Month: April 2013

Done!

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Last night I finally wrapped up Turning, the first installment of my teen dystopian New World Order series. I hope you’ll take a chance and read the book. You can find the main page here, and if you open all subsequent pages in a new window, you’ll be able to return to it to find the next chapters rather easily.

I’ll be releasing the book on Amazon and Createspace soon, and I hope that I can count on you to leave me honest reviews when I do.

The book will continue to be available for free here on the website through at least the month of May while I await your reactions, though you’ll be able to buy it for download on your Kindle or a paperback copy as soon as I have it up.

If I receive comments before releasing the book, I’ll be happy to include those in the front matter (hey! You’ll get your name in print!). If you’d rather I didn’t, just let me know and I’ll keep them out of the final copy.

Thanks for everyone for your patience as I composed this project. I know it took me a lot longer than I initially wanted it to, but writing is like that. Churning out a book in less than a year is very difficult, if only because sometimes it takes that long for the story and characters to mature. The process is very organic, and some things just cannot be rushed without getting poor results.

As soon as I’m able, I’ll get back to work on the other five projects (might be later today, though I might just take a break, too). I did crank out 6,383 words yesterday to pull this off. Getting to the finish line of a book is often like the final sprint in a marathon. Once you cross the line, you really don’t want to keep running, you know?

At any rate, there it is. Ten novels are now completed, and I hope to have two or three more done by the end of the year.

Nearly Done

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So I’ve made a slight adjustment in how I allocate my writing time. I had been dividing my attention equally between all six current WIP’s. But I’m nearly done with Turning, and so lately I’ve been pouring all my writing energies into wrapping this book up and getting it out to you all. Of course, most of the book is already available here on the website, and I’ll probably have it up for an indeterminate period after it’s finished, but at some point I’ll take it down so that I can start selling it.

The net result is that during the past week I’ve added almost 6K words, and the book has now crossed 80K words total. More to the point, I’m only three chapters and an epilogue away from being done. I hope to have a new chapter uploaded within the next day or so, and the book may well be finished by the end of the month at the latest.

This is my current word count as it stands today:

 

Turning 80001
God and Country 14185
The Blood-Eater Coven 12762
The Music of the Spheres 12471
A Glass Half-Empty 12018
Nicholas 9701

So there you have it. All told I’ve written over 46K words since the year began, and considering that I took all of January and half of February off, this averages out to about 21K or so per month (half of February, all of March, and only half of April). I’m hoping to keep upping the word count each month. I’ve increased my output by around 100 words a day from about 700 wpd in March to more than 800 wpd so far this month. God willing, soon I’ll be consistently breaking in excess of 1,500. That would net approximately six to seven titles per year, depending on length. At that pace, it would only take me about ten years to tell all the stories currently wandering around my head (with no accounting for any more I come up with between now and then).

And with that said, I’m getting back to work. SEE Yuh!

New Cover Art for Turning

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Okay gang, so now I need your feedback on the new cover art for Turning. Changing the name of the book also means making some slight adjustments (and, I hope, improvements) in the cover art as well. So here it is, tell me what you think:

Cover 4I still need to change the font at the bottom, but it’s the art work I’m most concerned about.

Additionally, I’ve resized the book to a 6 x 9, rather than a 5.25 x 8. This is based on observations of similar books on the shelves at stores. 6 x 9 seems to be the average size. At any rate, I was able to kick up the font size a couple notches, so it won’t be too hard on the eyes.

Oh, and there’s a new chapter up. Chapter 25. You can access it here.

I do confess that I’m a little concerned about the word count. Preliminary research on similar titles suggests that books in this genre number around 125k words. I’ve got 75k. Now, I’m not done yet, but I’m pretty close. I estimate that I’ll have about 13K to 14k words to go, which will put me a little less than 90k words. I have to confess, the smaller size does worry me a bit. I want to be sure I’m not cheating my readers any. On the other hand, of course, I ought only write the words the story actually requires. Anything more would be unnecessary padding–which feels a little too much like busy-work for my taste.

At any rate, I’m on a roll, so I’m gonna sign off now and get back to work. Later!