Project Update
I wanted to give a quick update on some of the things I’ve been working on. The second story of Virgil McDane, DITF (you’re not supposed to know what that stands for) is coming along well and I am shooing for an early May deadline. That should be more than enough time to get everything completed, get it to readers, and make last minute edits. It also will give me time to get a cover together. I am doing something different than last time, so we’ll see how that goes. Details will be announced as soon as I have them. I am quite happy with the way the second one is coming. There are some very rough parts that need to be completed, some plot holes filled in, and a general tightening, but it has been a lot of fun to write and I think will be a lot of…
Editing, Covered in Editing, With a Side of Editing
Sunday night I finished editing the 44th page of my weekend goal. I didn’t do double or a hundred like I hoped, but I got my planned goal taken care of and I was satisfied. I have 113 of my 308 pages completed, with a month and a half left to get the rest done. At 44 pages a weekend and 10 on a day during the week, that will take about three and a half weeks, ending in July, with two weeks for a final run through. Honestly, I want more time to do a final line by line spelling/grammar check, as well as formatting for publication. I know I’m underestimating that by tenfold and will need every ounce of time I can muster up to complete it. (I just used tenfold and muster in the same sentence. Remind me to discuss Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon and how…
Ebooks VS. Hardcover Books
Writer Unboxed has a pretty important article up that I haven’t really seen elsewhere. Basically, it details the price and royalty comparison between hardcover books and ebooks, and how it effects the profit margin of publishers and authors. Basically, it comes down to a publisher explaining in an earnings meeting that they make more off ebooks because of lower royalties and lower costs. That would be fine if they brought absolutely anything to the table, had to take more risk, anything, but they are facilitating what most people can accomplish for free on their own. It’s definitely worth a read.
A Couple Articles by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Read this and this. I talk about Dean Wesley Smith a lot (or I did a lot on the old Story Arcs) but less about his wife, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I don’t really know how that happened, but I am going to correct it. Personally, I think if you take her Business Rusch posts and the Shatzkin Files, you pretty much have everything you need to know about publishing as an industry. They’re well informed, experience, very analytical and sit on different sides of the publishing spectrum. Note on that, reading Mike Shatzkin is a bit like reading H. P. Lovecraft. Not so much the supernatural aspect, more like, “What the hell did that paragraph just say?” Anyway, Ms. Rusch has an incredible way of being brutally honest, and being uplifting at the same time. If you have anything to do with publishing, no matter its form, read her stuff….
Announcing Sorcerer Rising
It is with great pleasure that I formally announce Sorcerer Rising. I have been working on this story for over four years and finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m going to continue to do some posts about the series as a whole, what I learned about it, etc, but here is the gist of it: Sorcerer Rising begins the story of Virgil McDane. Once he was a powerful Wizard, an explorer, scholar, and soldier. Outcast from the Wizard’s Guild, stripped of his power and relegated to a lowly Sorcerer, he finds himself more and more desperate. His world is much like our own, only magic is an everyday occurrence. The greatest resource is Aether, patches of raw magic that spawn whole dimensions. Forged from emotion and thought, the possibilities held within these worlds are endless. Some are featureless nightmares, others whole planets filled…
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