Goals and progress toward them

Glad you're feeling better, Merri.

I've been swamped at work (funny how the Engineers "rediscover" my existence just when I think I'll have some breathing room) but have managed to get through a sticky patch on Book VI of the series. Not as far as I wanted to be but I also know that after muddling around for a few weeks on one section, I'll gallop through several others so it seems to average out.

I did hear from my narrator and he is still on target to finish the audio book version of Book I in mid-June. I haven't posted much about it since the production is in his hands and there's not much I can do at this phase. Once I get it back, I'll start a post about my experiences with ACX since I know some of the rest of you are curious about the audio book format and we haven't had many threads about it yet. I just didn't want to start until I was further along in the process and had something to tell you'all.

Keep writing, everyone. Back to Chapter 5 for me!

@ Merri: Glad to hear that you are well. That must have been quite a scary situation.

I've been in a bit of an awkward situation ... The idea for a series of fairy tales came to me and I've been jotting all of that down like mad. I really need to push it away and get back to my edits, but at the same time, I'm not silly enough to turn away good stories that I can get to once I do get Moon Dance out to some betas.

Still no news from the cover designer ... So not use to working with another person in this way. The silence is driving me half insane.

My blogging friends must be scratching their heads about now. Everything I'm reading is slipping through me like it's made of sand, likely since I'm editing and outlining. Anyone else find it hard to read and write?

Anyway, time to get back to outlining and editing. I need to start working on edits before I let myself get back to the outlines (I have eight stories planned and I'm having a blast building the world, setting up each pair of characters' plot (they're romances) tying things together, etc.). I hope everything continues to go well for everyone.

Well, took a huge plunge today and applied for a team writer position in a 12-18-volume SFF series, that is epic in scale and heavy on world-building and atmosphere. A long review process, and the competition is staggering, but I threw my hat in the ring and will see what becomes of it. Good to great per-book wages, similar to what a packager would provide. No cost, just writing multiple books and meeting stringent deadlines. In other words, working your frickin ass off for the next few years.

I'm all there. I need bookoo bucks right now. Everything crossed except my eyes--I'll need them to read the acceptance or rejection letter.

tri

triceretops said:

Well, took a huge plunge today and applied for a team writer position in a 12-18-volume SFF series, that is epic in scale and heavy on world-building and atmosphere. A long review process, and the competition is staggering, but I threw my hat in the ring and will see what becomes of it. Good to great per-book wages, similar to what a packager would provide. No cost, just writing multiple books and meeting stringent deadlines. In other words, working your frickin ass off for the next few years.

I'm all there. I need bookoo bucks right now. Everything crossed except my eyes--I'll need them to read the acceptance or rejection letter.

tri

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That is really COOL! I hope you get it. I know the feeling about getting money--

Merri, I'm so glad you are feeling better Here's to reaching your July 1st deadline

I've been on vacation and didn't get to write on Sun, Mon, or Tuesday. I wrote 1,000 words today.

Al Stevens said:

My WIP goal is to scale a wall I've hit. Five suspects, and I don't know whodunit. I haven't been able to outfit any of them with sufficient motive to bump off five young women. I believe in the believable, and nothing I've come up with can be believed without a huge suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. So I keep whittling away at subplots until it comes to me.

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Goal achieved. I was scraping rust off the opening when I found a character (with a really cool name) whose mention had no purpose except to introduce another character's involvement in the story. I thought about the unimportant character for a while, wrote a bit about him, and found my bad guy, who, as it turns out, can have something in common with the victims that nobody else knows about. All I had to do was give him a different profession.

That was today. Tomorrow I have to work him into the rest of the story.

This calls for a drink. I was hoping something would.

That's real progress, Al. Congratulations!

I love minor characters. They can add so much when they suddenly emerge into the light. Had one like that myself who moved from a two-liner to a strong secondary character.

Glad you got around the corner, Al.

I'd like to up my sales to at least 10 per book per week. I'm running a few promotions this week and trying to increase my readership. I also want to hit 500 followers on my FB page this week.

Merrihiatt--that's real progress you're making there, and I'm a wee bit jealous.

Just lots of good things happening lately; I'm a little overwhelmed by it all: won a publisher novel contest for my latest YA, offering pub and an advance. Of course I had to tell my agent; it was a fluke sub on my part.

My new werewolf thriller should break any day now. I have yet to see the artwork, but everything is finished and ready to hit the online stores. It's called "The Wolfen Strain."

Have a R & R from a publisher as a result of an agent sub, so this one is very important, and I'm waiting for the re-write outline. Funny this is, my MFC and the acquiring editor are both paraplegic, so this book could really benefit from some personal insight and authenticity. It's my adult thriller, and I'd thought this book had gone its course on the agent sub train.

As stated before, I put in my app to become a team writer on a 12 to 18-volume SFF series, and this is very close to a book packaging deal but only for multiple books, and the pay is mid-line to good. Still waiting on the app request.

I'm promoting my latest SF release and becoming more and more proud of its rank and sales--it went from dead stop to flank speed, and now is leveling out in a nice and steady sales wise performance. I expect the second prequel tie-in short story to appear on Amazon any day now, the artwork and formatting is finished.

I'm really hankering to write some new words on something but haven't decided yet. It could be a SF sequel, more short tie-ins, or a sequel to the prize winning YA story. This will all be determined in the next three weeks or so. I expect I will be tied up in the revision for the thriller, and that alone will keep me at the desk.

ETA: Can't believe my blog is doing this well. It's fairly new but I expect the page views to eclipse (in four months) my stupid little website, and the website has been up for six years. I can't figure out why I hadn't started a blog in the first place.

Tri

New goal: Finish my WIP with Scrivener. I completed porting the Word documents. The book has several plot threads that I've been writing independently, and it was getting difficult to keep them straight. I'm hoping Scrivener will ease that process. I'm finding some deficiencies in it, however, which make it less than ideal as a host for a single manuscript with multiple format destinations. First impressions.

@ Al: Scrivener is my God. I couldn't edit my book without it. I've heard Word is vital for formatting and I need to get it for that, but for actually taking all the balls of yarn in my head and untangling them, Scrivener saves my sanity.

@ Tri: Good luck with the SFF application! I hope things go well for you.

As for me? I have ten more chapters left to edit and I *finally* know what I need to do for to make the climax of my book work. I've been stumped on it for ages and knew I didn't get it the way I needed it in my first draft. So I'm pretty happy right now.

Goals: Keep editing Moon Dance. Keep outlining the books for Tales of Ellithica. Start brainstorming for Moon Shadow. (Already have some ideas but I should start filing them.)

@tri, good work all round. Your blog looks great, I tweeted a link to it. I would recommend putting your name in the banner, I had to look around awhile to figure it out.

(Edit: That reminds me I have to bite the bullet and start a blog sometime soon.)

I wish I was making as much progress as everyone else seems to be, I've been floundering around on my last round of edits for no good reason lately.

@tri, just reading some of your blog posts and you mentioned that one of your books, Gate Walker, is doing badly due to bad cover art and title. I'm not a fan of the art, but why do you think/know the title is bad?

Yesterday I finished the text of my non-fiction book, The Candy Store Generation. The count came in at 40,500. Now on to the graphs and figures. I think I have all of them done but one, but a couple of them need improvement, and I need to get a couple of better quality ones from the Congressional Budget Office.

My blog tour starts next week! All my guest posts are in, and the pre-reviews (is that a legitimate term?) are starting to trickle in on Goodreads. So far, they're generally very positive... it's always exciting when a reviewer invokes the Baby Jesus . I'm a little nervous about next week, since more than twenty bloggers will be reviewing the book.

I finished the second draft of my sequel over the weekend, and plan to get a few more rounds of revisions in before I send it to my editor, hopefully in another month. I'm hoping to have that one released by early this fall.

Keeping my fingers crossed that your tour is successful, oaktree.

stranger said:

@tri, just reading some of your blog posts and you mentioned that one of your books, Gate Walker, is doing badly due to bad cover art and title. I'm not a fan of the art, but why do you think/know the title is bad?

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Stranger, thanks for the name suggestion on the blog. I think I know how to fix that where my name will be included.

Well, the book is a sweet paranormal romance about a girl who can walk through the gates of time, and I go into great depth about how she does this, more than any other time-travel book that's out there, I believe. The present cover looks obviously photo-shopped and way too erotic. I mean, the guy looks like he's about to drop his pants, and she appears as a ghostly wisp. Just about all the other paranormal titles from this publisher have done really well, some of them hitting sales in the multiple thousands. Mine, for reasons that truly escape me, flat-lined almost immediately. It held sixth place in rank out of 200 books for six months and got rave four and five-star reviews, plus author interviews.

I can only blame or attribute the weak sales to my lousy title (my fault) and this artwork that doesn't seem to rep or portray the content. That's why I think I have an A-one story with an F- presentation.

Also, I believe the recent lowering to $.99 has stigmatized it, possibly conveying some type of desperation or even poor quality.

tri

merrihiatt said:

8,534/45,000 words written on Spring Love.

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It is now confirmed--I am jealous.