Return to the Journey

All righty, then! I've sidetracked long enough! It's time to return to my little story. It's getting close to done so why don't I just move along. Now let's see. Where was I? Ah, yes. The completion of the first draft. Right.

So, let's see. I'd finished the first draft; it was all written out in pen. Hundreds of dog-eared pages covered in enough ink to paint a horse. Or two.

It was approaching Christmas. It was a cold, soggy Christmas, as I recall. Snow up the wazoo. That's uncomfortable. My lovely Cori and I were travelling, that year, to visit family. In fact some very special people, Cori's mother and father, drove from Washington DC to meet us in Toronto.

As a side note, our little girl was one that year. Travelling with a one year old child is the height of hilarity (can you see the sarcasm oozing out of your screen?) but we managed.

The moment we left our house, I started getting jittery. My manuscript was sitting in there, all alone, with no one to take care of it. But my lovely Cori was adamant: no thinking about it! It was just a few days, but it really affected me. Probably too much; I probably should have made an appointment with a psychiatrist.

In Toronto, my in-laws (wonderful people!) met us at the hotel where we would all spend the night. Nice place: not too fancy-schmancy but certainly not a run-down cockroach farm either. In their room, they presented us with some early Christmas presents.

And there it was: my shiny new laptop. To be honest, it's a netbook, a little guy that's just perfect for toting around everywhere I go. I was, of course, elated. Ecstatic. Beside myself! (What a silly expression...) At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to start writing. I still have it. I've written both books, the majority of my third book, and this blog on this netbook.

And that's when it came home. Hundreds of hand written pages. Hundreds of them. I had no scanner. Even if I did, my handwriting had been so bad that any character recognition software would have either laughed at me, or had a psychotic meltdown. Chances are, it would have tried to murder me in my sleep. With a pen of course.

The rest of the trip was very nice, I suppose. But I admit I was quite preoccupied. I wanted to get back to the book. At the same time, the thought of painstakingly transferring it all to the digital world caused a certain trepidation...

Aw jeez, who am I kidding? It gave me nightmares!

But more on that later. I have a book to try to finish at some point in the near future.

Book Three--And I'm Still Alive

Okay! I've got the climax of the third book of Rites of Ascension done and it went right where I expected it to go! I don't think anyone will be disappointed. A bit surprised but not disappointed. I think, when it's (finally) done, it will be a good finale.

I was going to post a short excerpt but it's too raw yet. I need to fix up the middle--the pacing is jerky and I'm not happy with some of my phrasing. Well, without getting too involved in the whole thing, there's still a lot of work to get it right. But it's a lot closer to store shelves...or Amazon's digital shelves anyway.

Title-wise, I'm toying with the idea of simply calling it Ascension. It's not bad; it certainly works as a working title. I'll keep a thought on it.

What about the future? Well, when this series is (finally!) complete, I think I'm going to hold off on another series for a while. It has been draining, and pulling together the threads in this third book has been surprisingly difficult. I suddenly have a lot more respect for those writers who pound out series--Robert Jordan (R.I.P, sir) comes to mind.

I have two ideas for single volume works that I'm going to explore. One of them is in my comfort zone--another epic style fantasy. The other is an (gasp!) urban fantasy! Which one, which one...

Well, let's get this third Rites of Ascension out and then we'll see what we'll see.

Oh, and by the way, I'm alive. Thumbs up!

Thanks folks! Talk to you soon!

Good News--And Bad

Yep, I've got good news and I've got bad news.

Which do you want first? The bad news? Oh, all right.

Rites of Ascension III had a setback. A big one. I was plugging away at it and I was getting more and more frustrated. It looked pretty good but it felt like a shirt that's on backward: it just didn't sit right. So I went back and looked through it. And I tore out about a hundred pages. That means, yes, it's again taking longer than I expected. *Sigh*

Coincidentally, a few days later, I got a review for Blood of War: three stars. The reviewer commented he was concerned that the third book would become too religious- or too politically-based. I removed those hundred pages because it was, in fact, beoming too politically driven and that is not what the series is about. It's about exploring one man's process of growing up. The rest is chaff to make things interesting.

If you're really looking forward to Rites of Ascension III, then all I can do is apologize profusely and assure you that, setbacks notwithstanding, it's still on the go. As soon as it's done properly, I will release it. but as I said before, I won't release it unless I'm satisfied it's the story it was meant to be.

All right, that sucked. The good news then? (Try not to be too disappointed here; it's actually pretty important if you stop and think about it.)

The Amazon customer discussions are almost alive again. If you've never been there, here's some background:

For a long time, the Amazon forums were just rampant with authors and wanna-be authors all screaming, "Buy my book!" It almost killed all real discussion. The place turned into a self-promo wasteland. I never really went. I checked a couple of threads last year but I quickly got tired of "Buy my book!" so I stayed away.

I happened across a thread a couple of weeks ago and it looked interesting. I'd heard Amazon had banned self-promotion on their forums--except in one sub-forum. Frustrated about the progress on my work, I stopped in to take a break.

Okay, it's not perfect. There are a few trolls (for the uninitiated, a troll is forum speak for someone who posts comments that are negative and offensive for the sole purpose of being negative and offensive) and a few authors still post the odd self-promotional tidbit. A few of the more established authors who should know better have taken on the cause that it's their right to promote wherever and whenever they wish. *Sigh again*

But for the most part, conversation is starting to pick back up. Mostly, it's just a lot of fun, with a fair amount of silliness involved (guilty as charged; but please, if you check it out, I'm just goofing around!), There are some good threads starting up with good conversation, good ideas and good book talk. It's starting to be a decent place to get good reading recommendations.

Case in point, one poster, Angela Perry, posted a thread a little while ago, and the question she wanted answered was what did readers want in an online community. This exploded, and over the next several pages of responses, an idea for a new kind of website came out, one where the readers come first, one that, if it works, readers wil be able to use to get ideas to fill their Kindles and bookshelves from other readers.

The thread degenerated toward the end but the idea is a good one and I hope to see it happen.

Check out the forums at Amazon; they're a pretty good place to let your hair down. There are only two rules:

1) Don't self-promote. It's pointless and it angers readers who are sick of the self-promotion. That's why Amazon made it against the rules. If you're an author, self-promoting there will hinder rather than help.

2) Join in and have fun. They talk about anything and everything there.

I'll be there too when I'm on the verge on banging my head on my desk.

Good Times!

Well, last week, to celebrate my birthday I gave away The Path of the Sword for three days. A bunch of you snapped up copies and I couldn't be more thrilled. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed giving it.

Now that the holidays are all over and done with, it's time for me to get serious again. I've had a wild few weeks--Christmas with two children under five, I'm finding, can only be described as wild--and it's been a great time, but I need to buckle down. I need to get my head in the game. I need to...

You get the idea.

I've picked up the pen (keyboard) again and I'm banging away at Rites of Ascension III. I still have a way to go, but it's turning out pretty well so far.

I'll let you know, a little closer to release, what the title is going to be. I have a couple of ideas but I don't want to set anything in stone yet.

Back to it!

Last Day!

This is it. The countdown is on. The great birthday celebration is winding down. The Path of the Sword is still free but only until the end of today! Grab yourself a copy today!

And remember: the sequel, Rites of Ascension II: Blood of War is out!

Part III is just around the bend (maybe two bends; it's taking me a little longer than anticipated).

Thanks for all your support!

Celebration Sale!

It's ma burfday! Yes it is!

To celebrate, I'm giving away The Path of the Sword for the next three days! I wanted 3.5 days--you know 'cause I'm 35 and all--but Amazon doesn't allow half days.

Until 12:00 am PST on the 18th of January, The Path of the Sword is free for the taking! Enjoy!

Goodreads

I'd like to say I hope everyone had a great holiday season. I haven't been around much because of my own revelries but now that it's done for another year, well, here I am.

I'm changing the pace a little this time. Some of you may have noticed that I'd begun writing about how I became a writer. I did this for two reasons:

1) Some of you may be interested in trying your hand at penning your own work and I thought I'd pass on any wisdom I've come across in the last couple of years. It's a shallow well yet but in time hopefully I'll have some useful nuggets for you.

2) The subtitle of my blog is 'A Writer's Journey'. Seemed to make sense to me that I actually mention something about my journey.

Today, I want to mention something just a little different. Goodreads.

I signed up some months ago but I didn't do very much with it. I was always too busy with other stuff to really give it a whole lot of attention. But, lately, I've been going more often and I have to say, it's not bad. No, it's not bad at all. In fact, I'd say it's one of the best resources a reader--or writer--can have at his or her disposal. Not only can you find any number of books that you may enjoy but there are a lot of authors and authors' groups that you can interact with.

Think Facebook, but for books. And without the eye-rollingly bad status updates.

So I've made an effort to create a more complete profile which you can see here. It still needs work--I'm still tinkering with it--but it's well worth the effort. It's a great place to discover new books, and readers interested in the same things you are.

Now, I know that, if you do happen to take a look at my profile, you'll notice I have a lot of books by very few authors. This part has, so far, been the most time consuming for me. I've read thousands of books in the past twenty five years and I'm trying to remember them. I'll never remember them all, and even of the ones I remember reading, I may not retain enough to remember whether or not I enjoyed them.

It'll look weird that I have suddenly read so many books but rest assured I have read everything I listed (just not, as Goodreads indicates so far, all in January).

Any down sides to Goodreads? One: sometimes navigation is a little confusing. But once you get the hang of it, you'll love it. I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone.

A great site. If you love reading or if you're an author looking to have a closer rapport with your readers, I heartily urge you to check it out.