Posted on

Soon: Title Announcements!

Oyez! Oyez!
Ian McNeice as the Newsreader/Town Crier in HBO’s Rome

Happy February 1st! I hope everyone is enjoying their Saturday. I’m spending mine working on Old Broken Road, but I wanted to give a few more updates regarding my other projects.

I have mentioned before that I am working on two new titles: the first is the next in the series that started with The Stars Were Right which I am cleverly calling my: Unnamed Waldo Bell Story. This will be the book that follows Old Broken Road and so far I’m really liking where it’s going. The second is a near future sci-fi in a whole new universe. Up until recently it has been operating under the project name: Deep. (You can see some of my inspiration here.) Now, neither of those names are final (some for obvious reasons) and we’re getting to a point where I should change that.

Today, I decided that when I reveal the Old Broken Road cover I will also be announcing the new titles of my next projects! This should all be going down over the next month-ish or so make sure you check back often. I’m getting really excited, cool stuff is coming and I can’t wait to share it all with you.

Have a great weekend. Go Hawks!

Posted on

Updates! Updates! Updates!

Updates! Updates! Updates!

A few weekends a month my wife and I like to declare it “productive weekend.” What this means is we both spend our time heads down and at work on our various projects. For her that’s painting in her home studio, for me that’s writing in my home office. We both find it really helpful and allows us to set aside time to push through any roadblocks that might have cropped up. Now on the tail end of our most recent productive weekend, I have updates!

The Stars Were Right
I’m in the final stretch now. Things are getting sooooo close. ISBNs are purchased. eReader distribution accounts are setup. There’s a few odd issues with the initial first-run of the book I am trying to sort out (works fine on Kindle Fires and Kindle for iOS, doesn’t seem to be working on Kindle Paperwhites or Kindle DX.) It’ll get sorted, and it’s getting very close. Excited.

Old Broken Road
As of this weekend I am 50% of the way though my initial edits. It’s amazing how quick it goes for me once I sit down and actually start editing the thing. If Stars was my Star Wars then Old Broken Road is my Empire. It’s much bleaker than the first one. Got about 5 chapters edited on Sunday. Still a long way to go, but I’m on track to getting my rough draft into the hands of my early beta readers soon, hopefully in a month or so.

Deep
It still doesn’t have a proper name, but Deep is chugging along. It’s a very different book for me and I am still wrapping my head around the way I am presenting the story. I’m about 10k words in (about two chapters.) The setting is starting to come together and I really like one protagonists, still getting the others sorted out. As I keep working I keep adding images I find to the “Deep” Pinterest board. Give it a follow!

Posted on

“Old Broken Road” finished, new projects begun!

Old Broken Road

Some pretty exciting news on the project front! As of Friday I finished the first rough-draft of Old Broken Road my latest manuscript! OBR is the sequel to my upcoming novel The Stars Were Right (follow the link to read an excerpt) and I couldn’t be more excited.

After I returned from my trip to Norway last year I was struggling with what to start next after finishing Stars. Eventually I realized I had to start the next tale in the world of the Territories and thus “Old Broken Road” was born, it’s story needed to be told. The rough draft was just shy of 75k words but it’ll be well over 80k after I go back and massage everything into place. (It’s already grown by 2k and I have only gone back over a third of it.) As far as publication, it’s still a ways out, I’ll need to go over it a few times, and then hand it off to my army of beta readers to get some feedback, then it goes off for editing, all this before I decide how to approach publication. Still, it feels good to have made progress. Remember Rule #2: Finish What You Start.

All in all it took a little under five-months from start to finish. Stars was born in about seven, so it’s nice to see I am getting faster. It’s a testament to proper planning I suppose. As I mentioned in my last post, I find myself heavily influenced by visuals so if you’re interested I do have a Pinterest Board full of images that have helped inspire “Old Broken Road.” You can check it out here.

There is no rest of the wicked, and I have more stories I want to tell, so I have also started moving forward with my next project. Currently code-named “Deep” until I can find a better title for it. (Titles always take me a while.) I have a board for Deep as well, it’s wildly different from the world of Stars and OBR, but I wanted to try something new. This project will be heavily rooted in sci-fi, in a genre I am calling “submarine-punk,” until I can find a better term for it. Looking forward to really jumping into that.

Okay, back to work! Stay tuned!