It's LIVE!

After spending most of yesterday on formatting, SONG OF STORM AND SHROUD went live on Amazon last night.  Of course... Amazon is the easiest to format and so it uploaded without a hitch.  Draft 2 Digital decided to be a picky bitch, but I finally got all the wrinkles hammered out and I uploaded the dratted thing everywhere before dinner last night.  

Today, I'll be formatting for print.  Woohoo.  So expect that to be available some time in the next couple of weeks.  (Takes time to get and approve the book for sale, doncha know.)

I did something with this book I've never done before.  I added graphics at the beginning of each chapter and a different graphic for the scene breaks.  I usually just laze out on the scene breaks and use some combination of symbols to denote a change of scenes, and I never do graphics for the chapter headings.  There's a little wyvern for the chapter breaks (looks like a dragon, but only two legs instead of four) and four little arrows for the scene breaks.  I'm pretty pleased.  All in all, the graphics added about 200,000 kilobytes to the file size, so I'll be losing a little bit of my royalties there, but it's worth it.  It's so SHINY.

Wouldn't you know it, though?  I was formatting and found a typo.  Aryl spelled Ayrl.  So, I went through the whole damn manuscript again.  And found a bunch more that I had missed AGAIN.  Aryl spelled wrong again, a couple other characters' names messed up, too.  Lucky for me, I had already added the names to my Word dictionary, so all the snafus had red squiggles underneath them.  The final draft was my SIXTH edit pass.  So, make it 7 passes on this sucker before it went live.  If there are errors now, they're masters of camouflage.  

You should've seen me yesterday, chain smoking cigarettes and talking to... err, yelling at... my computer.  D2D kept trying to put my wyvern at the end of the chapters instead of the beginnings.  I thought I had it fixed, but Chapter Two wouldn't behave.  Then I got Chapter Two fixed and all the other chapters went to hell.  I finally figured out it was trying to make my graphic be a Header instead of Normal.  I got that cleared up and it was then trying to put my chapter number on a different page entirely.  I had to switch it so the number came first and then the picture, which is a little odd, but hey, it works now, so I can deal with odd.  (The Amazon ebook has the pic first, so if you read it and have no idea what I'm talking about, you're on a Kindle.)

In the middle of the mess, I NEEDED a walk, so Hubs and I went for one.  I was burning off frustration, so the poor man kept having to tell me to slow down.  I hit the crest of that first hill panting like a sick dog, lemme tell ya.  But it burned the worst of it off, so when I got home, I went back at it and it worked FINALLY.  I probably spent 4 hours yesterday just on that annoying niggle.

Anyway, I'm toast.  If you're interested in epic fantasy, coming of age, action/adventure fiction, give the book a whirl.  It's $4.99, but that's not bad for a 110K word novel, eh?  And from what my beta readers told me, it's a fast read, too.  I hope you all enjoy it.

Done da done done, DONE

 After 34 days, 33 of which I worked, I am done with this round of edits on Song of Storm and Shroud.  

I know I said only yesterday that I was going to do another read through, but at this point, I'm not sure I can read the thing again any time soon.  Especially with my brain going 'You're done? Hey, cool... Now, write THIS!  And THAT!'  So, if you're ready to beta read SONG, let me know.  It shouldn't need more than proofing at this point.

At this time, I should really spend some time on blurbing.  (You know, the exercise in trying to take a 110K manuscript and squeeze it into a diamond that will attract buyers.)  Except my brain isn't braining right now.  I need a coffee IV.  And a time machine to go back to when the world wasn't all crazypants.

And I need to clean my house.  And I need a shower.  And I need to go to Wallyworld.  I've been remiss in all three.  (Okay, I've taken showers since I last cleaned or shopped, but still... yuck.)

Anyway... SONG or S3 or SoSaS or whatever nickname I use, is a big, beautiful, chonky book.  Chock full of excitement and adventure.  With a bunch of mages.  And a dragon.  Good versus evil.  Magic abounds.  It was fun to write and I hope it'll be fun for you to read.  It's a whole book without a real cliffhanger, but there are seeds laid for another book.  Not sure exactly where to start that one, but it'll come to me.  (Maybe that'll be a post for Wednesday.)

Have a great day!

Working on It

 I finished that round of edits on Untitled Fantasy on Saturday.  Right now, it's 368 pages long and just a hair under 108K words.  Publication day is getting closer.  Not sure when it will be, but it'll definitely in sight now.  (If you have a good pair of binoculars.  LOL)

So, that means I need to get moving on two things... 1) a cover, and 2) a title.

I started something the other day with regard to the cover.  Spent copious hours on it, then scrapped it.  Yesterday morning, I hit it again with all new images and I've got something.  It's not quite right yet, but I think I'm getting there. 

What I did worked like this... scour Morguefile for free images of lizards, found ones I thought could work as a dragon and saved those.  Open the files, erase all the background around the lizard.  Find wings that were the right size and orientation to fit said lizard.  Find teeth that were the right size and potentially the right orientation.  Take those and erase the backgrounds.  Cobble them together so they look like they actually belong on the same animal.

But wait... in my particular art program, when you save an image as a jpg, it gives the damn thing a white background.  So, I spent some extra time erasing the lizard's background again and then saving it as a mic file (Microsoft Image Composer).  Okay, so now my 'sprites' are happy and I can play with them.  Of course, once I get a beast cobbled together, I'll have to save it as a jpg so the sprites work together as one image, and then I'll have to erase the damn background again.  (Yes, there probably IS an easier way, but I haven't found it yet.  I suspect it lies within software I don't have, don't want to buy, and don't want to learn.)

The super easier, and also more expensive, way is to pay someone else to do this for me.  Umm, yah.  Umm, no.  I love my go-to cover artist, but she is super busy, as in like booking for next year, and I don't think epic fantasy is her bailiwick.  I could look for another artist, but I keep having flashbacks of the first cover for Wish in One Hand.  OMG, that was SOOOOO bad and an incredibly expensive lesson to learn.  Like with getting a haircut, I hate paying for bad service, so I do it myself.  If this cover is going to be bad, at least I didn't pay for it, eh?

Anyway, I think I have the setting image - all tweaked and ready to go - all I need now is a dragon.  I think it's a bearded dragon base with flying fox wings and snake teeth.  Right now, it looks like the weird mating of a gargoyle and that gremlin in Gremlins 2 who grew wings.  But I can work with that.

Oh, yeah, and #2... the title.  I've been playing with stuff in my head, trying to find something that makes me stand up and salute.  I thought up Mageborn... but it's still not right and of course, someone else is using it.  (And yes, I know, finding a title someone else HASN'T used isn't necessary, but I want what I want, so I'll try my damndest.)  Thinking about it now, maybe Mage Against the Shrouds... which could make the next book Mage Within the Shrouds.  That seems interesting...  Has that fantasy ring to it.  And it isn't already used.  Hmm.  Ooo, maybe Twins Against the Shrouds... eh, mage seems better.  

Okay, well, time to toddle off.  Work to do.  Calls to make.  

Anyway, as you can see, I'm working on it.  What are you working on these days?

Finished? Yeah, I Guess So

Once again, I wrote this and forgot to post it...  Sorry it's late.

----

Last night, I finished Untitled Fantasy.  At the time, I wasn't sure I was finished.  In fact, I said something on FB about it being finished unless my brain said otherwise while I was trying to fall asleep.  But my brain was quiet.  Well, other than starting the next book.  That didn't last long, though.  I told my brain to shut up and it did for a change.  Best night's sleep I've had in weeks.

Now I need to let the book marinate for a while.  A week.  Maybe two.  Maybe less.  The story will tell me when it's ready to be edited.  

I guess I really need to find a title for the damn thing.  Everything I think of sounds lame at this point.  No biggie.  Rumor Has It was 'Duke Noble 1' until it was time to make the cover.

From here, I need to wade into the book and decorate.  It needs paint and furniture.  Or frosting and fondant.  Whatever metaphor suits you.  

Anyway, now I can relax a bit.  This story I started in 2011 is finally done.  I'm pleased with it overall.  It ain't perfect, but its imperfections can be sanded away and polished up.  Yay for edits.

Oh, here's another song for you.  This one really speaks to the muse for me.  Bottom of the River by Delta Rae.  Watch the video.  It's totally cool.  I think she's supposed to be a witch being dragged out of her house in the middle of the night and taken to the river.  But she gets them in the end.  Hehe.  Fun.

Rolling Along

After spending several days last week NOT writing, I changed one little thing about what I'd already written and the floodgates opened wide.  I'm over 12K now.  Yay.  1900 words Monday night.  1800 words Tuesday night.  Woohoo.  Keep 'em coming.  

I have no set date for this to be finished, so I have no way of knowing when it'll be edited sufficiently to get it into the hands of readers or, further down the road, the hands of the book buying public.  But I'm writing, so that's something.  It's the end of April.  I finish the writing by the end of May, edit in June, get it to proofers and back in July... August maybe?

I read something yesterday that Rex Stout - the author of the Nero Wolfe mysteries - took about 45 days to write a book, usually during the winter.  If I could do that, that'd be great.  

As it is, I'm happy to be rolling along.  If the words are flowing out of my fingers, then all's right with the writing.

Updates and Junk

The second pass of edit notes is done for Duke Noble P.I.: Rumor Has It.  This round, I ended up with 12 pages of notes.  And I've already entered 8 of those.  I'll enter those last 5 suckers and make one more pass for typos.  Then I can send it off to readers definitely by the end of the week.  The waiting is nearly over.  Yay.

I really need to get to work on a cover now.  Gah.  I actually have an idea in my head of how I want it to look.  The question now is whether I can pull it off.

And I need to do a blurb.  I have no ideas there.  

But I have an idea for the second book in this series.  Derp.

This book... which will hopefully be part of a series... is a throwback to the old noir crime novels.  It's set in a time before computers and to-go coffee.  When people still smoked without worrying about being harassed for it.  When men could still ogle a woman and she took it as a compliment.  

I hope I got it right.  

Anyway, I enjoyed writing it.  I hope people enjoy reading it.  

Last night, as a reward for finishing the edit pass, I started reading Uptown Blues: Herbert and Melancon #5 by Seth Pevey.  I'm kind of addicted to this series and Seth knows it, so he messages me when he's got a new book out.  Unfortunately, I was in the middle of the edit pass, so I couldn't start reading it immediately like I usually do.  But I sure as hell got my buns in gear to make that edit pass go quickly.  ;o)

So far, so awesome.  That boy can write.

And that's where I'm at.  How are things with you?

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.

Out the Other Side of Edit Hell

I did it.  I'm done.  And it's off to the proofers.  Those last twelve manuscript pages wound up garnering 2 full pages of notes.  I think I fixed everything.  We'll see.

Oh, I'm sure I'll have missed something.  A comma here.  A missing word there.  Little things.  I hope.  The big things, like plot holes, should have all been ferreted out and eradicated.  :fingers crossed:

In the end, this edit pass ended up with 20 pages of notes.  It took me 10 days - 9 of them in a row - to complete.  Right now, the book is 189 pages and 63785 words.  (Like I said, manuscript pages don't equal published pages.  When I format, I'll change the font and its size, paragraph spacing, sentence spacing, etc. and I don't format until the book is done-done.)

It's now in the hands of the proofers, so I can take a deep breath and chillax a little.  

Last night, after I sent it off, I played a little poker and read most of the rest of the book I was reading, and watched a whole TV show without working through the commercials and then missing stuff after the commercials were over because I forgot to unmute.  Then I went to bed and didn't lay there thinking about the book.  (I still laid there thinking, but it wasn't about the book.)

Today, I plan to not think about the book.  It'll be my day off.  Of writerly pursuits.  I have life stuff to do - like dusting and vacuuming.  If I feel like it, I might go fishing.  If I don't have pay-job stuff to do, that is.

Tomorrow, I'll figure out what I'm going to do while this book is out of my hands.  Work on one of my many unfinished books?  Definitely write the blurb.  Maybe some marketing stuffs.  And a sale or two. 

So, here I am, out the other side of edit hell.  :blinkblink:  It's kinda bright out here. 

Update and Stuffs

Yesterday, I finished this phase of edits for Cinder Ugly.  It was the phase where I read the book on my Kindle, making notes along the way.  I ended up with 9 pages worth.

Today, I will begin inputting those notes.  Once that's done, I'll send the book to my Kindle again... lather, rinse, repeat.  

I hope to have the book ready to send to readers for proofing by the first week of October.  Should be doable.  Depending on schedules and my own gumption, the hope is to have this book in readers' hands before Halloween.  :fingers crossed:

In case I didn't post this before or you forgot, here's the cover:

I love how kickass Jeni looks here.

At some point, I need to sit down and write the blurb for this.  Maybe after I get this round of notes input.

Anyway, progress is being made.  Things are happening.  Certainly not on the timeframe I envisioned at the start of the year, but we can't sit around pining for what was lost during this chaos.  Moving forward is the only answer I have right now.

Onward!

And Now It's Done

In case you don't follow The Writing Spectacle (and why not, I might ask - I'm there Tues, Thurs, Sat, & Sun... sheesh), I finished Cinder Ugly's first draft Saturday night.

This book has been a slog...  Stepping into the wayback machine, I see the first time I emailed myself a copy of the work I was doing on this book was July 19th, 2019.  I also see I restarted it on January 3rd.  I fiddled with it some in February, March, and May, then I fell down.  The rest of it was written this month, during the inaugural AuGoWriMo.

And now it's done.  59789 words of occasional awesomeness and occasional dreck.  I like what I wound up doing with the ending.  I'll fix the dreck in the middle during edits.  I have an idea for a new beginning that I'll play with, too.

I took yesterday off of writing.  My first day off in 23 days.  I hope it doesn't become a habit.  Writing every day is good for me. 

Anyway, I'd like to have this out into the world by the end of October, but that depends on editing speed, potential issues, other people's schedules, and the world in general.  I'll be working toward that goal, and that's the best I can tell you right now.

Thanks for all your support through this and everything else.  :hugs:

Progress Report 8/5/20

Hello and good morning to you all.

It's the fifth of the month and I've already done 5 days of what I had originally called AugNoWriMo, but I like Silver's suggestion better, so it's now AuGoWriMo - August Go Write Month.

Here's how it's played out so far:

7/31 - 1347
8/1 - 1471
8/2 - 818
8/3 - 887
8/4 - 642

For a total of 5165 words added to Cinder Ugly.  Yay.  Remember, no judging here.  Words every day.  That's it.

And I'm not sure if what I'm laying down is any good.  Also, no judging there.  They're words assembled in some cogent form and editable later.  Not 5165 instances of VERY.  LOL  The story is moving forward toward the climax.  That's all that's important right now.  Whether they're in any shape for other humans to read can't be a consideration.

As an aside, I've heard critics of this style of fast writing (or dirty drafting, if you prefer) question the quality of the writing.  Quality sacrificed in favor of quantity.  Well, duh.  This is NOT good writing and I wouldn't want anyone to see it - not even my BWFs*.  It's supposed to be dirty and gross and messy.  That's what editing is for, silly pants people.  You can't write a book this fast and hope it will be of publication quality when you're finished.  Derp.  Books written the long, slow way still need editing, too.  Perhaps not as much, but the first draft of anything isn't perfect for anyone.

Anyway, progress is being made.  When I don't feel like writing, which has been the last three days, I do it anyway.  Those days I don't make a huge amount of progress, but I make progress. 

How are things going for you?

*Best Writing Friends

Getting Out of My Own Way

As you know, Bob... Umm, uhh...  As you know, I was having a difficult time getting back into writing Cinder Ugly.  I was stuck at 19K words and just couldn't seem to get over that hump.  So, once again, I set the damn thing aside so I could focus on editing Ugly and the Beast.  As the end of editing approached, though, the fear of what the hell would happen when I sat down to write again rolled over me like a herd of frightened buffalo.

What's a gal to do? 

Well, I'm not sure I did this consciously, but I got the hell out of my own way.  I sidestepped the herd.  When I sat down to write again, I did NOT go back and read what I'd already written.  I didn't check to make sure I had everything in line.  Which is good because I already knew I'd backed myself into the corner of boring and meh, so going back over that crap again wasn't doing me any good.

At first, the writing was slow and kind of crappy.  Then I hit a stride and the fingers were flying.  I pounded out almost 3K words and I felt really good about them.  Then I had a flash of insight for what would happen next and I've been writing on that ever since.  To the tune of around 7K words so far this week.  Woohoo.

Sure, I'll have to go back and fix a bunch of stuff in that muddy part.  But that's what edits are for.

I have to remind myself of that fact more often than I'd like to admit.  Write crap, edit it later.  Everything can be fixed in edits.  Except blank pages.

So, as always, getting out of my own was the trick.  I wish I'd figured that out sometime in the last year, so I would've gotten more work out, but better late than never, eh?

Right now, Cinder Ugly is sitting at around 26K words.  Onward and upward.  The plan is to have this first drafted by the end of the month, edited in April, and out not too awfully long after I get Ugly and the Beast into the world.  :fingers crossed:

Feeling good about it all.  Yay.

Sisyphean Times

This week, I'm feeling a bit like Sisyphus.  If you're not familiar with the dude, the Greek gods punished him by making him roll a boulder up a hill and every time he got to the top, the boulder would roll back down to the bottom.  Gods are kind of assholes that way.

While this editing thing isn't exactly like that, because I don't have to start over, I do feel like I'm taking two steps forward and one step back.  Like a couple days ago, I started out the day with 45 pages left to edit.  I edited 15 pages and when I was done, I had 35 pages left to edit.  45-15=35?  As I said on FB, edit math is not like real math. 

Despite it being frustrating, it's a good thing.  It means I'm adding substance to the book as I go along.  I mean, let's be honest, I write pretty emaciated drafts.  Poor things need meat.  Not fat, muscle. 

When I started this edit of UatB, it was 56K words.  As of last night, it's creeping up on 62K.  Things are richer and fuller now.  So yay.

I have about 21 pages left to edit and then a read through.  Well, 21 pages if I don't find a spot that needs muscle.  We'll see how it goes.  And if I've got to spend a little more time rolling that boulder up the hill, I will.  I still have 4 days to reach my goal of having this ready to go by the end of the month.  The end is in sight. 

And at least I don't feel like the boulder is going to roll over the top of me and smush me flat.

How's it going with you? 

No Pushing or Kicking

Well, we're past the halfway point on NaNo.  And I am nowhere near halfway through the 50K I'm supposed to be writing this month. 

However...

I've written every day except two and those days I was having back issues which meant prolonged time in this chair was not going to happen. 

The book, which lay forgotten for 6 years, will be written all the way to THE END - if not during this month, then before the end of the year.

I'm feeling more like a writer than I have for the majority of this year.

Now, I could be kicking myself mightily for the failure up to this point.  I mean, if you look at the word count thingie on The Writing Spectacle you'll see more red days than black days.  But kicking myself is unproductive.  Instead, I'd rather celebrate the days where there's a number higher than zero and call all of them wins.

If this keeps up, which I'm going to try hard to make sure it does, then I might actually have some stuff to publish in 2020.  Like this fantasy I'm writing.  And the other two books in the Sleeping Ugly series.  I could actually write SCIU #4 and Dennis Haggarty #3.  You know, stuffs like that.

But I'm not pushing myself there either.  It's nice to look ahead, as long as it doesn't hold you back.  Right now, I'm just happy to be writing again.

Stop Being So Hard on Yourself

Friday slipped away from me entirely and that's okay because I've decided to stop being so hard on myself. 

So what if I didn't get a blog post written.  Nobody died.  My regular blog visitors didn't say 'well, no Friday post, so I'm never going back there'.  Life proceeded as normal.

And so what if I didn't write every day last week.  It's not a crushing blow. 

And so what if when I did write, I didn't always get a lot of words down.  Sure, when the words are hot, I can do about 1000 words an hour.  A couple days there, I didn't get more than a few hundred down.  Oh, well.  I'm still writing and the book's still progressing.

That's the point there, isn't it?  I'm writing and the book is progressing.  It's more than I can say for the majority of this year. 

Ditch the negatives.  Focus on the positives.

Sure, it ain't always easy.  I have to keep reminding myself.  Negative thoughts creep in and I find myself falling back into the gloom.  Then I have to remember to kick those thoughts back into their box where they belong.  And to stop being so hard on myself.

It's a one day at a time thing. 

Oh, there are definitely times when I need to be hard on myself.  Things need to get done and I'm the only one to do them.  I'll kick my own ass when I have to.  But I don't have to right now.  What I have to do is write.  Plenty of time for ass-kicking later.  Right now I'm still bruised from the extensive ass-kicking I was doing with nothing to show for it. 

So, last night I wrote like 500 words.  Yay! 

Now it's your turn.  Tell me something positive.  It's the first step toward not being so hard on yourself.

Update

First off, I dragged my gumption away from the extended vacation it has been on for the majority of the year.  :cue fans cheering loudly:  "Hip, hip, hurr... meh.  'Bout time, lady."

Right now, I'm in the middle of accomplishing the edits I wrote down back in March.  I've gone through all the notes and done the easier ones.  Yesterday, I went back through the notes and typed up the bigger, deeper edits this book requires.  It's about a page and a half of typed notes.

I started tackling them last night. 

Little things that take more effort are on there.  Like verifying what floor Jeni's apartment is on.  (The eighth, btw.)  And verifying Jeni's mom's name is the same throughout - apparently I couldn't decide on Marjorie or Maude, so there were instances of both.  (It's Maude.)  At one point, I mentioned that there was a storm brewing, but I never actually made it rain.  That's a 'fix or delete' situation.  I fixed that.  I think.  Might need to go back and layer in some more rainy stuff.

Some of the things I have to verify are already written down in my 'series bible'.  (That's the file you keep so that certain things stay the same throughout - like names, hair colors, etc.)  Some of it, I never put in there, so I have to go back through Sleeping Ugly, trying to find the information.  (The ages of Josh's kids, for instance.)

Once again, I'm checking the easier stuff off and making a big O around stuff I need to go back over again - the bigger stuff and the more tedious stuff (like 'find and replace THAT').  When I go through the list of easier stuff, I'll go back and hit the harder stuff again. 

And when all of that is done, I'll set it aside for a bit.  I'll write Cinder Ugly.  Then I'll go back and re-read through UatB and make another round of notes, this time making sure that what I wrote in all three books is constant. 

This isn't a quick process, but it gets the job done.  Maybe once I get all this done, I'll be ready to send this off to my AWE (Awesome Wonderful Editor) and start the process for CU.  Again, I hope to be able to release these things before the end of the year, but I ain't promisin' anything.  All I have right now is hopes and gumption.

Random Release Observations

In case you missed it, Sleeping Ugly released late Saturday night.   Here are some observations I made this time around...

1)  Sleeping Ugly's cover got washed out a little on Amazon.  It's way more electric than that.

2)  I got a ranking in Australia long before I got one in the US.  But I didn't make any Aussie sales before I had US ones, so I'm guessing someone downunder has KU and follows me.  G'day, mate.

3) I didn't have a 'release day'.  I had a release night.  I slept through most of it.

4) After I got the book uploaded for release, all I wanted was a nap.  No excitement.  No champagne.  No woohoo.  Just a nap.  I settled for no nap because it was almost dinner time and then I went to bed early.  Party like a rockstar.  Woo.

5) Formatting is easy once you have it down.  I have a checklist.  And it doesn't take long.  I spent maybe an hour formatting SU for epub.  I'll spend another hour or so today formatting for print*.

6) Amazon does not like Viner Hand font, which is what the title is supposed to be.  (It is Viner Hand in the PDF version I made, but I'm only passing that out to a few people.)  But it substituted something nice, so no big thing.  I could force it by using a graphic instead of actual font, but meh.  Amazon takes a penny for larger files.  I want my penny more than I want a cool font.

7)  If I put my head down and work like a husky pulling the sled by himself at the Iditarod, I can accomplish things and meet deadlines.  But it's tiring as hell. 

*In case you missed the news, Createspace might be going away within the next couple months.  I'll be shifting my books from there to Amazon's print thingie as soon as I can.

Milestones

If you've friended me on FB (and still bother to follow along), you might've seen that I officially rolled over 2000 books sold this morning.  So, I'm celebrating.  Woohoo.

Yeah, it took 3 years of publishing to sell that many copies.  Yeah, it's good in a way.  It depends on the perspective.  If you're a traditionally published author, maybe that's not so woohoo for you.  :shrug:  I am not now, nor will I ever be, traditionally published.  If you've had a lot of money to throw at advertising, maybe 2K is a low number in your world.  I haven't had that option thus far, so I'm feeling pretty good about it. 

Sure, I wish it was more.  I sold a thousand books my first year.  By that projection, one might think I'd bw passing the 3K mark right now.  Actually, I had hoped it would be exponential and something more along the lines of 1K the first year, 2K the second, 3K the third, so I'd be at the 6K milestone right now.  Hopes and expectations are good, but they're not reality. 

Still, it's a milestone.  And worthy of a minor celebration.  If I drank, I'd toast myself.  Instead, I'll just have some coffee and get ready to get back to work after my week off. 

How do you celebrate the milestones in life? 

Chicken. Head. Off.

It's pre-release week.  So, basically, I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off.  Not literally, of course, but in my head, that's about what it feels like. 

My last to-do list was a full page of little notebook paper.  Right now, all but two things have been crossed off.  I started a new to-do list - moved those two items and added two more.

I'd forgotten how much stuff has to be done around a release. 

Last night, I got WHTF formatted for print.  Then I went through all of the Once Upon a Djinn ebooks and adjusted the back matter so they all have WHTF info on them along with links.  Meanwhile, I found an error in the print copy of Up Wish Creek which needs to be corrected in case anyone should want to buy a print copy.  (Not likely, but still.)

I also firmed up and paid for some advertising last night.  And contacted my cover artist with a page count for WHTF so she can do the paperback cover. 

Today, I have to work on bookmarks, updating the back matter for all my other books, more advertising stuff, work on the Createspace stuff for WHTF...  Argh.

It'll all get done.  It has to.  And since there's no one else to do it but me, I guess I'd better quit ma bitchin' and get to work.

What are all y'all up to today?

Crutch Words... The Invasion

Hi All.  I know I've talked about crutch words before.  Well, here we go again.  With data.

This is the list of crutch words I've compiled for my own work.  The numbers are how many I had when I started weeding / how many I had left.  I skipped the * ones (unless JC says something on the next pass about them - like they're really irritating).

that 572/162
like 314/110
said 283/132
think 132/44
thought 156/48
though 39*
knew 92/38
know 233/82
wonder 31*
still 110/29
took 32/12
now 48*
realize 29/11
which 103/47
tilted head 15/6
shook head 50/25
by the time 5/4
shrug 15/10
felt 44/18
look 139/29

These are the ones I have to do today so I can get this out to JC:
really 88
seem 42
just 75
even 138

I compiled this from words my editor has pointed out over the course of several books and ones I've noticed on my own. She points them out or I notice them, they go on the list.

It's taken working over the course of 4 days to weed these out of a 63K manuscript.  Of course, by weeding, I mean deleting, rewording, replacing, etc..  And I didn't eradicate the entirety of any word because that would just be weird.

As always, I hope I've made this better.  JC will let me know if I screwed anything up on her next pass.  :fingers crossed:

As a reader, what words really stand out and irritate you after you've seen them over and over?

Last bit, I might be sending out ARCs of this to select people.  If you're interested, let me know in the comments.