Tomorrow I get my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
I don’t know which one, and frankly I don’t care: I’ve seen enough of the science to know that all of them are more-or-less equally effective, and the risks in all cases are vanishingly small, especially compared to the risks of NOT getting the vaccine, and especially-especially considering that my job continues to require me to see and interact with the public (less of the public these days, granted, and in a safer way, but still… way too many of them and way too often for my tastes).
So this is a HUGE weight off my mind. Not perfect yet, since I won’t get the second dose for another few months at least, and even then it’s 2 weeks past that point, but that’s okay! A very, very positive step.
In other news, I have started work on the next novel! This will make Novel 8 total, and the second novel for 2021. It’s working title is “Something Spacey This Way Comes”, but that’s definitely not what it’s going to be called. It’s going to be a heist story, mixed with a little cyberpunk and a little military-sci-fi… I’m excited! The world building and character outlines are coming along well, and I expect that I will be able to start writing the story itself, if not today, by the weekend! Woo!
Hope everyone out there is staying healthy and safe!
Cover Art Purchased
I’m always a little nervous when I buy covers for my novels. I’m a writer, not a graphic designer, and so the selection of a visual element for my book is always a bit weird.
Add to that a very shoestring budget, and there’s a lot of pressure on the choice. It needs to look unquestionably sci-fi, ideally use the colour red very prominently, and tie into the story somehow if possible… and all this with the added wrinkle that it comes from a pre-generated book cover artist.
I have a guy I really like (hi James!), and so I’ve used his service basically exclusively since I started self-publishing my work. Considering the (rock-bottom) price of the covers, he actually does really good work… I think you can tell from the covers I have selected that they’re not really “professional” covers, but they’re pretty good, and since a professional cover costs about 20-30x as much as I can pay, I have few complaints.
This new cover I’m getting is more blue than usual, but the starship that features very prominently is pretty cool looking, and that’s important. Cool-looking spaceships above a cool-looking planet… a good combination!
Anyway, I just want to be ready for when the book goes live, and that’s one more thing off the list that I don’t need to worry about.
Now, if I can just get my English exam finished…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Novel 7 is with the Editor
Phew! One book down, 3 to go for 2021. That feels real good, I gotta tell ya!
And I’m really happy with how the story turned out thus far. I mean, it will still need a level of polish and improvement, no question, but the story itself I think turned out really well!
So now with the book in my editor’s incredibly-talented hands, I am going to finish my English exam (due next Monday, but I’m not waiting until the last minute for it), and start shopping for a cover. The last few times I looked I couldn’t find any really good ones, but a few were okay. Hopefully there are a couple new options when I check.
Oh, and I have to see if I can think up a slightly more elegant title for the book. The working title was awful (they always are), but the title slapped on it before sending it to Christine (my editor) is better. Might be a touch long, but we’ll see.
Anyway! Good news from my little corner of the universe today, at least, so that’s something.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Can't Talk. Writing.
No time for a full post today. I am THIS CLOSE to being finished this novel and sending it off to my editor.
THIS CLOSE. Picture my finger and thumb so close that you can’t slide a piece of paper between them. THAT CLOSE.
So. Gonna go do that, and then maybe write a full post tomorrow (or, at worst, Wednesday).
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Unexpected Expenses
One of my (three) cats has been having some tummy problems recently. It’s more annoying than really anything else (and somewhat smelly), but it still means a lot of trips to the vet to try and figure out what’s wrong with her.
Today’s visit was on the more expensive side. She (Donut) had to have an ultrasound to see if they can find evidence for what’s causing the problem. At first we thought it might be diet (doesn’t seem to be), and then bacteria (no luck there either), so now we’re just hoping that there’s nothing wrong and it’s behavioral, since if they find anything on the ultrasound it might mean surgery, and that would be even more expensive.
Makes me simultaneously grateful that my partner and I can afford these things, and sad because I can’t really afford these things. Today’s visit alone wiped out a full week of my paying job’s income, and it may not even result in anything. It does make me very grateful that we have a basic universal healthcare in Canada (I say basic because many aspects of healthcare aren’t even remotely covered, but can’t throw too many stones there since it could be so, so much worse).
Ah well. Upside: plenty more time to write today! Today the novel gets finished, I think… I have my last class of the semester (exam questions come out next week, and I still have a big assignment due by Friday), but other than that, just writing. Lots and lots of writing… I got almost 10k words done on Monday, and I don’t even have that many that I need to do for today to bring a close to the story.
Late, yes, but late and finished, soon. And then a little bit of polish and then off to the editor… where I will spend more money I don’t have.
Oh! And I have a meeting tonight to discuss the advertising budget I received for the writers group, so that’ll be good! Hopefully!
Anyway, I should get back to it. Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Today, We Write
I mean, most days I write. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but I write almost every day. But today… today I am going to write.
See, I’m about 30k words shy of finishing this novel. And I have about 5 days to finish that in… that’s 6k a day, minimum, but I don’t like leaving things to the last minute, so really it’s 10K a day for 3 days, and then a break day, and then a day of editing to polish it up. Which is a LOT. About 1k/hour, which isn’t unreasonable, but it is a lot.
So! Short post today just to say that I’m going to be doing a LOT of fingers-on-keyboard today and tomorrow (argh, and that doesn’t even factor in the stupid essay I need to have done by the end of this week… argh…). Hopefully all done by Wednesday!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and happy!
The Busiest Time of Month
The end of a month is always a busy time for me. Technically, it’s the start of the month that’s the big time-suck, but the end falls right before the beginning, and so there are a lot of things that kinda all stack up in the few days between one calendar month and the next.
One of the big things is planning on what I’m going to say to my Patrons over on Patreon, other than the usual “Thank you so much!”, which is always true and always worth repeating. Being a writer is lonely, hard work, but knowing there are even a few people out there who support me and my work and think I should be doing more of it is really, really important.
But other than that, it’s nice to have a chance to reach out to potential new readers/supporters, let people know what I’m doing (I mean, the answer is always “writing”, but what I’m writing is very different from week to week, much less month to month!). And there was that period of time that I released a whole series of videos answering what it’s like to be a writer for my educator/editor friend to use in a series of writing lectures… that was pretty cool (albeit a lot of work).
This month I don’t think… oh, wait! That’s not true, this month coming up I have the exciting news about the writers group that I founded and am working to maintain throughout the pandemic (never an easy task). So that’s something I can talk about, other than the novel.
Anyway, I should get back to it… class in a little bit, followed by all the writing!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Little Extra Time
So my editor was in touch recently, and mentioned that if I needed a little more time, she would be happy to push my scheduled time back a week.
This is great news. I still think I’ll be done before April, but I was going to have to crunch through some very long nights to get the novel edited up to my humble standards within that time frame as well. This means I can spend a bit more time preemptively polishing (and maybe tying up a few loose ends more tightly).
So that’s good news! I’m going to spend the majority of today working on the novel, and then finish it tomorrow so I have a week to add, remove, and generally polish the work. So… huzzah!
In other news, things are continuing more-or-less apace. I had a weird dream last night that featured an ex-girlfriend of mine very prominently. She’s a woman I haven’t thought of in a very long time (in my defence, we didn’t date very a long time, although it remains a very pleasant memory in a rough period of my life). Had one of those “Huh, I wonder how she’s doing” moments before I realized that I don’t remember her family name! Ah well… it was over twenty years ago, we can only hold onto so much.
Anyway! Back to writing about space pirates and spices! Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Missing Short Stories
One of the biggest downsides to my recent bout of extremely-being-busy is that I don’t have time to write short stories any more.
It’s not a format that I was ever terribly skilled at. Why use 100 words when 10,000 will suffice? But that stated, I did like practicing short stories, and I really liked polishing them up for submission. Sure, only one of my shorts ever sold, but I think it was a very, very good short story (one that I plan to revisit someday as a novel, perhaps). But as much fun as they are to write (and to provide free here for all of you!), they don’t pay the bills, and I don’t think they ever will, There’s just too much uncertainty in short story publishing… most of the time the magazines that publish them take too long to rely on as a source of income. Great supplementary sources, sure, and I am positive there are people who have figured out a way to leverage short story writing into careers, but those people are much better at the format than I am.
Plus, I like writing epics. I like getting to know characters and situations and universes. I like thinking about how the technology in this universe will be different, either slightly or drastically, from the previous universes I’ve written. Can be hard to keep straight sometimes (I have so many variations on “pocket computer” at this point it’s somewhat ridiculous), but it’s a challenge I enjoy.
ANYway, hopefully the world will calm down a bit, school won’t last forever, and I can get back to writing more short stories before too much longer.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Weird Blips
I’ve mentioned it before, but I was educated as a scientist.
A crappy scientist, granted, but I studied physics for a very, very long time, and a lot of that has seeped into my life in interesting ways. I can my educated hypothesizes about almost anything, I quickly adapt to new information to replace old incorrect data, and I am always fascinated by numbers.
To that end, I tend to keep a pretty close eye on the numbers in my life. My grades, certainly (81.5% at this point), my bank account constantly (enough to pay for editing for the next three novels, although I will have to start paying for my account fees again if things don’t change), and book sales (none in the last week).
I also pay attention to the traffic on this website. It’s not usually indicative of much, although often if the website traffic trends upwards I will land a few new book sales that week. And this week there was a day with twenty times more visits than normal.
Technically, twenty-five times more than normal.
That’s a big blip! And nothing I can see that would direct that many eyeballs towards my work (I don’t think I released any podcasts, that I’m aware of, or new videos of me other than my usual Thursday “talking about board games” that I do at my paying job). It’s weird… I even checked my advertisements I’m running, but no huge traction there either (which, honestly, was a little bit of a relief… my ads are still small potatoes, but that big of a swing in numbers if I had to pay for it would be remarkably pricey!). So I am left to wonder why a whole bunch of people, or one very, very determined person I suppose, showed up out of the blue last week.
It’s a weird business, being a writer.
Anyway! On Saturday (yesterday morning) I did a presentation for some funding from my university which, if successful, will let me do some good in my community. Provide funding for a couple artists, a secure deposit on a physical space that my writers group meets at, and provide subsides to the other members of the group (I think it’s only fair that I don’t receive any of the funding myself, since that would be a conflict of interest. But being able to help other writers is a reward on its own). I’m almost positive I won’t receive it, or if I do it will be staggeringly reduced in scope, but hey, miss all the shots you don’t take.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Hitting Halfway
Getting to the halfway point in a novel is a weird feeling. It’s hard to describe, but to a large extent it can be summarized as a combination of disbelief (I’m halfway already!?) and confusion (Wait, have I covered at least half the stuff I need to cover!?).
It’s a good feeling, certainly, but still weird. Add to that the simple fact that this half of the novel took me 2.5 months to get to (way too long), and the next half has to be done in the next 2.5 weeks… yeah, weird, complicated feelings!
Oh well. In the grand scheme of things I can’t really complain.
I’ve written a proposal for funding for the writers group I (used to) run locally, and while I don’t think I’ll get the funds, it was an interesting experience to consider the impact it’s had on me and my fellow writers. I’d certainly produced more consistently with the writers group, but that was in the Beforetimes and everything was easier back then. Looking forward to getting back to a sort of normal, at least! Hopefully soon!
Speaking of, my dad received his first dose of the vaccine, and my mom is on the list for next week, so that’s good news for both of them. I’m actually pretty jealous. I’m hopeful for sometime in the summer, but at this point who actually knows… regardless, there does seem to be a light at the end of this tunnel, and that’s definitely something worth celebrating!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Keeping Up the Pace
It is worth remembering from time to time that what I’m aiming for is long term sustainable writing. I want to do this for the rest of my life… wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, write, and then at some point eat dinner and go to bed. More or less just that, forever.
I love writing. It brings me great joy and great sorrow, it’s enormously relaxing and incredibly stressful. It makes me examine things I never thought I’d examine (for example, in the last two weeks I have studied the layout and manifest of the “HMCS Haida”, a Canadian WW2 destroyer ship, at least a dozen times… I still don’t know what the majority of the crew on a ship like that actually do.
But at the same time I have to be very careful not to push myself too hard. The drive to write at all times, to consume every waking moment with writing, is strong, because I’m not making a living at this yet. At the rate I’m going, it’s going to be another 4-5 years before I do… and if I want to keep doing this for 4-5 years, or 40-50 years more likely, then I have to remember that it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Anyway. All this to say that I’m not where I want my word count to be by a long shot, but I’m going to be much better by the end of the day (and even better than that by the end of tomorrow), so I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to focus on doing the best work I can, the best writing I can, and try not to stress too much about the little details. I’ll let you all know how that goes.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Only Two Things Are Certain
Ah, that lovely time of year when I get to crunch through taxes. My fantastic partner handles a lot of the fiddly details these days, which is nice because I was not a big fan of doing my own taxes.
I did them, of course, but yeah. Just a degree of specificity that I really struggle with. Especially if/when anything went wrong, and I had to know very specific details. Not my forte.
ANYway, this gives me an opportunity to review how my financials have been going for the last few years, and I’m pleased to report: better! That’s nice. I’ve been basically doubling my income from book sales every year (technically, more than doubling… around 2.2 times per year). The critical thing to remember here is that the numbers are so small as to be almost meaningless, but still, it gives a promising trend. At the rate I’m going, I should be able to be a full-time writer, capable of supporting myself and contributing to my partner’s expenses as well by 2026.
And that’s actually not bad! Five more years… I would struggle, but I could do that. And we’re talking a very small salary at that point, plus it doesn’t factor in expenses (specifically, each book costs me about 2 grand to have edited, which means that more books I publish the more I pay out to keep those books coming).
Regardless, that’s somewhat promising. And hopefully as my books reach a wider audience I’ll gain more Patreon supporters, because that’s probably going to be the only thing that actually lets me make a living at this for the foreseeable future.
So, positive thoughts and good news all around!
With that, I should really get back to writing this novel I want to release in a month…
Hope everyone out there is doing well!
A Nice, Quiet Sunday
It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally I get a full day to myself.
Not “myself”-myself, since my cats and partner are still around, but I don’t have any big pressing plans, I don’t have events to attend (either virtual or in-person in the Beforetimes), and the day opens up before me like a flower spreading its petals to the sun.
I don’t know if flowers do that. I’m a physicist, not a biologist/botanist. Ask me to calculate an escape velocity for that flower, I gotcha, but anyway.
The moral of this is that today I have a full day to do more-or-less whatever I want. And of course what that means is writing. What I almost always want to do is write. I’m going to take a break in a few hours to fry up some rainbow trout and steam some veggies (tastier than it sounds, I assure you), but other than that… a whole lot of writing, occasional bouts of painting, and a lot of chilling.
Tomorrow I have a stack of reading to do (Marlowe, at this time… “Doctor Faustus”), but that’s a tomorrow problem. Today? Today I am looking forward to crushing a few thousand words and other things that I do to enjoy life as best I can.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Progress into Space Piracy
When I originally decided to start this novel, I was going to intentionally avoid too many “space pirate” parallels. For one thing, I’m not sure it’s ever been done particularly well (“Treasure Planet” is a great story, but it’s not really space piracy in a meaningful way). Piracy is a hard thing to translate into good sci-fi. I’m not saying it can’t be done, and I’m sure there are ways to do it, but a lot of the time it comes across as pretty… trope-y. And I wanted to avoid that.
However, that stated, there is a fair amount of pirate-like-activity in my story thus far, not least of which includes stealing a starship. “Commandeering”, I suppose, to use the nautical term. And as I’m continuing to write it… yeah, there is a lot of piracy, in the fantasy-esque sort of piracy. Fewer missing teeth and legs, but a fair amount of theft of property, buckling of swashes, and a love of freedom that borders on the extreme.
Anyway, I’m really enjoying the story as it is shaping up, but we’re about to hit the mid-story doldrums (ha, nautical term!), so we’ll have to see if I can maintain this inertia for the next several chapters! Fingers crossed!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
End of the Month
Well, I am not done my latest novel. By projection, I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s always a little disappointing to not finish as quickly as I would like.
That stated, I think February may be the single best month I’ve ever had for book sales, so that’s definitely a step in the right direction. Lots of books purchased through ads I’ve run (which is expensive), but also lots purchased without requiring ads (which is significantly less expensive!).
In other news, I’ve gotten a lot of stuff done around the house, I’ve continued doing pretty well in my university courses (although I also got my first “B” on an assignment… a small one, but still… since starting to study English), and overall things are going about as well as can be expected mid-pandemic.
Oh, and I installed a bidet on one of my toilets today, marking it as the most handy-man day I’ve had in the last 30 years. Hopefully I did it correctly! No leaks, at least, but that’s a pretty low-bar. We’ll see, I suppose!
Anyway, hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Salt Mines, Here I Come
I have resumed my paying job to help finance my writing again. Yesterday was my first day back in the store. It’s still not fully open, we have a maximum capacity in the building that we’re keeping a pretty close eye on, and February is usually a pretty slow time for sales regardless, but it’s still pretty stressful.
Oh well. Not much I can do about that.
Novel is still coming along well (although, as is tradition, I still hate the working title for it), and I’m hopeful to have it finished “soon” (next few weeks). I have to maintain the pace I set during my week off, but that’s okay, it’s not exactly a blistering pace to maintain. I wrote about 12,000 words over the week, and I should be aiming for 14,000 for a regular week regardless of all other considerations. More-or-less.
And classes have resumed. I have officially received my first “B” grade since I started taking English courses (only on one assignment thus far), and that didn’t feel great, but on the flipside I’m honestly not doing this for the grades, I just want to learn. Still, old habits die hard.
Okay, with that, I have about two hours that I can use to write before class starts for today, and I intend to use it! Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Few Quiet Days
Well, this is it. The second last day of my “vacation” before I return to full-time work and school on Tuesday.
On the one hand, I got a fair amount of writing done. Not as much as I wanted, granted, but I still have two days to work with and I may yet get to finish this novel before my time off is spent.
On the other hand, I really did have a pretty lovely time relaxing and writing. Did a lot of cooking (made some pizza from scratch that I am quite proud of), ate too much (I think I went through 4 packages of crumpets in 10 days… delicious, but definitely overkill), and overall had a nice time.
But, all good things must come to an end, I am told, and this vacation is definitely nearing the final stretch. I think I may get another few thousand words written today before I have to switch gears and finish all my course readings.
Oh, upside: I sold about a dozen books this last week. About half of those were from advertising, the other half seem to be just impulse purchases by folks, but it’s nice to see a somewhat steady stream of book purchases. I could get used to this… of course, I need about ten times that number per week for writing to be a viable full-time job for me, even considering my very humble financial responsibilities. But still a step in the right direction.
Right! Back to the novel… I’ve just laid out the heist our protagonists are going to attempt, and now I get to make everything go wrong! Always fun…
Holiday Continued!
Well, it has hit the halfway mark of my vacation. The first half was satisfying, if unproductive (I have not hit my word count for the novel, but I’m hoping to finish it today, tomorrow at the latest). Doing a fair amount of exercising, a lot of cooking and baking, and playing way more Battletech than anyone in their right mind should.
The Battletech video game, for the record, not the interesting miniatures game nor the Roleplaying Game, all of the same name. I own all of them, as a blast of nostalgia from my youth, but I’ve only played the video game. It’s great, though! Anyway, I’ve been enjoying it a lot, but it’s time to buckle down and get the novel finished.
In related news, I have also done a lot of organizing, cleaning, and re-arranging. Downside to vacationing at home, I suppose, since when we rent the cottage on Hoth I don’t get that inclination and can just focus on writing.
So! Things are going well, and I should be writing right now, and I am going to go do that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Holiday!
Ah, finally a little time off.
I mean, I had a few days off around Xmas, but literally only a few days, and most of that was spent recovering from the exhaustion of the preceding two months. This time I have almost 10 consecutive days off (I go back to work next Tuesday), and nothing I really have to do other than write, eat, and sleep.
And boy oh boy do I intend to do all of those things in vast amounts this vacation. Plus some exercise, I suppose, if I must. Oh, and a bath! Not a shower, I have lots of those, but an honest-to-goodness bath.
Breakfasts will consist of crumpets, because I freakin’ love crumpets and I only eat them on vacation. Lunch will mostly consist of sammiches and pasta because it is fast and easy to make. Dinners… well, dinners will be all over the place, but the goal is to not order in food at any time. I may bake some bread and make some fresh pizza… maybe make a few hamburgers… nothing fancy, but it will be so nice to not be rushed in fourteen different directions every day.
Mostly, I’m looking forward to the writing, of course. My goal is to finish this first draft by Wednesday, and then get the next novel started on Friday or Saturday and to get a fair chunk of that done before heading back to work.
contented sigh
Looking forward to it. So much.