The election is over, and had good and bad outcomes, as well as Republican sore losers who won’t give up no matter how the vote goes.
So the writing didn’t do as badly as I feared. Conversely, much time I could have been writing was filled with things like editing and you know, the other things that are needed to make a book come into being.
Over the past two months, True Princess questions have been satisfactorily resolved, as have similar questions with The Journeys Home, the third book, which is pretty much ready for the final read-through and collecting of the front and back matter.
Also, Father Maman, the novella that fits between Journeys and the next book, is off to my reader, for her opinions and assistance.
And the book which follows Journeys and Father Maman has had The End typed where it belongs. Those of you who follow this may recall The Lovers and First Indications. As I read them through, it became obvious that, unlike Father Maman, those two were in fact a single story, dealing with the Queen’s life during the trip home and in the palace. So Queen Immured (which may not end up being the title) came to be, now at not quite ninety-one thousand words.
Latest updates on top. Older ones are below.
Updated December 3, data from 30 November.
As of (10/1), the WIPs, along with my plans for them, are:
- The Faux Princess (Dragons Run My Life, Book One): 111 109 words. No major change.
- The True Princess (Dragons Run My Life, Book Two): 99 278 words. A few additional changes.
- The Journeys Home (Dragons Run My Life, Book Three): 128 479 words. The back and forth with my reader is done. I don’t expect more than minor changes.
- Low Places (A Beckie and Ian story): 107 506 words. Unchanged.
- Queen Immured (Dragons Run My Life, Book Four): 90 767 words.
- Father Maman (Dragons Run My Life, Book Four addendum) 19 757 words. Finished except for things.
- Forbidden Islands (Dragons Run My Life, Book Five) zero words. The file is named.
From two months ago, here’s September’s update:
As of (10/1), the WIPs, along with my plans for them, are:
- The Faux Princess (Dragons Run My Life, Book One): 111 114 words. No major change.
- The True Princess (Dragons Run My Life, Book Two): 99 286 words. My reader returned it the 10th of September, and I made most of the changes she pointed out.
- The Journeys Home (Dragons Run My Life, Book Three): 127 860 words. It went to my reader on September 23rd.
- Blood Moon (A Beckie and Ian story) formerly Princess: 59 686 words. No changes. Obviously not complete.
- Low Places (A Beckie and Ian story): 107 506 words. Unchanged.
- First Indications (Dragons Run My Life, Book Four): 10 709 words.
- The Lovers (Dragons Run My Life, Book Three addendum): 44 281 words. Following Miri and Rhion, and Sanne and Gareth as they travel from Rendekebing to Traenthe. Both this and Father Maman are complete except for things I or my reader find wrong.
(First Indications and The Lovers have been combined in Queen Immured.) - Father Maman (Dragons Run My Life, Book Four addendum) 20 539 words. A trip to seek out Tanial’s maman in Slot Minear.
Here’s October’s work. Added 11 537 words, bringing the Y-T-D total to 177 515 words.
Here’s November’s work. Added 30 667 words, bringing the Y-T-D total to 207 849 words.
What happened, then?
Overall, I wrote 42 100 words, about 700 words per day. For days I did write, about 1000 words each of those days.
In addition to the editing and other tasks, I opted to put Faux Princess into a giveaway, mentioned here earlier in November. I was pleased with the response, but now I have to follow through. I thought to use MailChimp for my bright shiny new mailing list, and did something that they feel violated their TOS. It’s been five days now, and they still haven’t responded to my request asking what I did wrong and can I be reinstated. If they don’t answer in the next day or two, I’ll find another provider.
I’ve received comments and suggestions on True Princess and Voyages Home. Father Maman is with my reader now. Recall (if you can) I had one big question last time: would the three stories, Father Maman, The Lovers and First Indications, work better as a single book? I put them together into a single volume, and then read it through to the end (as far as it was then) and decided while Father Maman didn’t fit, the other two did, and make a better story than the two individually did. In my opinion at least. We’ll see what others think as time goes on.
I made the time to move my books to Kindle Direct Publishing (It didn't take long!), but I have to do other things, like new covers and so forth. I decided to drop Blood Moon and publish Low Places in December.
In addition to the routine complaints (trying to figure out where images will appear in the blog, and the annoying having the point of view skip to the bottom of the file whenever a new line is added), now Blogger has forgotten how to import bullet lists, making it necessary to find each one of them, clean up the bullets and spaces that the original had, and then put them all on individual lines (see above about adding new line frustrations) and then use Blogger's bulleted list command. I have too many to spend my life doing that. For now, I've dropped the history section, and I'm looking for a new platform.
As always, comments and opinions welcome.
