The re-edit of Tears of the Mountain is now done, fixing up various little grammatical and spelling errors that hadn’t been caught previously. It also now has its new cover. The edited version is now up and working on Smashwords and is currently being published on Amazon, so should be ready to go in a day or two.
Now to start on Winter Wolves.
I’ve finally got the re-edits of all the short stories completed and now have the hard part to go – the re-edit of the two novels. The first, Tears of the Mountain, will be the easiest given it is just a grammar/spelling check, but Winter Wolves will take a while longer as there is a large section I want to rewrite, given I was never entirely happy with it.
In the meantime I have to finish working on some new covers. I have some done so far, but there are plenty more to update to the new and improved style. Here are the ones done so far.
And finally, when that is all done, I can return to the 2/3rds done Dawn of Wolves.
I had my first ever interview posted, over on Indie Book Blog.
Its actually rather a lengthy one, and doing them is harder than it seems.
I’ll need to start hunting down more if I am to get my name out there and interest in the books.
And here we are in March already – two months of the year gone.
The output was reduced a lot compared to January, only around 50-60K done, but a lot of time was spent finishing Winter Wolves, proof-reading it and publishing it on Amazon/Smashwords.
The givewaway of Winter Wolves has slowed down some, but has now hit 101 people having acquired it. No reviews yet but three people have said that they will at some stage.
Sales wise, between the two novels I managed 15 sales for the month. Not a huge amount, but it is a start. Of those 6 were of Winter Wolves, so I’ll have to calculate how much goes towards supporting my sister – that one of them was on Amazon.uk and is listed in pence makes it more challenging.
I didn’t hit all my goals – a fair way off it actually, but it was a decent month still.
Aims for March. Work on He Stands Between, Dawn of Wolves, Hammer of the Skies and a novelette for another project. Aim is to try and finish one of the first three and the novelette.
Late last night, just before I was about to head to bed, I got my second review for Tears of the Mountain – and my first 5-star review. Needless to say I was pretty stoked as I hadn’t been expecting it at all, and the person who wrote it isn’t someone I know. They read it and liked it, a lot. Its got me pumped now to go crazy with the writing – knowing you aren’t a complete hack and someone liked your stories enough to post such a glowing report really does help out the confidence.
And now onto the progress of the Winter Wolves giveaway.
It initially started very slow – just six were taken up in the fist 2 days. And then yesterday it took off, with 58 people purchasing it through the coupons in total now. It seems it got picked up on a website that advertises free books and this pushed a fair bit of traffic my way. Too date I haven’t gotten any reviews, but a couple of people have said they will write one.
Hopefully, with a week and a half still to go, it will help generate a number of reviews and even a sale or two.
January has come and gone – yes already. One twelfth of the year has already flown by.
Writing wise it was a decent month. Notable points are;
130K words written – mostly rewriting old drafts but still that is progress.
70K done on rewrite of Winter Wolves novel.
10.5K done of rewrite of Dawn of Wolves novella.
Tears of the Mountain published on Smashwords/Amazon.
Halfway into the rewrite of He Stands Between.
Various notes and ideas done for other stories.
Hope I can keep up the pace for February.
Aims for February are finishing off Winter Wolves and hopefully Dawn of the Wolves, plus a short story or two. And trying to market Tears of the Mountain better.
The year has begun and we are already a couple of weeks in so I thought it time to take stock of what has happened and what I have got planned.
Firstly I have managed to write everyday of the year so far, and not insubstantial amounts. If I am rather liberal with my definition of ‘written’ then I have written 58,000 words in 13 days. The best day was yesterday, with 9,500 words done. Of course a large chunk, read most, of those words are rewriting old drafts into newer drafts. It is much easier and faster doing it that way, but of course the rough drafts need doing first.
Some of those words are on rough drafts, of which some have already received some rewriting, which seems a rather fruitful way of doing it. Scribble up the rough draft in the morning and in the evening get stuck into a rewrite of it.
All of that has been spread over a number of projects I’m busy working on to try and finish off, ranging from novels to short stories. The quick they are done, the better.
In addition to all that, I have finished the editing and polishing for Tears of the Mountain (or at least that is the theory – I have probably missed half the errors in it.) To celebrate I have put it up on Smashwords, and plan to make it available at more places (such as Amazon), as well as pushing it around the traps – but more on that later.
So that is what has been happening. Now for what I have planned.
I do at some stage need to give the old website an overhaul, updating the statuses of various projects, stories, collections and the like to reflect changes that have happened.
Short term plans are to complete the last part of the initial book of Cara’s Choice – the rough draft is getting close to being finished – and also to finish a rewrite and update of an old novel, Winter Wolves. Winter Wolves was sitting on around 60K of its rough draft when I left it but finishing Tears of the Mountain inspired me to return to it, given it takes place in the same setting and features one of the same characters. Since I wrote it there have been a number of changes to the setting that need incorporating, as well as it needing a complete overhaul of the ending; it didn’t work at the time and works even less due to various changes. But in a day and a half I’ve done 13,000 words of the rewrite of it.
Longer term is a goal to increase output, that being a short story every two weeks, a novel/novella every two months. An audacious target I know, but if I keep up my current output then it is entirely achievable.
I even had the short list of what those projects will be;
Winter Wolves (gunpowder fantasy novel)
He Stands Between (epic fantasy novel)
Hammer of the Skies (steampunk novella)
Cara’s Choice: The Awakening (urban fantasy novella)
Primal Tales III (fantasy short story)
Nhaqosa V (fantasy short story)
Cahuac and the Fisherman (fantasy short story)
Between all that I should be busy for a while.
Professor Halir Ashford. Historian, Explorer and Adventurer. One of the favourite characters I’ve written so far. And a character who really shouldn’t have existed beyond a minor mention. It happens from time to time; characters take on a life of their own and demand a bigger say in things.
His story starts back with a novel I was planning (but never got around to starting). I needed someone to introduce the main character (Heric ‘Harry’ Ban, likewise a character that came about unexpectedly) to the adventure, and so I came up with Halir. he had been a friend of Harry’s father back during a war and was now a professor and historian. The novel was abandoned and the character would have been forgotten except for another novel I started sometime later, Winter Wolves.
Winter Wolves was my first serious effort at plotting and then writing a novel, and was designed to be a showcase for the setting and for Harry Ban. I even managed to complete a round draft. There was a need for a character who would draw Harry into events, and for that I went back to Halir and brought him along.
Though I finished the rough draft, I never got around to fleshing it out, instead, as is my want, I moved onto other projects and suddenly Halir took over somewhat. He got himself two lengthy short stories, Gifts and Sacrifices, and The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings, and then he got himself a full novel in which to star – Tears of the Mountain – which is the first novel I’ve completely properly.
It won’t be the last that Professor Halir is seen either.
I’m not going to look back at my resolutions for last year – I know that most of them never got done, which is why I normally don’t bother.
It is a good time, however, to look back over 2010 and to look forward to 2011.
2010 was a year of missed opportunities, both writing and otherwise. While I did actually complete my first proper, full length novel, my writing output was way down on what it should have been and that single novel should have been more. Moreover, it is still sitting there gathering dust and hasn’t been used yet, something that needs to be rectified.
2011 needs to see an improvement. I’m not going to make any resolutions – because they will just be broken – but I want to see a lot more writing done, both novels and short stories. I’ve got all these ideas floating around not being used.
I’m going to go over the Pure Escapism page and stories and clean it up, make it look more professional. That includes new and improved covers. I have a few that I’ve worked on and that I need to upgrade the rest to that level.
I’d like to try and add at least one new short story to the collection a month – more of the time permits – and of course to try and exchange the reader base. Cleaning up and polishing the pages here and at Smashwords, plus starting to join up on various forums should help with that a bit.
The big one is of course the novels. I’ve got one complete and two half complete. They need to get completed, polished and made ready as soon as I can. And then I have to make a big decision.
Do I try for an agent and publisher, a long and laborious process that has no guarantees of any success?
Or do I try and go independent? There is no success guaranteed there either but there will at least be something to show for it, which is more than would happen if I ended up with no agent. It would require a whole new skillset – that of self marketting – but there have been a number of successes to show it is not impossible.
I’ve just done something I’ve never managed in all my years as a writer before – write The End on a full length novel. Yup, after 90,012 words and a long time deciding just which novel to work on I have finally completed the first full draft of Tears of the Mountain. It’s a big step forward, helped out by doing the last 20,000 words in the last seven days.
Of course it still needs much work, such as organising into chapter, spell checking, polishing and correcting details in the early parts of the story that got changed in the later part.
And then once that is done there starts the look hunt for rejections, I mean an agent and the possibility of getting it in print.
Still its a big thrill just to have gotten it to where it is now.
Mist and Shadows 