Janelle Becker Books

NaNoWriMo Days 9-12

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Day 9 – 645 words

Days 10 and 11 – Nothing

Day 12 – 1,150

Total so far: 14,573

Yeah, I’m wa-ay behind. Between writing up a co-op lesson, helping my kid get his video ready for his film-making class, taking a sick kitty to the vet and putting together the “Yes, You Can Be Published (For Free)” course for Tuesday night, I haven’t had a whole lot of time or energy to do much writing. And to make matters worse, Tuesday night into Wednesday morning I’m working an 11 pm to 7 am shift at a new  house in Penfield. This means class will wrap up at 8:30 pm (or so), and then I’ll be crawling back outta bed by 10:30 to run down to Penfield to stay up all night. Oh yeah, I’ve really thought this through.

On a positive note, I have the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday off. I hope to rest and finally get some words cranked out. My son will, doubtless, want to watch a “guy flick” with me on Thursday, but I should have quite a bit done before that time.

The bright spot is that Tree of Liberty has now (finally!) passed the 50K mark, and once it’s done, I’m gonna be looking for some BETA readers. I’ve got a few in mind, provided that they leave me reviews once I post it on Amazon. I may yet do the same thing with Topheth.

I’ve been rethinking my overall publishing strategy – as in, actually developing one for 2013. I hope to actually plan out my launch and marketing rather than just dumping the books on the market without any regard for when or how I might try to sell them. Yes, this means a slight delay for the books I’m currently completing, but I believe it’ll work in my favor overall to do things a little more deliberatively.

NaNoWriMo Days 7 and 8

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Word count day 7:   3,766
Word count day 8:  +  221 (So far)
Total word count:   12,441

For some reason, I just can’t get started today. I’ve got ideas. I kinda know what’s happening now with The Tree of Liberty, and after the election I’ve been rather re-motivated. Like so many Constitution-lovers, I fear the future, too. Maybe more so now than ever.  The guiding concept behind Jefferson’s Road was giving the Left an excuse to do what they’ve always dreamt about doing: turning the U.S.A. into the U.S.S.R. Now it looks like they’ll go for that even without the excuse. Now they believe they have a mandate, for crying out loud. And what with the Republicans gleefully accepting defeat yet again, there’s little to stop them.

Except us, of course. And that’s gonna get ugly.

I don’t want to turn this into a political rant. I’ve got a whole series for that. But I am grieving. Maybe that’s what’s keeping me from putting words on a page. I don’t know.

Topheth is coming along nicely as well. Cranked out some serious verbage on that last night. It’s another dark, grim story in Janelle Becker’s world. I hope those of you who liked The Coppersmith will give her another go in this book. Should be fun!

All right, enough. I just wanted to get the update in. I’ve got about twenty minutes of the day left, and I need another 900 words or so to reach my target goal. I’m getting back to work, now.

NaNoWrimo Days 3-6

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Day three – 1,829 words.

Day four – Goose Egg. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Then again, it is the Lord’s Day. Spent time with the family after church and watched Blue Like Jazz that evening. Loved what Don Miller had to say about being truth-tellers rather than salesmen when it comes to faith and God.

Day five – 1,485 words. A little lean, but climbing back in the saddle. The rest of Monday was spent at co-op, where I could only generate a measly 35 words… due largely to interruptions and tiredness.

Day six – 1,586 words so far. I’ll be able to crank some more out after I get some sleep from the overnight (and after voting is done.).

As it stands right now, Topheth has about 60K words written, and The Tree of Liberty has 45K. I’ve written about 4.3K words on Topheth, and 3.95K words on Tree. Of course, that’ll all change when I get some more to do this.  I’m 1,745 words off my goal for the day. I hope to get back ahead, and then capitalize on my third overnight tomorrow to gain some serious mileage before next Sunday rolls around. Then maybe I won’t fall quite so far behind. On a positive note, we’ve only got one more week of co-op left, so I’ll recover most Mondays in the month as well.

NanoWrimo Day 2

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Word count: 3,355.

I spent the bulk of my writing time finishing the revised outline to Topheth. The story has grown in such complexity from when I first began it five years ago. It might take longer to wrap up, if only because there’s so much more depth to it than I’d originally imagined. Nevertheless, I’m going to endeavor to complete the book in October no matter what.

I’ll be returning to The Tree of Liberty with today’s efforts.

NaNoWriMo Day 1

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Word count update: 2,615.

Most of that went to The Tree of Liberty. I did finish the next chapter of Topheth, however, and realized something significant: I am so far off my old outline that there’s no hope of recovery. No matter, the story is far better now. But it does mean I’m gonna have to map out the rest of the story sometime today if I’m going to finish it this month.

And So It Begins…

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Yay! It’s National November Writing Month!

Egads! It’s National November Writing Month! One thousand, six hundred sixty seven words a day for thirty days straight.

The good news is: I finished the new outline for Tree of Liberty, which means I should be well positioned to git er done before the end of the month. The bad news is: between Tree and Topheth, I’ve got about 55,000 words needed to finish both books. Thus, I’m going to be busy. Very busy.

And, of course, nothing changes during November. I still have to work full time. We still have a major holiday to contend with. I still have to produce a sermon for church every week (and no, none of that writing counts towards NaNo.). And I still have co-op lessons to write.

On top of that, I’ll be teaching my course on how to publish independently at the Webster Public Library on Tuesdays, November 13 and 20 from 6:30-close.

At any rate, if you want to follow my progress, you can check how I’m doing here on the blog, or at IndieAuthors.com, where I’ll be posting daily updates.

Planning Ahead…

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So I’ve agreed (in principle, at least) to use this year’s NaNoWriMo to finish The Tree of Liberty and Topheth… and if I have any time left in December, to wrap up In The Widening Gyre as well.

The Tree of Liberty has been giving me particular fits. I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say the whole thing feels like I’ve been swimming through mud. It just doesn’t have that particular urgency to it that I expect it to have. Thing is, I know exactly where this story is going and how the whole series ends, but I’m just sorta stuck right now.

There are two things I’m going to try, beyond just plowing through it in November. One, I want to strip the whole thing back down to outline (and I’ve never outlined a Jefferson’s Road story before), and see if I can’t figure out how to speed things up. The second is an insight my son gave me last night (And I don’t know how he recognized this). In the first two books, my main character, Peter Baird, is primarily reacting to what’s going on around him. He does act and make choices, of course, but he’s essentially a reactive character. In this book, I’ve been using him more as an actor, less as a re-actor (there’s a nuclear joke in there somewhere. Like, maybe that’s why the book has no energy? Guffaw.). So maybe the character himself has been resisting what I’ve been trying to do with him. It’s something to consider, at least.

Topheth is steaming along fine. I should have no real problems finishing it… so long as I can keep the heat on (shameless pun).

In the meantime, I’ve finally started successfully outlining the next Jonathan Munro Adventure. I’ve been wanting to do a story that takes place in Russia called The Music of The Spheres, but until this morning, I just didn’t have a good sense of what happens. But I picked up my pen and paper around 10:00 this morning, and now I’ve got almost six handwritten pages of outline done, with lots and lots of stuff happening that’ll keep it going right on till the end, I expect. This is good, because the second Jonathan Munro book comes out next Spring, and I wanted to have a third one ready to send off to my editor as soon as it does. This will give me a head start for the new year, and I should be able to get the whole thing finished in plenty of time.

So for the rest of the day, I’ll be writing up the outline for The Music of The Spheres, and then tearing into The Tree of Liberty.

As an aside, in a few weeks I’ll be teaching a class on Tuesday nights at the Webster Public Library for how to publish independently. We’ll be meeting in the common area on November 13th and November 20th from 6:30 on. The cost is $20 apiece if you want to attend, but I’ll basically be teaching how to design covers, publish, and promote online. It’s the same material I’m presenting in our homeschooling co-op, just taught in two, two hour sessions instead of eight thirty-five minute classes.

Somethin’s Happening Here…

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What it is ain’t exactly clear.

What is clear is that The Coppersmith is seriously taking off in the rankings. This is the latest from Amazon, as of 4:35 am on Tuesday, September 4th:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,012 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

That I’ve even cracked the Top 100 in two categories is nothing short of amazing. Part of it, doubtless, is the little hiccup with Amazon’s price matching. Seems Diesel Books was still offering The Coppersmith for sale at their site, a discrepency which has since been rectified. I’m unaware of the book selling anywhere else at the moment. So for the past day or so, people have been getting the book at a serious discount. Maybe that’s led to the sales. It certainly hasn’t hurt my rankings.

Regardless, I’m hard at work on the sequel, and I hope to have it done… before the month is out? We’ll see. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have something more to offer all these readers!

Totally Amazing!

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The Coppersmith has continued to climb in the rankings, as almost 1,700 copies were downloaded overnight.  We have now completely surpassed the high-water mark set by Jefferson’s Road: The Spirit of Resistance, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see us bump up against 10,000 by the end of the promotion (around 2 am EST).

Here are some screen shots:

Many thanks to everyone who’s tweeted, liked, mentioned, and downloaded the book! I hope it scares the snot outta you!

The Coppersmith Is Free to Download

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Yes, you read that right. The Coppersmith, my serial killer novel that takes place in Upstate New York (nothing quite like creepin’ out the home folks!) is FREE to Download from Amazon for the next three days.

This is the second “Kindle Promotion” I’ve done so far. We saw more than 6K downloads for the first Jefferson’s Road book. Aside from the freebies, The Coppersmith has outsold Jefferson’s Road by about 2:1.

I’m real curious to see how this works out.

As before, those who SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER and POST TO FACEBOOK or TWITTER will be entered into a drawing to receive a free, autographed copy of the book.

Meanwhile, I’m hard at work on Topheth, the sequel to The Coppersmith. You can find an excerpt in the back of the book.