It’s been awhile since I’ve given an update on my writing so I thought I would do one now. The two projects receiving the lion’s share of my attention are:
Walk Through Fire – A prequel novella which focuses exclusively on the Hell Patrol
- The cover is done.
- I still need to write the description/blurb, but that shouldn’t take too long. I probably won’t concern myself with it until March.
- My editor currently has the actual manuscript. I hope to have his comments back within a week or so. Other than quickly reviewing them for major structural changes, I won’t begin the next set of revisions until March. I’m doing this for two reasons:
- Given that the story is much shorter than a full length novel (a little over 38K words as of the last draft), I know I can make the changes fairly quickly and still get it ready for the April 1, 2012 target date.
- I really don’t want to stop working on Book Two right now to do revisions…and that leads me to...
- Recently, I’ve been playing around with alternate titles to this book and I feel pretty confident it won’t be called Divide and Conquer at publication. However, until I decide on a new name, it will have to do.
- No cover yet which isn’t an issue since I’m shooting for a late summer release.
- No blurb for the same reason.
- I wrote all of the chapters relating to the Cadonian storyline first and after a very quick couple of edits, Leah is reading them over and giving me her initial thoughts on structure, plot, character, and so on in these chapters.
- I’m several chapters into the Heshan plot. I’m a pretty focused and determined writer, but to help me finish this plotline a bit sooner, I’m participating in a writing challenge several authors on www.kindleboards.com are doing. The goal is to write 60K words in the 29 days of February. Even though the words don’t count toward my goal, I actually started the challenge on January 28th, holding myself up to the same standard of about 2100 words a day at minimum. So far I’m averaging over 2200 words a day. If I maintain that pace, it would give me about 73K words by February 29th. I originally estimated that it would take around 70K words to write the Heshan plot (shorter than the Cadonian plot), so I hope I can either finish or come really close to finishing the first draft within the month. Then, I’ll become an editing machine in order to stay on pace for the goals I set at the beginning of the year.
On a side note, I’ve been looking at a couple of older short stories I wrote last year. My plan is to revise/improve them and then submit them to magazines (both online and print). I’m really hoping at least one will get accepted. If not, I guess I’ll hold on to them for awhile longer and either include them in a future collection or perhaps, post them for free on my website. We shall see.
I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. :)
So you're doing all this as well as holding down a regular 9-5? Are you sure you're working at the office?!