On a Sale

So Eagle and Broken Halo should be up soon. I'm thinking maybe Monday at the latest? We'll see.

In celebration of getting both books up this year despite my usual chaos-ridden life, I'm going to put Wolfhound, Badger and Iron Angels up for sale at $.99 until the end of the year. If anyone out there has been waiting for a discount to get into the series, now's the time! Also, the German edition of Wolfhound will be discounted until then as well. Happy holidays, and I hope you are all doing well.

On Another One Down

So, yeah, I haven't been posting here, mostly because I've been a bit occupied. Broken Halo's first draft has more or less consumed my free time and thinking space since I finished publishing Badger and Iron Angels mid-August. It is a good sign that the story kind of caught me up like that, or at least I hope it is. In any case, I managed to write like a maniac the past few weeks and put the finishing touches on the rough draft last Friday. On a related note, I think I've actually crossed the magic one million words of rough drafts mark that is supposed to mean I won't suck anymore. So for everyone who has been enjoying (or by the reviews, not enjoying) my work, don't worry. It will get better. :)

Anyway, finishing Broken Halo means I'm able to shift my focus to other projects now. First up on the list is going to be Hector Kingsley: Murders in Whitechapel. The book has been sitting on the backburner for a while, mainly due to my preoccupation with other projects, but I think that now that I've more or less overdosed on space operas for four months, some steampunk is in order. Fortunately, I've been cooking up quite a few interesting ideas for our stuffy, erudite investigator, and I think the upcoming draft will provide a much better story than I had before. My goal is to pretty much rip through the revisions in about three weeks--a pace which kind of intimidates me when I think too much about it, but it feels right. Here's hoping I don't screw everything up!

Eagle is going to need a bit more pondering before I'm really ready to start into it. I'm hesitant to get really in depth on it now, both because of the risk of burning myself out, and because I am worried about getting obsessed with it like I did with Broken Halo. I need to revise stuff sometime, and that means I will just poke along for a bit with the rough draft until I can turn my full attention to it.

Other than that, my progress seems to be going fairly well. Books are selling, I'm somewhat less close to utter and complete madness, and I think I am doing alright. Thanks for your patience with my little update here; I will try to get a few more posts up if I get the chance. In any case, I will see you all later!

On What Happens Next

Well, four books are up! That is good...

Soooo, now what?

My focus on getting Iron Angels and Badger done has kind of consumed my attention for the past few months. I've literally spent every spare hour that I could on those projects, but that has left the ground in several other areas a little bare. My blog is, shall we say, a bit out of date and shabby, I've done little in the way of promotion, and my other books have been a bit neglected. Now I finally have the time and energy to devote to them, but I'm faced with the need to choose which one!

So in terms of my main writing goals, I think that Murders is my next revision target. That book was originally supposed to come out near the end of 2012 and cap my efforts for the year. Even though Hector Kingsley has not been my most popular work, I think that I will at the very least finish up this sequel. Besides, while explosions are nice, I think I need a short break for a while so that I don't burn the action side of my brain out.

New projects will include Broken Halo (Iron Angels' sequel) and Eagle (next book in the Jacob Hull series). I'll be poking along with those while I get their stories set up, and hopefully will finish both rough drafts before the end of the year. That should give me plenty of time to get both books out during 2013.

Of course, there's always the side projects. My blog needs to be reorganized and such. Maybe there should be time set aside for that on Saturdays? I don't know. Bah. Too much to do and not enough time... See you around!

On Two More Down, One to Go

Iron Angels and Badger are both now live! Hurry, go buy them. :)

On a more serious note, we've gotten two books closer to my goal for the first year of publishing. My initial plan was to publish four books over the course of a year; with Wolfhound, Badger, Iron Angels and the True Adventures of Hector Kingsley, we've pretty much done that. Now the last part of that goal was to publish four books in 2012, which means I just have one left to work on, the sequel to Hector Kingsley.

I can't help but feel a little accomplished. We've done a lot of work the past few months, and hopefully we now get to see it pay off! Of course, there's also that panic and mania that sets in at times like this. What if they don't sell? What if I messed them up somehow? That sort of thing will probably mean I won't get very much sleep anytime soon, but such is the price of chasing a dream...

Anyway, I hope that you guys enjoy the stories, and I will see you around!

On Early Mornings and Productivity

I've recently made a change in my morning routine. Said change involves me getting up at five thirty in an attempt to get some writing done before the chaos of my day comes crashing in.

So far, my little experiment has been a resounding success. I've gotten an astonishing amount done in the past few weeks, even with the intrusion of a chaotic vacation and a few other difficulties. At the same time, I've been sleeping a little better, and I've felt like there has been a remarkably positive change in my mood. Crazy what a little advice from Benjamin Franklin can do, huh?

As a result, the crushing amount of work I've been facing has declined to somewhat managable levels. Both books look like they are going to come out more or less as planned, and I've even been able to head off some interesting problems before they've started. New intro material is ready to go into the back parts of my books, setting up a schedule for Eagle (Jacob Hull's next book) and Broken Halo (Iron Angel's sequel), as well as Murders in Whitechapel. I'm still debating on the schedule for some of the projects for 2013, but that's probably for another post. As things stand, I'll just be happy to finish 2012 with two Hector Kingsley novels, two Jacob Hull novels, and one Iron Angels book out, and it is looking like I'll actually be able to pull that off.

That is, if five thirty doesn't kill me first. Seriously, it's productive, but just seeing that number hurts...

On Restructuring

So I've made a few changes to the blog! I'm probably going to keep making the occasional modification to the layout here over the next couple of weeks. The way things were arranged before just grew a bit stale, and I don't feel like it was working out very well. Let me know if you like it/hate it/gave a great big "meh" when you saw it.

Along with that, I've been trying to reorganize how I will be doing my work over the next eight weeks or so. Over the next week or so, I am anticipating a lot of the penultimate revision of Badger to get done. In fact, if I can just manage to buckle down and get to work, I may actually get the revision done this week and send it out to the copy editor early. That way we can have a secure deadline to publish it by August 14th.

While the copy editor has Badger, I will be turning my attention to other projects. Namely, I'm going to be pushing through Eagle as quickly as I can. I wrote Badger's rough draft in a crazy rush last year about this time, and I turned out to have a pretty good book at the end. I hope to do the same this time, so that we can have that book ready sometime in early 2013.

At the same time, I am going to try and get chunks of the Iron Angels final draft done. That way, by the time Badger comes back and is ready to rewrite, I can have Iron Angels done and ready to put up at exactly the same time. No muss, no fuss, just two more books done, and one left to go to meet my goal of four books in 2012.

Well, that's all the news for now. Hope everyone's doing well, and I will see you later!

On Schedule Changes

So I suppose it would be good for me to admit something at this point. Iron Angels won't be coming out in May.

That might be kind of obvious, given that we are on the last day of the month. Hope springs eternal, I guess. :) Unfortunately due to delays caused by our move to Pennsylvania, other projects, and the unavoidable craziness my life seems to attract, the possibility of getting the book out this month wasn't very high.

Which, of course, means I now have a decision to make. I can either continue to work on Iron Angels until it is in publishable condition and get it out during the month of June. That would mean putting off the revisions on Badger until Iron Angels is completely done, possibly delaying that book as well, which is something that might get me mobbed. :) Alternatively, I can shift my focus to work on Badger and finish up the work on Iron Angels at a later point. One way will minimize the delay before Iron Angels hits the market, while the other preserves the rest of my schedule for Badger and the other books.

As I've been thinking about it, though, the best option seems to be the second one. Iron Angels is in the final stages; that means it will only need a short, final revision to touch things up before it is ready to go. I think that if I get Badger ready during June, send it to the copy editor by the end of the month, and turn my attention to Iron Angels after that, I can have Iron Angels ready before I get Badger back at the end of July. Then I can pour my efforts into getting Badger ready, which I will hope to get out by the middle of August. That way, instead of stressing myself to my limits and possibly rushing the development of these two stories, I can take each at its own pace, and probably have both of them ready by mid-August. They'll be released at the same time so that they can support each other, which might be a benefit that I won't complain too much about.

There are benefits to doing things the other way as well, but I think they are more than outweighed by the costs in time, effort, and most importantly, sanity. Putting too much pressure on myself to get everything done at a preset time, without consideration for the usual chaos that infects my life, will do more harm than good in the long run. By taking a more measured approach, I can have both books out before the end of the year, and hopefully arrive at my next project with my wits intact.

So yeah, if you are waiting for Iron Angels to come out right now, I apologize for the let down. It has taken me a while to admit it, but it turns out I am human too, and can fail. Blergh. Rest assured, however, that my schedule for Badger remains unchanged. My rewrites on that are starting as we speak, and the alpha readers have pretty much all gotten back to me. That project has me both excited, scared half to death and ready to start. Let's hope no more crazy hops in the way this time.

In any case, I'll see you around!

On Cool Stuff and Getting Stuff Done

Alright, so first things first. Iron Angels second to last draft is finally done. Yeah! Now it is off to our esteemed copy editor, Tristi Pinkston. Hopefully that means we will be on track for a publication date in May, which at the moment looks increasingly likely.

That also means that I am now free to work on other projects again, namely The Social Contract's first draft and the Badger rewrite. I will hopefully have the alpha readers go over Badger during May, so that I can then spend most of June tearing it apart. Let me know if you want to help out with the whole process! As it is, Badger has a target publication month of August, and I think we have a very good chance of making that date too. After that, the only other book to get done during 2012 will be the sequel for Kingsley, subtitled Murders in Whitechapel, which hopefully will be ready by November.

Five books in less than a year. That's possible and not entirely crazy, right? Aheh heh...

On to other things. We have a cover being done for Badger at the moment, again by Paul Hamblin, our awesome artist from Wolfhound. He's sent me a few rough versions, and says he'll have the finished prodcut done soon. I'll post it when it's ready, so get excited for it!

We've also had an ad up occasionally on Girl Genius, and things have been going moderately well for us. I don't know how cost effective ads are for ebooks; perhaps it is the fact that we need people to buy the book and not just visit a comic? At the same time, Kingsley's been doing a bit better as a result, so I'm not complaining at all!

Also, at the end of this next week, Emily and I will be off to Utah to participate in the LDS Storymakers conference. It will be the first time going as an actual professional writer, so I'm kind of nervous. At the same time, we'll get to meet some of our writing friends and attend some cool panels and workshops, so it is totally worth it!

Finally, whoever did this is awesome, hands down. I'm on a freaking wiki! Huzzah!

Whew, lots of news, huh? Perhaps I should post here more often... oh well. Off to work! See you around!

On Tough Stuff

Soooo... yeah. I'm sure you might be wondering where I've been for the past month or so. At least, what's been keeping me so busy that I haven't been posting here. It's a funny story, you see little elves from the future abducted me and... okay, so you're not going to buy that one. I guess I will have to tell you about the mission the CIA sent me on to...not that one either, huh? Well fine then. I suppose the truth will have to do.

So, first off, Iron Angels. This book is supposed to be published in May, which makes time a little bit short on that one. I've been working like crazy to finish it up so that my copy editor can have it (thanks again for your patience, Tristi!) and the story has been a tricky one to resolve. At the very least I think I've got the hang of it now, which means that I will be able to get it done this next month and have a third book. Hopefully the payoff is worth all the agony it's put me through!

The next thing that has been taking up my time has been something called Tough Mudder. No, not the Firefly thing. Tough Mudder is a race where you go through twelve miles of obstacles, mud and various other pleasant stuff like electrical wires and burning bales of hay. No, I am not making that up, and definitely no, I am not running in it. At least, not this year. :) However, my dad and a bunch of the guys from the ward are running the race in a couple of weeks, and so I've been getting up early every Saturday morning to work out with them. And by work out, I mean getting up early enough that the sun isn't out and running through freezing cold mountain streams.

On top of all of that I have the cutest little girl in the world who wants nothing more than to have her daddy read her the pidgeon books. Those unfamiliar with the pidgeon books written by Mo Willems should acquaint themselves with these works of art. Otherwise we will be sending Sera over to make you read them to her.

So yeah, it's been a bit busy, but we are still moving along. I wanted to provide photos in this post, but for some reason the internet is not cooperating with me tonight. Oh well. Grumble grumble grumble...

On Progress and Cover Art

So Kingsley is off and running! It's doing well for now, but I am hoping that it starts to rev up and reach the level of success that Wolfhound continues to enjoy. I just need to find the mental energy and time to promote it a little bit more and I think it will catch on pretty well.

So on another topic, we have the cover art for Iron Angels! James Curwen was kind enough to provide the artwork, and he has done a wonderful job. Go check out his other work, and I highly recommend him to other authors looking for covers! He's great. Now I just have to revise the book itself until it has similar quality... At least I have until May this time! See you around!

On Bleh

You never realize exactly how much you are on the internet until your modem dies and you suddenly don't have the internet to be on. :(

Fortunately we were able to fix that problem fairly quickly, which is why I once again have a steady, glorious connection to the interwebs. All the better to obsessively check on Amazon with.

Speaking of which, we got another review! And it was another good one! Sales for Wolfhound are still going fairly well; I've been impressed with how the book is doing, and I've come to the conclusion that December and January are golden times for a new book. If things keep going like this, then Wolfhound will have paid itself back easily. That sort of early success definitely does wonders for my self confidence.

Of course, now the more neurotic half of my brain is chipping away at that confidence by making me worry that I will let these people down with my next book. All of a sudden I have expectations to live up to, and that was an unexpected burst of stress to deal with. At least Iron Angels is now out, Social Contract has been started (Mwahahaha!) and I have a few days to pound away at Edawku before I dig into the Hector Kingsley copy edit. No pressure though. Right?

Right?

On A Good Start

So here we are in 2012. Has the apocalypse started yet?

Wolfhound has been out for almost a full month, and I have to say we've been doing pretty well! The book has officially hit the "good job" mark and kept going strong, though I don't think I will post actual sale numbers here. Pride goeth before the fall and all that. :) We've also got a review up, which was pretty positive and very encouraging. I had been getting a little worried as to why we hadn't got any before then, but I guess people were just taking some time to get through it. I just want to meet those expectations in the sequel!

Iron Angels is pretty near the completion of the next draft, with a bunch of helpful alpha readers set up. That's always nice to have, especially since I suspect the schedule for that book is going to be cutting it a little close. My goal is to have it ready by tomorrow and out to the readers as soon as my fingers can hit the keys. Wish me luck!

The final copy edit of The True Adventures of Hector Kingsley has been delievered! That means that my next project, outside of doing an alpha read, will be to revise that book and get it ready for publication in early February. I'm getting both excited and nervous about it, but I think it will do at least as well as Wolfhound, if not better!

In any case, I suppose I should get back to work, shouldn't I? Hope all is going well for everyone, and I will see you later!

On Another Draft Done

So as of yesterday, the first draft of Murders in Whitechapel has been finished. The overall story still needs a bit of work, but I think that people who like the first book will enjoy this one as well. I certainly enjoyed writing it; now I just need to get to work on the revisions on it.

In other news, I now get to work on The Social Contract! That book will probably occupy me for the first few months of 2012, and I am so excited about it. The various elements of the story are going to be pretty cool, and it will be a very different kind of story. At the same time I'm going to be revising a book for a friend called Edawkuh, (Yes, I will get to it, Megan) and hopefully finishing up an alpha rewrite of Iron Angels before the week is up. So yeah, even on break I still plan to be pretty busy. :)

In any case, the completion of the last book of the year calls for a celebration of sorts, so I'm going to give you guys the back cover of the paperback/hardcover version of The True Adventures of Hector Kingsley, courtesy of Mr. Ennis once again. See you around, and happy holidays!

On December

Alright, we've made it to December. So far so good. Now I just need to make it to the end of the year, and then not only will Wolfhound be out, but we should be well on the way to getting a couple other projects up as well.

In terms of that progress, we have succeeded in getting cover artists not only for Kingsley, but also for Iron Angels! That, in addition to a copy editor for Kingsley, means that we have a sustainable little publishing schedule set up. Now all I have to do is get IA revised and out to alpha readers, and we should be set for the next little while.

Of course, all of that is easier said than done. End of December, end of December...

On Juggling Projects

With all the excitement over Wolfhound--which hopefully will be up by next week--it is easy to lose track of where I am on the other stuff I've been working on. Here's a quick update on that.

Mysteries is now about 57k words long. That means I've got about two thirds of the book done, and that I'm on track to finish the first draft by the end of the year. Unfortunately, I seem to need to slow down my original schedule. What with the extra work to get Wolfhound up, the need to revise a few drafts of previous novels, and the general fatigue from the past six months or so of running all out, it is probably a better idea to stick to six thousand word weeks on Kingsley's second novel rather than push the envelope and risk burning out in two weeks. At least, that's my perspective.

Iron Angels is sadly still partway through the third draft. My ideas are ready and I'm starting to get excited about getting it ready for alpha readers. I just can't seem to find the brain energy to spare for it right now; Mysteries and Wolfhound are kind of stealing the show. Once Wolfhound's up, Iron Angels is next on the spot, and I hope to have it ready for an alpha read by mid-December. That way we will be on track for a fourth draft by the end of Feburary or so. I hope, I hope, I hope....

As for the True Adventures of Hector Kingsley, we have a breakthrough! We found an editor who is more than willing to run through the book for us, and the search is already on for a cover artist! I think that we have a better than decent chance of getting Kingsley up by the end of this winter, which is really exciting. It might be a little exhausting too, but that's the life of a writer I suppose.

In any case, those are all the projects I'm currently juggling right now. Soon as Wolfhound goes up, life will be a bit more managable. At least I think it should be, right? Hope all is going well for you guys, and I will see you around!

On Getting Through November + Interview at A Storybook World

Alright! So it's been a busy last couple of weeks. We are officially about three weeks out from putting Wolfhound online, and that fact has me a little intimdated, excited, befuddled and happy. It's kind of a mix of things. In one way I feel like it's taking forever to get up, because I've been working on publishing this thing for months now. At the same time, it's like this deadline is rushing straight at me way, way too fast. So I'm now enjoying the delightful blend of impatience and panic that I would assume accompanies the publication of anyone's first book. I guess that means I've hit the perfect middle ground then right?

Progress on Mysteries continues apace. I'm at about the halfway point, which is more or less where I had wanted to be by now. Based on the status of other projects, however, I think that I will need to prolong the number of weeks I work on this one. It is not that the novel is taking too long--far from it in fact--I just need more time to revise other projects so that they are ready for the next step in the process. Among those projects would be a 3.2 draft of Iron Angels to get it ready for an alpha read (would have already been ready with 3.1, but then I got an excellent character development idea), work on getting a copy editor/cover artist team together for the True Adventures of Hector Kingsley, a 2.1 draft for Badger (Emily really liked it! Huzzah!)and finally the formatting and prep work to put Wolfhound up on the 28th. I figure that those projects are important enough to extend the schedule a little bit for Hector's second novel, especially if it means that I get the next few books up online in a shorter amount of time.

So yeah, that's the progress so far! I just need to make it through this month without going completely nuts and we will have finally gotten this book up! Now it's just a matter of following through...

On another note, I have another interview up, at A Storybook World. Go there and read it! See you around.

On One Month Until Publication

So as of yesterday, I have about thirty one days until my first book goes up for sale, and I find out if other people like the story as much as I do.

...

AHHHHH!

All futile panicking aside, I am really, really excited about this whole thing. It is an incredible opportunity to put my work out there and to have the help of so many people to get this thing done. We have had a wonderful cover artist, an impressively dedicated copy editor, and friends willing to both give advice and help refine our efforts. I've been amazed at the amount of help and friendship we've recieved, and in case I haven't remembered to do so before, I just want to thank all of you for being there when we needed you.

Now we just need to get the edit done and format everything for release. Also, now that I think about it, if we mean to get Kingsley up in four months, we need to look for another batch of cover art and copy editing. Along with Mysteries and Iron Angels, that should be more than enough to keep me busy. Like I needed help with that before, right? See ya!

On a Crazy Week

You know its been a particularly crazy week when you can't remember the last normal day at work you had. This week has been one of those, for better or worse. To all those who have emailed me and are still waiting on a response, yeah, I will try and get back to you by the end of the night. I just hope that I can make it through November, because at this rate I'm starting to wonder if my poor little brain can take it.

At the very least my writing schedule has been moving along pretty well. Hector Kingsley's second book, for now Mysteries in Whitechapel, has now reached the one third point, which means that I've already written everything that my writing group will see before I rewrite it for the alpha readers. That's always kind of a turning point for the story in a lot of ways, and I am very glad to have reached it. I'm also all the way through the second draft of Badger; now I've turned it over to Emily for a preread. She always gets the good stuff first (mostly because at that point it isn't that good, and she's an excellent editor.) and she's liking it so far. Iron Angels' third draft could be going a bit better, but I've nailed down Susan's character a bit better and I hope to have it ready by the end of October to send out to alpha readers.

All in all, things are going well, just really, really busy. I hope that all of you are keeping up with the challenges life throws at you as well, and I'll see you around!

PS. Here's the cover for Wolfhound as far as we've got it. Cool, huh?

On A New Project

I made it! Badger is now done, at least as far as the first draft is concerned. The book will likely need a second draft before it can be readable, but for now I will be shifting my focus to the next project: Murders in Whitechapel.

I'm a bit concerned on how to start this one off. Part of the problem is that Kingsley is a mystery oriented story, which is very different from the event oriented storyline in Badger. Rather than a battle, I need to inject intrigue and trickery, which requires a bit of a different focus.

Another part of the problem is that unlike the first Kingsley novel, you start this one with a fairly good idea of who at least one of the bad guys is. That brings the conflict a lot more quickly into focus than the first book, and changes at least some of it from a "Whodunnit" type story to a "Whatshegonnado" plot. It's enough of a difference to make things subtly different, and it presents a puzzle I'm going to need to work around to get things right. Given the success I had with the first book, I am hoping to not flub the second one completely, so there's that presure to deal with as well.

At the same time I'm going to be doing a third draft rewrite of Iron Angels. The writing group has made its way through nearly a third of the second draft, and their critiques have given me fuel enough to go through and make my alpha readable draft now. That story's pretty different from Jacob's or Kingsley's as well, but I don't think it will distract me too badly. I hope.

Here goes everything...

August Update

Alright, here's the situation before I descend into the morass of writing that has consumed me lately.

You know that 3rd draft of Kingsley I was working on? It's done now, though I will still tinker with it. Thanks again to all of my alpha readers; your contributions were greatly appreciated. Next on my list is a query letter revision and a synopsis that I can send out to some traditional publishing agencies and companies. We'll give the regular market some time to take up the series before I go it alone with Kingsley.

Badger proceeds on schedule, despite constant interference from the opposing forces of over-motivation and procrastination. Distraction has made an occasional appearance as well, but we've broken the 50k mark as of last week, and I intend keeping the book on track for a Sept 10th first draft finish date. The story is going relatively well for a first draft, but I think I've grown to hate the clunkiness of my first pass at the stories I write. Compared to the much more improved version on the second run through, it just seems very much unfinished, which tires me a little. Oh well, such is the process of writing.

Iron Angels is still making its way through the writing group. I think I'll probably continue submitting sections until the first draft of Badger is done, and then revise a quick 3rd draft to prepare it for alpha readers. So far its going pretty well, so hopefully I didn't mess it up.

As for Wolfhound, we have cover art! Or at least, a sketch for it. It looks awesome, but I'm going to wait until it is more finished before I post it up for everyone. After all, I don't like people looking at my first drafts, so why would I do that to the artist? Just rest assured, its super cool! Also, with the 3rd draft of Kingsley done, I'll be switching to a quick 7th draft of Wolfhound in preperation for the copy edit.

In other news, Seraphina now has a neck, a hunger for rice cereal and a temper. Life is always getting more interesting... See ya!