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Posts Tagged ‘novellas’

Switching Back

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on April 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Now that Become: Brothers is up for pre-order,

Brothers

it’s time to switch back to working on the bigger story, BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING.

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It’s not really a complete switch, since this picks up the story of the same characters, just a few years later. But it always takes me a day or two to get my head into the new story, even in the same series.

Right now, I’m reading through what I had already written of this story (about 32,000 words). That will give me a chance to re-familiarize myself with it and to patch any gaps left by removing the problematic flashbacks that are now no longer necessary.

The changed–and changing–relationship between these brothers will continue to be a major part of the ongoing story.

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Multitasking

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 22, 2017| 2 Comments »

For an indie author, the reality is that you’re never working on just one task. There are always other things that need attention, too. And I’m not just talking about real life things like walking the dog, doing the laundry, or fixing dinner.

One of those tasks is marketing the books that are already out. I likely don’t spend nearly enough time on this. I’m not very good at it and writing new stories is so much more fun. Therefore, this month, along with working on the prequel to BECOME and on improving my time management, I’ve been trying something suggested by a fellow writer.

For the last two weeks, I’ve checked on the Amazon ranking of my books, picked the two lowest (with certain caveats) and made them free for a day. The only promotion I do is to create a tweet and post it in a couple of my Facebook groups for retweets. It costs nothing–at least nothing out of pocket and only a little time to put the tweet together.

Each time, I’ve given away about 250 books. Some of those might be new readers who wouldn’t have tried one of my books otherwise. Some might even leave a review. But the main goal is to inch those books up in the rankings to make them more visible on Amazon.

Over the two weeks, I’ve learned a few things:

First, I’m going to have to revise that schedule. Maybe only do one book a week and possibly skip a week now and then. This is because my catalog currently consists of:

  1. Three stand-alone novels. (THE BARD’S GIFT, FIRE AND EARTH, and DAUGHTER OF THE DISGRACED KING)
  2. Two series. (Chimeria (currently BLOOD WILL TELL and BLOOD IS THICKER) and DUAL MAGICS (THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, THE VOICE OF PROPHECY, BEYOND THE PROPHECY, and WAR OF MAGIC).
  3. Three boxed sets (BY SWORD, TALE, OR MAGIC; CHIMERIA , DUAL MAGICS )
  4. And a handful of shorter works. (“Heart of Oak”, “The Music Box”, “Becoming Lioness”, “Wyreth’s Flame”, and “Modgud Gold”)

I’ve already done a one-day promotion for each of the stand-alones and for BLOOD WILL TELL. THE SHAMAN’S CURSE isn’t eligible until March because I ran a Kindle Countdown deal for it already this period and you can’t do both within the 90-day enrollment period.

I have deep concerns about the utility of running this kind of free promotion for subsequent books in a series or the shorter fiction. And I’m not willing to give away the boxed sets. I might do a one-day discount on them, though.

But the other, perhaps more interesting, thing that I learned is that it mostly worked–with one glaring exception. Three of the four books I’ve tried so far have gone up in the rankings and, while they have slipped back a little over time, they have not gone back to their previous ranking yet.

The fourth book actually ranks lower now than it did before the promotion. That book is DAUGHTER OF THE DISGRACED KING.

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And now I have to figure out why. I have some ideas I’m working on. More on that next time.

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Heroes Can Be TOO Good

Posted in Real Life, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

I’m still working on that new chapter for the prequel to BECOME.

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Partly, that’s because I’m still working on overcoming those bad habits regarding my writing time I blogged about last time. And last week turned out to be a very bad time to try to work on that due to several real life show stoppers.

Partly it’s because I backed up a little bit to fix the current scene. I realized that I’d set up my protagonist to be just a little too pure of heart to be truly believable. Now, I still need him to do the thing I was setting up. I just needed to provide a better motivation.

Now, instead of being just a little too good to be true, I’ve set him up instead to internalize a lesson from an earlier episode. This works much better.

Motivation has been the bugaboo through this whole part of the story. The first version set up the brother to be too nasty–a bully. Which is not what I want. The second version set up the protagonist to be a saint. Again, not what I need, here. This version will work better. But it’s probably not the last time I’m going to need to do a little work on the motivations of these two before I get to the final version of “BECOME: Brothers” (working title).

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Figured it Out

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on February 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Turns out that distractions weren’t the only thing keeping me from working on that next scene in the prequel novella to BECOME.

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It was wrong and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it.

This is a scene that was cut from an earlier version of the novel and resurrected for the novella. The results of this scene are important.

This is the story of the early relationship between the two brothers, based (loosely) on the Hercules and his near-twin Iphicles.  Hercules was a demigod. Iphicles was not. Even though the Hercules figure is my main character, it had to be hard on the Iphicles character. And this is what the brothers had to initially overcome.

Now this scene is near the turning point (half-way through, just where it should be). The way the scene was originally written, the other brother came off as a bully. That’s wrong. Even though the main story is going to take these two down a sometimes difficult path, I don’t want him to be mean, just very, very frustrated.

So, now that I’ve figured out what was wrong, I can start drafting a new scene that will do a much better job.

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Progress

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on January 25, 2017| Leave a Comment »

The novella prequel to BECOME is coming along nicely. About half-way through.

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About half-way through, but I haven’t made any progress the last couple of days. I need tp rework the next scene–one that had been cut a couple of versions ago–so I need to think about that a little.

I also need to think about where the main story begins if I remove all of the story of the brothers’ early relationship to put it in the novella. There are at least three choices. So that needs a little more rumination before I can proceed with that.

 

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