New Releases by Cedar Sanderson

Breaking from the schedule, today, I'm bumping up the signal for a new release I read at the end of 2020 (you know, a couple weeks ago) - The East Witch by Cedar Sanderson (no relation).  It was a helluva good read with great characters, an awesome plot, harrowing adventure, fun mythology, and a little romance.  

Click the link and snag yourself a copy.

Also, for the younger set, there's a children's book that Cedar illustrated coming out 1/31/21 - The Hungry Werewolf.  (She's a woman of many talents.)  At the time of this posting, it's #136 in Children's Scary Stories.  Not sure if it's actually scary or not, but I was totally into this stuff when I was a kid.

When you're a werewolf, you make your own friends...
Step inside the covers and meet the monsters so creepy and so adorable that you may want to invent a new word to describe them! We like "creepydorable" but you could come up with your own.
Inside you'll find blobs, a mad scientist, and an awful lot of bats, but we invite you to begin at the beginning, with just...
One Hungry Werewolf.

I haven't read the above, but I assume if Cedar's associated with it, it's got some pretty good stuffs in there.  Pre-order a copy for your little reader of scary tales today.  

Enjoy!

Another First Draft

Last night, I finished the first draft of Duke Noble: Consequences...  I'm still not sure about that title... I like the end.  I like the book overall.  I know it's any unholy mess and will need a lot of editing, but I'm okay with that.  The point is it's done.  The first draft word count is 51280.

Tomorrow, I'll email it to my Kindle and drag out the notebook and the red pen to start the editing process.  We'll see how that goes.  I'm not promising anything.  Frankly, with the way the world is, I can't promise anything.  But I would like to have this out to people mid-February and published by the end of March.  :fingers crossed:

I've written all but 7 days since 12/8/20, so I'm taking today off.  From writerly pursuits at least.  I'll be around here somewhere doing something.

Jackals

Just now as I was commenting on a friend's blog, I started thinking... and I think there only a couple ways to go right now - either a person writes like mad to keep the jackals away or the jackals overwhelm them to a point where they can't write.

I was in the latter place for most of this year.  Obviously, that wasn't working for me.  Sales sucked.  My writing suffered.  And the jackals were never satisfied.

Now I'm in the former place.  I think.

Anyway, I'm writing.  I'm climbing toward the climax of this novel as fast as my little fingers can take me.  Last night, I cranked out over 3100 words and rolled over 40K words by a good margin.  That's the most I've written in a single sitting since forever.  The best I did last year was 2400+ words last May, when I forced myself to sit down and work on Cinder Ugly.  (That lasted like 3 days and then I fell apart again.)

Of course, I'm throwing things out there I never intended to.  There's no basis for it.  There's no groundwork laid ahead of time.  It's a hot mess.  But it fits in the grand scheme.  I'll have to go back and edit the earlier stuff so it makes sense.  Hey, that's what edits are for.

I feel good about this.  In a spot where I feel good about little else.  Will the rest of the world meet Duke Noble with the same excitement?  :shrug:  I can't worry about the rest of the world right now.  I can only worry about this.  And write like mad to keep the jackals at bay.

Not sure what'll happen when this book is finished.  I'll dive into edits and hope that works the same as writing like mad.  Then I''ll work on publishing.  Then?  Maybe Duke will talk to me some more.  Maybe Dennis Haggarty will put his foot down.  Maybe the gang at the SCIU will demand their place again.  

Whether you're pushing to keep the jackals away or hiding from the little bastards, it's okay.  We all do what we have to do to survive right now.  Hang in there as best you can.  :hugs:

Wrapping up 2020

Whew, I made it out of 2020 alive and with my sanity intact... mostly.  Time to wrap that puppy up and shove it into storage.  Here's how my writerly year shook out...

I wrote 73044 new words last year.  For the most part, that was finishing Cinder Ugly and writing Duke Noble .  I also laid some words down on several other books - another SCIU novel, the Arthurian UF thing, a quirky thing, and an attempt to start a sequel series to the model books.

I edited and published two books last year - Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly.  That brought my total number of published novels to 15.

In sales, it was not a good year.  I sold a grand total of 65.39 books for a whopping $79.89 - an average of $1.49 a book. The only book I didn't sell any copies of was Project Hermes.  :sigh:  Of course, I didn't do any paid advertising last year for the nine free or sale things I did.  It was all on me and I didn't have the heart to do much marketing.  

I had five freebies.  I moved 359 books that way. 

Goals for the new year?  Well, I'm trying to take it day by day.  Lord knows my goals for last year didn't pan out.  And I quote: "If I can swing that, I'd like to see Ugly and the Beast and Cinder Ugly hit your ereaders in 2020.  I'd also like to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty at least written, if not out there in public."  I did get UatB and CU out to the world.  As for the other two... umm, no.

This year, I will get Duke Noble's first book finished and out there.  Yes, I hope he will be a series.  No, I have no clue where I'll go after this one is in the can.  I still want to get another SCIU and another Dennis Haggarty out there.  Then there's the idea I had for more from Jeni Braxxon.  We'll see what happens.  I'm not promising anything but Duke at this point in time.

Other than that, the hope is to just keep plodding along and not let whatever happens this year derail me as much as last year's events derailed me.  

How was your 2020?  Do you have plans and goals for this year?  What are they?