Sweat70

Yeah, I know I should be writing. *sigh* But there’s SO much to do to prepare for not only RT, but also I-Con this weekend.

I’ve been working pretty much non-stop on materials for the presentation I’ll be doing (which I didn’t know I’d be doing until a few weeks ago, when my friend asked me to fill in for her). I’ve been devising new promo materials (a few of which I’ll post images of so you can see what I’ve been up to) and figuring out my schedule, which is growing increasingly complex.

During all this, I’ve been working through edits on my May releases. Luckily, the FireDrake edits have been relatively easy, which is nice. I’ve also been working on my first Tease novella, Perfect (see yesterday’s post for a look at the gorgeous new cover).

So I haven’t been doing a heck of a lot of writing. Just a little here and there. I’ve managed to write a bit every other day or so, which is okay, considering everything else that’s been going on, but I should follow Michael’s advice and start writing a bit more. Will do, Mike!

Sweat70

Time to get serious about writing some new stuff. I mean it. Really.

Who am I kidding?

I’ve been kind of lax about writing since right before Easter. Traveling a lot for family functions and getting all my promo gear ready for RT and all the other appearances I’m making this Spring is taking a lot of time away from my normal writing routine. However, I’m still writing — a little at least. I’m up to about 29,000 words since the start of the challenge. Not as far ahead as I’d like to be, but not quite as bad as it could be. Maybe next week will be better for writing. One can hope!

Sweat70

Checking in with just over 24,000 words total written since the beginning of the challenge. Going well so far, even with edits. A lot of the new writing has been expansion of my now-out-of-print first vampire story, One & Only. The story began life as a very short story of only about 3,500 words. It’s now over 22,000 words, which I think is a great improvement!

The story has a lot more meat on its bones now and if/when I find a new publisher for it, I think folks who’ve read the first version of it and this one will be happily surprised. At least I hope so!

I’ve got a lot of writing to do and little time to do it in before things get really busy with RT and all the other events I’m doing this year, so it’s back to work for me…

Sweat70

Checking in with just over 19,000 words total now since the beginning of the writing challenge. I’ve been working on various things, and slogging through edits, which slowed things considerably. But I’m hoping to get back on track for a few days this week while I wait for another round of edits that should hit sometime late this week or next. Wish me luck!

Here’s hoping everyone else doing the Sweat70 Writing Challenge is doing well!

Sweat70

Checking in with a total of about 16,000 words written during the first week of the challenge.

The writing is going well. As you might have noticed, I reinstated the word meter in the sidebar of this blog, so you can check there to see how I’m doing from day to day. I had a few really good days last week. Edits and traveling have slowed me considerably, but I hope to get back on track with the WIP shortly.

On the edit front, they’re pretty light, so they won’t take long to work through. I hope to get them off my desk momentarily, and get back to writing!

Life: Ups & Downs of The Writing Life

Just when I’m down in the dumps, something comes along. This writing life is full of amazing - and constant - ups and downs. When I get good news lately, I start anticipating some bad news in the very next email. But today is a day where the good news actually follwed the bad, so I just *might* be feeling a little “glass is half full” today.

Let me start by telling you that on Friday, I received some disappointing news - a rejection from a large publisher that I’d waited 6 months to hear. After that long a wait on a mere partial (first 3 chapters and synopsis), I guess I expected more than a photocopied form letter where they had to hand-write my name in on the blank after “Dear: __________” and then the title of my book on the blank typed into the body of the letter. I mean, how unprofessional does that look? Don’t they have a computer? Don’t they use Word? Heck, even WordPerfect or NOTEPAD for cripes sake! What does it take to type in a name and title? At least if they’d done that, I wouldn’t have known so blatantly that it was a form letter.

Then I read the letter, only to be insulted. Now, I’ve had to reject people in my business life. I’ve even had to fire people. My goal was always to let them down easy. Say no, but be nice about it. Be polite. I guess these folks don’t care about politeness. The form letter said my writing was “weak.” OUCH! And it didn’t just say it once. It went on to say it was “weaker than other submissions they’ve gotten.” Double ouchy! So I’m asking myself at this point, is this just one of many insulting form letters they have? And if so, how do they decide which insult to send to which author? Or do they just tell everyone they’re “weak” regardless of why they’re turning down your book? *sigh* I could drive myself crazy wondering about this, right? (As if I need any more stress!)

So then this morning I woke up eager (and nervous) to find out what had happened last night in Portland, OR, where the EPIC conference is being held this year. I went to the conference in VA last year and was tickled pink to win my first EPPIE Award for The Ice Dragon. Hara’s Legacy managed to Final this year and they were announcing the winners last night. I didn’t expect lightning to strike twice, but according to several eye-witness reports, Hara’s Legacy actually WON!!! YAY!!!

That kind of news totally negates and outshines the depressing form letter, wouldn’t you say? (Now, I just hope the reports are correct and Hara’s Legacy actually did win, or I’ll be very embarrassed for posting this before the official results went up on the EPIC site.) Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

Editing Again

I got the first round of edits yesterday for my May ebook release, FireDrake. I don’t know exactly why, but the dragon books are always so much simpler to edit than any of my others. I’m happy to report that these edits are very straight-forward and I should be able to get through them reasonably fast and back to writing my work-in-progress. I hate to drop the WIP right in the middle of a hot streak like this, but it has to be done. Everybody keep your fingers crossed that my muse can wait a few days for me to get back to her.

Sweat 70

I decided at the last minute to join in the “Seventy Days of Sweat” writing challenge again. I did it last time and made out really well, though I sort of petered out towards the end of the time period, though I’d already written more than enough to satisfy myself.

This round started on March 1 and runs until May 16. There are quite a few challenges in there with the big RT convention in April, along with a few other sci fi cons I’ll be attending and other more mundane things that I have to do before the end of May. It’ll be interesting to see how I do with the challenge this time, though I’m off to a really good start.

Since March 1 I’ve written over 7,000 words and am very happy with the rapid progress I’ve been making on some new work. I expect edits to show up this week, so I know the new writing will have to take a back seat until I get through edits on FireDrake, but it’s all good.

I’ll try to post about once a week on my progress with the writing challenge - probably on Wednesdays, if I remember - so stay tuned, if you’re interested. And if you want to join in, check out the challenge blog and sign up!

The Writing Life: Last Night’s Talk

Author Michele Lang and I did a great presentation last night at a local library about ebooks and epublishing. We had folks in the audience from many different genres of writing who were all interested in learning how epublishing works. The discussion was lively, and by comparing my path with Michele’s, I learned an awful lot. We fielded a lot of questions and tried to iron out the differences between self-publishing, vanity press, and the various “flavors” of epublishers, among other things. It’s amazing how, as ebooks find their way, there are so many businesses popping up and the way some of the more successful epublishers are now doing a hybrid kind of business where they’re branching out to print books, but in a new business model that’s changing the way books are getting to market.

All in all, it’s an exciting time to be an author. There are many avenues to getting published today and more opportunities than ever before. Of course, one of the dirty little secrets of being in the “new media” is the need for the author to do a lot of self-promotion. Even doing the talk last night was another way to get my name out there, though of course, that was a secondary motivation for participating in the event. Still, every appearance and discussion with a potetial reader is a step in the right direction. The crowd last night seemed interested in the ways I’ve discovered - by watching and learning from folks who know way more about marketing than I do - of publicizing my ebooks and print books.

I’ve had good teachers, though most of them never knew they were teaching by example. But still, I’ve watched what other people do and the things I liked and thought would work for me, I did as well. I’ve also put my geeky nature to work by building a website and establishing a web presence of sorts. I learned a lot of ways to manipulate graphics and design things like bookmarks, postcards and other giveaways. Of course, I never realized I’d need to learn this kind of thing when I was sitting at home writing my first book! That all came later.

As for the presenation, I think it went well. We had an interested and lively group and I absolutely love working with Michele. Her first NY-published book came out this week and I just know she’s going to have great success with it!

The Craft: Prologues & Davin’s Quest

I adding a new category to this blog for posts relating to the craft of writing. Not that I’m any mighty sage of the English language, but as I discover or wrestle with new things, I think others in my position - either aspiring or published authors - might be interested in some of what I’ve been through. I know that’s how I learn - by listening to the comments of other writers. Hopefully some of my observations will help someone else. Plus, I find this stuff interesting and I *hope* readers of this blog will too. So here goes… My first “The Craft” post - a little something about writing my upcoming ebook release (Davin’s Quest - February 19th) and what it taught me.

I struggled with the beginning of Davin’s Quest for several reasons. First, there was a prior book in the series - Hara’s Legacy - in which a lot of information about the futuristic world had been laid out, but what if the reader hadn’t read that book yet? I had to make the beginning of this book make sense to a new reader, while not insulting the old readers too much. Always a challenge - to remind folks of the “rules” of the world without huge chunks of exposition or the dreaded ”telling rather than showing.” *Yawn*

Another challenge was the fact that there are two heroes in this book. One is quite different from the other and until about halfway into the book, they don’t even know each other. So how do I introduce them both and keep the readers interested in BOTH of them throughout the first part of the book?

After much indecision, I decided to go with a prologue to set the stage for the story, since this book takes place over a few years of the characters’ lives. In the first iteration of the prologue, only Davin was featured - a hot section that introduced him and his position within Alvian society during an encounter with one of his underlings. Rick - Stud Number Two - didn’t show up until a few chapters into the manuscript. I knew that was a potential problem. How could the reader come to know and love Rick if he suddenly appeared in Chapter 3? It just wasn’t working.

So I wrote more pre-story for Rick and moved a key piece of interraction between him and his father to the prologue section, expanding the prologue in a way I’ve never done before. I decided to separate it using the main differences between Rick and Davin. Rick is human. Davin’s an alien. So by expanding the Prologe into something a bit longer than I’ve ever done before, I think I’ve managed to introduce both the alien way of life, illustrate the human existence in this post-apocalyptic world and the relationship between Rick and his fellow man and Davin and his alien race. That’s a lot to tackle in just a few short pages, but by doing it this way, I think I’ve made it interesting. At least I hope you’ll all agree.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the “Human” part of the Prologue as a Sneak Peek. You’ll get to meet Rick and then you can let me know if I’ve succeeded in laying out some of the history of the world and introducing Stud Number Two in an interesting way. Stay tuned…