The Dragon's Lair

I've never been a New Years resolution kind of person because I'll make goals whenever I dang will please, thank you very much. (Plus I'm not a big fan of New Years). But this time I... kind of, sort of did? I guess? And that is buckling down and writing up notes and outlines for new story ideas, rather than planning them a little here and there then taking notes only when I'm ready to write.

Which, technically, is a goal I actually started last year, but it was mostly world-building I'd focused on, with only a vague synopsis of what the story is about. Thing is, story ideas have been coming to me a lot quicker an a lot more put together than they used to be. Usually it takes me about a year to fully plan a story out. But recent stories have only needed a few weeks to a few days for me to flesh them out. So I don't want to focus on just world-building with only a vague synopsis, I want to get cracking on outlines.

Because I am sick and tired of having all this time to write with not a single story ready to be written. My hope is to get quite a list of story notes and outlines so that when it's time to write something else, I'll be ready to go.

Meanwhile, on a completely unrelated note, for Christmas I got Batman: Beyond the complete series. At first I was a little worried that it might not be as good as I remembered. I was wrong. I love this show. Still good as ever. Although I gotta laugh a little that the characters use flip phones.

I swear writing is, like, 10% actual writing, 10% getting it ready to be published and 80% doing what you can to advertise. The new book - previously titled All the Devils are Here, now titled Magic's Perdition - is about a week away from going live but can currently be pre-ordered on Kindle. You can read excerpts of it on my author journal, and there's even pictures. Journal is updated, websites are updated, Facebook is actually being utilized, passwords had to be changed because I forgot half of them...

Meanwhile all the art stuff I'd had planned today probably isn't going to happen. Except, maybe, some drawing if I don't get distracted by other things.

In other news, thanks to Windows updates the sound on my laptop doesn't wrok as well as it used to and I have no idea why. I hate updates so much. We also have a hawk that's been harrassing out chickens and doves, the little punk. We've also been getting an influx of squirrels due to all the bird seed and chicken feed. They're funny little guys.

Our weather has also been absolutely gorgeous, but instead of anjoying it I'm worried it's going to be another mild winter. As someone who hates the cold, a mild winter wouldn't be a big deal except it's mean a major increase in bugs, most especially flies, mosquitoes, and the kind of bugs that like to destroy garden vegetables, so we need a nice cold snap to do some population control on the insects. Still, I have been enjoying the ability to open my window.

(And I do think we're at least starting to head toward cooler weather, since it seems we're going more and more into the sixties. So I'm hoping that we will have a real winter, it'll just be a little later than usual).

So a while back I had a dream about a non-existent Aline-esque sci-fi movie starring Sebastian Stan and now I totally want to write it. Except I have a ton of stuff I am doing and that I need to be doing and don't have time to write right now. I also think it may not be long enough to make it worth publishing as a book.

Thanks a lot Captain America!

(The dream also included a sequel in which Sebastion's character dies. But I ain't having any of that).

So the Independent Authors group I'm part of over on Goodreads is hosting a one day event in which you can dowload books by indie authors for free.

Thank goodness I'm done! I finished the first round of edits for Amrin the Dreamer!

Holy crap that was the worst editing I'd ever gone through. Think of the most poorly written fanfiction you've ever read, multiply it by fifty chapters, and imagine having to edit it. That's what editing Amrin was like. I adore the story to pieces but the writing was such a nightmare I'm amazed anyone bought the dang book when I first published it. When I first started re-editing it I could only do it once a week because attempting to edit it every day was depressing me, and I was lucky if I managed to get one entire chapter done. It got a little easier toward the end since that's where most of the action is, and I've always had an easy time with actions scenes. But everything else was an ordeal to clean up. My book is a prime example of why less is more is so important. I was so monstrously wordy, and most of those words were me reapeting mysellf :P

Now I can finally set the thing aside, and hopefully the next round of edits will go a lot smoother, not to mention quicker. But let my experience be a lesson to any beginning writers out there - edit the crap out of things! Don't just give it a few quick reads and then think you're good to go. Edit, edit, edit, then have many someones go over your story and edit again.

The continuing saga of this post.

Eh heh heh. So, contrary to the poll, I decided to go with Wordpress instead of Livejournal. I'd been considering LJ up until I remembered the issues I often had with posting lengthy documents, and LJ being a butt about what constituted "too long." It was one of the reasons why I stopped posting fic to my LJ, because why wrestle with wordcounts when you can post a fic that's as long as you want on AO3 or FF.net? And Wordpress hasn't been a jerk about long documents.

Plus, even if I did post the story on LJ, you wouldn't want to follow it. I've decided that I'm going to post the story all at once rather than chapter by chapter. The reason for this is because I want the story posted in order, with the first chapter at the top of the page and the final chapter at the bottom in order to avoid spoilers. So to follow the blog would mean having to put up with quite a bit of spamming.

But when a new episode of the story is posted I will announce it on both my LJ and author's blog.

In other news, I've been frequenting the Support for Indie Authors thread in the Goodreads forum and found a really great thread on marketing your self-published book here. You have to be a member of the thread to comment, but it has some really great input that's gotten me thinking a lot more carefully about how I need to go about marketing my next book.

Okay, I'm in need of a little input. I created some cover images for my online novel and I want to know which one you guys prefer. the story is an urban fantasy that deals with ghosts, magic and even magical beings, but in a more quiet manner - I guess you could say - than something like the Dresden files.

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[Poll #2002406]

Would anyone be willing to beta an original fic? It's the first part of my online story, and it shouldn't be a particularly long read (it's only eight chapters), and all I really need is for someone to point out any plot holes or points of confusion they come across. The basic premise is that it's about a guy who can see the dead and uses magic to deal with them (there's more to it than that, of course, but that's the gist of it). Warning wise there's some violence and an animal death but that's about it.

The help would be much appreciated. Although I would need it done around March (not the beginning of March, just sometime within the month).

Also, does anyone know anything about service dogs? The main character of the story suffers seizures and so had his dog trained as a service dog. Mostly I just need to know what method by which a service dog would warn their master that a seizure is coming on. For my story I mostly have the dog whine and paw at the character's leg.

So do any of you vaguely recall my first foray into self publishing? A whopper of a book called Amrin the Dreamer? Yeah, so, here I am thinking I'd washed my hands of that book and would probably never look at it again. Then, over the past few days, I find myself thinking about that book quite a bit. I come to realize that, despite my impatience and naivety where my writing talents were concerned getting me to publish Amrin waaaaaaay sooner than I should have, I still love the story. It's still a good plot with good characters. And, hey, it's possible it might be salvageable.

So now I'm re-editing it with the plan to republish it. And, thank goodness, my brother - who helped me set up my LuLu account where the book is published - kept my LuLu password. I have everything I need for Amrin's relaunch.

The thing about Armin was that while it was a good story, the writing itself was a mess (seriously, the first sentence alone has a glaring grammar mistake that made me physically ill. I can't believe I published something that needed so much work done). I wrote it back during that age when you think you have natural writing talent and that you don't need no stinkin' editors, then wondering why the heck my book wasn't selling. My word I was an idjit back then. And, yet, despite the horrible dialogue and terrible sentence structure, I still love the dang story to bits. It's a sweet story - very Charles Dickens meets Lord of the Rings, only heavy on the Dickens aspect, especially at the beginning (the things I put my main protagonist through *shakes head*. If you thought my fanfic were angsty, they've got nothing on Amrin).

But Amrin is also a young adult novel, and lately I've been getting the feeling that I should probably publish another YA novel before publishing my current adult novel. For one, it would mean having three books under my belt (four if I decide to divide Amrin into two books, which I may have to end up doing - I wasn't kidding when I said it was a whopper, and I seem to be adding more to it than taking away) and for another... I just keep getting the strong impression that I need to establish myself a little more as a YA writer before publishing an adult novel. Or, perhaps, it's more about establishing what kind of writer I am. Because though I've said it before I'll say it again - the only real difference between my YA stuff and my adult stuff is the age of the protagonists. Other than that, there really isn't anything about my adult stuff that would make it unsuitable for the YA crowd. Except maybe violence but, well... Amrin. A rather large chunk of the book is about the abuse he suffers (Dickens would be proud of me). 

Either way, my game plan is now to get Amrin published first and my adult novel second. Now the only question still bugging me is whether to keep Amrin on LuLu or retire it there and move it to Amazon. moving it to Amazon would mean being able to sell it at a cheaper price and make it available for Kindle, plus I would have all my books in one place.

Keeping it on LuLu, however, it would eventually end up on Amazon, anyway, plus people have the choice of a hardback or paperback, and although it wouldn't end up on Kindle it would end up on Nook, as well as on Barnes and Noble's site. However, it would cost more :/

Decisions, decisions. But Amrin's going to take a while to edit so I've got time to figure it out.

The drums beat like an angry heart. Sebastian was escorted between two guards onto the scaffold, over the trap door. The rope was place around his neck. The crowd was silent, hundreds of eyes locked onto him, seeing him, confirming his existence for all of time. It didn’t matter that his name would be said with hatred, because his name would still be said.

Witch Craft: the Tale of Giacomo - Epilogue

Back to the Beginning - ch. 1