I’ve started my next book!

If you’re not following me on social media, you missed an important tidbit from last week. I’ve started my first draft of my next book.

In fact, I’m over 10,000 words into it after just three writing sessions (totaling a little shy of five hours.) For comparison, My Last Days is around 92,000 words. So I’m chipping away at it pretty quickly.

As is typical of how I write, I’m just going and going and going. I don’t like to spend a lot of time outlining and creating character personas. Particularly since most of my characters are rooted in reality. They may not be exact clones of actual people in the finished product, but they are as I’m writing. For me, that makes drafting much easier and quicker. Does it make a better end product? Probably not. But it’s how I enjoy writing and I fear when this feels more like a job than a passion, I’ll not want to do it anymore.

So far, I’ve exposed two hints about the book. In case you missed them, I’ll share them here, too:

  1. In takes place in 1996 – so much nostalgia coming your way!
  2. It takes place in Billerica, Massachusetts.

I don’t have any goals around when the draft will be done. I didn’t want to impose any additional self-apposed stress on myself until life gets back to a closer semblance of normal (namely, daycare re-opening.)

For now, the goal is to write a few chapters a day until I feel comfortable with the first draft. Then work on tightening up the main plot points, the characters, and the entire premise before shipping it off to beta readers. If you want to be a part of the beta reading process (you read an early draft and provide your honest input), sign up for my mailing list. It’s the best way to get the inside scoop on the new book, as well as exclusive discount coupon codes for future books!

My Last Days’ First Review – Five Stars!

Getting feedback on something you’ve created is wonderful. Even if it’s negative. Just knowing that your work was good enough (or bad enough) to inspire someone to write a review online means a lot.

I was so glad to see that My Last Days got its first review on Amazon yesterday, just about a month after being published. I’m even more elated that it’s a five star review!

If you’ve finished reading your copy, I’d love it if you could take a few minutes to pop a review up on Amazon. It’s incredibly important for self-published authors to not only get positive reviews, but to get a lot of them.

Thanks for being the first, Melissa!

Launch day!

It’s been an endless day of fighting with an almost-three-year-old to get eye drops in her eye after emergency cataract removal surgery yesterday. I know, I didn’t know a toddler could get cataracts, either!

But I wanted to take a quick moment and acknowledge two things.

First, it’s been almost six years of my life. Of ups and downs, loves and hates, happiness and sadness, but the day is finally here. My Last Days is officially available as of today.

Second, I wanted to take a moment to sincerely thank each and every one of you who pre-ordered a copy. Further, those of you who’ve already started reading, maybe have finished, and maybe have texted me your thoughts along the way. Thank you beyond words. It means so much to me, especially in this weird state of the world we live in, that you’d spend your hard earned money on my book.

I’d love to say I spent the whole day online, talking the book up, promoting it however I could, and begging you all to tell your friends. But I didn’t. My little girl comes first, and she always will.

One week left to pre-order… and some other updates

The last three weeks have flown by. Almost in the blink of an eye, as they say.

Since launching the new site here and getting My Last Days available for pre-order, things have been a little hectic. I’ve been packing and shipping pre-order copies out myself, which isn’t a big deal. Except I offered a signed copy with a “witty or funny inscription”, which turned out to be much more challenging to come up with en masse than I thought. And, surprisingly, most folks who wanted a signed copy opted for that option. I think my mailman hates me.

That said, time is running out to get a pre-order in. But only if you want a copy before the public gets theirs next week. Digital versions will go on sale on the 6th and I’ll do my best to get your copy to you before then if you order in the next few days.

I’m really pleased with how sales are going so far. I’ve outsold A Sour Chord already, which is not that much as that didn’t sell very well.

I got my first actual piece of press this week, too. Our local town blog posted a nice writeup about me and included details about the book. You can find it here.

That’s about it for now. My anxiety has had me up since 1:30am (it’s now 5am), so I figured I’d knock out an update while I couldn’t sleep.

I hope you’re well and staying safe. Wash your hands and wear a mask for pete’s sake.

So many updates, all at once!

Oh, hi there. It’s been a while, I know. Actually, it’s been over a year. That’s inexcusable, at least in my own eyes.

Anyway, I’ve been up to a lot of things. Besides just living life, being a dad, working my job, working my other job, keeping my humans alive and trying to be a good friend to my close friends, I’ve done two momentous things as of just now:

  1. I published My Last Days! Finally, it’s available for pre-order starting today and will be available on May 6th.
  2. I launched my new author site. This took longer than I’d like to admit, but I’m happy with the result.

As a special offer to those who read my blog, you can use the promo code BLOGREADER on my online book shop will receive 10% off their order, with no limit. Pre-order your paperback or hardcover of My Last Days and you’ll get it on May 1st, before the public. You may even get it sooner than that, if I can get out to the post office to ship them out.

It’s also available for Kindle, Apple and Nook, and is available on Google Play and Smashwords. eBooks are just $2.99 as a promotional launch price. The paperback and limited edition hardcover are on sale until the end of May. Buy them right through my site, pay by credit card, or through your Amazon account.

And, please, tell your friends, loved ones, strangers, the guy at the grocery store. Tell everyone, but do it from a safe social distance.

Thanks for all the love and support over the years while I got this thing finished up and available to you all!

Not much to report, sadly

I’ve been chugging away at editing, as time permits. Well, I guess it’s more as my brain permits. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to just get this book done. Maybe I don’t believe in it as much as I need to. Maybe I don’t think people like it (the amount of people who started reading it is far more than the people who finished reading it.)

Maybe it’s a million different things. I don’t know. But, I keep pushing myself, a little bit at a time. Edit this, tweak that, push this over there, don’t make him say that, make her more independent, etc.

On the upside, my boss sent me what she refers to as the “tie fighter” keyboard. It’s designed in a very unusual way that’s supposed to be very ergonomically friendly but takes some time to get used to. I’ve had it almost two weeks and while I can type fine on it, for the most part, moving my hands to hit things like a function key, or number key, get tricky. Then I have to look in the mirrors. Oh, yes, there’s mirrors on it.

It’ll make more sense if you see it, so here:

The idea, according to its makes, is that you’re not rotating your shoulders to put your hands on the keyboard, which is better for your hands, nerves, neck, arms, and shoulders.

I do feel it helps with my hand. It hasn’t fully solved the issues, but it’s alleviated some of my pain, which is nice. I can type fine for a whole day without my hand really hurting, which is a nice change. The keys press a little deeper than I’d like, so that’s taking some getting used to, and the Command key is in the wrong space (because it’s a Windows keyboard, really).

Having the ability to type without pain is nice. It’s allowed me to — on the days where my brain feels like it — edit the final draft and add things to it without worrying about my hand hurting too much. If I could only get over the mental hurdle, finish it and move on, I’d be so happy.

As for the artwork, I started a contest on 99Designs to get cover art done. The gentleman who did the artwork for A Sour Chord is unavailable and I’ve been unsuccessful in finding someone online to do it, so I resorted to 99Designs, which is a website where you write up what you want and designers compete to win. They submit a bunch of entries, and you pick the winner.

Unfortunately, I had to cancel the contest because I didn’t feel like any of them really got the purpose of the book and were just too far off from what I was expecting. Which is weird, because I don’t know what I really want for the artwork. I feel like it’s just one of those things I’ll just know when I see it.

That’s it for this update. If you want to contribute and be helpful, poke me about editing. If I seem bored or uninterested, just say “how’s editing coming?” and shame me into finishing this thing.

Having Trouble Finding Motivation

It’s not writer’s block. For the purposes of the final draft, I’m “done” writing. It’s all about editing. It’s all about taking feedback from everyone who took the time to read the various drafts of the book (some of you multiple times) and making sense of it, and making the story make sense with it.

So why am I having a hard time motivating myself to do it? To finish it? To publish it?

Every day I have a recurring task in my to-do app, simply titled “Edit,” in the My Last Days project. And every day, I check it off and move on with my life. I tell myself things like “I’ll do it tomorrow”, or “there’s no sense in editing it, you don’t have an artist lined up to do the artwork” (don’t get me started on what a pain it’s been to find someone for that.

Is it because my hand hurts so much and typing is painful sometimes? Maybe. Is that an excuse? Possibly. (On a related note, I’ll be seeing the interim head of Orthopedics at Mass General in April about my hand, in hopes they can help more than the guy who cut me open two and a half years ago did).

I started reading James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” last week on the recommendation of my boss. It’s supposed to help you become a better person by making tiny changes in your habits. I’m hoping it’ll help me work through whatever it is that’s blocking me from finishing My Last Days.

And since I have so many ideas on the book I want to write after I finish My Last Days, I really want to get it done. I also want my hand to not hurt so much while typing, which is the reason I haven’t started writing the next book. If you recall, I wrote the entirety of the first draft of My Last Days while editing A Sour Chord all those years ago.

Thinking back on that, it seems like forever ago.

 

An Editing Update

It’s been a long road, there’s no denying that. I wrote the first draft of My Last Days back in 2015, while working on editing A Sour Chord. That seems like forever ago. Literally forever.

After some ups and downs with it, both caused by myself and by others, I’m finally chugging along full steam ahead to get it done.

A huge thank you to everyone who beta read any of the drafts over the years and offered completely honest feedback. I didn’t really learn anything I didn’t know about the “final” draft.

With that said, it’s back to editing to finally finish this project up, get it published and move onto the next one.

Of all of my test readers, one thing’s clear: my original ending was the right way to go. My editor didn’t like it, so I rewrote it completely before a lot of test readers read it. It never sat right with me, because it wasn’t how I truly wanted to end the story.

But, every single test reader suggested — without any prompt or hints from me about the original ending — a similar ending to what I’d originally wrote. Thankfully, my writing app kept a history of those chapters, so I’ve resurrected them already. I have to expand on it some more to really wrap it up, but the ending is close.

Then there’s a bunch of other things in there, throughout, that need tweaking and expanding on.

It’s happening though. I don’t have a goal of when I want to finish it by, but sometime in the next few months.

If you helped out and gave me honest feedback about things, thank you. I appreciate the effort some of you put into giving feedback and appreciate that you volunteered your time to help me out.

Copies sent to test readers!

I’m very excited to report that, as of yesterday, I’ve sent copies of My Last Days off to my test readers.

They’ll read through it and give me their feedback about the story, characters, plot, ending, etc.

Hopefully they like it and then we move on to the next steps. 

Things I still need to do: read through it one more time myself, start to finish, get artwork done for the cover and jacket, remember how to publish the eBook to the various ereader websites that exist out there.

Then it’s just a matter of getting it all done and publishing it. Then, the hard part starts; marketing. The part I’m least good at. Fingers crossed! My only internal goal is to sell more copies and have more readers than A Sour Chord. Which wasn’t much, so it shouldn’t be too hard to beat.

20 Chapters to go!

I’m so happy to report that editing of My Last Days is happening super quickly lately. Each night I sit down and edit, I churn through 6 to 8 chapters.

The book, you see, is broken down into sections, months, really. Since we’re living the story of Andy’s life (that’s his name, in case you missed it), we follow him through-out the months.

Each month is broken down into a handful of chapters – some as little as 4 or 5, some as many as 10.

It’s a unique approach to telling the story to help you understand what time of year it is, how much time has passed, etc., without you having to guess.

As of last night, I have just the last three months left to edit, each of which has about 6 or 7 chapters.

I think I’ll be done with editing the final draft by the end of September, then ask some kind souls to give it a read and let me know what they think. While I like the story I’ve written (especially some parts), I’m not sure I love it. At least not just yet.

If you’re interested in reading it and giving me your feedback, get in touch with me on Twitter at @jandreauwrites!

“Final” Draft Editing of My Last Days

According to my last update, it’s been almost 3 years since I did anything with My Last Days.

Three years. 

My word.

I knew some time had passed, as I blissfully ignored the book, the draft, the edits, everything. In fairness, time goes by much faster as you get older. Also, my daughter’s almost a year old now, so for the last year I’ve had an excuse of being a busy new dad.

What about the other two years? I don’t know. I think I felt defeated with the last draft and just needed to step away from it for a bit, so I did. That “bit” turned into longer than I’d hoped, though.

But, as of Monday – when I’m on a short 3 week vacation – I’m going to get back to it. I’ve bought a brand new notebook for edits, loaded the latest version of the book to my Kindle to re-read through it all and I’ll make notes as I go.

Then, I’ll hit the “final” draft, edit the hell out of it, and hopefully get some feedback from folks who hadn’t previously read one of the drafts to see what they think.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll publish sometime early in 2019. And that’ll be that.

Then, maybe, I’ll move on to another book. Or maybe I already have. Maybe I’ve been writing for the last year about being a dad and what fun, great and horrible things that’s brought into my life.

If you’re still following along here, thanks. If you’re new here, welcome. If you’re anxiously waiting for me to finish this book so you can read it, I’m sorry.

Editing continues!

I feel like editing is the bane of my existence. No matter how much I edit, there’s always more to edit.

I’m about a quarter of the way through the fourth draft’s edits, which so far have been minor, but it still needs to be done.

It’s been going a lot slower than I want it to, but it’s been a busy month and my other hobbies are taking precedence over this, but I’ll get there. I’m taking a week off at the end of the month to celebrate my birthday, as I do every year, so I’ll get a good chunk of it done then.

Once that’s done, off to the editor it goes, and then we take it from there.

Fingers crossed that early next year, we’ll have a second finished book for you to buy, read and (hopefully) love!

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