Wednesday I managed to write over 3,000 words. That’s not my best day by a long shot, but it’s my best day recently, and that’s nice. I need about four more of those to finish this draft, take a few hours to sleep, and then start editing it before sending it off to my editor.
I’m a little worried about the last few thousand words for this story, only because the source material I’m using (Tintin and Red Rackham’s Treasure) doesn’t have an awful lot happen in it. Some very pretty scenery, but not a lot of actual stuff. But I’ve mentioned that before, and it’s a hurdle I’ve tackled before, so I’m not really THAT worried about it. But it is on my mind (and today I’ll be diving into the deep of it, as well as Wednesday).
In other news, I went grocery shopping for the first time in over a month. I’m probably going to have to go again next week for fruits and vegetables (I got a massive stock of staples and non-perishables, but I left the fruit and veg until last and there simply wasn’t room in my shopping cart for much). I burned an entire week’s paycheck on that shopping trip… but again, hopefully this will last a month, so I’ll still be okay in the end.
This pandemic, man. So weird. Oh well! Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
When Two Books Become One...
So part of the joy of bringing the old Tintin comics into science fiction has been re-imagining the world through the lens of written stories, rather than the visual medium of comics. For the most part this has been a joy, and a lot of the scenes in the TIntian novels “feel” very comic-inspired to me. I think I did a respectable (if not exceptional) job on the first novel, and the second one is even better, if you don’t mind me saying so.
I suspect the 15th, when I get around to writing it, will be fantastic. But this is the third novel I’m doing this with, and I continue to be happy with the process. Maybe someday I’ll write a sci-fi Asterix and Obelix, but until then, Tintian is a chunk of my childhood dreams made real.
But that’s not to say everything is necessarily easy. The biggest issue is one of length… trying to fill a novel worth of words with a comic that maybe has a thousand words across it is tricky. And in this particular case I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to collapse a two-part story into a single novel.
Specifically, “Tintin and the Mystery of the Unicorn” and “Tintin and Red Rackham’s Treasure” are 2 parts in the comics, and finish laying the fundamental groundwork for the rest of the Tintin comics in many ways. It introduces the last of the “major” characters in Professor Calculus (who I’ve already included in my 2nd novel, “Tintian and the Mysterious Meteor”) as well as the Captain’s ancestral home in Marlinspike Manor (which I am introducing in this novel). Other than the two major reoccurring villains in Tintin, that’s most of the fundamentals covered, really… and I’ve already built the foundations for one of those two villains in my work.
ANYway, what I’m saying is that the current novel is hovering around 35k words, and that’s just a bit shy of my usual novel length. Now Spielberg compressed the two (and added parts of “The Crab with the Golden Claws” to boot!) when he made the movie adaptation, so I’d be in rarefied air if I did the same… I just don’t know if it will make this novel too long if I do. But, all things considered, there’s not a tonne that happens in Red Rackham’s Treasure. A talkative parrot, some monkeys that steal a rifle, and a lot of submarine and diving suit action that makes good comics but I don’t know if would make a great novel.
Of course, one might say the same thing about the entire endeavour of writing works inspired by Herge in the first place, but that’s what I’m doing.
Anyway-anyway, I’ll decide in the next thousand words or so. I might even cut some of the stuff I’ve written so far, make sure the story doesn’t spiral away from me… we’ll see!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Words Count
Get it? Because words are important, but also because I have to count how many words I’m writing to finish a novel?
Hey, I didn’t say it was a clever title. Just that it’s a title.
A friend and I spent much of today doing “writing sprints”, just picking word count goals for an hour and then trying to hit them. I picked 1,000 word goals each hour, and have so far fallen short each time (although not by much, mostly landing around 750 words). I have 30 minutes left in the last sprint before I start making dinner and calling it a day… so far I’m 790 words finished, so at least THIS hour I’ll hit the target. Of course, I am lightly self-sabotaging, since I’m writing this post instead of continuing to work on the novel…
Regardless, I also have tomorrow (or most of tomorrow at least) to continue working on this. Which is good, because I’m a week and a half away from needing it to be mostly finished (minus second-draft editing). At this pace I’ll be fine, but that’s assuming I can maintain this pace… but I should be fine. It’ll be fine, right?
Right.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Nice to be Writing Again!
I mean, technically I never stopped, but there’s a big difference between academic writing and novel writing, as I’m sure everyone is aware. So it’s nice to be writing for work instead of for education, I suppose? Either way, it’s awful nice to be back at writing fiction.
My pace is going to have to pick up a lot if I want to hit finishing this novel by July (that is edited and published by July, of course). But that’s okay, I think I can manage that. I have two more lessons to take notes in for my class, which I will finish today, and then one last (little) assignment for the 22nd that I am technically already finished (just need to collate and submit a bunch of “conversations” I’ve had in the class Discussion forums), and then nothing until the autumn.
Which is good, since I need to have another novel done by the autumn before classes start, more or less! It will be nice to have that time back.
I realize that I am missing my weekly writing group since they were a great source of feedback on works-in-progress, but somehow we must soldier on. “Chapter Two” (the writing group) will get back together before long, and I’ll just have to do without until then.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Essay Done, Back to the Books!
Well, that’s the majority of my summer course finished (not all of it, but most of it). I still have a few short stories to read, but I should be done the whole thing tomorrow, and then I can turn my writing attentions back to the novel full time.
Which is good, because I’m hella-behind.
I mean, it’s not that bad, and as is typical I got the sudden urge to start a completely different story, but I’m going to focus on this one and get it finished in the 2 weeks I have until I have to turn it over to my editor (well, 3 weeks really, but one of those weeks is going to be just editing).
Anyway, nice to have most of the mental load for the course finished, and I hope I did okay in the course (I think I did pretty well on that last essay, but you can never really be sure).
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Big Essay Done!
Well, the most significant part of my summer English course was just submitted (gah, passive voice, the bane of my casual writing!). So that’s nice. A big weight off my mind.
I think I did pretty well on it, honestly. Probably not great, I don’t think I am going to blow any minds as a result of it, but it was still a pretty satisfying sort of thing to write. And further evidence that I am not great at academic-style writing, but can do it when the need arises. So that’s nice.
I have a couple short stories I still have to read for the course, and one of them is by a writer I love (Mary Robinette Kowal) and one by a writer I heavily dislike (Andy Weir), so that’s something else. Looking forward to finishing that so I can get back to writing fiction! Woo!
Anyway, that’s it for today. I have a big dinner planned for my partner and me, and maybe a few more episodes of Schitts Creek before bed… maybe. I have been pretty exhausted recently, so I may just call it an early night. We will see!
Hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!
Deadlines!
So my editor reached out earlier this week to ask if I had a new novel for her to work on in the near future. I said that it should be done by early July… which gives me 3 weeks (more or less) to get it finished. 23 days to finish about 50k words… I think I can actually do that.
I mean, I kinda have to now, since I do have a deadline… so that’s that! Looking forward to getting it finished up and then published late July!
But since I’m working semi-regular hours again, this means really cramming in those words on the days I do have off, between school work writing and reading (for example, I have a big assignment due in 4 days that I need to get finished!). But I’m going to try and get back on my multiple-posts-per-week schedule.
Lastly, keep up the good fight everyone out there able to do so. Stay healthy and safe!
Helluva Month
It seems almost insensitive to point out that I hard a pretty hard May with everything going on these days. I guess I could point out that just because other people have it worse doesn’t mean I don’t have a hard time… although by some standards I’m not having much of a hard time at all.
These are interesting times, friends. And I think a lot of people in the USA are going to lose their lives, either to riots or sickness or government lash-back, before this is all over. And it hurts to think about that, about how blind some people have become to suffering because those who suffer “deserve it”.
Well, what can ya do? I will leave it to wiser, smarter minds than mine to propose solutions and to take measurable actions: I just write sci-fi, and try to imagine better worlds than ours, ones that have their own problems but small, personal problems rather than cultural wounds that run deep and long. Things that can be solved by a laser sword and a spaceship.
Stay safe out there, everyone. Fight the good fight, but go home at the end of it if at all possible. The world needs you.
Back to Reality
So I had a full day of work yesterday. It was better than I feared, to be honest, although still not fantastic. Wearing a mask for 8 hours straight isn’t a big deal, but going 4-hour-stretches without being able to drink water or coffee… that’s going to take some getting used to.
But that’s okay. A small inconvenience, really. And I get Mondays off, so I can actually have 2 day weekends (have to work Saturdays, natch), so I can’t really complain.
In other news, I paid for two waves of advertisements, and fingers crossed that they work. One through a podcast I like (The Greatest Generation, a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are a little bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast), and the other through the usual Amazon channels.
This means May has seen my highest advertising expenses ever (currently just under $300CAD), but that’s okay! Hopefully a few more people pick up my books and like them and then pick up a few more.
Speaking of which, I’m going to get back to writing those books today! Hope everyone out there is safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 67: The Last Day
Whelp, this is it. The last day of my self-isolation.
Possibly the last day of my first wave isolation, but as much as I love staying home and writing I obviously hope the province and country are recovering and moving towards something resembling “normalcy”, whatever that means.
I can’t claim I’m excited to be going back to work, but my boss is being pretty conscious of the health and safety risks, and I’m in a privileged position in a lot of ways, so things could be much, much worse. And my workplace is pretty chill in the grand scheme of things, so there is that.
I have a mask for tomorrow and a few more that hopefully will show up early next week, but it’s going to be weird to be wearing it for 7 straight hours. And I’m not sure how to handle lunch… I may just skip it tomorrow, since I only have the one mask and you shouldn’t be taking it on and off during the day. Such weird times, such weird times…
Anyway, it is what it is. I’ll keep everyone updated on how things progress from here out, as per usual, and try to keep up the multiple-posts-a-week jive I’ve got going.
In unrelated news, I finished (re)reading Watchmen, and that was a pleasure despite how grim it is. The next book I have to read for class is The Giver by Lois Lowry, and this will be the first book for this course I haven’t read yet! Looks depressing at a quick glance, but I love me some good sci-fi (obviously!) so I look forward to the inspiration I will gain from it!
I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 63: "Holiday" Monday
Writing continues apace, which is nice, and I’m still enjoying the week I have before I had back to my other job on Saturday.
On the same note, I am taking things very easy this weekend. Since it is basically my last weekend off until who-knows-when, I’m trying to check-in with myself, make sure I’m happy with my progress.
As a result, I’ve been doing a fair number of writing. I just finished the short story collection Burning Chrome by William Gibson, as well as the short story Fermi and Frost by Frederick Pohl. These are both required readings for the course I’m taking (“Contemporary Science Fiction”), but it’s nice to do deep-dives on what really drives genre, or at least what drove genre.
I mean, I write sci-fi. I know I write sci-fi, but I write very soft sci-fi without too much analysis of the hard numbers and science (although I do dabble with that occasionally… I have a few paragraphs that are pretty number-crunchy in Tintian and the King’s Claw, although I have tried to avoid too much in my more recent novels). But if I wanted to write a cyberpunk novel… could I? There is a whole discussion about whether cyberpunk still exists, for one thing (since the ‘worst case’ of many of them are now in the distant past and we are sailing towards brand-new ‘worst cases’). What about a Humanist or Solarpunk? It’s interesting to think about, even if the novels I’m working on at the moment don’t fit into those subgenres.
Anyway! Hope everyone is having a great Monday, and is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 59: The Tunnel at the End of the Light
So my boss has requested I return to work on May 23rd. That gives me another 9 days of isolation before I have to go back to my other job.
Mostly, I’m nervous. This feels too soon to me, but unfortunately those decisions are completely out of my hands. More critically, if I want to finish another novel for the end of June (and I do!), that means about 30-40k words in the next week (more or less), since I won’t be able to keep up this pace once returning to “more regular” hours.
Blargh. I really wanted another few months of this. But, what can you do.
I’m going to reach out to the folks I would like to be my agents (again), see if they’re still considering The Queen of the A.I.s for their representation work, and if not that gives me another 4 months to finish one of these novels as I publish that one. And if not (or if they continue to say nothing, which considering the times, might be what happens) I should still have time to finish this Tintian novel by the end of June. Or July at the latest. Which would still keep me on pace, although certainly less so.
Anyway. I should get back to it.
Oh, one quick positive note: I think today marks the first time I’ve ever sold two physical copies of a book on the same day! I have sold 9 or 10 digital copies in a day, but physical copies tend to only come in one at a time… so that’s another kinda sad, kinda happy note to my career thus far. Hopefully that pace picks up soon!
Isolation, Day 58: All Good Things
Well, yesterday my boss (from the store I work at to pay for my editing) reached out to me about returning to work. I’m still freaked out about going out in public if I can avoid it (we are nowhere near done with this pandemic), but I don’t really have much choice in the matter.
Nothing has been finalized yet, but he’s obviously considering asking me to go back to work in the near future. And that means less time for writing. Which sucks, but again… what can you do?
Also went grocery shopping today, which was an experience (first time in a month!). The store was pretty empty and very well stocked of most things. I made the mistake of grabbing a small shopping cart and therefore didn’t get everything from my list, but I didn’t miss anything critical (and certainly nothing worth risking a second trip… did I mention being out in public still freaks me out? Definitely still freaks me out).
sigh
Oh well. I guess I’ll have at least a few days of writing full-time before I have to go back, but I don’t know. We’ll see how things go. And who knows, maybe my boss will decide to give me more time to write before having to go back. Only time will tell, but there is definitely a tunnel at the end of the light.
Isolation, Day 53: The New Normal
As always, I continue to celebrate the little victories this pandemic has presented: opportunity to do way more writing, way more baking, more time with my partner and cats… more time, in general.
More stress, of course, but that’s okay! Things are still going well.
Just a quick footnote, for those who want a brief peek behind the curtain: in the week and a half since my latest novel came out, I have sold 11 copies (thank you everyone who bought one!) and it has been read approximately 11 times through Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Lending (free ways to download and read books that grant me a royalty per page read… thank you everyone who downloaded Caitlyn Morcos that way!). This is pretty good for me, actually… usually it takes me about twice that time to hit these numbers, which means I am, so far, about twice as successful as I was with my last two book releases (assuming the numbers continue for the rest of the month, of course). But that’s still nice!
Now, as for where I want/need to be… we’re not there yet by a long shot (I need to sell about 1,000 copies of a book for it to break-even with the editing and cover art costs, so about 50x more successful than I am currently, assuming the book continues to sell about as well for another month), but still, positive growth is always nice!
Isolation, Day 49: 7 Weeks!
Well, it’s official… seven weeks ago was my last day at the job I used to go to in order to pay for editing and cover art (and little things like food and shelter, but MOSTLY editing and cover art… the important things in life…). It doesn’t feel like seven straight weeks, but can’t argue with math!
I think I’ve managed to get a lot accomplished in that time (a novel, two short story submissions, an audio short story release, and 40k words on two more novels), but unfortunately I am no closer to being a full-time paid author than when I started. I mean, aside from working on my portfolio, if you think of it that way.
Still, I’ve had pretty good sales (by my standards) of the recent novel, and hopefully that will result in people picking up other novels that I’ve written. And some people have picked up the book through Kindle Unlimited (it shows me the number of pages that have been read by people), so that’s great! Again, hopefully it inspires them to check out my other work, and as my body of work gets broader and deeper, more people will hopefully convert into future sales.
Anyway, the point of this is that after 7 weeks isolation, I’m still doing really well. Spirits are good, health is okay (not great, but I’ve started biking every day and that will hopefully help… although I’m only doing an hour most days, I’m going to increase that as soon as I get bike shorts that stop my butt from going completely numb!), and I’m pretty proud of how this whole time has been going.
I don’t know how much longer this pandemic will last, but I’m really happy with how well I’ve handled it so far. Here’s hoping I can keep that up!
Hope everyone out there is doing amazing (or as amazing as possible!), and staying healthy and safe!
Isolation, Day 46: Short Stories
I managed to finish another short story over the last few days, and with that done, it’s time to get back to the novels! I guess that’s the nice thing about short stories… they don’t take nearly as long to take from idea-to-complete. Usually one or two editorial passes, sometimes a beta reader or two, and then boom, done.
This one is another White Noise short story (although not an episode of the Black Cacophony, which I will work on after I finish the next novel while waiting for it to get edited). Not as much action, a little more thoughtful, but that’s okay. Most of the stuff I have been reading has been heavier on the thoughtful, lower on the action, and so it makes sense that it’s the kind of story in my head at the moment.
Anyway, other than that not a lot to report. I’ve gotten back to biking (indoors, obviously, with everything going on) and that’s been a really fun way to exercise except my butt is killing me. I was not meant to sit on a bike for an hour or two a day. But I’ll get through this, and hopefully it gets less painful as time goes on. I’m going to keep track of how “far” I bike, factoring on 20km/h, and then when all this is done we’ll see how “far” I got!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 44: Post Publishing Highs
Well, the book has been out for 2 days now, and it’s on pace for my best selling novel I’ve released! Certainly one of the stronger First Day releases I’ve had, and that’s nice! Thank you everyone out there who bought a copy during these difficult times!
As for me, I’m mentally preparing to get back to the fun part of writing (the fun part, for those of you keeping track, is “writing”, and not all the other stuff that comes along with publishing a book!). The two novels I’m working on are both just over 20k words, so they’re about 1/4 done, but that’s okay. Plenty of time and energy to pump into those!
In unrelated news, I’m trying to switch my major for the English degree I’m working on, make sure everything is going according to plan, but that’s hard due to everyone only meeting via emails and, more specifically, people not reading the emails I send and rather just assuming what I want. Such is life… still have a few days to sort everything out. But frustrating! Oh well, I still have 4 years worth of courses to take (more, if I have to stick with distance learning, because I really struggle with online courses). But whatever, it’s getting done! I did really, really well in the two classes I’ve had so far, so hopefully I can keep that energy up!
Hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!
Isolation, Day 42: Published Novel 4! Woo!
Yay new book available! Caitlyn Morcos, Interplanetary Marshal Service is now available through Amazon, and I hope everyone out there enjoys it! You can find it on the main page (which I have reorganized to put my newest books first), and as always my biggest, most heartfelt thanks to all my Patreons for making this novel possible.
The elevator pitch for CMIMS is space-western crime procedural. Think Firefly meets CSI. I’m really proud of how it turned out… this was a novel that I wrote a lot of the outline and rough work years ago, and then for the last few months have updated, cleaned up, and modernized it to bring it up to my standards. It was tough, but rewarding work. And I hope everyone enjoys it!
You can find it on your local Amazon, or just through the links here:
CANADA
UK
AUSTRALIA
USA
Now to take a nice relaxing 20 minutes of vacation before I dive back into writing Novel 5! Ah, the life of an independent author…
Oh, hey, if you do buy the book and enjoy it, can I ask that you submit a review for it? Those really help small authors like me to get some traction for our work. It would mean the world to me! Thanks folks!
Isolation, Day 39: Only 20,000 Words to Go!
I know that sounds like a lot, but 20,000 words of editing is actually a pretty quick process! I should be done today, major catastrophes notwithstanding. And I’m excited to have this draft finished, because then I can put it down for a few hours, and tomorrow do the final draft before it goes live!
Self-publishing my books is still not the preferred way to do it, but for now it’s the option I have available to me. And it still gets books into your (my amazing readers and supporters) hands, so I’m gonna call that a win. In order for each book to break-even, I have to sell about a thousand copies, and to make anything remotely like a profit I have to sell about two thousand copies. That’s about ten times more than I’ve sold of ALL my books, combined, at this point, but that’s okay! Because hopefully as people read my work and realize that I’m both a consistent writer and a quality one, they’ll pick up other books I write and so on, and so forth.
I’m still not doing much (read, any) marketing for my work because, as it stands it’s just shouting into the wind unless I have way more scratch to burn (which I don’t), but I figure when I have about 10 books under my belt I’ll be able to start really pushing some ads out, hopefully direct a few (hundred) people towards my work.
With that, I should get back to it! Those last 20k words aren’t going to edit themselves!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 36: My Father's Birthday
Today, my dad turned 81. It was an unusual birthday, I suppose… I mean, I haven’t seen him due to the whole “isolation” thing, obviously, but I suspect it was unusual.
Still, I gave him a call, told him that I was giving him snow for his birthday (it has been snowing all day today, which is pretty unusual for late-April, but this year, “pretty unusual” barely twitches the needle any more!). He seems to be in good spirits, happy with how his work is going (he owns his own company), and relatively optimistic about the future.
Which I suppose is nice. I’m more… cautiously pessimistic about the future. I think the COVID-19 thing is going to be pretty brutal to the States, but we Canadians are probably going to be mostly okay. Probably. A lot of this depends on people being willing to listen to experts and scientists, and we haven’t had a great history of that, but we will see, we will see.
More progress on Marshal Morcos today, the editing progressing nicely. I think this is the last of the major edits I have to do, after which is one more read-through to catch as many of the minor mistakes as I can, and then jumping through the hoops to get it self-published! Hopefully by Saturday! It will be nice to get back to writing, rather than editing, though!