Tuesday, September 17, 2019

Remember When: One Year Anniversary!

The madness of a weekend that let me write Remember When was in August, but the fruition of a month-long effort of Editing (and Proofreading and Cover Art and Learning How To Publish) came on 17.SEPT of 2018. The novella was available on Amazon for Kindle.

I had to do the marketing push, pursue reviews and promotions, and thought I had a chance of selling about five copies... but I was sure going to make a professional presentation.

and I was amazed. It worked.

Not "get rich on your first published book" amazing, but entirely acceptable numbers for a brand new fiction author without the benefit of a publisher or paid advertising campaign.

The reader reviews came in, too. Thank you to everyone who reviewed or rated the novella on Amazon, Facebook, and Goodreads. They were uniformly gratifying, and insightful. I learned a lot about what people thought was good, and no small amount about what people thought could be better.

I ran that marketing full throttle for a week, maintained it for the remainder of a month, and then set to outlining what the next novel would be.

Because the most important things I learned were that I could do this, that people enjoyed it... and I loved doing it. Contented Muse, Happy Me.

Thank you. All of you.

Now, how about we do it again, with a bigger book and another full throttle push to get a bunch of sales piled up on Day One for the new novel, Remember Them?

Stay with me on this, folks... we are 6/7 of the way through 3rd Edit pass, and I'm seeing the signs of everything falling into place soon. I'll announce the publication date for Remember Them just as soon as I am sure we can hit it. Spread the word, Start the hype, and if you know someone who you'd like to introduce to the series, Get Them Hooked Up. There is a link to Amazon's sales page on this 'blog and on the Book's page on Facebook. They'll want to read Remember When before they can get a copy of Remember Them!

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Siege Warfare, and Some Very Good News

Editing a novel, especially the 3rd round (in our scheme), is almost like Siege Warfare. You surround each paragraph, then pick it apart line by line and word choice by word choice, always advancing your trenches until you are close enough to charge in and capture it.

In less colorful language: we look at every line and every phrase. How does this read? Is the meaning the same if we change *this*? How does the paragraph flow? Is this dialogue expressed in the correct character's voice? Does this reference close a loophole left open in some previous chapter, as intended?

and so on.

and so on.

I wasn't joking. Even uninterrupted, good editing can and should take longer than the original writing.

Thankfully, I have a good editor.

The end is in sight. Might be a few weeks if things interrupt, but we are getting close. When we have it in hand, I'll be posting the publication date here. Thank you all for waiting so long!


In better news:

I'm proud to announce that Remember Them will have another magnificent Scott Ruggels cover design. He works wonders, both on schedule and in quality. I'm very grateful.

Friends, please feast your eyes on this: