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…]
Tagged as:
Books,
Crackle & Bang,
Novels,
publishing,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
WIP,
Writing
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…]
Tagged as:
Books,
Crackle & Bang,
Novels,
publishing,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
WIP,
Writing
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…]
Tagged as:
Crackle & Bang,
Help!,
Novels,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
WIP,
Writing
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…]
Tagged as:
Crackle & Bang,
Fears,
Novels,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
WIP,
Writing
Another busy week here at Swimming Cat Central. Home improvement continues to be a major theme here. With the ceiling repairs complete, out next step was to prepare the living room for the rest of the carpeting to be removed and a new subfloor put down. That meant packing up all the loose stuff that was still in the living room so that the workers could play furniture Tetris. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Chaos,
Home Improvement,
Packing,
The Perils of Prauge
If you’ve visited the site in the past couple days, you might have noticed that the progress bar at the top of the sidebar has updated! That’s right, the third draft of Perils has started! I’ve got all my Alpha Readers past the halfway mark. In fact, I’ve got all of them, except one, past the 70% mark and we seem to be on track to finish the Alpha Read by Valentine’s Day. I know I’ve had great fun transcribing the comments into Scrivener. My readers have helped me find a bunch of typos that managed to make it through the second draft, pointed out some of their favorite moments in the story, and shown me the places where I need to provide more information. Even better… [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Novels,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
WIP,
Writing
Things have been progressing well with the Alpha Read of The Perils of Prague. Of the five readers that have kept with it, three of them have sent me feedback for at least four of the seven review sections, and one of the other two has sent me comments on enough of the middle section to put him past the halfway point. I’ve encouraged everyone to keep with it, and with a little luck I will be able to close out the Alpha read around Valentine’s day. The better news here is that since I’ve got comments for more than half of the book, I’m getting ready to start the third draft this week! [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Novels,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
WIP,
Writing
Life, it has been said, is what happens while you were making other plans. My last post talked about some of the things that life has brought me, recently. This post, is about the other plans I’ve made. Last year, at Balticon, I started what I had termed my “summer project” to get my novel The Perils of Prague ready for publication by the end of the summer. That project did not go off as planned… [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
ACX,
Balticon 48,
Books,
Capclave,
RavenCon 2014,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
The Way of the Gun,
Voice Work,
WIP,
Writing
The plan for this November was pretty much the same as last November: Write a new novel for NaNoWriMo, and post a daily diary chronicling the journey. This year I had the added tool of the Magic Spreadsheet added into it. The plan was not just to write 50,000 words, but to do so by writing every day. So what happened? [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Crackle & Bang,
Novels,
Steampunk,
The Perils of Prauge,
Writing
This post is partly inspired by a post from P.C. Haring. P.C. has had a very bad September. The theme of his post is “Why do we fall, sir?” The answer, of course, is so we can learn to get back up. But that got me thinking… There are many reasons why we fall. Some trip. Some will leap for greatness and fail to catch themselves. And some… are pushed. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Day Job,
Every Photo Tells...,
Flagship,
Flying Island Press,
Novels,
Philippa Ballantine,
Short Stories,
Tee Morris,
The Cross of Columba,
The Perils of Prauge,
The Way of the Gun,
Voice Work,
Welcome to Paradox,
Writing
