Month: December 2011

Spilled Milk – the latest thriller from Michael J. Scott

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is now available on Amazon.com for 99 cents. Here’s the link if you want to take a look:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006RMQYLY/

Spilled Milk tells the story of Gerrold Smith, a man who chooses to become a terrorist to rescue his children from a corrupt foster care system. I hope you enjoy it! I promise I’ll be releasing more soon. Eye of Darkness is nearly complete, and then I’m going to tear into The Tree of Liberty, the next installment of Jefferson’s Road.

Content Advisory for Spilled Milk:

No sex (some discussion of rape and child pornography), some violence (guns, bombs, and car chases), mild profanity (no blasphemy). About 79,000 words (roughly 300 pages printed).

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Spilled Milk – The latest thriller from Michael J. Scott

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is now available through Smashwords.com! I’m very excited about this new release. Spilled Milk started as a NaNoWriMo project almost two months ago, and quickly grew beyond what I’d thought it’d be to the story it is now. Not only did I finish the 50k words in 30 days (that’s the NaNoWriMo challenge), but I kept going with the story until the whole thing wrapped up about a week ago. Seven weeks from concept to completion. I’ve wrapped up the editing (yeah, I know, a week to edit?!) and built the cover art (see? –>), and now it’s up and ready for you to enjoy!

Naturally, I’m releasing it via Amazon as well, but they take a little longer to review their books than Smashwords does, so I’m giving you the address for the Smashwords version. I’ll post the Amazon link as soon as I have it. Also, the book will be available in print through Createspace soon, though I’ve run into a little snag with converting the file for them.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

What would you do to protect your kids? For Gerrold Smith, a widower whose children have been taken from him by the courts, the answer is to hold the city hostage. What starts as a random act of violence quickly escalates into terrorist activity, and as Gerrold discovers the city’s dark secret he must choose between saving his own children, or sacrificing them to save even more.

At any rate, I hope you enjoy it. It’s a little darker than my Jefferson’s Road series, but still enjoyable.

Content Advisory: No sex (some discussion of rape and child pornography), some violence (guns, bombs, and car chases), mild profanity (no blasphemy). About 79,000 words (roughly 300 pages printed).

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Ta-DAH! And just like that, I’ve finished Spilled Milk. Final word count: 78,531 words. So far, I’ve maintained my pace of 10k words a week. This week (so far), I’ve got slightly less than 5k done, though, which means I’ve got to immediately pick up Eye of Darkness and pour almost 6k words into it to meet my quota. If I succeed, then I will likely be writing “The End” a second time this week, given how little there is left to go on the novel.

Of course, neither work is anywhere near ready for release. I have to line edit and concept edit both of these before I can publish them, and that’s going to take some time. The good news, for Jefferson’s Road fans, at least, is that I’ll be able to have  The Tree of Liberty done before too long. I expect to start it in January, and I should have it finished no later than mid-February — all assuming I can keep up the pace. Topheth, the next Janelle Becker book, will follow close on its heels, which means that I’ll have four novels finished before Spring. At that point, I’ll have to assess where I’m at. Especially in terms of editing. I still have line edits to finish for The Elixir of Life that my friend Linda sent me. But, all things being equal, this should shape up to be a very productive year.

Right now, I’m going to do the happy dance.

shuffle, shuffle, step!  shuffle, shuffle kick!

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Well, I’m still working on the Spilled Milk story that I started for NaNo. Yesterday I wrapped up the first seven days of December, and I’ve cranked out about 10.4K words so far this week. I think this is going to be my goal from now on: 10K words a week. True, it’s nowhere’s near an Amanda Hocking type pace, but it’s a whole heck of a lot faster than I’ve gone before.

I did some math last night before cranking out the final grand to put me over the 10K mark. This is a list of the various works I have in process and their respective word counts since starting to write seriously about six years ago:

TITLE Word Count
Eye of Darkness 71866
Spilled Milk 63203
Tree of Liberty 15971
Topheth 26838
The Novem 24381
Waterless Places 12311
Descent 11664
Rock of Ages 11289
Saint Jude 8856
Jezebel 5469

I’ve listed the projects in order of priority. So even though Topheth is further along than Tree of Liberty, I know I have more people waiting for one than the other, which is why I put it first.

As you can see, I’ve got ten different projects that I’ve started and haven’t finished as of yet. Fantasy, sci-fi, action/adventure, thriller and drama. I’ll need to write approximately 500K words to finish them all. And that’s my goal for this next year: to finish and release ten separate novels.

I don’t have any illusions that this will be easy, and frankly, if I succeed at finishing all ten, I think it means I won’t have reached high enough. I will definitely have to churn out 10K words a week to pull this off.  Still, it’s a goal, and one worth pursuing.

That being said, I do believe I’ll have both Eye of Darkness and Spilled Milk done by the end of the month–and I’ll be back to work on the next mile in Jefferson’s Road before the new year begins.

Wish me luck!

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