Joshua P. Simon - The Accidental Author

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

1. The cover is done.
2. 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.
3. 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...

Divide and Conquer: Book Two of the Blood and Tears Trilogy (tentatively titled)

1. 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.
2. No cover yet which isn’t an issue since I’m shooting for a late summer release.
3. No blurb for the same reason.
4. 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.
5. 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. :)