Book Release Day – The Awakening Now Available!

Hello, there!

Today’s the day – I’m so excited to announce that The Awakening, Project Sirius book 1 is available for purchase!  Head on over to your favorite online bookstore and purchase your copy today!

Better still, if you’re an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscriber, you can read it today for absolutely no charge!

Click the link of your choice below to find your copy today!

• Amazon
• Barnes & Noble
• Powell’s
• Bookshop.org (formerly IndieBound)

As an independently-published author, I humbly ask for your help – once you’ve read The Awakening: please leave a rating and a review!  Your review doesn’t need to be long or complex, a simple “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it” or “It was okay” is more than enough!  Ratings and especially reviews helps increase a book’s visibility, something all independently-published authors struggle with, so every review counts and is a huge boon to us!

The first review has already hit Goodreads, and exactly as I hoped, the book is very much written for a YA audience in mind, so spread the word to all the other YA Sci-Fi fans out there, especially in the LGBTQ+ crowd, and we can bring this new series to its audience!

Thank you for reading, and, well…I have a secret to tell you.

Promise not to tell anyone?

….

Project Sirius book 2 has already been written ;)

So this is just the beginning :D

-Jon Wasik

The Awakening – Project Sirius Book 1 Cover Reveal and Release Date!

Hey there!

Today’s the day – I am proud and excited to announce the cover reveal, release date, and pre-order availability of The Awakening, Project Sirius book 1!!!!

Without further ado (cause I’m sure you’ve already looked down at it ;)) I give you the front cover!

I am absolute in love with this cover!!!!  The artwork is amazing (and I’ll be going into how it came to be in a later post), and it just came together so well!  (You can click on the image to see a bigger version.)

Better still, here’s a look at the full print-edition cover!

That gives you a nice look at the back-of-book blurb I spoke of a few days ago, too ;)  And if you’re interested in the artist, check out Shupeipa on Fiverr!

So now to answer the really big questions…when will this be released, and where can you pre-order?

September 9th, 2023!

Just two months away!

And The Awakening is currently available to pre-order for Kindle or for print at Amazon.com, links below!  (Other print vendors will be listing the title very soon!)

Amazon Print

Amazon Kindle

Why separate links?  And if you’re super early to the party, why does the print edition not have cover art?

This is unfortunately one of those downsides to self-publishing.  It’s very difficult to coordinate simultaneous listings, because the self-publishing providers are inconsistent and semi-unpredictable.  When I pushed the button to activate pre-orders for Kindle, Amazon said it could take up to 72 hours.  My experience shows that it could be anywhere from an hour to 72 (in this case, it took 5 hours).

Similarly for the print edition, IngramSpark has sent all the data for the listings out to the vendors, but they are all inconsistent in how fast and how completely they get everything up into the listing.

But worry not, everything will link up in the next couple of days, and no matter which edition you buy, you’ll be getting the same awesome YA Sci Fi story with a snarky, LGBTQ+ protagonist :)

So tell your friends, tell your chosen family, tell anyone who’ll listen – a new saga begins!

Thanks for reading,
-Jon Wasik

Project Sirius Book 1 – Title Reveal!

Hello, there!

Final edits are done, the publication package is built, and files are being submitted…Project Sirius Book 1 is officially Coming Soon!  And to kick things off, I am excited to officially reveal the title for book 1 (and give a sneak peak at the cover!)

Without further ado!!!!

The Awakening

I could leave you with just that.  If the only purpose of this blog was to market my work, that would probably be enough of a teaser.  But this blog is more than that.  This blog is about the journey.

How did I arrive at that title?  I knew from day one that I didn’t want to repeat the title method I’d done for Chronicles of the Sentinels, where a single word was used for each book in the trilogy.  I also know that Project Sirius is meant to be a much longer series (to be fair, so was Sentinels, but that’s another story).

But the moment I thought of “Awakening,” I knew it fit on multiple levels for what happens in the story and, in particular, what happens to the protagonist, Mika.  Since I didn’t want single-word titles, it seemed logical to add “The” to the beginning.  Later books could have multi-word titles, but I’ll only know what those titles are after I’ve finished writing them :)

‘The Oracle said, “Wake up, Mika Kai!”‘

Mika goes through an intellectual awakening, an emotional awakening, and the beginnings of a sexual awakening.  As an LGBTQ+ person, she is learning about her feelings, thoughts, and desires, while conflicting with the demands upon her by the oppressive society she lives in.  She’s torn between being true to herself and her desires, and the laws forbidding those emotions and desires.

And she begins to learn how to feel okay with her feelings, but this really is just the beginning of that journey.  At 15 chapters written in book 2, I can tell you that she has a long and difficult road ahead of her.

Coupled with that is the realization that the entire foundation her society was built upon is a lie, and that is part of her intellectual awakening, but it also directly affects her personal journey on a very profound level.

Finally, it is also another kind of awakening – in the beginning, she is a follower.  In the end, she is forced to step up and be more to those around her, as the fate of everyone she knows rests upon her shoulders.

The Awakening is through and through a YA story, and I’m so happy with how everything turned out and came together cohesively, all while telling a sci fi story that I’ve not found anywhere else!  I hope you’ll agree with me that this is something special!

But when will it be released?  Hang in there, because that news will be coming very soon ;)

Thanks for reading!
-Jon Wasik