Author’s Blog

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing M. D. Gillmore July-20-2026

250 Books Signed and Numbered

I've got 250 Books signed and numbered for Advanced Readers Copy Collectibles. If you would like to win a free copy, head on over to GoodReads.com and get yourself a free account.

Matthew Delbert Gillmore lying beside a shipment of new books from BookBaby printer.

M.D. Gillmore and 250 Copies of His Debut Self-Published Novella

Debut Book Covers

The book covers turned out pretty good for a first time. More dark reddish than I designed for but that's how print goes sometimes. You learn to just roll with the finished product.

Stacks of The Stars Are Full of Souls Books for Signing and Numbering by M. D. Gillmore July-20-2026

Signing 250 Copies of The Stars Are Full of Souls with Sakura Color Pens

I asked Gemini to recommend some archival pens for signing the books so that the ink would not run or fade over time. Out of the three it recommended I found these Sakura Color pens from Japan. They were really great pens for signing and I'll probably do some line art with them too.

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing M. D. Gillmore July-20-2026

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing M. D. Gillmore July-20-2026

Advanced Reader Copy Limited Edition Collectible

I printed two-hundred-and-fifty for signatures and numbering with a strategy of giving away 100 for giveaways like GoodReads.com, 50 for promoting and marketing to influential people, and sell off the smaller numbered remaining 100 for twenty-plus-shipping to make back the core $2000 I paid to print these. Not including the editor. And the software subscriptions to make the cover. Meh- we'll see how it goes.

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing Stacks of 70 July-20-2026

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing Stacks of 70 July-20-2026

Purchase Book Directly From Me

I haven't got a way to buy the signed ones online yet. If you want to get one directly from me before they're up for sale just message me on Facebook or mdgillmore at gmail dot com address. It's $20 plus Media Mail with envelope at $5 and 8.5% tax if you're in Texas. I am only mailing to the contiguous 48 states of the USA at this time.

Get The eBook Free

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book 1 eBook by M.D. Gillmore

Get Your Free Advanced Reader's Copy eBook!

Be among the first to read The Stars Are Full of Souls Book 1 with this FREE Advanced Readers Copy eBook.

For iPhone, iPad, & Mac (Apple Books): Tap the Download ePub link, and when the file finishes downloading, tap it and select "Open in Books" (or use the share sheet to send it straight to Apple Books).

For Android Devices: Tap the Download ePub link. When prompted, choose to open or upload it directly into your preferred reader app, such as Google Play Books or Moon+ Reader.

For Amazon Kindle Users: Modern Kindles and the Kindle app fully accept .epub files. Use the Download ePub link to download the file and then use Send to Kindle at amazon.com/sendtokindle to drag and drop the downloaded .epub file directly to you Kindle library and devices.

PDF format for Computers and Tablets

For Computers and Tablets: that do not have e-Readers you can click to Download the PDF and "Save to Documents" or any folder of your choosing and open with your preferred PDF Reader.

About The Stars Are Full of Souls

The Stars Are Full of Souls Book Signing and Numbering by M. D. Gillmore July-20-2026

A Long Journey

I've been writing The Stars Are Full of Souls for a ridiculously long time now. And not just because I'm a great procrastinator that hides my creations in the bottom of a closet. But also because I had to get through some things in life to bring these collections of thoughts together in a small collection of stories worth reading.

For me, writing fiction is like making a big vegetable soup. And the fresh vegetables - that's the stuff that's real. The vegetables right out of the garden? That's the stuff that really happened. The vegetables are all truth. And then I wash them off and I clean them and chop them up. I cook them in particular order; that's the plot. I add seasoning and spices - these are the embellishments. And I pour them all into a stock prepared by boiling the discarded bits and scrapes of them. Now it's becoming something else. Now it has more than it was when it was just simple bits and chunks of truth. Now I let it cook and simmer it up and bring it to a satisfying conclusion. Now it's unrecognizable in taste and smell from the garden fresh reality. Now it's a work of fiction.

The Stars Are Full of Souls is very much a project hewn closely to many truths. It contains bits of me from all the way back to when I was a kid, to all the way up to therapy as an adult understanding those kid parts for the first time. Ideas I've had that I've no other way to present. Stories I would never get to tell unless threaded through some sort of construct - some sort of soft presence suggesting that Heaven and Hell dwell within the stars of the cosmos. That things in life that we can't explain transcend religions and generations and notions of certainty.

And I wanted to create a platform. A string of consciousness where I could flit in and out and write whatever story I wanted to write as long as I connected these small tenuous dots of death, heaven and hell, and some of my own constructs between religion and mythology.

Plus, for me - I don't know about you - but it's a real tear-jerker set. Spoiler alert, but the stories are deliberately built to make you cry. And it was hard enough just facing up to getting through writing them, much less, every next revision, and proofread and edit, and reexamining, and rewriting, and pushing that broken heart up a hill just to make the work better. Hopefully.

So it took fifteen years to write and produce, and it takes about an hour-and-a-half to read. I hope you find something in there that's worth it.