhet and Normandie Jade, are hired to get it back.
With only a matter of time before interstellar war begins and the Distomos is used, friendships, courage, and faith will be tested when all seems lost.
Can you believe it has only been eight months since The Distomos was released? It still seems kind of baffling to me that my book is out there in ISBN-land possibly grazing with other books in the library fields.
After I released The Distomos, real-life work picked up and kept me away from really focusing any attention to promoting the book any further. But that’s okay! I knew that was going to happen. While its sales did exceed my expectations, I definitely could have done better in promoting it had it been something to realistically pay my bills. Alas, at least my foot is in the door for bigger and better things!
Which brings me to: I’m writing another book!
While this may not come as a shock to all of you, it took me a long time to think of what to write next. While I have MANY stories on the agenda, I figured I wanted to get the story of The Distomos done and out of the way. This is why my next book will be a direct sequel (with a bit of prequel) to The Distomos! This also brings me to tell you, it will be the final book of the series, effectively making it a duology. Screw that trilogy hype.
I’ve always planned on The Distomos being two books, but I was unsure if I wanted to do the sequel right away. I feel that I need to finish off these characters and finish the story to really be “at peace” and effectively move on from my creation.
While some of you may be irked that I’m following the path of familiar ground for the next book, let me tell you: I’ve already plotted the sequel and it’s going to be a much bigger, if not a more in-depth book than the first one. Questions will get answered, backstories will get filled in, and most importantly: the excitement will be there.
Quite frankly, there will be nothing to stop me.
What I plan on doing a bit differently though, is NOT to self-publish. Why not?
Let’s save that answer for another blog.
And just in case you’re interested, I still have signed books I’m selling! Just message me if you’re interested, or check out all of these fine links below!
Going into the fourth week of availability, my book, The Distomos, is now available on Barnes & Noble’s Nook as a “Nook Book!” (It’s still an eBook, but just with a fun name to say).
I’ve been looking forward for it to becoming available there! Better late than never!
Mankind has taken to the stars; maintaining their empires through the belief in God. Peace and prosperity are kept through Church-appointed Templars: the police of the galaxy. But when the Distomos, a secret weapon from the Church falls into the hands of the enemy, two ex-Templars, Kieran Rhet and Normandie Jade, are hired to get it back.
With only a matter of time before interstellar war begins and the Distomos is used, friendships, courage, and faith will be tested when all seems lost.
A love for sci-fi leads to Brock grad’s self-published novel
By Celia Carr
After being falsely accused of plagiarism in high school for a strikingly creative and well-written short story, Derek Smith realized that perhaps he had a knack for writing after all. Now, after a lot of dedication, the Brock University graduate has published his own full-length novel, The Distomos.
The Distomos is a sci-fi novel set in the distant future in a world where mankind has taken to the stars and the church reigns as the ultimate form of government. Peace and prosperity are kept through Templars, a kind of policemen appointed by the church. Trouble arises when the Distomos, the secret weapon and power source of the church falls into the hands of the enemy. With very little time before interstellar war begins, the church hires two ex-templars, Kieren Rhet and Normandie Jade, to retrieve it. The Distomos is a story of friendship, courage and faith being tested when all seems hopeless.
The word “Distomos” itself is Hebrew for double-edged sword but the story incorporates a number of different religions which complete the all-encompassing governing church in Smith’s novel.
“It was unintentionally more of a religious story, but there’s more than one religion involved and I sort of play on both sides of the debate,” said Smith. “A lot of it was almost subconscious just because I’ve been so exposed to it. I grew up in St. Catharines and apparently Niagara has the highest amount of churches in an area than anywhere else in Canada. Even just going down Glenridge Avenue, there’s at least five or six churches. Religion is very prevalent around here so it sort of just made its way into my writing.”
Smith knew from a young age that he wanted to be a writer, stating he was always writing Star Wars fan-fiction before he even knew what fan-fiction was. This creative spark eventually lead him to pursue an English degree at Brock in hopes that it would help him with his potential future career in writing. He graduated from Brock in 2009 with a degree in English and professional writing.
“I always had ideas but I never knew what to do with them,” said Smith. “It was in my third year of university that I took a creative writing journalism course, and I started writing in that class. It was mostly just a fictional skeleton of a story but just being in that class sparked a lot of creativity.”
After a lengthy process of writing, copious amounts of tea and learning the do’s and don’ts of self-publishing, The Distomos was officially published on Feb. 21.
Smith works full-time from March until August, so the majority of his writing took place from September until December. Sometimes he would be writing for as many as 16 hours per day, taking short breaks in between. He mentioned that he purposely bought a laptop that couldn’t handle an internet browser to avoid distractions while working on his novel.
“It was honestly just a matter of sitting down and actually writing it,” said Smith. “So that’s what I did. I just sat down and wrote.”
Smith described how many rules there are for self-publishing including things as simple as finding fonts to use on the cover that aren’t copyrighted. Aside from already writing an entire novel, sorting out the rules and legalities was a project of its own, but Smith said he enjoyed the otherwise tedious work. The Distomos also became a very “Brock” oriented project as it was peer-edited by other Brock English graduates. The front cover was illustrated by another Brock graduate, Matthew Therrien, who is now a professional illustrator based-out of Toronto.
Smith is now in the process of getting his novel into bookstores and currently runs a blog on how to self-publish.
To learn more about Derek and The Distomos, visit Smith’s blog at Uncannyderek.com. Paperback copies of The Distomos are currently available to order through Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com and Lulu.com. E-book versions are available in the iTunes store and on Lulu.com.
When you’re out and about, you can pick up a copy of the paper today!
Mankind has taken to the stars; maintaining their empires through the belief in God. Peace and prosperity are kept through Church-appointed Templars: the police of the galaxy. But when the Distomos, a secret weapon from the Church falls into the hands of the enemy, two ex-Templars, Kieran Rhet and Normandie Jade, are hired to get it back.
With only a matter of time before interstellar war begins and the Distomos is used, friendships, courage, and faith will be tested when all seems lost.
A surprise to me, The Distomos is still in the top-selling list on Lulu.com!
Once again, I cannot thank you all enough for making this such a successful venture. As my first self-published novel, it’s quite humbling to know that there are people interested in helping out “the little guy” and making dreams come true.
I certainly have learned a lot from making this happen. Not only has it been a great experience, but also a ton of fun to do! Writing is something I love to do. With the positive experience I’ve had with making this novel, you can guarantee there will be more stories coming your way!
Mankind has taken to the stars; maintaining their empires through the belief in God. Peace and prosperity are kept through Church-appointed Templars: the police of the galaxy. But when the Distomos, a secret weapon from the Church falls into the hands of the enemy, two ex-Templars, Kieran Rhet and Normandie Jade, are hired to get it back.
With only a matter of time before interstellar war begins and the Distomos is used, friendships, courage, and faith will be tested when all seems lost.
