Guess It’s Time for an Update

Yeah, yeah, I’m a slug about updating the site; I’ve just been… busy.

Revisions and edits are pretty much complete on The Daedalus Enigma: Waves of Darkness Book 6. Any remaining typos will hopefully be caught in the formatting stage. I’m still pushing for a May release.

I have every intention of getting the cover art done this weekend for the first season 4 episode of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe: Episode 37 Aftermath. The editing is already done.

If I ever release a hardcover version of Waves of Darkness, it’ll probably be an omnibus volume of the entire Sisters of Power story arc. Recently, I’ve had ideas for lovely (hopefully) black & white/greyscale illustrations to use in such a volume. What can I say? I need to learn the newer version of the PenUp app, since they want to overcomplicate brush/tool selections on it now. At least that app is still free and not Apple-centric (I’m still pissed at Adobe for their bias against Android devices).

In more Waves of Darkness news: I am expanding on the original 1st draft of Waves of Darkness Book 8: Hunting the Dragon. When I started looking back at the files, I thought my computer had eaten some of the chapters. I only found 18 chapter files plus the Once Upon a Tide… in my file library. Turns out I told the entire story in only 18 chapters. That is entirely too short.

While I still hope to release book 8 in 2025, I may have to push back the May date to later in the year.

No, I still haven’t started plotting book 9. I also haven’t finished writing season 4.

Captain’s Log: Chattacon 49

My table set up this year.

What have I learned this year? Tea blends are a BIG seller. I do not carry tea blends. One of the neighboe booths did.

I sold one copy of Blood Curse: Waves of Darkness Book 1. My only sale the whole weekend, but that made this a successful convention in my mind. Thank you for the pity purchase, Rich. I’ll take any sales I can get! I did get some interested browsers, and author cards were taken. Hopefully some audiobook and ebook sales will come out of this weekend.

I had one panel on Saturday; Homegrown: Writing from Our Roots, along with Louis Herring-Jones, Phillip K. Booker, Mel Todd, and moderated by William Joseph “Hillbilly” Roberts. It was fun to learn I wasn’t the only one who participated in bottle rocket battles in the woods as a kid. The panel was about how we use our experiences, aspects of places we grew up, and people we know or knew in our writing.

Late Saturday night featured the “Chattacon Choir,” a very hammy group-sing of Bohemian Rhapsody and Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. Both singers and audience participated in the performance while in varying states of sobriety or the lack thereof, over emoting, heckling, and pantomiming lyrics.

Think if MST3K did this live with a large group.

I finally got to hear how this tradition got started many moons ago when the convention was still held at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. The first time was a spontaneous event which spread throughout almost the entire convention. Now it is contained, for the most part, to the consuite.

I did get to talk with my second cousin, Mary Robinette Kowal (this year’s Literary Guest of Honor), before the convention ended Sunday. Took having to say which side of the family I’m from before she could finally place me. As I pointed out previously, we haven’t seen each other since we we little kids, several decades ago. We had a nice, if short visit. Both of us were getting ready to leave.

I plan on doing a table again next year, though I still have to pre-register for it.

I got some progress made with various projects while manning my table. I made a good start on writing episode 45 of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe. I also finished my first round of edits/revisions on Maelstrom of Fate: Waves of Darkness Book 7, which I plan to release in October. I moved that up from November, because I hope to attend HallowCon this year.

I also did a new pencil sketch of Belladonna. It felt weird drawing real world again. You can’t zoom in on a screen to fine tune details with real pencil and paper like you can on a drawing app. Since the sketch involves full frontal nudity, I will not share it in this post.

I might put it on her character page. I haven’t decided yet.

Con Prep Underway

LibertyCon fast approaches. My schedule of obligatory panels and activities is available now on the Appearances page. I still need to look over the programming schedule to see what other panels I want to attend and figure out when to visit the con suite for food. I am also getting my book inventory ready and prepping the other sundries I need to take with me.

Meanwhile, the June episode, The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe: Episode 30 Divided Forces Part I is available on KDP. You can find the link for it on the main page for the series or the page for season 3.

I’m trying to get out of my writing slump and have made some progress on season 4. I’m still in mid-season on episodes, though. Not being allowed to take my MS to work with me anymore to scribble on during down time has really put a knot in it. But, the job pays the mortgage and bills, not the writing. I need to get season 4 fully drafted before the end of the year. Then I can concentrate on plotting and drafting book 9 in the Waves of Darkness series.

Formatting Update and Other News

First, I’d like to say thank you to my fellow authors on some of the writing groups we share on Facebook. They’ve been extremely helpful in my navigation of Ingram Spark’s submission guidelines. I highly recommend authors, whether new or veteran, to join such groups. They are especially beneficial to those of us whose schedules don’t mesh with in-person writing groups’ meeting schedules.

Meanwhile, I finally got started on the formatting of Blood Curse 2nd edition this weekend. I’m having to go back through and redo the italics because copying the text to the correct trim size undid all that work. Next up will be changing the font from Word’s default of Calibri. I’ve also installed Treasure Map Dead Hand as my font for titles and headers.

I know all this is tedious, but I’m enjoying the process. This will also help make producing the rest of the books in the series easier.

Meanwhile, I should finish typing up the final episode of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe season 3 this week. I will start plotting season 4 once that’s done. I plan to start publishing season 2 early next year. Somewhere in between now and then, I need to do some promoting on that serial.

That’s it for now. Enjoy your short work week, and I hope you had a good Labor Day weekend.

Fixing the “Oops!”

Nothing like going through first edits on a rough draft written a few years previously and spotting gargantuan plot holes. In case you haven’t guessed, or are new to this blog, I have returned to working on my steampunk serial, The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe.

I’m finally getting episodes 13 through 24 (aka Season 2) ready for publication. I’m also seriously entertaining the thought of having a new cover done for the Season 1 omnibus, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, as well as doing new illustrations for it.

“Why?” you ask. Mainly because sales have been all but non-existent, and I never really got marketing off the ground the first time through. This will mean pulling all the current versions down and republishing.

Yes, I am a masochist. I must be to intentionally put that much on my plate.

Meanwhile, back to why I started this post. I’ve found myself trying to keep supposedly intelligent characters from unintentionally looking like bumbling idiots. In other words, I originally wrote some scenes which turned into “wait-a-minute” moments. So, I have to figure out why I had a character do something a certain way, when an obviously better way was available.

Specifically, why did a character LEAVE a communications center to deliver a message rather than send it via a secure means already available to them. It would’ve been quicker to use the system rather than leave the building and head into a subterranean system of tunnels and lifts to reach a place deep underground.

Not to worry. I did find a plausible excuse.

Messages sent through that system, while secure, have to be entered in the log if they originate from the communications center itself. The character didn’t want this message to be discovered by her supervisor, so she feigned illness to be excused from the rest of her shift. She also didn’t encounter any message stations along her route before encountering other major characters.

Plot hole plugged.

Book News (and stuff)

I must agree with Viktor on it this time.

The rough draft of Hunting the Dragon (Waves of Darkness book 8) is in the bag. The first 10 chapters are with my alpha reader, and she’s promised feedback notes, hopefully by next week.

The remaining chapters are still in handwritten form and need to be typed up. I will start on that soon. I have to admit that the back half of the rough draft is a hot mess and in need of some scene rearranging and serious polishing.

Meanwhile, I’ve completed inking all the Dragon Poker portraits. I will be doing a color accent version of them for special edition sets of the cards. I’m told those will be offered in a wooden case.

Next on my agenda is the reformatting and revision of Blood Curse (Waves of Darkness book 1). The new edition will be in the 5×8-ish (not sure of the exact measurements right now) size rather than the 6×9 trade paperback version it was previously published in. I plan to snazzy up the interior as well. All this is necessary before I can order a new cover design, since I need a page count to determine the width of the spine. The size change will change the original page count, of course.

Finally, happy news: someone bought one of the 6-episode mini-omnibus ebooks in my The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe steampunk serial. This is the first sale of the year and the first sale in months!

That is all for now. Thanks for reading!

Brain Hurricane

Had more ideas for this second Waves of Darkness story arc storming through my head this week. Given the nemesis I’ve given Viktor, I figured I needed to up the stakes for him in these second 7 books. (The rough draft of book 8 is nearing completion, so I need to get with my beta reader and hopefully recruit a few more.)

I won’t list the details here, since they would be spoilers spread out over books 8-14. I’ll just say to expect things to get personal between Viktor and Dragon. At least one main supporting character will be taken out of the picture. Allies will be attacked or subverted. Nobody will be safe.

All I can say is it’s a good thing my mask has been hiding my maniacal grin from my coworkers when these ideas start playing out in my head. I don’t want to scare them too much. Mwahaha!

In Passing

The teacher who originally inspired me to major in print journalism has passed.

I hadn’t thought of the man in years, then I saw his obituary in yesterday’s newspaper. I did the math to make sure it was the same man I remembered and verified that I was one of his pupils the year he retired from teaching (but not from sports writing).

Farewell, Coach Johnson. you’ve more than earned your rest.

 

Sometimes It Pays …

Sometimes it pays to be paranoid, or at least highly skeptical.

Today, I received a call from a “senior acquisitions specialist” for “the only award winning hybrid publisher” about evaluating my book to present to one of their “book investors” and possibly add it to this year’s portfolio. (I was just sitting down to eat before getting ready for work, so I let the machine get it.)

To her credit, the woman, identified only as Sunshine (no last name stated), did pronounce my first name correctly. She failed, however, to actually identify the publisher she represented. I found out from my caller ID it was called Stratton Press. The call back number matched the one she called from, which seemed to add a touch of credibility.

The thing is, I haven’t sent out any queries since early last fall. I keep a board of who I’ve queried and when. This publisher was not on it. I am assuming the fact I’m an author, and my contact info was culled from my FB posts on various author and book promotion groups, then Google-fu for my phone number, which I don’t believe I’ve posted.

So, I did a little Google-fu on my own. Sure enough, there was a post about this publisher on SFWA’s Writer Beware.

Yeah, I’m not calling Sunshine back.

I’ve been a published author for 9 years and a regular attendee of the writing tracks of several conventions, so I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about naive new authors and even veteran authors falling prey to the somewhat dubious business practices of some vanity and/or fly-by-night publishers. (Yep, the terms acquisition specialist rather than editor and hybrid publisher had images flashing in my head of Robbie the Robot flailing its arms and repeating “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”)

So my advice to my fellow authors out there is do your research when looking for an agent or publisher, be suspicious of unsolicited offers to help you publish, especially if the one’s offering want money from you, and don’t be afraid to ask more established authors for advice or recommendations.

Finally!

I’M WRITING AGAIN!