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Posts Tagged ‘The Founders’ Legacy’

Catching up with things

Posted in A writer's life, am wrinting, author appearances, Author signing event, Creative passion, tagged , , , , , , on September 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »

I am in Sydney being a grandma to my youngest grandchild. I’ve gotten over the must clean and tidy and now after a few days I am tackling things. Writing has not been easy. I am hoping after this blog post and maybe a newsletter, I will be able to settle down.

I don’t usually suffer from writers’ block. I do suffer from distraction if there are other things going on, like tax returns, travel to book events and travel to look after the bairn. (People who know me are certain I have ADHD and maybe they are right but I don’t need pills so I’m not bothering to get an official diagnosis.)

For the first time I made a book cover in Canva. I have not made one anywhere from memory previously so yay me. I had help from Google and Youtube. While I passed the first hurdle on upload, I received an email to say the cover spilled over the lines and I need to resubmit after fixing it. I did that this morning and I hope I sorted it. I don’t want to ruin my career in cover making before it has started. Mind you I did not design the cover. The designer isn’t doing things for other people anymore so they said I could use it so I did.

What cover you may ask? I’m making a paperback of Vorn and the First Comers so the novella is more accessible. I had the ebook for free and everywhere except Amazon has it for free. It’s very hard to keep permafree on Amazon because they don’t like it.

Vorn and the First Comers is an origin story for the world of Argenterra, the Silverlands series. Ages ago I was going to write different stories that link to Argenterra, Oathbound and Ungiven Land. The characters, particularly Rae, tell of their ancestors and the First Comers. That enriches the story I think and fills up with world with history and magic.

I started off strong with Vorn but stumbled with Goslien of the Valley and to a certain extent, Faruni’s Triplets. It was meant to be a collection Tales of Argenterra by Kushlan Silvertongue. I just couldn’t find a way in to Goslien’s story for like more than ten years. The other day while laying in a half sleep the story came to me. Clear picture of Panal of Puri and Goslien. Wow. I have written up notes but am yet to write this one up. But I feel a bit closer. I just can’t write on demand like that. Or to market either. I have to feel it, see it in my mind. Temperamental me!!!

News! The Founders’ Legacy is still 0.99cents for the ebook but that finished on September 30 so if you haven’t got a copy, then grab one now. I’m not making a profit on it at the moment. There is no series, but I am interested in getting people to read it and to tell me about what they think.

So far I have had a few great read comments…or that made me think…or I really liked it.

That reminds me, I have a review quote from Dr Craig Cormick, who launched the book.

Brave, challenging and just a great read! The Founders’ Legacy is going to mess with your head–in the most positive way. Dr Craig Cormick OAM, Children’s Book Council of Australia (ACT) Ambassador and Marion Writers Centre Patron.

Get your copy of The Founders’ Legacy! Here is the universal link.

Next up, I’ll be in Ourimbah in the Central Coast on Sunday at a free book event. It’s such a cute event and it has indie writers across children’s, non-fiction, romance, fantasy, sf and horror. Well worth the trouble! Here is the website.

The next event for me is Once upon a fairytale at The Cube in Campbelltown. I’m looking forward to dressing up with a fairy persuasion.

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Back home and launching books

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »

It was always going to be a tight squeeze, getting home to Canberra and also doing the leg work for my physical book launch for The Founders’ Legacy. So home to Canberra Saturday evening and Sunday to start cleaning and such and then Monday evening the launch. The only hiccup was the cupcakes but they ended up being delivered and everything went off smoothly.

The venue upstairs at Smiths Alternative was so cute. Very shabby chic!

Matthew and I got there in time to set up and relax a bit. I’d been tense all day, worried about the launch and reading aloud. I need not have worried because everyone is a friend.

Dr Craig Cormick did the launch speech and did a bang up job. He talked about the book, tackling gender and genderless pronouns and how reading does your head in, but does it in in a good way. I did read a bit from the beginning. There was a bar and that made most people really happy as we had a bar tender. The cup cakes went down a treat too.

My daughter took that shot and I think it is really good. Many thanks to Canberra Cupcakes. My first time with a book cover image topper thing.

Here is a picture of me and Craig waving books around.

You will note I’m wearing a toy stethoscope for me being a Dr Donna Hanson. Craig always comes up with clever gags. Thank you Craig.

Photos by Cat Sparks and Erana McCoy.

Matthew manned the book table and I manned the signing table. It was a really fun evening as many of my friends know each other so they caught up.

I am very grateful for the venue and every one who came along. I really did have a fun evening. Matthew and I slunk off afterwards to eat dumplings at CBD in Civic.

If you missed the launch and want a copy of the book, do let me know. I take paypal and can deliver to Canberra.

Otherwise, you can order directly from the printer. They print in Australia, the UK and the USA.

The Founders’ Legacy

Hanson, Donna Maree

Buy Now

Oh in other news, there is currently a special on the ebook. The Founders’ Legacy is $0.99 for September. Link here.

There is more book news in the next post.

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Ooh this is exciting!

Posted in Indie Publishing, Print books Direct, Print books direct, tagged , , , , , , on August 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Ingram Sparks has finally released its sell direct store for print books. This means you technically buy direct from via my printer. That means if the Zon or other bookstores are charging outrageous prices then you can use my link. There will be postage of course!

So my first trial will be my new release, The Founders’ Legacy. The paperback is $30 AU, 30 GDP and $19.99 US. Purchase link here.

Let me know how you go! I want to try it myself for a UK purchase.

If this works, then maybe I will need to work on special editions.

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Still in Singapore

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 28, 2026| Leave a Comment »

It’s lovely. The weather is warm, of course, but less humid than on my visit last year. Or so my body thinks.

I have been to the pool every morning so far. Yay me. It is so convenient as the pool is downstairs. At home I have to drive for 20 minutes so it’s an event, rather than every day.

We caught some of the birthday fireworks. It’s not Singapore’s birthday yet but these are the lead up. We are right next to the stadium so the fireworks sounded like bombs going off. Very scary. We caught the last one.

Last hoorah of Singapore’s fireworks on the weekend.

I have started working on the revision to Gentleman Magician. I need to get a move on with that. However, it shouldn’t be too long if I knuckle down.

I’ve also been editing audio files for The Founders’ Legacy. And well that takes a lot of time and some of the errors (pickups) I can’t do here. I tried but the sound quality is different and I hate the sound of my voice so much anyway and the way I stumble over words that I feel that I might start over again, again, again. At least I got the whole book down this time, instead of redoing chapter one over and over again. Practice makes perfect.

But again, I winkled some more typos out so I have updated the files, yet again. I’m going to stop typo hunting now so I can move on. I found the issue was really in Vellum, the program I use to format the books. Somehow I had an option on to automatically correct spelling errors. I didn’t even know that option existed. My novel has a whole lot of made up pronouns, strange names and Vellum changed them and created chaos. All that careful proofreading torn up. However, I believe it is sorted now. But if someone mentions typos I may go up in flames.

For Russell Kirkpatrick’s memorial, which I’ll miss in person, is on Friday. Kylie kindly asked me to talk about Russell’s writing and links to the writing community. I have sent that video off but damn that was hard. In the end I just had to run with it, be as natural as I could, even though I hated listening and looking at me and I didn’t want to become emotional.

In other news, The Founders’ Legacy is for free on Kobo for a little bit. Hopefully this universal link will work. Barnes and Noble is inaccessible from Singapore for some reason. Link for The Founders’ Legacy. Here.

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