A Quick Update...

Not much time for more than just a quick post at the moment. Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that there wasn't a post at all last week. My excuse: Thanksgiving and all that. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So, real quick, here's where things stand on the writing front:

Pavonis: Sales are dead as a doornail. All down to bad marketing on my part, sorry to say. Bad choice of title; bad back-cover blurb; bad cover artwork; inadequate marketing efforts; [check] all of the above. People who've read it seem to like it, but it's going nowhere. I'm not too worried about it.

The Artemisia Chronicle: This is the gothic/sci-fi 'script I finished in September. Still waiting to hear from Harper Voyager, which isn't likely to happen until sometime in January. Watch this space.

Mr. Gunn and Dr. Bohemia: This is the steampunk action/adventure that I was working on until recently. I finished editing the first draft last week, and it's sitting in the pile waiting while I decide what to do with it - and that depends on how things go with Harper Voyager (see previous paragraph). If they like Artemisia (and/or Pavonis, since I submitted that too), I'll see if they'll look at Gunn & Bohemia. If not, I have a growing list of publishers to try.

Smoke and Mirrors: That's the working title of a steampunk/sci-fi project I've been working on. Right now I'm building the storylines and I'm probably about a third of the way through that part. It's coming along nicely. I'm hoping to be ready to begin storyboarding before Christmas, but I'm not rushing it. I bought Scrivener (now that there's a Windows version) and I'm using that for this work. Really nice, I have to say.

I've decided not to self-publish any more books, at least until the whole self-publishing landscape settles down a bit (and possibly not even then); thanks to people like Author Solutions (Click here for details) and Amazon (who seem to be treating self-pubs with contempt) the whole plane is a minefield, and I'm not interested in going that way. Things have really got to change; if and when that ever happens I might consider it, but that time is a long way off, I think.

Until next week...

Two Works In Progress

Right now I'm working on two, count 'em, two Works In Progress.

The first is the completed first draft of the story I started writing last year then abandoned for several months. As I mentioned in last week's post I put a copy of that on my Nook Tablet so that I could review it and mark it up for edits, but I deliberately left that to one side for a few days. I started on that the other day and I've highlighted several chunks that need changing; some need to be rewritten, some need to be just ripped out. My process is that I won't start the actual editing until I've re-read the whole thing and marked up everything that needs to be done, and at this point I'm about 15% done with that markup pass. I'm not rushing it - I want to do the best job I can and since I have until January I'm in no great hurry.

The second WiP is the new story that I also mentioned last week. I have the main storyline worked out, together with the beginnings of four major characters. I said last week that it would be in the Steampunk genre; that's still true. I also said that I was considering setting it in the same world as the other WiP (the one I'm reviewing/editing now), but that is no longer the case. See, a few days ago I had a dream. Usually I don't remember dreams unless I either wake up in the middle of one, or something happens later on that reminds me of something in the dream, and both of these occurrences are rare. In this case something in a movie I was watching sparked a memory of a detail of the dream and the rest came back to me a little at a time as I thought about it. And this dream gave me a terrific idea for a twist to the new story. I can't say more about it without committing major spoilerage, but I'm pretty excited about the way things are coming along. The point I was getting at, though, is that this change makes it impossible for this story to be in the same world as the the other story, so that won't be happening.

I'm still working on the story - I have at one subplot that I want to work into the thread, and an idea for another one that I rather like - so it'll be at least a couple more weeks (probably closer to six or eight, or even more) before I'm ready to begin laying down some storyboard. Right now I'm adding notes to the project (using Scrivener, in case you're interested) and I'll continue to do that until I have it all worked out.

That's enough about work for now. Time to get back to the other work (the one that pays the bills). Until next week...

Is it Thursday already?

Despite a day off sick (Tuesday) and another working from home (Wednesday - because even though I was mostly recovered, I wasn't in any fit state to be driving very far) this week seems to have really flown. Hard to believe that tomorrow's Friday already.

Since last week...

I finished the first draft of the Work-in-Progress on Saturday after something of a marathon session. It came out to ninety thousand words, give or take, which isn't too bad and makes it my longest book to date - at least, until I get to editing. To help with that I pushed the 'script through Calibre to convert it to ePub format then sideloaded it onto my Nook Tablet. Now I can read it through as and when I get a few minutes here and there, and use the highlight/notes feature to mark up the screwups. That's on the back burner for now, though; I want to give it at least another week before I start reading it back, even though the very first chapters haven't been looked at in months.

(A bit of history here: this story was one I started late last year then abandoned sometime around February after writing a bit more than seventy thousand words. The thing had lost direction because I hadn't done a very good job of the storyboard, which provided a valuable learning experience. Going forward I'll be much more careful about building storyboards.)

I've given myself until January to do at least one good pass of editing. The reason for that date is that I saw a tweet from Harper Voyager (you may recall that they had that open submissions period in October during which I submitted two 'scripts, The Artemisia Chronicle and Pavonis) to say that they won't be sending out any notices of acceptance until January (a bit of a change from what they said in October, and now it's not clear how long I should allow before giving up on them - but I'll worry about that later).

So here's my plan. I'll take my time doing the best editing I can manage, then hold the 'script until one of three things happens: (1) Harper tells me they've accepted at least one of the 'scripts I submitted (if this happens there will be much celebration in the Ford household); (2) Harper tells me they've rejected both of the 'scripts; (3) Harper says nothing by, say, the end of January, which I will treat the same as (2).

If Harper accepts, I'll keep the new 'script ready so that I can give them first look when the time comes. If they don't, well, I have a small list of publishers that might be interested, and I'll see about submitting it to some of them.

Right now I'm putting together some first thoughts on the next writing project. It's far too vague yet to go into any great detail, but I can say that I intend it to be a more character-driven piece than the previous books. The story's set in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and it'll probably be in the steampunk genre. I may go so far as to set it in the same world as the previous work (but not in the sense of calling it a sequel, at least not the way I'm thinking of it), but at this moment I'm still getting my brain around the general details of the overall story and the main characters.

As far as the actual writing goes, I'm moving away from the software I was using, in favour of Scrivener. The old software was pretty good, especially for storyboards, but failed miserably when trying to render output. That meant loading that rendered output into OpenOffice and modifying all the paragraph styles, and then doing a whole bunch of corrective work to get the thing into proper shape. The whole process was such a damned pain that in the end I started using the program just for storyboards and notes, and actually writing the 'scripts directly in OpenOffice. With Scrivener I should be able to do the storyboard, the notes and the writing. I'll have to see, though; Scrivener keeps its projects as folders containing multiple files, and that could make the process of backing up my work more difficult. I'm still using the trial version, and if it does what I want I'll go ahead and pay for a registration.

I see that the email I've been waiting for just arrived, so it's time to get back to work. Until next week, then...