Another week, another lost seven dollars.
Ha ha, my Father has taken to motivating me by saying daily “Every day your book isn’t out is a dollar you’ve lost!” Or some variation of. He’s got a point, but he really could give it a rest. :P
After all, there is that thing called ‘A Day Job’ that currently pays my bills. So it’s rather important. I’m sure quite a few of you are out there in the same boat. Gotta’ love the Catch 22, right? To sell books you have to write them, to write them you need time…but you can’t have time if you’re worrying about bills, which means a job, which means no time to write, and…playin’ the old record over and around again, aren’t I?
Moving on!
The Candlemaker’s Merman
I’m sitting at around 14,000 words, which is the halfway point in both the story and my target length–so we’re doing pretty good! The beta readers seem to be enjoying the story as it goes, and agree that this has a flavor very similar to WaM–which should make my comic readers happy, as I’m still a little unsure how Children of Hephaestus will be taken– It could go either way, so I’m trying not to predict anything.
I’ve also managed to outline the rest of the candlemaker’s story, so writing should go smoothly from here on out. After that it’s just a matter of re-writing, printing, and then putting it aside while I write the second adventure.
I’ve also decided to bump up my goal deadline for this. If I can write 50,000 words of a book I hate in 30 days, I should be able to write at least two 30,000 word stories by the end of January. So new goal? Get two done by January 31st, so Book 1 can take a trip to the editor (if she accepts it…I haven’t actually asked yet… XD Bad author! I know.) while I’m working on three.
Children of Hephaestus 2: Jupiter
About 10,000 words in order & about 7,000 words of various scenes that still need homes ranging from the beginning to the ending. The story is trotting along, nothing particularly interesting for this week, but you know I’m still working on it!
Interesting note: There is a great challenge in making a sequel dependent on knowledge from the first book, while still making it accessible and easy to understand to new readers. It’s so easy to be tempted to just info-dumping a summary of past events, but that doesn’t work. So, learning experience! (Insert a Fluttershy “Yay” –don’t look at me that way. You know you watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic like the rest of us.)
Children of Hephaestus
I’ve self-edited 7 of 29 chapters. It is slow going and I’m tempted to spend all my time writing for my other two books than actually marking up the pages for this one. My December 31st deadline looms ever closer and I can feel my editor breathing down my neck as I type this…ahhh!
Author Blog
Well, in this case it’s an IP Lawyer who also happens to be a writer’s blog. :D The Passive Voice is a great resource that links to outside articles from a lot of different, valuable sources. It’s sort of a nice little collection of everything and I find myself being linked there from time to time. I usually find something nice. :D