Sunday, April 30, 2017
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Shifting Seas Short Story
I've been working on a side project for a couple of weeks now. It started as a challenge to myself and grew from there. Since it has been so long since I published Dragon-Ridden, I wanted to write a short story set in the Dragon-Ridden world that featured a side character from the first book. For whatever reason, Jost and how he first met Tate got stuck in my head. It led to all sorts of questions about Jost and his crew that I hadn't considered before.The more I thought about doing a short story with Jost as the main character, the more excited I became. One of my favorite things about today's era of publishing is how authors have begun to explore the worlds they've created through short stories or extra scenes from other characters points of view. I'm not going to lie, there are a few authors that I cyber stalk under the hope they will post one of these shorts to their blogs or Facebook feeds. I've wanted to do something similar in my own series for a while now.
Surprisingly, it was a lot more difficult to write a short story from Jost's POV than I thought it would be. I'm still trying to figure out how that could be considering that the short story I wrote is less than a quarter of the length of a full book. It took me way longer to write this than I had first allotted.
For the next couple weeks, I will release a chapter a week through the blog. At the end, I will create a page on my website that people can go to read the full book. I hope you enjoy Jost and his adventures as much as I have. To read the first chapter, click on the link below.
Shifting Seas - Chapter One
Happy Reading!
Sunday, April 2, 2017
Odds and Ends
For the most part, I am happy being an independent author, and I am grateful that I started writing at a time when the opportunities for indies have never been better. There are many benefits to being an indie. For me, a big part of the reason I gravitated to this route is because I enjoy having the ultimate control over my books. No one is going to put more effort than me in ensuring that I'm putting out the best product possible. That being said, there are times in the publishing process where I would give my right arm for the ability to off load the book onto a team who would take care of the necessary tasks so I can get back to the business of writing.
For example, finding a title. That might seem like an easy thing to do. After all, it's only a few words. Wrong. That's so far from the truth. For whatever reason, it seems that the fewer words there are, the harder it is to find the right ones.
For Dragon 2, I spent a whole afternoon coming up with names and then crossing them out. Every time I thought I had something, friends and families pointed out a flaw. Cue the frustration. Then when I did find a name I liked, I sat on it for several weeks because there was just something about it that didn't feel right. When all was said and done, it took me over a month to come up with just a few words.
The second part, the one I hate even more than finding a title and the part I'm at now, is writing the book blurb. The piece that is supposed to convince a reader to take a chance on you and the manuscript that you've put months/years of work into. Since publication, I've rewritten Pathfinder's blurb four times, and I still don't feel like I came up with the best option.
It would be so nice to tell someone 'here, you do it.' Time is the ultimate resource for a writer. Especially one who has a full time job and would like some semblance of a social life. There never seems to be enough of it. That being said, when I am able to find a name or write a blurb I like, I feel like I could take on the world. It's a catch 22. I'd like someone to take the task off my plate, but I feel so accomplished when I succeed.
For example, finding a title. That might seem like an easy thing to do. After all, it's only a few words. Wrong. That's so far from the truth. For whatever reason, it seems that the fewer words there are, the harder it is to find the right ones.
For Dragon 2, I spent a whole afternoon coming up with names and then crossing them out. Every time I thought I had something, friends and families pointed out a flaw. Cue the frustration. Then when I did find a name I liked, I sat on it for several weeks because there was just something about it that didn't feel right. When all was said and done, it took me over a month to come up with just a few words.
The second part, the one I hate even more than finding a title and the part I'm at now, is writing the book blurb. The piece that is supposed to convince a reader to take a chance on you and the manuscript that you've put months/years of work into. Since publication, I've rewritten Pathfinder's blurb four times, and I still don't feel like I came up with the best option.
It would be so nice to tell someone 'here, you do it.' Time is the ultimate resource for a writer. Especially one who has a full time job and would like some semblance of a social life. There never seems to be enough of it. That being said, when I am able to find a name or write a blurb I like, I feel like I could take on the world. It's a catch 22. I'd like someone to take the task off my plate, but I feel so accomplished when I succeed.
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