The Writing Life

Another Book Finished!

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Tonight I wrapped up my thirteenth novel. A Glass Half-Empty, the long awaited sequel to A Glass Half-EmptySpilled Milk, is now done and being prepared for publication by Createspace. I’ll prepare a Kindle version probably tomorrow, and then get the Smashwords and Google Play versions done shortly thereafter. Of course, those last two will have to wait until the book has run its Kindle Select term.

In the meantime, I reworked the cover a bit. The gun, I think, conveys a little better what the story might be about. I’ll let you guys know once the book is available.

Whew! Now I’ve just got four more to wrap up before the end of the year. Ha!

A Rant

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I don’t typically write reviews (not exactly the purpose of this blog, y’know?), but I want to make an exception. Sort of. Okay, not really a review. More of a rant, actually.

The other day I just finished reading Raymond Feist’s Magician’s End, the final volume of his Riftwar Cycle. This series has spanned twenty-nine books and taken over thirty years to write. I remember reading the first novel, Magician, while in college and introducing the series to my best friend, Greg (or was it the other way ’round?). Now, reading the end of the series, I find myself in a bit of a reflective mood.

To start off with, let me just assert that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Cycle, though I confess I haven’t read all the books, and the final volume is no exception. Feist delivers. The end is satisfying but sad, because it is, after all, an end.

I guess what’s niggling at me is the fact that it took almost three decades for this story to unfold. This is essentially Feist’s entire writing career. He’s neither done nor dead, of course, even though he’s pushing seventy (who says retirement is a good thing, anyway?).

But to spend thirty years crafting thirty novels (there’s one stand alone amidst the Riftwar Cycle, and ironically, it’s my favorite Feist: Faerie Tale) just seems a bit… I don’t know…

weak?

No disparagement meant to Mr. Feist. He’s a fine writer. A bestselling author, in fact, and one of my favorites. But what it draws my mind to is the fact that he’s still following the traditional path of publishing, which is cranking out one book a year. And why not? It’s worked well for him.

Why not? I’ll tell you why not: because one book a year doesn’t cut it anymore. Not in today’s rapid fire culture. Not when there are too many voices clamoring for the attention of highly distracted readers. And not for Indie publishers like me, who’ve largely eschewed the traditional route and chosen to “go it alone.” It certainly cannot cut it in my case: not when I’ve got so many stories to tell. I don’t know how any author could be content to simply crank out one book a year. Is it really a quality thing? Is it that some people can only hold so many stories in their heads at a given time? I don’t really trust conclusions that paint me in some kind of exceptional light, because I’ve never seen sufficient evidence that I’m all that exceptional.

I’m grateful to Feist for the Cycle, and for what I’ve learned from his stories and technique, but I think it would have been wonderful to have more of him to read over the last thirty years than a shelf-full of novels.

Then again, I’ve only really been at this for nine years now, and it’s only recently that I’ve dramatically increased my output. I have eleven novels published (or will, as soon as The Elixir of Life gets released), so I’m doing better than a book a year, but just barely. Ask me in another twenty years – I hope to have a hundred done by then.

And no, I won’t be retiring, either.

An Effective Writing Day

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Now this has been a satisfying day. I worked on three different projects today, starting off with 458 words on The Blood-Eater Coven, Book 2 of The Dragon’s Eye Cycle. That doesn’t seem like much, but the story is progressing nicely. I’m nearly fifty percent done.

Next, I spent a considerable bit of time working on Anarchy, Book 2 of the New World Order series. I cranked out  2358 words on this one, finishing chapter five and at least half of chapter six. I’m sure to get comments from my youngest, Rachel, who is my BETA reader for the book when I see her in the morning.

And after enjoying an episode of Sleepy Hollow, I concluded the evening with another 550 words on Descent, wrapping up chapter thirty-one and starting chapter thirty-two.

All told, I’ve written 3,366 words today. Not too shabby. I’m still way off pace for the month, but it felt good to get back into the swing of things and churn out some content.

In the meantime, books are continuing to sell from the promotions I’ve been doing. This next week there will be three running. One on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and a final on Friday. I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

New books before the end of the year?

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So I’ve got about twenty-six days left before the end of the year, and I’m sitting on about 53K words on A Glass Half-Empty and a little more than 47K words on Descent. If I work daily to get to 2K words a day, that’s about 52K words to divvy up between the two of them. Given the difficulty in writing EVERY STINKING DAY INCLUDING CHRISTMAS, it’s unlikely I’ll get both of them finished. That being said, it’s more than likely that I’ll get at least one of them done. Probably A Glass Half-Empty, all things being equal.

That is, of course, if I can keep my hands of writing Anarchy. My youngest daughter, of course, is pushing for it. I’ve composed a chapter and a half on it so far, about 5K words, give or take. Naturally, it’s more fun to start a story than it is to stick with it long enough to finish one. That’s how I wind up with so many works in progress.

At any rate, I’ve put together a pair of new covers (visible on the front page, of course) for both A Glass Half-Empty and Anarchy. Love to get your thoughts on them!

And yes, I will be starting book five of Jefferson’s Road before too long. I know many of you are anxious to find out what happens to Peter (so am I, actually!).

Here are the covers:

A Glass Half-Empty   Anarchy Cover

Cheers!

Ow.

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So I was spending the afternoon painting the front of the house, trying to get the last bit in before the weather turns to cold for it (below 50°), and I’ve been using my children’s old play set as a scaffolding. Probably not the brightest idea I’ve ever had, but certainly not the dumbest.

I know this for a fact.

The dumbest idea, of late, is stepping out on the side beam of the “scaffolding” to reach that last little bit of siding – a space about two feet long by one foot tall. The beam was held together by a pair of drywall screws through the thinnest part of the wood, not the big old lag bolts that tied the rest of this structure together.

Did you catch the past tense there? Oh yeah. Those screws aren’t doing a bit of good now. Mercifully, the pine bush broke most of my fall, so I didn’t completely bash my skull in on one of the concrete drainpipe receptacles we’ve got at every the corner of the house. No, not completely. Just a little bit. Torqued my shoulder pretty good, too. And tore some skin off my, ankle, and back.

What fun.

So here I am, cleaned up and polysporined half to death, sick and tired of the ice packs on the back of my noggin, and assuring the family that I don’t need to go to the hospital, ’cause there just ain’t no cure for stupid. At any rate, I hope to get some writing done. But if it stops making sense, it might be a signal that I should go to urgent care. Not my idea of a good way to spend the evening.

At any rate, that’s my day so far.

Recovering From Some Changes…

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So after a major life change in my family, I’m back to writing again. Two pretty large events totally threw me off pace this past September. Even mentioning them in the context of writing feels a little out of place, and I don’t want you to think that I don’t regard these events as highly significant. The first was the passing of my mother-in-law. It was expected and yet unexpected. She’d been suffering from a debilitating disease, and yet when the time came, it took us all by surprise.

Naturally, I didn’t do any real writing during this time. Just a couple hundred words or so when things settled in the evenings, and there wasn’t anything better to do.

The second event was a new job, which I am just now starting to settle into. I’ve been promoted to an assistant manager of a new house. Actually, it’s a new house with new guys and new staff: Yikes! My company rarely does this, but this was a special opportunity. Nevertheless, it’s been marvelously chaotic as we learn to adapt to new responsibilities and new routines. Finally, this week, my work schedule seems to have settled down to a dull roar, and we’ve grown more comfortable with the new guys to not be quite so stressed out as before.

Still, this morning met the third day when I have successfully reached my 2k word goal. I’ve had to let go of two projects–Nicholas and the next Jonathan Munro Adventure, both of which were falling behind as it is. Nicholas, being a Christmas story, is better released next October. And since the second Jon Munro book, The Elixir of Life, hasn’t come out yet (November!), it’s okay to hold on to it until we reach the new year. This does put me back a bit on those projects, however.

On a positive note, however, this does mean I should be able to finish the remaining four books in plenty of time, even going over my typical word count if need be. Jefferson’s Road: God and Country, Descent, A Glass Half-Empty, and The Blood-Eater Coven are all past 40k words and still climbing. I have hope that, maintaining the 2k word goal, I’ll have these books done, perhaps in time for Christmas.

200,000

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Okay, so this post is a few days overdue. Sue me. On September 5, 2013, I broke the 200,000 mark for the first time in a single year. I’d love to say that was 200,000 books sold, but it ain’t. It’s my word count since February 15th. The actual count (as of this moment) is 204,644, with another 1200 words to go to make this evening’s quota.

Of those 200K words, more than half were written since July, when I knuckled down and started trying to crank out 2k words per day. My actual average is around 1500, but better to aim for the moon than for the streetlight. At this pace, I should easily be able to write and finish between six and seven novels per year. Naturally, I’m hoping for more.
My six WIP’s are all closing in on 40K words (half done). The average is 37,400. I don’t think I’ll actually finish all six this year, but there’s a real good chance of knocking four of them out of the park.

The only one that sorta befuddles me on that point is Nicholas. Since this is a Christmas story, I’d sorta like to have it done by November at the latest, but it doesn’t look like I’m going to make it. I’ll finish it regardless, but it’ll just have to wait until next Fall before I release it. Probably right around the time you first begin to see Christmas sales going up.

In the meantime, I’ve worked out a schedule for next year’s books. I’m going to do the fifth Jefferson’s Road book, another Janelle Becker novel, and the second book in the New World Order series. I’m also going to work on a set of three novels that comprise a new series called “The Issachar Initiative.” These will be spy-thrillers about an off-book black ops organization responding to problems around the world. I’ll tell you more about it once I begin work on the project. I hope to cannabalize one of my half-written books for this purpose, and retask an outlined book for the same, and then write a third one as I’m working up the first two. I’ve never tried to write three books in the same series at the same time before, so it should be interesting. Regardless, I expect to release them rather close together.

At any rate, you can look for Jefferson’s Road: God And Country, Descent, A Glass Half-Empty, and The Blood-Eater Coven (Book 2 of The Dragon’s Eye Cycle) sometime early next year. I’ll also be wrapping up a third Jonathan Munro Adventure, as well as Nicholas for the 2014 schedule. And, of course, the second Jonathan Munro book comes out from Ellechor this November.

Okay. Enough updating. Back to work!

Of Cliffhangers, Free Books, and Cheap B*stards…

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I posted this earlier on AuthorCulture, and thought it worth reposting here:

This isn’t at all the post I imagined I’d be writing, but it’s weighed on my mind for the past two days so heavily I haven’t thought of much else in my spare time.

Recently, I made the first book in my Jefferson’s Road series permanently free. I am told by many on kboards.com and other kindle-centered sites that this is a particularly effective marketing strategy employed by many authors to entice readers into trying a series. And indeed, nothing sells quite like free. Since going free, my book has been downloaded almost six hundred times (not just Amazon), and I’ve seen an uptick in sales of the other books in the series. And everything was going along swimmingly, until I received the following review:

I get it. Authors write books to sell and make money from their sale. This author can not be blamed for his effort, his writing abilities, or his product. I very much enjoyed the partial book I just finished but his total overt intention was for the readers to buy the next partial book, the next partial book and the next and so on. Most writers do this but Kindle editions are becoming less than desired due to this process. This partial book would have received 4-5 stars except for the presentation of the alleged ending. Sadly, the author’s interest was more in selling his next book than providing enjoyment. I will not fall for it by buying the entire story.

He left me 1 star.

1 star?!! On a book he so clearly believes deserves a 4 or 5?

What really incensed me is this term “partial book,” as if somehow, I did not bring Jefferson’s Road: The Spirit of Resistance (shameless marketing plug and link inserted) to a full, complete, and satisfying ending.

Which is simply not true. Now, this is what I wrote in response:

Partial book? Seriously? You get a book for free, and then complain because why, the rest of the story isn’t free as well? I tell you what: go to my website and contact me directly through the contact form. I will GIVE you the next two book in the series. But don’t call these partials. It’d be like calling the first season of a TV show incomplete because they wanted to make a second season. Book one can and does stand on its own, but the story can and does continue on from there.

The thing is, the Jefferson’s Road books are cliffhangers. Each one is designed to end on a massive plot hook that carries you into the next installment. That’s the point of the cliffhanger. It is a completely legitimate and rather ancient art form, dating at least as far back as Scheherazade in 1001 Arabian Nights. Now, in Scheherazade’s case, she wasn’t employing a marketing strategy or trying to sell anything. She was simply trying to stay alive one more night. Her goal was to live one more day, and over time, to make the all-powerful sultan fall in love with her.

Frankly, as a writer, I’m doing the same thing. I’m trying to survive one more day in the cutthroat world of fiction, and hoping to make the all-powerful reader fall in love with me. I don’t want the reader’s money (per se: because let’s be honest, I am trying to earn some dough) as much as I want the reader’s heart.

My goal is simply to make the reader say, “I read all six books practically in one sitting, and I simply could not put them down!” as has happened a few times already.

I believe this reviewer would not have given me 1 star if I made the rest of the series free as well. The books each run well over 300 pages, and they take some time to write. That’s why I haven’t released it as one single, massively long narrative (who am I? George R.R. Martin?). If I had, I seriously doubt I’d have as many readers as I do. Think it has something to do with short attention spans, or people not wanting to give that much time commitment to a new, unheard of author.

Which means, to me at least, this reviewer’s chief complaint is that I dared ask him for a couple of bucks, as if selling books is somehow distasteful. Actually, that’s not right, either. I didn’t ask him for anything. I made a book available for free, which he chose to pick up of his own free will. And he liked it, too. But now he wants the rest free as well? Maybe some day, when I don’t need book sales of a single series to help me make my grocery bill, I can offer the entire thing for free and just let the readers enjoy. But for now, I just want to scream,

“Hey buddy! Amazon is a BOOK STORE, not a LIBRARY!”

Moving Forward

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I don’t know if it’s because of the weekend, or if it’s due to the initial climb plateauing and starting to fall, but the book appears to have levelled off in the rankings, with a slight decline down to #1655 in overall rankings, #6 in Political and #55 in Action & Adventure.  Nevertheless, I’m not concerned. Like I said, I’m looking for real readers here, not just people stuffing their kindles with freebies. I’m not complaining either way. Frankly, it’s nice to know people give my book the time of day, and I appreciate all those who’ve downloaded a copy.

And people are still dowloading it. Some others may be climbing faster, but that’s okay.

In the meantime, I’m still working on all six WIPs, and they have each crossed the 30K threshold as of this afternoon. Here’s the latest breakdown of my word counts:

Descent 33,902
God and Country 31,261
The Blood-Eater Coven 30,700
A Glass Half-Empty 30,252
Nicholas 30,165
The Music of The Spheres 30,063
 

Total All Six Books:

  

186,343

So, as you can see, I’m making serious progress. And for those who’ve grabbed the first three Jefferson’s Road books already, have no fear: the fourth will be out soon (likely end of the year, or early 2014).

And… I’m back!

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The logjam of laziness that has captivated my writing ambitions for the past week or so has finally broken (with a little help from my trusty sledge-hammer: Self-Discipline and a heavy application of Butt-Glue (That’s the short name. The long name is Butt-In-Chair-Glue).). Yesterday I plugged away at Descent, my alien-abduction type novel, and cranked out 4,173 words. Today I hope to do something similar with Jefferson’s Road: God and Country. Of course, even assuming I match yesterday’s effort, that will still put me significantly behind toward reaching my goal of finishing all six novels by the end of the year. And here I was doing so well!

Sigh. Nine days of writing very little works out to a loss of 18,000 words. I’d only banked 5,643 extra words with all my previous efforts to get ahead. Less than three days. True, I did manage to write 1,847 words during that time (almost a full day’s work), but that still puts me behind by 10,510 words. Yesterday, I reduced that to 8,337. Maybe I can knock it down below 6,000 today.

God willing, I’ll pull something off before my wife returns later this afternoon and wants to go out on a date. Family first, right? For now, I’ve got to grab a shower and get cranking.

Later!