In early December three things helped make the end of the year pretty good on the writing front, specifically I got the page proofs and illustration preview for my short story in the Shapers of Worlds Volume V anthology, I participated in a book fair, and I reached 50k words on my newest novel draft.
I got the page proofs for my short story, and after having a couple people look the text over I was happy to find that there was only one misspelled word that needed to be fixed. The anthology is over 450 pages, so there are a lot of great stories in there! I'm very grateful to be part of it. In addition to the page proofs, I also got a preview of the illustration that will accompany my story. The work was done by Wendi Nordell, and I've cropped the drawing here to give you a taste of full illustration.
What I really like about the illustration is that I get to see someone else's interpretation of what the Sehenryu people look like and how they dress. I've gotten word from Ed Willett, who is editing the anthology, that the ebook version will go out to Kickstarter backers in Jan/Feb and the paperback version will be shipped in March. For those interested, you can learn more about the anthology and order a copy from Shadowpaw Press, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.
The book fair had 34 authors all squeezed in a medium sized event room that was part of a cafe/bookstore. What I was happy to find was that all of them were regional authors who were passionate about they books they had written. I was next to a guy who had written a legal thriller based on a real life murder in DC. I was also pleasantly surprised to find another author who writes SFF and it turned out that we already had a connection by being on the same author podcast in the same year. The event was three hours and while the first hour was pretty quiet, things got crowded and busy towards the end. By the time I cleaned up my space and headed home I had sold three books. Anyone scoring an event purely by dollars acquired, it wasn't great, but I am playing a different game. The cost to exhibit at the event was $25 and I ended up with $45 in sales, which means (not counting the cost of my time) I left the book fair with more money than when I started. Not the full $20, but instead $5 because I bought a book there myself. I try to practice what I preach and support local authors.
Based on my previous two novels, the one I am drafting will be a little longer than 100k words. As the new year gets started, I just passed the 50k work mark on my newest novel draft. Consistency seems to be my biggest challenge, as judged by my writing calendar. Some weeks I'll have less than 1k words total, while others I could have over 5k words. Holiday travel was certainly to blame for slow progress in Nov and Dec, but things will settle down in Jan and my goal is make some big pushes. Story-wise, I've just hit the mid-point turn, which will lead to the rush to the big confrontations (plural) at the end. It's taken six months to get to 50%, and my goal in 2025 is to have a complete first draft by the start of July.
No big marketing plans in the works for the next few months other than putting some feelers out for being a guest on a writing podcast and trying to get a couple book blogger reviews. I tried to get my books stocked at my local B&N, but those emails were lost in the Void. Next step is to go in-store with copies in hand and see if I can convince a real person to stock them. I've seen local author books on the shelves, so there must be a way to crack the code.
Thanks for stopping by.
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