run to the breakers

So last November I completely wrecked myself with all the writing. In the end I finished Locks of Clay, but to the detriment of pretty much everything else. I did my job, I fed my dogs, I wrote, I stopped sleeping, and that was about it.  Didn’t really have the energy to blog, and then when I got the edit back on Skeleton Army I had some choices to make. I wasn’t sure exactly what direction I was going to go in.

So I went to Lafayette for a month. I took a picture of a giraffe.

this guy really knew how to take a leak

I also visited their Home Depot.

Ultimately I decided that there was enough story to tell prior to Locks of Clay that two additional books in-between would be warranted. I did a pretty in depth edit of Skeleton Army, which I think I like the results, and now I’m working on the two companion books, which will form a sort of trilogy within the larger series. (Locks of Clay will ultimately form another trilogy in the same way.)

So why am I working on the sequels instead of polishing up SA itself? In February I found out about ABNA, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. A no-holds-barred thunderdome of writers, last man (or lady!) standing takes away a publishing contract with Penguin.

Now, I still believe in my business model and I’m still looking forward to self publishing, it’s an exciting challenge and I’ve always been a business guy. But the competition is free, and I figured it couldn’t hurt.

Skeleton Army is currently a quarter-finalist, which means it’s survived two cuts from the original field of 10,000 to the current slate of 500. At this point each manuscript is being reviewed by Publisher’s Weekly, so even if I don’t advance any further than this, I’ll walk away with that much.

The next cut is to 100 and at that point Penguin will read each remaining manuscript to cull to a final three. At that point the internet takes over.

In the meantime I’m working on the rest of the trilogy, and once ABNA is over I’ll get back on Skeleton Army. Current goal is to have all three ready for prime time by the end of the year, with Skeleton Army itself done by sometime late summer or so. Maybe sooner depending on how the final edits go.

Well if the word calendar on the right is still functioning, you can see I’ve managed to stay on track all week, hitting 40,000 words so far. And Locks of Clay is coming along pretty nicely.

I had wanted to do some extensive plotting ahead of time, but one thing lead to another and November 1 showed up and I only had some very rough ideas in my head. I like where it’s going so far though, and if it’s a little rough, that’s what second drafts and editors are for.

I also picked up Gears of War 2 last night and ended up playing it until about 3am with a couple friends, as if there weren’t already enough distractions in this world.

I was able to get my daily 5,000 done first though, and that’s what counts.

(I also picked up a little RPG called Valkyria Chronicle, but I doubt I’ll even spin it up before february or so. January is for Persona 4, which I won’t be able to play in december, since I’ll be visiting my sister in Louisiana.)

So just like every year, the nanowrimo site has been down and out for the last two days. The widget I put up here in the sidebar to track my progress is on the fritz too. Rest assured I did NOT write zero words yesterday (in fact I wrote a little over 5,000, which is my daily goal for the month.) If it doesn’t start working soon I’ll just swap it out for a simpler one that reports only the total word count and doesn’t track daily progress

With October half over and National Novel Writing Month only a few weeks away, I added a new widget to the sidebar. Over the course of November it will track my progress as I write the sequel to Skeleton Army.

Watch in awe as I drop a novel in a month (and then spend the next six months making it worth actually reading.)

A lot of stuff coming up real quickly: last week I hired an artist to do the cover art for Skeleton Army, today or tomorrow I’m sending off the manuscript to my editor for a run-through, couple weeks and nanowrimo will be upon us (and with it, the writing of the sequel to SA, Locks of Clay.)

Once the cover art is done I’ll probably throw up a little teaser, though I probably won’t FINALIZE the design until december. So far I like the guy I hired and I really like the direction he’s going with the art. Expect a strong recommendation at the end of the job, if things continue the way they’re going.

Looking forward to finally getting the manuscript to my editor too - can’t wait to get it back and get going on the next draft either.

And of course I’m chomping at the bit to get going on Locks of Clay.  I’ve got notes scattered across three different laptops, so I need to get them consolidated.  But so far I feel like this one will be light years better (at least in the first draft) than the first one.

So the nanowrimo webpage is scheduled to go down soon, only to emerge triumphant on 1 October, stripped clean and ready to go.  A month after that and the madness will start again.

If you’re unfamiliar, nano is essentially an event where tens (hundreds?) of thousands of enthusiastic folks from all walks of life (and all over the world) tackle the daunting task of writing an entire novel from scratch in a short thirty days.  It’s humbling to watch the words stack up, and how QUICKLY they stack up, both for total numbers and for the individual regions.

Of course, I have the honor of writing for Seattle (greater seattle really, as we have folks from the east side, folks from the north end, folks from the south, even some from the peninsula who throw in with us) which has put up the most words of any other region for the last two years running.  Of course, two years ago was my first year participating… coincidence?

We also end up with a pretty high per-writer total too though, and a respectable number of completions (people who have reached the goal of 50k words by the end of the month.)

Personally my goal is 100k, and while I fell far short in ‘06 (topped out in the low 60s) I came much closer last year and then came back to it last spring to put on the finishing touches.  This year I’d like to actually FINISH, but the more reasonable goal I’ll be setting is just to hit 100k and finish up later.  (Of course, my editor will be done with the first pass on Skeleton Army halfway through the month, which might end up distracting me.)

Skeleton Army, by the way, is my 2007 nano, and will be the first book published by Roosevelt Books.  The sequel will be written during nano 2008, and after that who knows?  (I have lot of ideas floating around for these characters and this world is what I am trying to say)

This weekend I settled on an editor. In addition to providing editorial services he also maintains a blog in which he discusses different topics relating to the publishing industry and writing in general, in addition to posting book reviews &c. From reading the blog posts and conversing with him via email he seems like a pretty good guy, and I really liked the sample edit he did for me and the ideas he’s already had about the book.

Some of my test readers have expressed confusion as to why I’m hiring an editor. When they do that I laugh and laugh.

Because while the book is perfectly readable, and my friends and family are very nice people, the book has some pretty big weaknesses I need help with. It’s definitely not ready for prime time. I’m super excited for the edit though, because I’m normally pretty terrible at taking either advice or criticism, but in this case I’ve resolved myself to the fact that I absolutely need to, so I’m looking forward to taking that step.

Also, my ISBNs arrived today. Which was a wonderful surprise, since I wasn’t expecting them for another week+. Since it’s going to be a while before I’m ready to publish anything I opted not to pay for rush processing. However, since I needed them in order to apply for for an account with Lightning Source I was more than happy to take early delivery. So I also applied for an account with Lightning Source.

So I’ve got my editor, got my ISBNs, waiting on account activation over at Lightning Source.

And quietly storming ideas for the second and third books.