Ramblings and Updates

I haven't been doing much writing in the last couple years, I have mostly been working on other side projects. One of the problems with being somewhat absent minded and prone to chase rabbit trails ;) I have been pleased to see a handful of people downloading Rise to Revolt from Kobo and I even got a couple more star ratings for it, its sitting at 4 out of 5 stars with three total ratings.

Kobo tells me that it has been downloaded about 20 times, although I seem to remember seeing something about that number possibly being inaccurate due to Kobo having a bug of some sort a while ago that interfered with counting free downloads. Is 20 free downloads and three ratings anything to get excited about? Well for me, it certainly feels good to know that 20 people tried to read my first book, and none of them hated it enough to send me nasty emails or leave a bad review. For a complete unknown's first work, one that was deliberately published on a very small platform that reaches a fraction of the people Amazon does...that is pretty decent encouragement.

What do I think of it? Well, with the benefit of a couple years of distance, and I would like to think at least a bit more development as a writer, I personally think the book is about a 2.5 star or so. The universe is well fleshed out and I think the story and technology holds up fairly well, not that I have done anything new or original at all. The weak part of the book and what I struggled the most with was writing the characters, especially their dialog. I got better as I went along and I think the dialog at the end of the book is quite a bit better than the beginning, but its still very much a first effort.

Do I still plan to continue to story and finish the trilogy? Well, not for the time being. Probably what I will eventually do is take the best parts of the book and rewrite it from scratch, possibly doing the next book at the same time so I can edit them together and make sure the story flows well. But thats going to definitely be some time down the road.

I do want to get back into pushing forward on developing myself as a writer and so for the last couple months I have been off and on working on getting my urban fantasy series plotted out. What I originally planned as one book to start the series, is now going to be a trilogy of 80-100k word books.

• The Pyongyang Incursion
• The Vladivostok Penetration
• The Berlin Infiltration

I have the first book roughly outlined and about eight thousand words written, but I still have the scene breakdowns to do and I suspect I will be throwing away a decent chunk of what I have already written. I am trying a new way of writing, where I am going to do a full outline first, then do scene breakdowns, something like what Rachel Aaron recommended in her excellent read, 2k to 10k. I am aware that there is no Perfect Way of writing, you just have to figure out what works best for you and stick to it. Since I am still figuring that out, this trilogy will hopefully see some progress on that front. I already know I am not a "pantser" as I wrote Rise to Revolt from a reasonably detailed outline, but I think that it would have benefitted from tighter plotting down to a scene breakdown.

I know I wrote in a post a couple years ago that I was planning to try the "pantser" approach next but I quickly discovered that I am definitely unable to make that work at all for me. Mostly what happens is that I sit helplessly in front of my keyboard, wondering what to type next. Or I type something and really get into the flow...and then realize that it doesn't really work. So definitely going back to making detailed outlines and then working on scene breakdowns is the right direction to go. 

My current plan is to write all three books first, getting the rough drafts all done and then editing the first book for release in Kindle Unlimited, with the next two being released to KU over the next two months. This is a tactic I have seen used quite a bit lately and it has some real advantages, especially when it comes to making sure all the books flow naturally into each other and plot threads are neatly wrapped up. This is also a good step to take as a completely unknown author, as its hard to build a brand with just one book. I really think KU has been a real boon to indie new authors, as people are far more likely to try out a new author when it costs them nothing. I know I have tried out a lot of new authors thanks to my KU subscription, and have found a number of enjoyable new reads that I may not have otherwise found.

The timeframe on this is probably going to be at least a year, my life is fairly busy right now, my second kid is due next month, and I'm suspecting finding time to write regularly is going to be difficult. Being easily distracted probably doesn't help either ;)

To help keep me motivated, and to work on inculcating good habits, my goal is to start posting on here a bit more often and try to get into a regular schedule. I will periodically post updates as to where I am at as well.

Hopefully I can look back at this post in a year and see some real progress on the writing front. If not, well, I probably got distracted by some old book or computer ;)  Or possibly analog photography...I finally have all the stuff needed to do my own black and white photo development, I brought a very nice enlarger home last week that my uncle found for me and I am looking forward to learning how to use it.

There are just too many interesting things out there...