I have been busy writing and doing a bit of learning on writing. Yes, just a bit this time around.
First of all: My E-novel. I just finished the revision of ch 9 which means two more chapters to go. I am a week late on them, but I think I can get them done this next week since I am on vacation. Then comes the last spell check--that could take hours but hopefully won’t since most of the misspellings have been corrected. No, not all since I may have created new ones.
And then also comes making a cover. I am still debating if want to try it myself. I had one idea, I think I could do but after looking over quite a few samples I may do it in a different way. I’m not sure if I can do it that way. But I’m not sure if I want to take a chance and spend one hundred to two hundred dollars on it. I could but there’s no guaranty it would sell enough copies to make it worth it. I would like to think so, but there are too many variables. Fifty to seventy-five I would do.
And if I did use one of the cover sites it could take a month longer to get it done.
I am already thinking of the blurb. I have three ways of doing it and sometime next week I probably will type each one out and see if I can get some people to look them over.
The title--well I still don’t know. It’s called “Two Struggles” now since my MC has an inner fight as well as the outer fight with the bad guy. I thought about “An Inner And An Outie” but I somehow I don’t think so. :) “Duo Conflicts”? (Shoulder shrug) I can almost come up with something, but it won’t quite come.
Second of all: Been working on my Rod tales--I think I mentioned them last time. They started out as being very short, less than 300 words, stories about Rod the mage after I decided to try a couple twitter tales. They were a bit more than 140 characters. I decided to do some more and forget about making them twitter length. However I ended up with three--maybe four--of the 12 stories being over 1200 words. This one is most probably over 2,000. I have one I hand wrote out that will be under 500 words again but so far each story is longer than the last by quite a bit. I wanted to either post them on my blog or E-mail them out to anyone interested. I would need to collect addresses for those interested though. The stories would go out 3 or one or one half or one third at a time depending on length. I may just put them all in an E-book. But that won’t be for a while since I am still writing them. Speaking of that I did revise one and sent it out. More on that one later. And another 500 or so word one I revised and placed on Google+ community called “Saturday Scenes” designed for flash stories.
Third of all: I am still working on the Writers of the Future contest. Not even a Honorable Mention yet. Not with the new guy Dave Farland even though I did have a couple with the late. The one I am working on now is due June 30th. I have a second revision to do on it when I get various crits back. So far one out of four has been sent. I said I wouldn’t need them until the 22nd so since I am typing this on the 22nd none are really late yet. The one I am doing now is different for me and was inspired by a pic on G+. We shall see if I do better on this one. There is reason to believe it is a bit better than some of my previous tries. I will start working on the final revision Monday even if I don’t have any other crits. That would give me one week to finish it while I am working on the E-novel. Some crits will come in during that time. I have been accused of writing for Dave and I might just be too much--however he has stated what he wants. Which makes it sound like he wants us to write for him. And some of the advice he gives would work more generally, so it would be writing to make yourself better.
Fourth of all: It’s later--that is time to mention again the one Rod tale I sent out. I wanted to send it to Beneath Ceaseless Skies but they don’t want modern fantasies. Which is about the only type they don’t want. But I had the thought of transforming it to a western--which they don’t mind. It’s short enough and the setting is right so that it would only take a very small handful of word changes to do it. Next the idea hit me to make this a second adventure of a Cowboy mage I already wrote a nice long story about. That would take a bit more work but not all that much. If I did I could still keep the original story for the Rod tales. That is I think I could. If someone did buy the Western version I wonder if there would be enough changes to make it a different story. I could make a couple more changes and see if it would be okay.
Fifth of all: I started the revision of what I am calling themed story sets or broken novels. In other words a series of short stories about the same person. I have mentioned these before: one is a steampunk sp ops series about the Lieutenant in charge of a ten man team, one is about a different mage, one is about an alchemist. The revision I am working on is the Sp Ops series. I finished the first story and am maybe a third of the way through number two-which is 25,000 words long. The Alchemist series isn’t quite finished. The story I am working on very close to being done, but I may do one more to get the total word count up. I want each set to be at least 55,000 words, which I will E-publish.
Sixth of all:This segment is more a potpourri part. I read on one Q+ post that someone had sent out ten stories at once for the first time. That reminded me, I could use my vacation to send out stories. One per day even though I blew that already. Which means one day will have to be two. I also am doing critiques for critters.org. An online critiquing group. They now have five or more groups with different genres. I don’t send in stories anymore but I like doing the crits. This week and next I can catch up and get a little ahead. I’ve already done one.
And it took me a couple of days to finish this, so I am done with that Rod tale--it came in at over 4,000 words. And I am finished with Ch 10 of my E-novel so one more to go.
I think there was something else to say but I forget right now---if I recall there could be a PS. I haven’t had one for a while, but last month I almost added one, didn’t get to it though.
