I didn’t post last week. Bad blogger! But there were reasons for it. Things were actually quite busy, and what time I didn’t have taken up by work had to be dedicated to sleep. And I still didn’t get enough sleep.
So, a lot of work last week, but a lot to show from it, too. I finally had to end the Alpha Read, as my last Alpha Reader wasn’t able to give feedback on the last few chapters of the book due to the distractions of moving to a new house, caring for a family, holding down gainful employment, and other unimportant things like that. ;D Heh. Actually, I don’t blame him for where he placed his priorities, I just regret not getting his reaction on the last chapters of The Perils of Prague. I did get some feedback from my weapons consultant and made a few changes on how firearms are handled in the book. With these final edits, the Third Draft of Perils has finally drawn to a close!
And I did one other thing last week.
I hired an editor. [click to continue…]
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The 2014 convention season is about to kick off for me. This time around, the year starts off with RavenCon. Last year, I went to RavenCon as a vendor. This year, I’ll be returning as a panelist! And apparently, it is going to be a big year for RavenCon. The con hotel has already sold out, and they are trying to make arrangements with other nearby hotels. The con is less than a month off, but the schedule is starting to come together… [click to continue…]
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Life has moved on a bit in the last week. It does that. As a result, this post is a bit later than planned. It has been a few weeks since I talked about what has happened in my life, so I thought I’d share some this week. In the past few months, we’ve had a number of things around the house fall apart for various reasons: age, over use, and the odd ruptured pipe. Now, we’re finally getting to the rebuilding phase. Not just rebuilding the house, but rebuilding the way we’re living. [click to continue…]
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This post may seem like a bit of a reversal from the last one, but the Perils in Peril post was a bit of a cry for help. And I did get the help I needed, although it wasn’t exactly the help I thought I wanted when I wrote the post. Not making much sense yet, am I? Let’s just say that the cry for help was less about helping me meet a goal, and was more about getting me to face facts I had subconsciously realized, but hadn’t admitted to myself.
It was a wake up call… [click to continue…]
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Last summer, I asked for help from you, the readers of this blog. I had reached the state where I needed readers to further polish by novel and get it ready for publication. A number of people volunteered to Alpha Read, and to Beta Read. Well, things went slow with the Alpha Read. I had to scramble to get some replacement readers in December. Now, the Alpha Read is about to complete, and I’ve sent word out to the Beta readers that their part is about to begin.
And I’ve heard back from exactly two of them… [click to continue…]
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Wellington Books never wanted to be a field agent. He was quite content as the Archivist for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Happy to spend his days in the hidden sub-basement, tending his analytical engine, seeing that all the agent’s reports and their associated artifacts were properly cataloged and filed. Life was simple, but good. He even had time to tinker on his own personal projects.
And then she came.
Eliza Braun had been a filed agent. Had been. She had blown up one too many installations, defied orders one too many times, and had been assigned to the Archives to learn some humility.
That didn’t work.
Instead, she had drug poor Wellington out of the Archives, insisting that they investigate unsolved cases they had discovered waiting to be cataloged. And then they got caught.
And now, they were off to America… [click to continue…]
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The world of publishing is changing, and a lot of the old measures of success are going away. Oh, those measures are still there, but more and more authors are finding new ways to be successful in different ways. Still, there is some draw to some of the old landmarks: getting an agent, signing a deal with a large publisher, seeing your book in bookstores. And yet, having your book in bookstores may not be the road to success most people think it is. You see, they aren’t what you think they are. The fact is, bookstores are not in the business of selling books. [click to continue…]
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A while ago I posted about forming a local writing group, the Germantown Writer’s Guild. The GWG has been doing pretty well thus far. We’ve had over 30 people join on Meetup, and there have been a couple of meetings where we have had twelve or thirteen folks show up. There is certainly an interest for some kind of support for writers in the Germantown area. We’ve already started a weekly writer’s workshop run by one of our members and based on an MFA course she once took. Another member is running a Page One meeting for beginning writers. I am doing a monthly Writer’s Support meeting, and I’ve been asked by the other members of the Guild to host another meeting… [click to continue…]
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In the full court press to get The Perils of Prague ready for publication, I’ve had to deal with a number of new experiences. One of which is figuring out the cover. I’ve done covers for a couple of my short stories in the past, but those were only e-books. For Perils, I’m planning on also having dead tree copies available. This brings up an entirely new dimension. You see, physical books have back covers. And since they have them, I have to figure out what to put back there. [click to continue…]
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A number of authors have talked about their fears on their blogs, but this has never been a topic where I’ve had a lot to say on the subject. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I’m perfect and everyone else is flawed. Quite the contrary. We all have the same doubts. We all look at our writing at one time or another and say “This is crap!” For some, this becomes a paralyzing fear. They can’t move on and many consider quitting writing altogether. They figure that if the writing is crap now, it will always be crap, so why bother? I take a different view. To me, crap is a necessary stage. Everything has to start as crap. The difference is if you leave it as crap, or if you make it into something better. So, I pretty much haven’t been bothered by writing fears.
Until now. [click to continue…]
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