Anthology Deadline

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Greetings! Thanks for all the encouragement to keep the blog going! I’m settling in with the job now. At first I was pretty much coming home and conking out. The girls would come by throughout the afternoon and remind me of things like music lessons and Kung Fu. I’d get a chocolate fix and then start the driving. Now I don’t nap every day.

I’ve been getting some writing done. About 10k words since I last posted. Most of it has happened recently. Last year I volunteered to be in an anthology. Everyone has to contribute an original erotic paranormal romance story at least 15k words long. The project has changed leaders several times, and I thought it was dead. But someone ressurected it and set deadlines. I have 8000 words done and it’s due Friday. Yikes!!!

Unfortunately, out of those 8000 words, there’s still not a sex scene. The story is riddled with raunchy language but no one has gotten it on yet. Part of the problem is the story was originally envisioned to be written under my real name. In fact, I submitted short stories of it to several places. But the main character is a satyr, which obviously lends himself to my pen name much more than my real name. But the world building gets me every time. And now that it’s going to be longer, the other two characters are demanding more time on the stage…you know how characters can be.

So I’ll be coming by this week to let you know my progress towards the looming deadline. I’d love to hear how your projects are going too!

For inspiration, here’s a picture of my favorite satyr drawn by Kevin Yancey:

silas3

 

Under Construction

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Changes have been happening in my life. The biggest one is I took on a part time job. The hours are perfect: 9-2 while my kids are at school. Unfortunately it means I can’t write as much.

I was going to shut down the website. I really haven’t had much to say about the writing process for awhile now, and I didn’t have time for Spark Tally over the summer. But it was a really hard post to write goodbye. I felt like I was giving up, even though I don’t plan to give up writing entirely. Plus, I really enjoy when people check in and let me know how they’re doing. There have been many successful writers on this site whether it’s getting a first draft done or getting a publication or just having time to string some words together.

So if you’re still out there, I’m going to start posting Spark Tally again. I’ll probably be glad if I get a few hundred words down a week. If you know some writers who’d like to share word counts and thoughts, please invite them!

Beyond Spark Tally, I don’t have a plan for the blog. I did update the rest of the site, so take a look at the links above. Many of the websites I was published at are gone, but I still have a few publication links left. Surprisingly, the very first story I had published is among them.

I hope you’re doing well. Please share your news, or wait for the Spark Tally post this weekend!

Real Numbers from an Indie Publisher

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If you are an indie writer, you might be like me and feel that all indie writers are bringing in at least 50K a year. Part of the problem is the only people posting numbers are the super successful. But I’m going to keep it real. If you are not even close to a four figure yearly income from your books, much more a five figure income, this blog is for you.

I’m at three figures! Of course, it’s gross and not net, but hey, I’ll take it. Since June, I’ve wanted to sit down and look over the sales figures, but I also didn’t want to do it because June was so bad. But July was good once again, so I took a peek.

My seven month publishing numbers:

Published 9 works and 86,500 words.

Republished one work with a new cover and added fractals.

Designed and created 4 covers.

Sold 223 books which is a book a day average.

Made almost $250 in royalties.

The disappointments:

Though sales and downloads for my billionaire serial started strong, they fizzled for the last two episodes. The blog readership for the pen name was steady, so I have to wonder if readers quit buying and started reading for free on the blog. I also sunk a lot of time and money into a picture book for the series, and it didn’t bring new readers as hoped for.

The surprises:

My holiday series has had steady interest despite the only holidays in the series right now are fall holidays. An even bigger surprise is the first episode of my slipstream romance is my third best seller.

Overall

I’m going to keep at it. I was pretty upset at the end of June, but after taking a few steps back I see that I’m having some successes. I’m hopeful that the next holiday books will have good releases.

How is your writing year going? I’d love to hear your ups and downs!

 

Summer

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How did it get to be July 18? I swear the Fourth of July hits and summer disappears. I haven’t gotten the writing done that I’d hoped for. And my low sales are keeping my spirits down as far as publishing. I actually decided not to publish this month and probably not next month so that I could work on the stories for the fall. Maybe that will take away the feeling that I’m spinning my wheels.

I’d like to give this blog a lot more attention coming into fall. It’s be nice to do some recipes again and Actual Writing Advice. I’d also like some sort of fiction writing on the site, but I don’t know what. If you have an idea for anything on the blog, please leave it in the comments section.

This week I do plan to get some words down. I got 500 earlier today and plan to do some more now. There’s a really nice rainshower going on, which always inspires my mood. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a steady word count this week. Anyone who is still out there listening and writing, I’d love to have you join me.

Writing Question for the day: What do you think of first person POV? Hard to write in? Easy to write in? Too close to the character? Not distant enough to provide some info?

I’m thinking about trying a story in first person POV which I haven’t done in a long time. For me a big challenge is staying in one characters voice constantly without slipping into a more narrative structure. Any tips and thoughts would be great.

Art Muse

What’s Up?

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Sorry it’s been so long. Last week I was teaching music for vacation Bible school and knew I wouldn’t have a high word count. I finished the first episode of my slipstream though. Julie was quick with the editing, so I was able to format it and get it published. All for three whole sales.

This month has been really bad for sales. At first I was ignoring it, but now that the new release is out, it’s hard to. I thought I was building up a readership, but maybe I did something wrong. I really have no idea what happened, making it hard to know how to fix it.

I’m redoing a cover tonight. Next week it should be back to serious writing. I’ll try to run a word count marathon with a prize. Those are fun for me, and I hope for you too.

Happy Fourth!

G1

Checking in Friday

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I’m in story love. I never quite made it to story love for my serial, but there’s something about the slipstream romance that has me consumed.

After yesterday’s big word count, I only got 675 written today. And that was just now. I’ve spent the day working on my house, and my kids haven’t been feeling great. So I took it easy with them tonight.

Still, I thought about the story most of the day. I even sent an email to Julie about it. A character that was meaningless in the first go around of the story now has his own POV. It’s always interesting to me when that happens. I’m not sure what gripped my imagination about him that I needed to change the story so drastically. But I’m revelling in it. These are the good times of writing. It’ll be hard if I discover it sucks.

How is your writing going?

PhotoFlare 018

Checking in Thursday Morning

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5300 words today or yesterday, depending on how you’re looking at things. On Tuesday I wrote 1500. The even better news is I finished the first installment of my slipstream romance. It orginally appeared as a 5000 words story on my blog. This first installment is 10,000 words. I always knew I wanted to make it deeper, I just didn’t think I’d be turning it into a novella. The plan is to have three installments of 10k words each. I’m sure Julie is laughing as she reads this thinking it will probably turn into four. We’ll see. I’d like to get half of the second one done tomorrow.

How did you guys do? I hope the words are flying from your fingers!

Here’s a fun pic from my trip. That’s my son dressed as the Dread Pirate Roberts. The costume was a hit at the Fair.

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ARENA by Holly Jennings

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The lack of word count over the weekend is brought to you by Holly Jennings. Oh, and I went to a Ren Fair.

But Arena is great! It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down and really enjoyed a book. I had several tasks to do like packing and cleaning the house that tried to keep me away from the story once I’d started, but I bought the audio book too so I could keep enjoying the story.

It’s a sci-fi book where virtual gamers are the sports stars of the world. Kali is the first female captain to take a team to the finals. Kali’s voice is refreshing and keeps the narration fast paced. I love that she’s strong, independent and knows how to get the job done. In fact she’s so strong I would’ve liked to see her struggle a little bit more. The “sponsors” loomed large as the evil entity, but despite Kali throwing wrenches into their system repeatedly, they never came after Kali directly. Perhaps in the sequel? It’s something I’d love to see. That and more face to face interaction between the teams. This book was all about getting Kali’s team to work together despite drug problems, game addiction and the sponsors, which was cool, but we needed more smack talk between the teams :)

Holly is the master of action scenes. Wow. I wish I could write like that. My absolutely favorite part was the final battle. But I’m not going to go into that because I want you to go out, buy Arena and enjoy the awesomeness for yourselves! You will be very happy you did.

IMG_3078That’s an updated picture of Holly’s book from when I went to Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago. I hope to see it on the Best Selling Science Fiction shelf next!

A good book like Arena is always inspiring. I’m home from the weekend getaway and ready to write tons of words this week. I’m going to try for 5000 a day. I doubt I will make it today, because I’m starting now at 10 pm. I will resist the coffee. I hope you join me as I post my progress this week.

Ready. Get set. Go!

 

Checking in Wednesday

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I wrote over 1500 words today. Hooray! Yesterday I only had the 500 from the morning. But I’m pleased with my progress. I’m working on a slipstream romance. I really don’t know of any others, though a Google search turned up one possibility on somebodies blog. I do enjoy the flexibility of indie publishing. I’m sure a publishing company would never accept a slipstream romance. Of course it’s probably because nobody will read one.

I have a completely new story and world churning in my head. I haven’t decided if it’s a pen name story or a me story yet. There’s definitely a romance, but there’s a lot more than that going on. I see a lot of similar themes in it that are in some other stories I’ve written but never published. I’d like to start writing it to flush it out a bit more, but I can’t take the time at the moment.

Here’s some art from a game called Gems of war that I waste a little time with. I find it inspiring: