Category: The Sword Keeper

Not a bad start

So January’s almost over, and I have to say it’s not a bad start to the year. Things are going quite well, both on the writing and publishing end, and on the personal end as well.

Gunslinger to the Stars
Phase:3.0 Draft
100%
MyBookProgress by Author Media

First off, I finished draft 3.0 of Gunslinger to the Stars last week. The final draft came in at just under 52k words, which means that I managed to cut a healthy 27% of unnecessary wordage compared to the rough draft. That’s like upgrading from chuck roast to top sirloin, or 80/20 lean ground beef to 93/7 (except I actually prefer 85/15, but you get the point).

The Sci-Fi StoryBundle is doing quite well, enough that it may be a small windfall! That’s always encouraging, especially in today’s publishing climate. I should have some guest posts lined up soon from my fellow authors, which should be fun, so look out for that in the next few days. The bundle is only available for the next ten days, so if you haven’t picked it up yet, now is the time!

With Gunslinger to the Stars 3.0 finished, it’s time to move on to another WIP. The next one lined up is The Sword Keeper 2.0, which should be a lot of fun. This is my first epic fantasy novel, and there’s a bit that still has to be cleaned up, but I can legitimately say that this is one of the best things I’ve written so far. Really excited to get it out, hopfully later this year.

I also wrote a short story last week, and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. It’s so insanely political that it will probably get me blacklisted at half the magazines I submit it to. It’s also insanely short. I’ll probably clean it up a bit, see if I can add anything, and then go straight to self-publishing. Thank goodness that’s an option!

Lots more stuff happening this week. New free books, new release, new WIP, another short story in the works… 2017 is definitely off to a good start! And on that note, I’ll leave you with this awesome Pogo mix:

Well, that rules out time travelers

If there’s one thing that the events of the weekend have proven, it’s that time machines aren’t going to be invented for at least another few hundred years. Because if time travelers from our immediate future were in our midst, I have no doubt that either Hillary or Trump (or both, Godwilling!) would have been assassinated by now.

Of course, it could just be that things are going to collapse so hard that it wouldn’t make a difference which one of them became president, but whatever. No sense in being overly optimistic.

Last week was a total wash after the motorcycle accident, but I’m slowly getting back into the saddle. I’ve got the comments back from my first readers for Gunslinger to the Stars, so that’s the WIP I’m picking up next. Deadline for draft 2.0 is October 29, but I may be able to get it done sooner than that. Hell, I may even get it done this week.

Publishing it is another question. Finances are tight, and it’s been a bad year for sales, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to produce a quality book. Right now, I’m shooting for an April release date. That may actually be a good thing, though as it gives me time to write and release a few tie-in short stories. But regardless, it’s going to come out early next year.

Between now and then, I’ll probably release a couple of short stories and story collections. The shorts are selling better than I expected, and they make great giveaways for InstaFreebie and my mailing list. I’ve still got a bunch of stories on submission, but some of them are coming off soon, and others (like the tie-ins I want to write) would probably do better as direct to publish anyways.

As far as other WIPs go, my next big project is The Sword Keeper 2.0. I want to do a solid clean-up pass before I hand it off to my first readers, which shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. It is my first epic fantasy novel, though, so it’s probably going to need a lot of work before I can publish it.

Next one up after that is Edenfall. There’s been a lot of interest in that one from readers of Genesis Earth, so I think it’s time (after so many years) to finish the trilogy.

I have plans for Sons of the Starfarers, but those will have to go on hold for a while as I work on these other projects. I’ll probably write the last four books in a big sprint and publish them all within a month of each other. No idea when, but hopefully before the end of next year.

That pretty much does it. I’ll leave you with some words of Hungarian optimism that showed up in my YouTube feed today:

The Sword Keeper 1.0 is finished!

It’s been roughly four and a half years since I wrote the first word in The Sword Keeper, and now the first draft is finally complete! I finished it on Monday and promptly came down with the flu, which is why I’m only writing about it now.

This is my first complete fantasy novel, which is kind of a weird thing to realize. I started writing fantasy back in high school, but I never actually finished anything until college, and by then I was writing science fiction almost exclusively. Of course, the line between fantasy and science fiction is pretty fuzzy, especially the science fiction I tend to write, but still it’s a different set of tropes and a different kind of story.

In terms of other fantasy books, this one is pretty light. It’s just under 100k words, which makes it about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of a Brandon Sanderson novel. There’s magic, and it does drive the story, but the magic system itself isn’t the main driving factor of the plot. No elves, no dwarves, no dragons.

Instead, there’s an ancient order of magic sword bearers, a secret brotherhood of dark mages, a prophecy about saving the world, and a tavern girl (not a farmboy) who turns out to be the chosen one. About half of the fighting happens in the Void between the mortal and immortal realms. Oh, and the cost of magic is death.

There’s no question that this book needs a lot of work before it’ll be ready to publish. That said, I’m really excited about it. If all goes well, I expect it to be out sometime next year.

Quick update on WIPs

Last week, I think I may have written the best scene of any story I’ve written so far in my career. Seriously, I was in tears by the end of it, and that never happens. I’d post it here, but that would spoil the book (The Sword Keeper), so you’ll have to wait until it’s published.

Progress on The Sword Keeper is coming along quite well. My goal is to have it finished before the end of next week. There are only two chapters left, and the really hard stuff is already written, so it should be a straight shot to the end.

I started this book nearly four years ago when I was teaching English in Georgia, and can still remember working on it on my tiny eee PC on the second story of the Leladze farmhouse, with the chickens roosting in the tree by the balcony and a marvelous view of the Caucusus Mountains just outside my bedroom window. Then the electricity would go out, and I’d have to wrap things up in order to conserve battery power.

Point is, I’ve been working on The Sword Keeper for far too long. In fact, I think I’ve taken longer to finish the rough draft for this book than any other. The only WIP that’s been kicking around for longer is Edenfall, but that’s only because it’s been on the back burner this whole time. With The Sword Keeper, I’ve been working on it off and on for the past four years.

It will be very, very good to have it finished. After that, it will probably need a major revision to fix a bunch of plot holes and put all the scenes and chapters in the correct order (for some reason, every novel I’ve written has the scenes out of order in the first draft), but that shouldn’t be too hard. Then it’s off to the first readers.

As for Gunslinger to the Stars, I should be hearing back from my first readers soon. I’ll probably do a revision for that one next, which (with luck) will make it ready to be published. If all goes well, I may be able to publish it in time for Christmas this year.

So that’s the plan. I’ve got another story release coming out in a couple of days, plus the free books for September, so if you aren’t already signed up for my email list, be sure to do that soon.

Thanks for reading!

Next project

So after finishing the rough draft of Gunslinger to the Stars a couple of weeks ago, I took an unofficial summer break to work on other things. But I’m back now, ready to pick up a new WIP. There are quite a few to choose from. Here are the ones I’m leaning towards:

The Sword Keeper — This one has been in progress for quite some time. When I left it off, it was about 3/4ths of the way finished, with a whole bunch of action scenes right up to the very end. I could probably finish it in a couple of weeks.

Edenfall — This is the sequel to Genesis Earth, and it’s been on the back burner for years. There seems to be a lot of growing interest in the first book, though, which makes me wonder if it’s time to finish the trilogy. If this is the book that my readers really want, then that’s the book to write.

Sons of the Starfarers — This series hasn’t really taken off the way I’d hoped it would, which is why I’ve more or less tabled it for now. There are four more books left, and if I’m going to write the next book (Patriots in Retreat), I’m going to finish all the other books as well. This could take a while, though, and I’m not sure now is a good time to pick up that project. If there’s enough demand, though, I’ll see what I can do.

Children of the Starry Sea — This sequel to the Star Wanderers series ties in a bunch of stuff from Sons of the Starfarers that I haven’t written yet, so now is probably not the time to write it.

A Beachhead in Time — This is the first book in a trilogy that I’m cowriting with my friend Scott Bascom. We’ve already started it, so technically it’s already a WIP. Not sure whether to make it my primary project at the current time, though, or to juggle it with a personal WIP.

So those are the options. Personally, I’m leaning a bit toward Edenfall at the moment, but when I’m between projects I tend to vacillate a lot until something really sticks.

Coming right along

I’m making good progress on The Sword Keeper, but I keep having to push it back to help a friend remodel his basement. His wife is having a baby in a couple of weeks, and he needs to get things finished before his mother-in-law comes over. There have been a ton of setbacks and delays, mostly having to do with the shoddy construction work done by the guys who built the place, but we seem to have passed the biggest hurdle which is to install the bathtub. Now, it’s mostly a matter of installing insulation and putting up drywall.


There’s this really fantastic game that I’ve been looking at called Stellaris. It seems like a combination of Masters of Orion and Europa Universalis. Really really tempted to play it, but as of right now, I’m holding back. When I finish this WIP, though, I may just treat myself.

Also, I recently signed up for a 30 day trial of Instafreebie, a site that (among other things) lets authors do ebook giveaways in exchange for readers’ email addresses. I’m running a giveaway for Genesis Earth, which you can pick up here if you haven’t already gotten a copy. Depending on how things go, I may sign up and run a few more campaigns in the future.

I’m really, really itching to get back to work on Gunslinger to the Stars. That will probably be the next full-length novel that I publish. In the meantime, I’ve got a bunch of short stories that should be coming out soon, starting with a Sad Puppies related piece that is sure to make a lot of people smile. Look for that one in June.

That’s pretty much it for now. Thanks for reading!

Breaking down the elephant

I came to a realization about productivity just recently. It’s one that I’ve known for a while now, but never really applied to my own quirks and strengths.

In order to accomplish a massive, multi-stage task (like writing a novel), you have to break it down into manageable chunks first. Otherwise, you’ll just get overwhelmed. If you try to eat an elephant in one sitting, you won’t be able to do it, but if you process the ground elephant meat into meal-sized tupperware containers, put some recipes together, set a meal schedule, and freeze the meat until you need it, then eating an elephant becomes much more doable.

The question is, what’s the best way to break down the elephant? The answer, of course, is that it depends on the person.

Some writers break their WIPs down into chapters. Others prefer raw word count as a measure of progress. Others use story beats, or a timer, or a hard and fast deadline. A lot of writers don’t use much of a system at all, which is probably why so many of them fall behind.

The hardest part of writing is often just getting yourself to sit down and do it. The blank page really is the most intimidating part of the job. If I had to guess, I’d say that about 50% of writer’s block is not having a good way of breaking down the elephant. And by “good system,” I mean one that is personalized to work for you.

I’ve tried out a lot of systems that didn’t really work—for me, that is. I’m sure they work just fine for other people.

For a long time, I used raw word count, but then I found myself cutting corners by dropping a project and going back to revise a half-finished one, just to get a higher word count boost. After that, I started tracking hours worked per day, but again the quality of my work fell as I started looking for busywork just to feel like I’d accomplished something.

I bounced back and forth between unfinished projects, sometimes starting new ones, sometimes making progress on old ones. Every once and a while, the story would hit me in just the right way to compel me to finish it, which is how I’ve finished probably 80% of the books I’ve written over the past three years. But that’s a very unreliable way to write books.

Then I started using a timer to break my work down into short, measurable writing sessions. The main reason I did this was to work my way up to hitting 10k words in a day (something I’m still working on). The idea was to develop more focus and train myself to write faster. What I didn’t realize until now was that this is a great way to break down the elephant.

Before, I would wake up in the morning and think “how am I going to write X,XXX words before the end of the day?” Understandably, this was a bit intimidating, and over time it tended to grind me down. But now when I wake up, the question is “am I ready for the day’s first writing session? Why not—it’s only 20 minutes.” And then I’m off.

Now, I’m not completely in that mindset yet. I still tend to think in terms of daily word count, which can make me fall back into the old habits of procrstination. And if the day starts off with something non-writing related, it can really throw me off. But using this method, I was able to get through 66% of Gunslinger to the Stars in about six weeks. And if I keep working on it, I’ll bet I can accomplish much more.

I do not consider myself a fast writer. Some of my professional writing friends think that I’m fast, but there are tons of indies out there who write much faster (and better) than me. But a lot of it really just comes down to the psychology of breaking down the elephant. And now that I’ve got a system, I just need to be better about using it.

If you guys are interested in keeping track of my writing progress, I’ll go back to using the WIP progress bars. I took them down in order to keep the sidebar from getting too cluttered, but that is a major reason why readers come to an author blog (to see the ongoing progress on the author’s next book), so I’ll redesign things a bit and figure it out. It would certainly help me to get back on the horse, knowing that people are following this sort of thing.

Right now, I’m about 35k words from finishing The Sword Keeper, a project I’ve been working on and off on for the last four years. It’s a fantastic book, perhaps even the best I’ve ever written, and getting it done is going to be huge.

After that, I’ll probably finish Gunslinger to the Stars. Put it on the back burner after LTUE, but it shouldn’t be too hard to finish it up. It’s a rip-roaring adventure that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and I could frankly use the break.

And then? I think it may be time to finish the Genesis Earth trilogy. Book two, Edenfall, has been on the back burner for a looong time (almost five years), but there seems to be a lot more interest in it now, with sales of Genesis Earth increasing and readers posting reviews that say “can’t wait for the next book!” When you guys speak, I listen.

So that’s the plan for the next couple of months. Beyond that, I have a couple of short stories coming out soon, so be sure to keep an eye out for those.

Thanks for reading!

The timelessness of novels

Every few months, an article about the “death of the novel” makes the rounds on the internet. This subject, the impending doom of one of literature’s most enduring forms, is a perennial favorite for bookish handwringers everywhere. If it isn’t ebooks that’s going to kill the novel, it’s millennials, the internet, our dwindling attention spans, or one of a hundred other things.

As a professional writer, though, I am awestruck by the timelessness of the novel. Think about it:

From its origin with Don Quixote in 1605, the modern novel has endured through social and political upheaval, global pandemics, the collapse of numerous societies, the most devastating war the world has ever seen, genocide and holocaust on an industrial scale, and rise and fall of half a dozen global empires. The world today would be unrecognizable to a person from Cervantes’ time, yet the novel has endured.

Movies didn’t kill the novel. Television didn’t kill the novel. Video games didn’t kill the novel. On the contrary—numerous franchises from Star Trek to Halo have a thriving line of novel tie-ins. When the ebook revolution was just getting started, people thought that so-called “enhanced novels” would dominate the marketplace. They failed to realize that all of the added audio-visual content was a distraction for most readers. Plain text is not a bug, it’s a feature.

It’s important here to make a distinction between novels and other literary forms, such as novellas and short stories. The other forms have endured as well, but not with anything approaching the popularity of the novel. Short stories are great for exploring an idea, but not so good at immersing the reader into another world. Novellas are great for telling an intimate story about two or three characters, but not nearly as good at conveying scope or intrigue.

There’s something about a novel-length story that captures the imagination in a way that other forms just can’t. Whether it’s the large cast of characters, the intricate world-building, or the interplay of numerous subplots, novels are more immersive, and therefore have the capacity to be much more satisfying. Little wonder, then, that the novel has endured.

I’ve seen this in my own books, too. Over the years, I’ve done relatively little to promote my full-length novels, and yet they still chug along with a steady month-to-month trickle of sales. When I do promote them, such as with this month’s free run of Genesis Earth, the results are astounding. My full-length novels also tend to receive much higher reviews.

In my second year of self-publishing, I got impatient and switched to novellas. While I don’t think that was a mistake, it did not provide the foundation for a lasting career. The Star Wanderers novellas did well for a couple of years, but I don’t think they’re going to endure in their current form.

I love writing novellas, but the books that I’m proudest of are all novels. Where novellas entice, novels satisfy. Where novellas tell an intimate story, novels possess greater depth. As such, I think it’s time for a change.

In the next couple of months, I’m going to prune back my catalog a bit. The Star Wanderers series will still all be up there, but I’m going to remove the individual novellas from sale, keeping the omnibus editions instead. This will pave the way for a sequel novel, Children of the Starry Sea, which I’ve already started work on.

I will probably remove most of my older short stories, and some of the derivative works. I don’t want to clutter my book pages with my earlier practice work, or anything that looks too obviously self-published.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with Sons of the Starfarers just yet. I’ll definitely finish the series, but I’m not sure whether to do the other two omnibus editions or to just release each individual book in print. I’m toying with the idea of releasing the last four books in rapid succession, to build some momentum for the series, but it would take some time to write them, which means that Patriots in Retreat (Book VI) would be delayed for maybe a year.

I’m definitely going to turn Genesis Earth into a trilogy. No idea when the next book, Edenfall, is going to come out, but I’m going to do as thorough a job with that book as I did for Genesis Earth, which means it may take a while.

Novels take a lot longer for me to write than shorter books, but the end result is generally worth it. The trouble is that without a busy release schedule, sales tend to dwindle as you fall out of readers’ minds. I’ll try to make up for that by upping my marketing game and running more free and group promotions. In the meantime, anything you guys can do to spread the word would help!

I’ve got a couple of really awesome projects that should be coming out before the end of the year: The Sword Keeper, Gunslinger to the Stars, and a bunch of other stuff that’s really going to branch out my catalog. I’ve also got a couple of short stories that should be appearing in some new markets soon. Be sure to keep an eye out, and let me know what you think!

Quick update on writing and the blog

I was really bad about updating this blog last month. My goal was to post something new every Monday and Thursday, but that fell through and I’m not sure why. It’s not like life got super complicated or anything, more like blogging was just the ball that got dropped last month.

No excuses, just getting back on the horse. I’m hoping to build up a buffer of interesting posts before the end of the week, which should make things more consistent around here. I’d also like to put together an old-school blog tour for the release of Captives in Obscurity, just to see how it goes.

In terms of writing, things are coming along well. I’m currently in the middle of the first draft of The Sword Keeper, which I hope to finish before the end of the month. There are a few non-writing things on my plate (selling car, rebuilding computer) that may interrupt my progress, but writing is my top priority and I’m getting it done.

 

New free books this month, just waiting for Amazon to price match so I can update things and send out the email to my mailing list (by the way, if you haven’t already subscribed to my mailing list, you can do so here). Also, I’m redoing the print edition for Genesis Earth and the first Sons of the Starfarers omnibus. Just got the first proof for Genesis Earth, and the new cover looks pretty freaking fantastic (same art, just tweaked a little).

In terms of the blog, I’ve got another Self-Sufficient Writer post in the works, which may be a bit political (though not directly partisan). It will almost certainly offend the perpetually offended, but more importantly, it should also be pretty interesting. A lot of thoughts have been coalescing in my mind for some time, and this is the result.

Other than that, I plan to do a blog post on my new scooter in the very near future, which is going to be a lot of fun. Also another tvtropes post, and maybe another WIP excerpt.

I also had a crazy idea to put together a promo page kind of like Patty Jansen’s, except with buy links for all of the stores, not just Amazon. It’s going to take a LOT of work to put it together, though, so don’t expect to see that soon. Hell, I haven’t even done the preliminary research yet! Still in the crazy idea phase—but let me know if you think it’s a good idea.

That just about does it for now. Good things are happening, and now that I’m back on the horse, more of that should make it to the blog.

General update and new short story goals

I may not have blogged much in the past couple of weeks, but I have been busy.

First of all, I’ve renewed work on The Sword Keeper, and this time I’m going to finish the damn thing. Too much time has passed already, and the story is too good to let it languish on my hard drive(s) any longer. As of now, the goal is to finish the 1.0 draft by the end of April. I haven’t put up a progress bar yet, but I will in the next few days.

Second, I’ve been busy writing some new short stories. On Monday, I finished “Lizzie-99XT,” a hard military SF piece about a starfighter pilot whose intelligence merges with the AI of her starfighter, giving her a very different perspective on space, time, and the heavens. And yesterday, I finished “Time and Space in Amish Country,” an Amish Sci-Fi Time Travel Romance that’s been sitting unfinished on my hard drive for a long, long time.

I’ve been thinking a lot ever since writing that post about making a living as a short story writer. While long-form fiction is still my bread and butter, I would like to work on my short form and make that an important part of what I do. Towards that end, I’ve set some new goals.

My biggest goal at this point is to write a new short story every week, on top of my other writing. If I can keep that up for a year, that’s 50 short stories that I didn’t have the year before. Even if most of them aren’t any good, the exercise will help to make me a better writer.

Writing short stories takes a slightly different skill set than writing novels and novellas, but there’s enough of an overlap that the two can feed into each other. In my experience, it’s a little bit like the difference between driving a car and riding a motorcycle. In some ways, they’re very different, but fundamentally they’re both driving. In a similar way, writing short stories and novels is still just storytelling.

My other goal is to read at least one short story every day. I didn’t realize this until recently, but almost every major SF magazine publishes all of their stories in full online (except for the two oldest ‘zines, Analog and Asimov’s—go figure). It takes only half an hour at most to read a short story, and because there are so many available online for free, I can read them on my phone from just about anywhere.

So that’s the plan. I’ll probably review a couple of short stories from time to time, as I find the really good ones. Should be something interesting to blog about, which is something else I need to be better about. Expect to see more posts in the near future.