Today I “met” with the book cover designer officially for the first time and got to give him my thoughts on the cover of Abnormal. Every time something new happens in the process it revs up my excitement. So close, yet so far. I want to tell you all the release date, but I still have to keep mum. But soon. Soon.
I am a few chapters in on revisions on Book 2, but I stopped for the A&S crunch and can’t remember what I was going to say next. Lol
Book 3 is tickling the back of my mind, but I have to tell it to wait its turn. If I dive into that now, I’ll squirrel and never make any progress.
Next on my list of things to do is get home from rapier fighting, shower, and eat. Then I need to use the feedback I got from my A&S judges to improve my research paper a bit. I won’t discuss the actual competition here. I won with both my entries, but my overall experience with the event was… let’s just say… disappointing. We’ll go with that. Hopefully next week in our neighboring Barony it will be better.
Category: #dystopian
Trailing ahead
Abnormal is getting even closer to publication, and today the book trailer went live on Rhetoric Askew!!!
Click the link. You know you want to. Scroll down to the neurons. See ’em? Yeah, click play. Now watch. Bad. Ass.
I’m super stoked. Today is a good day. I have decided. Who cares what happens after this? Well, okay, I should care–but I’m just jacked up on book trailer giddiness.
Now I gotta get ready for the day job.
But hey–one day closer to release!
Ever the student
Well, it’s getting to Documentation Time for my Arts and Sciences projects, so of course I start with the hardest one: the research paper. I haven’t done a research paper since the last time I was in college–so twelve years. Twelve years rusty. Why did I choose to do a research paper again?
Oh yeah…I had a brilliant idea.
No, I won’t go into it here. I only have two very rough draft paragraphs done, and it’s going to take this whole week to get it done and up to snuff…and to document the arts project. That one should be easier, but first thing’s first.
A lot of people have told me that they do the research first, then the thing. I ended up going backwards on my arts project. I did the embroidery using stitches that I knew to be used in period times; now I have to prove that they were used. D’oh!
With the competition a week away, I have to put Book 2 on hold. I guess that’s a good thing, though, because I’m kinda stuck a bit. Not stuck-stuck, but stuck enough. I’m at that point I usually get to in my writing where I’ve reached the near-end before enough has happened. I have to add more action, more description, and/or more dialogue. I think I’ve dialouged things out, so it’s going to have to be the former two.
I started my research on local media outlets, bookstores, and libraries for Abnormal‘s release, too. There are a lot of libraries in Tucson. I haven’t finished there yet, and I still have Phoenix left to go. I plan on taking one of my half days/partial days at work to start making calls to set up potential appearances/book signings/etc. I want to have the marketing materials in hand though, so I will have to just research until then. Maybe by then I can narrow down where I want to go to plug my book.
The web media sites I haven’t really gotten into yet. I need to, but it’s a bit hard to weed out the clickbait sites and find the real entertainment/book websites. I also have to avoid the “pay to be put on X lists” sites. I want none of those shenanigans.
Proofreading is done, the publisher loves the ending, and things are moving along. I just need to finish my Arts and Sciences writing, finish the second first draft of Book 2, finish a bunch of illumination/scrolls that I said I’d do, and oh, yeah, the arts exchange project and…..I’m probably forgetting something in there. Work! Yeah. I have to work. Damn day job.
I guess that’s enough rambling for now.
Crunch of a different sort
It’s crunch time again, but this time it’s not for a convention. No, this weekend is reserved not for cosplay scrambling but instead for A&S (Arts and Sciences for those non-SCAdians) entries.
I finished one of my two entries, but y still need to finish the research for the second and to write both documentation papers. Easy peasy, right?
I’m just hoping there’s enough left of High School Me and College Me to get them done. Lol Adult Me hasn’t had to write a research paper in over a decade, so we’ll see how it goes.
If I want to some day be a Laurel I can’t keep doing this, though. I think part of it is that I had so many other projects that came up between when I made Project One and the competition–which, incidentally, is a week from tomorrow. Thankfully I have the whole weekend to work on them. No events. Nothing planned. Just research.
Then, I guess, it’s back to Book 2. I’m still only about halfway through, and though I don’t have a deadline for this one, I’d like to get the second first draft done by the end of the year. I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to give myself.
Oh crap. This weekend I also planned to start contacting media outlets about Abnormal. Guess that will have to wait until I get done with A&S.
So much to do in one weekend. Let the games commence!
Media frenzy
The time has come to research media outlets near me to receive the press kits for Abnormal. 😀
Okay, so the time was probably long ago–the point is, I’m getting ready to do it now, before I head back to work after my vacation. I’ve got a browser window open to locate the various Arizona media outlets I may want to contact and a blank Word document open to receive those outlets’ contact information.
Except…I don’t really know where to start.
Okay, so I did have a starting point yesterday when I first did a search, but that starting point was a costly one. Sure, I could’ve had the contact info for whichever media outlet in Arizona I chose–or all of them–for a cost, that is. The site I found was not a free resource. Back to the drawing board, I guess.
I know I want to promote in my local town, as well as the larger areas like Tucson and Phoenix (especially Tucson, seeing as how I’ll be attending one of their conventions in the fall), but beyond that I’m clueless. How far am I willing to travel to promote? Would I even need to travel? And what about online outlets like Talk Nerdy With Us, Starry Constellation Mag, and others? They would be great resources for reaching my audience, too. I already know one of my old friends at Talk Nerdy who would like to do a read for review, and possibly someone at Starry Constellation. I have to go through the proper channels, though; I can’t just say “Hey, remember me? I wrote for you a time or two–how about you give this here book to one of your reviewers and have them type up a little something-something for me?” Yeah, that’s not very professional. Not gonna fly, much as I would like to pull a string here or there.
It’s kind of exciting to think about potentially being on the receiving end of a review or interview. I had a review done of Whispers of Death the day I self published it, but that was definitely a string-pulling event. “Hey, guys, I wrote and published a thing–somebody go read and review it!” Exciting though it may be, I tend to also get nervous when I think about phone or radio interviews. I tend to stammer and stutter, and my voice is weird in recordings. All high-pitched and girly, not at all how I hear it when it comes out of my mouth. Is that what I really sound like? And that machine-gun nervous laugh I have? Geez.
It’s gotta be done, though. I have to grin and bear it and not worry so much about how I sound. Worry about promoting the book, about getting word out there, about getting Abnormal to those who would enjoy the story.
Flashpoint
I’m happy to announce that a piece of flash fiction that I wrote will be featured on www.rhetoricaskew.com soon!
If you’re interested in the opportunity to have a piece of flash or a poem published on the website, check out Rhetoric Askew on Facebook and follow them to see the weekly Social Media challenge. It’s pretty cool, and here’s the scoop: once a week they post a photo, and all you have to do is use that photo as inspiration for the work. The other authors and followers vote by likes, and the piece with the most likes wins a feature on the site.
So there’s my happy news and my plug for the day. 😉 I’m still working on Book 2, but I’ve gotten to the point where I need to go back and read through what I’ve already written to see where I need to flesh things out or rework things. Y’know, make sure I haven’t written any huge holes in there.
Well, off to work before it’s my turn to drive. We get back home today, and tomorrow it’s back to mundane life yet again.
The battle (moor) is over
We have left Battlemoor behind, and soon Colorado will be in the rear view mirror and we’ll be staying the night in Albuquerque before we go home.
I had a great time, but I miss my Rory-kins and my River monster. It’ll be good to be home and have them happy to see me. It’ll also be nice to sleep in my own bed … and write on my couch.
I managed to get a decent amount of writing done while on vacation, but I’ve got a lot left to do. I’ve gotten my MC into a sticky situation, and I’ve got to get her out of it… but I’ve got half a book to go for that.
I met many new people and made a few new friends this past weekend. Got some good rapier fighting in, and (in a rarity only found in out-of-kingdom events) managed to get to fight only people I’ve never fought before. Won a few fights, lost a few, but thanks to my rapier teacher I’m trying a new thing where I try to remember at least one thing I learned from each fight to help teach me new things and learn how to improve. I wasn’t able to get over my shyness to ask other fighters for pickup fights, but a couple of people asked me so I did get a few non-tournament fights in.
Tuesday I go back to work and fully back to mundane life. It’ll be a little bittersweet, because I’ll be back to normal but I’ll have to leave SCA life behind for a while. Not completely behind–I never get completely away from it because I’m always working on craft projects in my off time. I have to buckle down and get my A&S projects finished when I get home. I’m not going to try for Champion this go around. Novice for me this time, but maybe for the Kingdom A&S in the fall. We shall see.
Speaking of down time, I should get some writing in while I’m sitting here in the back seat.
Guarded outlook
I spent most of the active hours of the day guarding my Queen, and it was kind of nice. She rested most of the time I was on duty, and she even ordered me to have some ice cream.
Tomorrow I try fighting at this altitude. I’m doing okay now, but I get tired quickly. It’s nine fifteen at night and my glasses are fogging up from the heat and mugginess. But I’m okay. I’ll just sleep on top of the sleeping bag until it cools off.
It’s been a strange day, time-wise. I started in the wee hours writing futuristic sci-fi on my laptop…in a tent in the middle of the woods… And throughout the day I was pretty much dressed like a Viking…. while wearing Sketchers. (My foot started hurting, and I’ll never make it through the weekend on medieval shoes like that.) It’s kinda surreal.
It will be strange to be back in real, current times. Back at work, back writing, back doing all the things I’ve been doing–but dressed normal. Well, normal for us.
Time for bed–er, cot now. See you all on the morrow.
Speed bumper cars
I got back into Book 2 today (which may have a new working title), and though I got a revival of inspiration I also ended up with a new issue… I can get some forward momentum, but I have to create more conflict to keep the pace good and keep it from getting boring.
But how?
I’ve got a few things in mind for speed bumps on Clare’s story, but I have several things to consider. Is it going to work for the overall arc of the series? Is it going to muck things up? Am I going to be getting in too deep?
Only time will tell. Time and beta readers lol
Mind Meld
As I work to salvage some of what’s left Book 2’s first draft, I find myself coming to a sort of “meeting of the minds.” My minds, that is.
Bits and pieces of the original Book 2 draft are, in fact, salvageable. What’s interesting is that some of the new bits and pieces fit right in with the old bits and pieces–with a little strategic revision, of course.
^^ Ah, so that’s where I fell asleep ^^
Continuing where I dozed off, I’ll have to add a considerable amount of work to make this a full book. Because of my fondness for chapters with different POVs (hey, it worked in Whispers of Death! Lol), half of what I wrote for the first draft is not usable in this draft. Oh, I can use the info, sure, provided I can weave it in right, but I can’t actually use what I’ve previously written. No chapters from Eli or Harper’s POV if I can avoid it.
That makes the upcoming part tricky. Things have happened and will happen that will cut my MC, Clare, off from pretty much everyone. How do I show what Eli and Harper are doing without the POV chapters?
I’ll figure it out. I had to do it for Abnormal, when I put in a bunch of extraneous chapters that turned out to be unnecessary, and like now I worried about my ability to convey the information without those secondary POV chapters. So I should stop worrying and get to writing.