{"id":8637,"date":"2013-06-14T11:29:34","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T17:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8637"},"modified":"2013-06-14T11:29:34","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T17:29:34","slug":"what-ive-been-up-to-recently-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/what-ive-been-up-to-recently-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What I&#8217;ve been up to recently"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I posted anything except Trope Tuesday posts, so I figure I should do a quick one here explaining what I&#8217;ve been up to recently.<\/p>\n<p>As far as writing goes, I finished the first draft for <strong>Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII)<\/strong> about two weeks ago.\u00a0 Since then, I&#8217;ve been bouncing around between\u00a0<strong>Lifewalker<\/strong> and other projects, writing only about a thousand words a day (which is kind of low for me), but it looks like I&#8217;m going to go full steam ahead on <strong>Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII)<\/strong><strong>.<\/strong>\u00a0 That&#8217;s the story that really excites me right now, and it&#8217;s practically writing itself.\u00a0 I should (God-willing) finish the first draft sometime next week.<\/p>\n<p>As for <strong>Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI)<\/strong><strong>,<\/strong> I&#8217;ve gotten feedback from first readers and sent off the first chapter to Kindal Debenham&#8217;s writing group, where they workshopped the first chapter.\u00a0 It&#8217;s going to require a bit of work, but I should be able to publish it before the end of July.\u00a0 My goal right now is to publish something every two months, and <strong>Benefactor<\/strong> is at the top of the queue.<\/p>\n<p>Life-wise, I&#8217;ve had a whole lot of weird expenses pop up recently, including a wisdom tooth that needs removing (??? I&#8217;m like 28!).\u00a0 But between my new job and a marked increase in book royalties, I should be able to cover it without any problems.\u00a0 The job I have right now is really nice&#8211;it pays twice minimum wage at only 20 hours per week, with a schedule that leaves the whole day open.\u00a0 It&#8217;s perfect for writing (well, as perfect as any day job can be), and it&#8217;s quite physical so I should be in pretty good shape by the time I&#8217;m done.\u00a0 I&#8217;ll probably keep it for a couple months, up until the end of the summer, and hopefully save up enough to move elsewhere in the country, or perhaps go back overseas.\u00a0 Who knows?<\/p>\n<p>About book royalties: my sales on Amazon have really gone up recently, which kind of astounds me.\u00a0 I&#8217;m selling about 10-11 ebooks per day, which doesn&#8217;t sound like a lot, but it <em>really<\/em> adds up.\u00a0 Throw in Amazon UK, Smashwords, and all the other retailers, and I&#8217;m perilously close to actually making a living at this thing.\u00a0 I have no idea if the current trends will continue or if sales will suddenly fall off, but it looks like people are reading and enjoying my books, so I&#8217;ll definitely keep putting them out there.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of sales, I inadvertently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kboards.com\/index.php\/topic,153887.0.html\" target=\"_blank\">tossed a rhetorical hand grenade<\/a> over at KBoards by suggesting that perhaps the community over there focuses a little too much on sales as the primary measure of success.\u00a0 Well, they didn&#8217;t quite run me out with pitchforks and torches, but the debate did stretch to eighteen pages, so one way or another I think I touched on a sore spot.\u00a0 In the end, though, it turned out to be a fairly constructive discussion, and I think the KBoards community is a better place because of it.<\/p>\n<p>Other than that, I&#8217;ve been spending far too much time on minecraft than I probably should.\u00a0 I&#8217;m on a server now with my brother-in-law and some other friends, and I&#8217;m building a city in the sky, kind of like Zeal or Shevat.\u00a0 It&#8217;s actually turning out really well, but I don&#8217;t want to post any pictures yet because it isn&#8217;t finished.\u00a0 Later, though&#8211;definitely later.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s just about it.\u00a0 I want to put in at least two thousand words today, and it&#8217;s already noon, so I&#8217;d better run.\u00a0 See you later!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a while since I posted anything except Trope Tuesday posts, so I figure I should do a quick one here explaining what I&#8217;ve been up to recently. As far as writing goes, I finished the first draft for Star Wanderers: Reproach (Part VII) about two weeks ago.\u00a0 Since then, I&#8217;ve been bouncing around&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/what-ive-been-up-to-recently-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What I&#8217;ve been up to recently<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"What I've been up to recently. http:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2fj","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[857],"tags":[158,46,731,647,155,387,312],"class_list":["post-8637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sw","tag-first-readers","tag-goals-and-plans","tag-kindle-boards","tag-minecraft","tag-rough-drafts","tag-the-real-world","tag-work","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2fj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8639,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8637\/revisions\/8639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}