Goals and progress toward them

stranger said:

Goal 1: Indie publish print version of my first book
Status: It's already published in ebook form so just need to figure out formatting and CreateSpace
Target: Next few weeks

Goal 2: Indie publish my second book as ebook.
Status: Has been content edited. Need to make improvements based on that and move onto copy editing phase and hire cover designer.
Target: Within 2 months

Goal 3: Indie publish third book as ebook
Status: Really crappy first draft done. Maybe 15% through second draft.
Target: Maybe October. Definitely by end of year.

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Completed two of my goals this weekend (they happened to line up.) My first book is available as paperback and I ordered a few copies for myself.

Second book released to Amazon. (Click on MYTH WEAVER in my signature for details.) I love how the cover art turned out. Next up is to try and get my book reviewed and hope that the reviews are good.

stranger said:

Completed two of my goals this weekend (they happened to line up.) My first book is available as paperback and I ordered a few copies for myself.

Second book released to Amazon. (Click on MYTH WEAVER in my signature for details.) I love how the cover art turned out. Next up is to try and get my book reviewed and hope that the reviews are good.

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I like the cover art for your two books in your sig. Good luck with them!

SBibb said:

I like the cover art for your two books in your sig. Good luck with them!

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merrihiatt said:

Way to go, David!!! Wishing you all good things.

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Thanks guys.

Beautiful covers, I agree.

tri

Tomorrow I'm reading and notating ten chapters of the first draft of my sequel. This is a written contract for myself!

Another chapter of Sealer's Promise is complete. I have two more and an epilogue left to write. I wrote over 5,000 words yesterday.

The artist doing the profile images for my author blog finished Sarena's picture. You can see her here. While my cover is going to be in a more real style of artwork, I wanted the profile images to reflect my love of gaming and its influence on my work. I think this image does a great job at showing Sarena and doing that.

Katallina said:

I wanted the profile images to reflect my love of gaming and its influence on my work.

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girl gamers are the most recent step in human evolution.

Nonsense, I was gaming before you were born (guessing here) on my little old Commordore 64. That was way back in the old days of Ultima and no sound cards. The avatars were little stick figures who could move up or down but not at an angle and the dungeons were...well, anyway, girl gamers have always been there or didn't you know any tom-boys who would climb trees with you and play baseball?

Just teasing, Robertbevan, so I hope you don't take it to mean I'm vexed with you.

EngineerTiger said:

Nonsense, I was gaming before you were born (guessing here) on my little old Commordore 64. That was way back in the old days of Ultima and no sound cards. The avatars were little stick figures who could move up or down but not at an angle and the dungeons were...well, anyway, girl gamers have always been there or didn't you know any tom-boys who would climb trees with you and play baseball?

Just teasing, Robertbevan, so I hope you don't take it to mean I'm vexed with you.

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evolution is a slow slow process.

seeing girl gamers just makes me happy. it's not something i'm used to.

Maybe you just haven't encountered many of us before. I come across quite a few at Gen-Con here in Indy every August. A few are even ancient relics like myself.

It makes me happy, too, Robert.

I have completed the big goal of approving my first audio book into final production. As a companion to that, I have finally gotten my topic up here at AW with regard to producing the audio book (sorry it took so long but I wanted to make sure I had experienced the bulk of the process so I could give you'all a fair evaluation of it).

Whew, now it's back to finishing Book VI in the series.

That's such a great premise, Merri. I hope your writing goes well.

I am currently looking at editors and want to have a website up by October. This is truly daunting as I have no technical experience. Looking at the amount of work ahead of me is quite nerve wracking. But nothing ventured,nothing gained!

I will be doing research on various webhosts. I am scrounging DA for an artist to do a decent and frightening cover.

I am also going to check Amazon rankings for Horror and see what the competition is. I intend to crush them.

Just kidding!

I'm glad mine isn't going under horror then

My goal is to finish my current round of editing (which is taking FOREVER) and to start working on my idea for a trailer.
Yeah, I know book trailers are supposed to be next to worthless but I had a simple idea that tickled my fancy and I thought it'd be worth a shot.

I am getting very close to actually putting my baby out there. 'Tis exciting.

Proofreading while you have a cold is brutal! Determined to finish today though.

Get better, sara. Don't force yourself if your sick.

tri

Thanks! I'm taking a Lemsip break. Mmmm, Lemsip!

Good luck everyone on your various projects.

Divination is "pretty much done." I just finished my 7th "final" revision. It's amazing that after going through the book 18 times+, I still catch "obvious" errors. :O I'm pretty sure there will still be one or three that still squeaked through.

I wrote "The End" over a year ago (early July 2011) and at the time, Divination was just under 73,000 words. It has undergone 18+ revisions and now sits at 91,000 words. Many of those original 73,000 words are no longer there. What a journey it's been.

I'm currently working on my description for Amazon and researching marketing/promotion.

One time I was in a final review meeting for a service manual with four engineers, the engineering manager, and the V.P. of engineering. We were there to do a final content check. Service manuals tend to be long, detailed, and schematic/block-diagram laden tombs designed to enable someone to perform maintenance on some gadget, engine, or cute little electronic device.

While the engineers discussed one of the schematics, I glanced down and..there it was. A typo in the third paragraph on the first page. Mind you, this document had been through seven previous meetings, multiple reviews by all present (one of whom prided himself on his ability to spot typos), and multiple proofings by yours truly. What was annoying to all of us was, after checking the original, that blessed typo had been there from the beginning and not one of us caught it.

In short, the human brain is very clever in that it will often interpret text to read what it thinks it should be, not what is actually there. So, don't lose heart, Wesley, but just assume that no document will ever be 100% free of error. With fiction, it's even worse because there you add in the grammatical errors with simple typos and punctuation goofs.

Whew, my own progress report - finally got through the Battle of Cambrai (WWI, November 1917). The AEF has arrived in France and I just have to wend my way through 1918 so I am a little over half-way through Book VI. Fortunately, most of the remaining chapters are in my head so things should flow a bit better through the remainder of the draft.

EngineerTiger said:

In short, the human brain is very clever in that it will often interpret text to read what it thinks it should be, not what is actually there. So, don't lose heart, Wesley, but just assume that no document will ever be 100% free of error. With fiction, it's even worse because there you add in the grammatical errors with simple typos and punctuation goofs.

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Thanks so much for the encouragement. It does bring me some solace (and nervousness) that many of the published books I read have a few typos and mistakes. Even with editing professionals and many sets of eyeballs reading the same thing multiple times, you are right; some mistakes will still get through, I suppose.

I'm starting to get some cold feet (about the novel and its current shape) and am questioning a chapter in my book if it should be where it is and if it should be in the novel at all. Probably will delay the process another week or so. Oh well, I obviously want to get this right.

Good luck everyone on whatever it is you are doing this day, and hope you continue to plug away to reach your goals.

Took the Amazon self-pub plunge. The water wasn't too deep 'cause I had assistance with formatting and cover. I'll know in the next day or two when it goes live, if I've got the mojo and it's going to look and read good. No details yet--I'll report back on the progress.

Tri