Okay, finally time for another writing update. Nov. 24 to be exact.
First a word on my Indie project. Still stalled-probably stale too for that matter. The person who is suppose to be double checking it for Boulder Co stuff decided to check it for more--I may have said that last time--and now she has overtime and doesn’t have the time to work on it. (Rolls eyes heavenward) that makes the fourth or fifth person to have that problem. I may decide to cancel her work on it. And I may have changed my mind on spending the money on getting a pro cover drawn the way I want it. Dean Wesley Smith is holding an Online workshop on how to do pro covers. $300. That’s in Jan. If I can take it, it will save tons of money and maybe time, even if the cover isn’t quite what I want. Plus I can use that knowledge on the covers for my story sets.
I have been writing a lot. One looong story at work. That one will be over 22,000 words. I haven’t done one even close to that long for a long time. Kinda of ironic with this one. It’s the sequel to a previous story. That story is just under 3,000 words. I believe I will write on more about this team of Steampunk Special Ops agents--maybe two--so I can get a word count of at least 33,000. I will then design a story set to sell all of them. I know what the third story will be about but I don’t think it will be enough to reach 33,000 words total. So one more very short story, probably between 1200 and 2200 words.
Speaking of looong stories I am also working on another one at home. So far 17,000 words. It might reach 20,000 but I would be surprised if it ends up being 22,000 like the other one. This one is the sixth story about a certain Urban Fantasy hero I made up a while back. I changed his name twice but I think I have settled on Simon Sayz. That’s his known name and his painter name. He was born with a much longer one which he rarely uses. He’s kinda of based on Harry Dresden but with lots of changes so no one will think I copied him. And of course my own way of how “Magic” works. One difference is that he doesn’t have a car, second he went to a mage school disguised as a private high school, third is he has a girl friend already-someone who doesn’t know about his abilities. There is a Secondary world with elves, unicorns, dragons, and other fae beings but it’s not the same as never-never. Once I make sure I have seven stories--I still need a short one dealing with a guy Simon has to find and convince to be his apprentice. I introduced that character in a previous story so I would need to not let that just hang there. I have part of an idea for that one and hopefully it will be rather short. More than likely it will be the last story in the story set I plan on doing with these tales.
On top of that I have one more story I started and will finish after I finish the Simon one. It too will be longer, even though maybe just over 10,000 words, and it too is part of a series. I think story six of seven but maybe story five.
The Friday after Thanksgiving I will be home--maybe most of Thursday too. I hope to get another story set ready for E-publishing. A series of short quirky tales. I also want to get one story ready to send out--maybe two. And of course write, maybe get a long way into my Q1 WotF story--due the last day of Dec.
Speaking of that I am also working on that one. It’s one I hand wrote out at work on five by three notepaper pages. I have around 3500 words on it already, while translating it to computer I am changing things and even redoing some of the order of the scenes. I figure I’m maybe one fourth to one third done.
Not doing good at sending out stories, I just keep forgetting or putting it off to write. Part of that might be that I am getting tried of complete rejections. I say complete because, as I have mentioned before, some markets have more than one form rejection. F&SF does and Lightspeed does also. They may use pretty much the same forms. Beneath Ceaseless Skies usually gives one to three sentences of personal comments explaining why it was rejected--very rare--sometimes they say something encouraging...I hear. It’s the same with another market but I’m not sure which one that one is at the moment. WotF gives out Honorable Mentions--Sliver HMs even though Dave Farland doesn’t seem to do them--Semi-finalists, Finalists and winners. So far Dave hasn’t though much of my writing even though I am doing better than the last Executive editor they had.
Speaking of online Workshops--I was just a few minutes ago. There is another of Dean’s workshops I would love to take in Jan. Dealing with “Character Voice and Setting” . I think I am doing good with setting but I know I could use some help with character voice. I will have the money for one but I may have to convince my wife I have it for the second one too. If they are still both open by the time I do that.
By the time I get done with these three or so stories I am doing I may have like five or six story sets to Indie publish. Three will be stories in a series.
Oh another thing I want to do with my time off is set up two of those story sets. I mean count the stories to make sure there are seven and decided which stories go where. I will still have to check for typos, misspellings, bad commas etc and revise two to four stories but at least I know what other tales I may need to write. Oh and redo parts of my Simon Sayz tales. For one I changed how the “magic” worked, for second, as I stated, I changed his name. I think there was something else that needed updating but can’t think of it right now. In either case I am getting anxious about getting those stories out there.
My wife may have me doing things like decorating for Christmas and some shopping so we will see how much of all that I want to do, I will actually get done.
Well, that’s it for now...unless I can remember what else I wanted to say. I believe last time there was a PS and there could be one or two PS-s again.
