Jefferson’s Road

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This morning I wrote an epilogue to the Jefferson’s Road series. Yeah, I know the series isn’t done. In fact, it’s only half done. But there are some developments within the third book that I wanted to follow up on, that can only be resolved at the end. Thus, the epilogue. It seems strange, writing those pages. I know exactly how this story ends. I always have, actually. What blows me away is how its developed over the course of three books now, and yet still is on target to reach the final pages–and I’m not even talking about the epilogue. I’m talking about the last chapter. Strange to have that already in my mind. Unchanged. The story moving unerringly towards it.

I’ve never written anything like this before. I have other books – other series, but nothing quite like this.

Anyway, I’ve heard back from one of my BETA readers already. No major edits just yet. I’ve got two more out there I’m waiting on, and then we’ll go forward toward releasing the next book. In the meantime, I’m plugging away at In the Widening Gyre. We’ve passed 60K words on it. It’s slow going, for some reason. I have to push myself to get any words written. I had a brief spate of creativity with the story after getting over one hump, so I’m sure I’ll have more.  But this is where the self-discipline I’ve been learning comes in.  This is where I stick my BIC, and make it happen, cause it won’t write itself. I’ll get there.

Ta-Daah!

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And now, ten days into December, Jefferson’s Road: The Tree of Liberty is finished! I wrote the final words around 6:00 this morning and typed “The End.” Final word count tally: 84,703 words. That means this book is about 10K words longer than the previous “mile” in the road.

My son asks me, “Do you still feel as excited now when you finish a book as the first time?” The answer, of course, is “No.” Finishing a book now is more of a relief than an elation. I still enjoy doing it, but I think I enjoy the process more. Although at this point, the most satisfying part is knowing that I can move yet another project off my over-burdened plate and concentrate on the next project.

In The Widening Gyre is next on the list. There’s 57K words finished on that book, and if I keep to my current pace (50K per month), I’ll have it wrapped up before Christmas. This will give us three books to move forward into the new year. Total of nine books now written (wow!), shortly to become ten.

At this point, I still have some minor editing to do on Tree, as well as writing the first chapter of the fourth book so I can pull a teaser from it for the back of the book. As well as an Afterword, though that isn’t hardly as necessary. I’ve started a draft on Amazon for the book – have to do the same thing for the next two as well, of course. And I have to do the same over at Createspace.

The main thing, however, is getting the book into a suitable kindle format and securing BETA readers to give it a run through. Some of you will be getting an email from me shortly, asking to participate. If you don’t get one and would like to be a BETA reader, drop me a line or leave a comment on this post indicating your interest.

On a related note, I’m almost at six weeks of writing at this accelerated (for me) pace, and it looks like I’ll make it to the “I’ve formed a new habit!” level soon. Good news for my back list!

And Just Like That…

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Topheth is done. I wrapped up the final two chapters tonight (more accurately, this morning). The final tally for the book: 81,045 words. Not too shabby, frankly.

I’ll still be vetting it with my writer’s group on Wednesdays, letting them assist me in editing it and getting it ready for publication, which will happen sometime early next year. I still have to go back and be sure I incorporate all the previous edits I’ve already received on it. And I’m curious to see what they think of the ending, and the consistency of the characters, plot line, and so forth.

But since the overwhelming response has been positive so far, I’m not worried in the least.

This means that all I have left to wrap up this year is The Tree of Liberty and In the Widening Gyre. Yes, I’m finally getting back to that story. Probably not tonight, but this week for sure. I have to reread the whole thing to remember where I left off and recover the voice I was writing with. At present, I have a little better than 55K words written on it, so there’s no reason I can’t finish it sometime in the next twelve to fifteen days. And then I’ll be free to advance onto another project.

NaNoWrimo Days 29 and 30

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Just so we have the numbers…

Day 29  – 2,843

Day 30 – 3,107

TOTAL: 50,320!

Yes, it’s official: National November Writing Month has come to a close, and after an exhausting last ditch effort, I have successfully written over fifty thousand words in just thirty days. Final tally, between the two books is as follows:

The Tree of Liberty:  28,976 words added. 69,979 words total in the story.

Topheth: 21,344 words added. 76,297 words total in the story.

Neither book is finished yet, but both are rushing headlong to their conclusions. I’m going to try and wrap things up in the next week or so, see if I can’t get these done and into the hands of my BETA readers before the end of the year. And then, I can return to In the Widening Gyre and wrap it up as well. But for now, at least, I can relax.

NaNoWrimo Days 26-28

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Very productive these past few days. I think we’re gonna make it!

Day 26  – 4,049

Day 27 – 3,632

Day 28 – 4,606

Total words: 44,370

I have only 5,630 words left in the next two days to reach the 50K Finish Line! So far, I’ve added almost 29K words to The Tree of Liberty and slightly better than 15K words to Topheth. Both books have now broken the 70K word mark, but unfortunately, neither is finished just yet! Still, we’re a lot (and I mean A LOT) closer to being done.

Some of you will be invited to be BETA readers for The Tree of Liberty. I hope to release it in 2013 for “general consumption” but I’ll want to get feedback and reviews on it before that time. Since Topheth is being read at my critique group, I’m just gonna hold off on releasing it until they’re done (or nearly done with it).

This is all part of the new strategy to actually market and promote these books with something resembling intelligence.

The third book I hope to finish this year, In the Widening Gyre, I will continue to make available as it gets finished. But once it’s done and y’all have given your thoughts on it, I’ll take it down from the site and put it up for sale. I know it’s frustrating to have the book only 2/3 done, but I promise I’ll get the rest completed. I genuinely want to be more disciplined in my approach as I move forward with this, but there are so many stories to write, and they don’t all like to wait. That’s sometimes why books get back-logged and other projects move to the front. In the end, they all get a little closer to being done, but they don’t always come out as soon as some of us would like (I guess I include myself in that as well, frankly).

In the meantime, I’ve put together a sample cover for the fourth Jefferson’s Road book: God and Country. I invite you to check it out on the front page (yes, I know about the colon. I’ll fix it in the final version.).

NaNoWriMo Days 19-25

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19-Nov 1123
20-Nov 0
21-Nov 0
22-Nov 3988
23-Nov 3430
24-Nov 1768
25-Nov 1078

I’ve got 32,083 words finished as of 11/25 (11/26 numbers are still being generated, but they’re in excess of 3,100 at this moment.) I still need to come up with another 15K words or so before Friday. I think I’ll make the threshold just in time.

So far, Topheth has passed the 70K mark, and is rapidly careening toward an end (looks like it’ll wind up somewhere in the 80K range); and The Tree of Liberty has pushed past 62K, and is still climbing. I’m not sure how many words it’ll have. There’s a few hiccups in the plot line I didn’t see coming, which might lengthen the story–I hope, not unnecessarily.

I believe I’ve hit and pushed through the wall, and now only sheer, dogged determination is going to get me across the finish line.

But if I get through this, and then can still wrap up In the Widening Gyre by the end of December (barring any unforeseen-by-any-except-the-Mayan-end-of-the-world events), then I will have successfully completed no less than six different novels this year (Spilled Milk, Eye of Darkness, The Elixir of Life, Topheth, The Tree of Liberty, and In the Widening Gyre). Not too shabby at all!

Next year will be the year of sequels! I hope to write a stand alone for NaNoWrimo 2013, though. I have a number of candidates in mind.

And the series just don’t end. Just the other day I came up with a concept for a space opera based on the political intrigues surrounding a future Silk Road (that’s what happens when I spend too much time watching the History Channel), in which contact with earth has been lost, and the far-flung colonies believe that humans on earth have been wiped out. It’s got a lot of grit, with something resembling a Firefly feel (though without the whole controlling planets and failed revolution type thing). It’ll be less cowboy, too.

Of course, God only knows when I’ll get around to writing it. But this is precisely why I’m aiming to churn out multiple books per year. I’ll never get anything fun written if I don’t ramp up my pace. God willing, at some point in the near future, I’ll be able to do this full time. Then we’ll see what can happen.

All right. Enough rambling. I gotta get my “B” back “IC”. Later!

NaNoWrimo Days 13 – 18

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Day 13 – 0

Day 14 – 1,532

Day 15 – 3,638

Day 16 – 834

Day 17 – 119

Day 18 – 0

Total word count so far: 20,696

I have 62,666 words written in Topheth and 53,978 words written in The Tree of Liberty. At this point, I should have 30k words written, so you can see I’ve fallen behind by about 10K words. Can’t say whether or not I’ll be able to catch up at this point, but there are some positive things on the horizon.

a) Co-op classes are finished for this term, so I don’t have to put in writing time to compose lessons.

b) I have a class to teach on Tuesday, but most of the material is already developed, so even that shouldn’t be too big a problem.

c) This is a holiday week, so I don’t have any overtime, and I think I’ll be able to get caught up on the rest of it. This includes having all day Wednesday available. And even though I’ll be working Thursday evening, the guys will pretty much be in Turkey induced comas at that point, so the house will be fairly quiet. I’m working alone that shift as well, so I ought to get a lot written – even on the holiday.

So there ya go. I have no excuses for not catching up over the next four days. I need to do about 4K words a day to break even, however. Yikes!  My best days were on the 7th and the 15th: 3,766 and 3,638 words respectively. Now I have to break both those records for four days straight. Wish me luck!

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.