The Shadowed is released into the world. I am so excited and happy. It happened on Monday but I got distracted by work and was too busy to blog. (Story of my life.) My husband just sent me pictures of the printed book. It looks awesome, all thanks to Emma Rider. I am so glad she suggested the face lift. I can’t wait till I get home next week and can actually touch my printed book. I am just beyond words right now.
This is so cool.
Just finished watching the symphony orchestra playing along with the fifth Harry Potter film. So enjoyable.
Anyway this will just be a quick update. I finished my editing checks and reread through of The Shadowed. In fact, I have already sent it off to my editing friend. Also, I’ve got 1.3k words written for the new idea.
And that’s it for my tiny Sunday post.
I think we are learning something about me. I am not a blogger. It definitely takes a lot to be one. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have enough going on in my writing life to blog weekly or I don’t have the dedication. Either way, at least I’m here today.
Here’s the news from the last entry:
First, I finished the redo of my fan fiction and have been posting it. I haven’t posted a fic in a long time. I forgot how much I love getting reviews. I am posting on my old site tthfanfic and a new one archive of our own. I get a lot more feedback from tth but then I had a tiny bit of a following there.
Second, The Shadowed is at the point where the feedback from my editor is just tiny sentence issue and commas. I am going through my editor’s suggestions right now. Then I will read through it once more before sending it back for what I believe will be the final time. The next step will be finding a proof reader to make sure my grammar isn’t too atrocious. After that, I’m not sure if I want to do a blog tour or go straight to publish. I know a blog tour is better for marketing but I feel like I just want to put it out there.
Third, while I was waiting for the edits of The Shadowed to come through, I started writing a new idea. I expect it to be between 10k and 20k words. This story should be my next work to be published but that’s getting ahead of myself a little.
Well, that’s my news.
Til next time, maybe it’ll be next week or next year. No one knows.
Wow. Just two months shy of it being a year since the last time I blogged. I wish I could say I had a really good excuse for not posting in that amount of time. I mean, I have an alright excuse for about four months; but the other six, well, five not so much. I feel sometimes when I don't have new author-esque news to deliver, I shouldn't blog but I don't want that to be the case. So let me catch you up.
Alas my story for the contest didn't win. I struggled a bit with the 4k word cap but I still like what I came up with. So maybe in the future I will tweak it and add more content and publish it as I can absolutely get in another 6k words at least.
Then to be honest, work continued to be crazy and I wasn't working on The Shadowed or the fan fiction I was trying to fix. Then a week before Thanksgiving my nephew contaminated me with germs. Continuing my bad luck train, I fell down some stairs and hurt my foot the day after Thanksgiving. I was on a little scooter thing for six weeks. My husband was very helpful, a bit mocking, but mostly helpful. At which point we reach January and I got sick from an unknown source and continued to stay sick. I'm managing but it makes writing or being productive hard. It's somewhat easier now but there are good and bad days.
Enough of that sad stuff, I did a thing. I went through some all my old notebooks and found random stories or snippets that I had written. So I posted one of them on my facebook author page and I am working on putting it here under the Unpublished Works tab but I am waiting for a second opinion from my husband. In the mean time I have an idea to make a tiny video of it. It's just really sunk its teeth into me. I hope to flesh it out one day but as of right now it can be what it is.
I am kinda tired. I didn't sleep much. So I'm going to leave this entry here and hope to have a random blog next week.
Whoops...
So I may have been put off my daily blog updating process for a little bit. I'm going to level with you. Work has been stressful and I have been working late for the past two months. However the project is slowly coming to close. In the meantime there has been progress!!
I'm on the second revision of The Shadowed. It is looking pretty dang snazzy. However at some point while going through it, I realized I'm a bit of a potty mouth. That has all been removed so it is a bit more everyone friendly. But then I got side tracked again... I blame my father. He linked me to a contest:
I read that and immediately an idea popped into my head. I was so excited to write it that I just had to start. I have actually just sent my second draft to my editor. Hopefully I will be able to submit it way before the due date. Then I will be back on track with The Shadowed.
What else... I got. a sweet new author logo designed by AWTCoverDesigns. I will try to put it up somewhere on my site. Probably on the contact me page. I believe that is all I've got.
I'll try to get my butt back on track. And I'll be here next Monday with a new update. Also the Finding Neverland musical soundtrack is awesome. I've been listening to it a lot. Enough that my husband yells at me if he sees me put in my headphones.
Anyway tootles.
I didn't die. Obviously, as here I am blogging again. Last week was a time of reflection and being a lazy burrito. However I want to make it a point that I actually did finish editing to Chapter 8 on my fan fiction last Sunday. I even received the edited feedback of my novella, unfortunately I did absolutely nothing with it. As all this writing is suppose to be a fun hobby sometimes I need a week break where I can relax and watch random episodes of Farscape that I've already seen. Never the less I made progress over the weekend and got 30 pages of 122 revised. And again we hit the unfortunately part again. I did nothing today because of coming home late and planning potential fun vacations. In other news I have received the finish product for the covers for The Shadowed. I have a shiny new banner on my published works page and on my Facebook page. It has made me very happy.
I want to go to bed. Does wanting to go to bed at 10 make me old? Maybe tomorrow will be filled with more writing.
Have a good week all.
Alas but once more, I must admit defeat. There was progress but ultimately defeat. I reached Chapter 6 of my fan fiction but not the desired Chapter 8. So the goal will be postponed once more and it will be met by next blog, I swear it! Unless I fail again but I should definitely be done by mid-May at the latest.
A bit of a throw back to Odd Man Out. It has also been uploaded to Smashwords and has already been distributed to the different platforms. Not sure if more people will find it and read it, but it can't hurt.
Right at this moment I am working with AWTCoverDesign on the cover my novella. I am super excited. It's looking pretty good. Maybe in a month or so there might be some sneak peeks. However I am still waiting back for my first edit.
I believe the last bit of news, is the newsletter. I plan to start having a monthly newsletter. I'm not really sure what's going to be in it but I'm sure I will figure something out.
And that's all I have. Have a good rest of your Monday.
I will start with the good news. The Waiting Room is on Good Reads. No reviews yet but it made its way there, and that was enough to brighten my day. It would be nicer if had some reviews somewhere but beggars can't be choosers. It's still not on Amazon but I am not at the stage where I am actively pursuing that goal because I am quite the busy beaver.
However speaking of goals, I must confess that I did not meet mine for this week. I didn't get to chapter eight of Seer of Southdown Base. I did a few pages but not enough to get to my desired chapter. No matter! I will do it this week. In fact I will finish up this post and finish the chapter on I am on right now.
No time to waste-- KC AWAY!
Unfortunately, I don't have much to report this week. The Waiting Room has been distributed to a few other platforms such as Barnes and Nobles; no Amazon as of yet. It has been doing well and getting a decent amount of downloads. I learned a valuable lesson on twitter that if I am going to use Allauthor to promote my books I need to write the featured tweet first. But you live and learn.
I really didn't do too much on my fan fiction story. It needs a lot of editing. I got through the first two chapters. I need to really get my butt in gear. My available writing time will be a bit smaller for the next three months which sucks. However I will do my best and persevere. My goal is to have edited up to chapter 8. I can do this! ....
Tomorrow... because my brain needs to unwind a little bit with a dumb tv show episode.
It's Monday again, and I have news again. Let's start today's update with The Waiting Room. It's out and free which took a bit of doing. Who would have thought that Amazon would want to make money? Apparently they do not allow you to publish free books unless people report that they can find a lower price elsewhere. However, I did find another publishing site with the help of a friend. Smashwords.com allows me to publish my book for free and even more. If the book passes its review it will be released onto a bunch of other platforms including Amazon. The review may take a week, so I will just have to keep my eye on it. But The Waiting Room is out there and free which is what matters.
Moving on to the next topic, The Shadowed. I didn't get as much writing done as I would have liked this past week due to longer work hours. However I did get my once-through done and the first editor has it. Now I just have to sit and wait.
Except I won't just wait, I will keep on writing which brings me to what I am working on currently. I use to frequent some fan fiction sites once upon. a time and still have some open stories on a few of the sites. I read through a few of them and decided I really wanted to finish one of them. It needs a bit of work but probably only three to four more chapters. So I have decided to work on that next in between the edits of The Shadowed. Then I will begin another original story.
So little time. So much to write. God damnit, it's almost time for bed.
This last week was quite productive. I actually finished chapter 10, and edited 9, 10, and 11 yesterday. I also went through the story fixing some elements that I had been meaning to change. Such productivity! It's nice when I am able to spend the weekend at home writing the hours away. I do want to do another read through before I send it to editor number 1. Right now, the story is weighing in at 129 pages and 42K words. Not too bad. I am very pleased with myself.
I can't wait till I send it off, then I can finally work on a new story. I have had four ideas pop in my head in the past two months. I normally find I have a hard time coming up with ideas. Once I have one I can run with it till the end but the initial thoughts are more rare. I don't know which one to pick. They are all meant to be varying lengths of short stories. One is a sci-fi, one a romance, another a thriller/fantasy, and the last one is a sequel type to The Waiting Room.
Speaking of which, The Waiting Room gets submitted in a week. So excited. That's all for this week.
Well I wanted to start off this week's blog with how happy I am with The Shadow's progress, instead I am starting with a complaint.
I don't have internet. Now I know in this wondrous age, even though my place doesn't have internet, I still have internet on my phone. However I prefer to work on my stories on my laptop and they live on my google drive. So no internet means no easy writing. The internet company says expected return is by 9pm (I am writing this update at 7pm and will just post it once I have internet). I hope it's quicker than that. That is enough complaining, onto the progress report! Charge!!
Not only did I finish the rewrite of Chapter 9, I set a goal of writing 2000 words for Chapter 10 on Sunday and I met it. My chapters for this novella are averaging about 4000 words so I'm already half done. I think my two new chaps will be a vast improvement over the old one. I plan to make my husband read them and hopefully he gives me a thumbs up. Doing some calculations, I believe a tentative goal for having my second draft ready is April 24th.
In other new(ish), I joined twitter as @alittleauthorkc. I was a bit disappointed that @alittleauthor wasn't available but I don't mind my handle. Trying to get the hang of tweeting. I like the gif options where you can add any number of preloaded gifs to your tweet. It's an interesting app. I keep strict no twitter hours between 8-5 policy, otherwise I check it a lot.
Lastly, fourteen days til I submit The Waiting Room. Woot woot.
I did a lot last week and have thus overachieved... at least in my mind.
Before I talk about where I outdid what I expected I would do, I will begin with The Waiting Room status. This short story has been approved by both editors now. So when I went to load it on KDP and preview the formatting, it was all messed up. I, with my husband's help, had to do some html formatting to get it to line up. Luckily there are some nice html editors online to test code with. Code is suppose to stay with work not writing. Nevertheless we defeated the formatting and The Waiting Room is ready to go. My plan currently is to release it the Monday before Easter. Hopefully because it will be spring break, more people will want to read and thus will grab my free story.
Next! Not only did I finish Chapter 8, I got three pages written for Chapter 9. So I did awesome in my mind. Unfortunately I have to rewrite Chapter 9 into two new chapters. So that might take more two weeks to finish the new chaps 9 and 10. It all depends on time I have available.
But I need to get to writing. Have a great week, all.
Let's get right into the thick of it.
The ad in the newspaper for Out Man Out looked awesome. I bought a copy, and it sits on my couch waiting to be framed. There was a sale of the story so maybe the ad worked, maybe it didn't. It was labeled a happy ad, and it definitely made me happy to see it there. However, I am not sure if I am going to try to put an ad in a few other papers as well.
Editor 1 has approved The Waiting Room; just waiting on Editor 2. An entry on KDP (where I publish) has been made for the short story. It eagerly awaits publication around April 15th.
Good news for The Shadowed, I completed Chapter 7 by Sunday. I have begun working on Chapter 8. However I realized that I will need to add an extra chapter. This is looking to be about 40,000 words. Hopefully I have a snow day tomorrow, and I can put some extra time into my little novella.
Last but not least, I've got three different ideas swirling around in my head. I have been trying to keep careful notes on all of them. As soon as The Shadowed is off to the editors, I will need to pick one of those ideas and begin writing.
And that is all... 'til next Monday.
And I'm back again with more news.
First, let's begin with Odd Man Out. You may have thought that it was done. After all, it's been put on Amazon; what else does it need? Publicity, that's what! So I have decided to put out an announcement ad in a newspaper to see if I can entice any new readers. I don't know if it worked, but the day I submitted the ad someone bought a book. So here's hoping. The ad should come out tomorrow. I plan to buy a copy of the newspaper and frame it.
Second, The Waiting Room. As you can see the cover is completed and up on my published works page. Even better I thought of the story blurb which usually takes me forever. Why is the blurb so much harder than writing the story? Otherwise the editing process is basically done. I and the editors just need to do a quick check through on one final scene.
Which leaves us with The Shadowed. I did finish Chapter 6, the good news. However I wasn't able to do any work during the weekend which is when I tend to do the majority of my editing. But I will do my best to persevere and meet my deadlines. Perhaps this week will just need to be extended to next Monday to get all of Chapter 7 done. I plan to get at least an hour in today for editing.
Lastly, my husband makes awesome pasta sauce. That is all.
I have decided to try and maintain a weekly update schedule. Sometime, every Monday, I will try to post on my progress or on something random. So getting right to the thick of the post, I do have progress that has been made. The Waiting Room has gone through the first editor and is making its rounds through the second. In the meantime, AWT Cover Design has begun working with me for the book cover. They did such an amazing job with Odd Man Out that I can't wait to see The Waiting Room. As for The Shadowed's progress I have edited chapter 5 and made it 3/4 of the way through chapter 6. I have made another goal for myself to try to get through a chapter a week. I will be happy if I can complete chapter 6 for this week. And that's pretty much it for progress. I will return in a week.
Although the excitement is still running high from the publishing of Odd Man Out, I do have few updates. First, thank you to all the people who have bought Odd Man Out, you are all awesome. Second, I had my story The Waiting Room up on this website as a sample writing piece. I took it down so I could go over it with my editors and a fine tooth comb. I believe it is already pretty well off and won't need to much fixing. Then I plan to release it for free on Amazon. I hope to do that in a month or two. Third, The Shadowed is back on the front burner. Once again that will be my main writing focus hopefully with no more distractions. I have done thirty minutes of editing today, however real life butted its head viscously into me. I was unable to do as much as I wanted. That is all for now. I will return you to your regularly spaced blogs.
Squuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Check out Published Works page!
This is it! The editors have approved. I've reread it for the last time searching for mistakes. I have finally pressed the publication button on KDP for Odd Man Out. What I didn't know is that I have to wait up to 72 hours for it to be reviewed. This will be a very tense 72 hours. Some may say I am a spaz, others that I am high strung. All I know is my stomach will be in knots until I see my book on Amazon. Once it is up, I will add a new page to my website to list my published books. This is so neat... and stressful. Next update will merely be a squuuueeeeee.
Odd Man Out is still in the editing process between my two editors. We all think that we are at the final draft, but we keep making minor tweaks. Hopefully it will be given the okay by this weekend. I just want it to be the best that it can be. In the meantime, I am trying to work on doing my second draft of The Shadowed. Unfortunately, it is slow going. Still, there is progress being made. That is all I have for now on my stories updates. Perhaps my next update will be just me shrieking in joy for having published something. Until the next post.