Editing’s in the works.

I’m really excited to share the news that Lauren, my editor extraordinaire, has received my second draft of My Last Days and has begun her journey on removing all of my unnecessary commas, overuse of characters thinking out loud, and she’ll probably point out how my main character’s a moron or something equally overlooked by everyone that read the first draft.

I feel like a little kid anxiously anticipating Christmas morning showing up, but it’s only October 1st. I can see the end almost there and I wish there was a fast forward button to get from point a to point b and just have it be done and ready for anyone who wants to read it to do so.

There’s still months left on the journey (if the last book’s editing process is any indicator), but we’ve done some things to make editing easier. This time, rather than using Word’s “track changes”, we’re using the app that I wrote both books in. I found some revision functionality that I didn’t know about during A Sour Chord’s writing process, so we’re going to use that. Hopefully that makes life easier for both of us.

More updates to come! Hopefully you’re as excited about my second book as I am. And if you’re curious, I’ve already started character creation for the third book. My mind truly never stops running.

Time Flies, doesn’t it?

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last update. In fairness, I took a week off from everything – which is very unlike me – to move and get settled into my new place.

As I sit at my desk in my new office, the sound of morning commuters zipping by on the road, the sun shining in through the windows above my monitor, I’m optimistic about what this change brings to the table. Happy about where I’m going and what I’m doing, and elated to share all of it with you.

I’m happy to report that as of a couple of weeks ago, I’m done with the second draft of My Last Days. Lauren, my editor, is reading the first draft now to get a sense of the story.  Once she’s done, she’ll do the edits and give me her feedback and then we’ll get those incorporated into the book and call it a third draft.

Once the third draft is done,  I usually like to read it over once or twice before calling it a final draft. That way I’m really sure that I like the story. That’s usually an important thing when finishing up a book, right?

I’m hoping to be done with this by May, which is when A Sour Chord went live in the bookstores last year, but we’ll see. This is still very much a hobby (I haven’t even sold 100 copies of A Sour Chord yet, and still only have 3 reviews on Amazon) so I’m not in a huge rush. But if I can knock out a book a year, that’s not too shabby in my opinion. Sure, it’s a financial drain to pay for all of the editing and artwork and publishing fees when you’re not making any money back, but it’s nice to know that even if one single person reads it and loves it and calls it their favorite book, that’s good enough for me. Just having someone flipping through the pages of a book I wrote on their iPad or Kindle is something that’s completely amazing to me. I’m really happy I’ve gone on this journey.

Which reminds me, maybe it’s time to give away some Kindle copies of A Sour Chord again!

An Editing Update

I’m chugging away like a madman on the second draft of My Last Days, editing out long unneeded parts, making my characters stronger and solidifying the story itself.

By my math, I’m about 30% done with the second draft and Lauren (my editor extraordinaire) is ready in the wings for when I’m done and will tackle her part. I’m hoping to sit down with her and show her the app I’ve been using to write in, in hopes that we can both work in the same application to make life that much easier for me. Thinking back about how we did it with “track changes” in Microsoft Word last time is giving me anxiety all around. It was daunting and time consuming and to be honest, I hated every second of it.

My goal is to be done editing by mid-January to hand it over to Lauren and let her churn away at her process and then hit the ground running for the final draft.

I’m hoping I can have this done and published by mid-May again, which’d put me at the exact year mark since A Sour Chord went on sale. If I can churn out a book per year, I’m pretty happy with myself.

If you’re interested in checking out My Last Days (as it stands now) to offer some feedback, reach out (either via the Contact form above, or Twitter or Facebook) and I’ll hook you up with a copy!

Friends are reading A Sour Chord!

So much has happened in the last week!  Let’s get you all caught up, shall we?

For starters, I’ve sent out the book to half a dozen friends to read and give me their feedback.  Not so much on the grammar and typo side, but of the story itself.  They’ve been chugging along pretty quickly.  I haven’t gotten any feedback yet, but I did set up a survey to capture their feedback and am anxiously awaiting some results to help nail down some final touches!

I also finished the second draft! I went through and re-read the entire thing last week, tweaking phrasing, word usage, and adding a chapter that I thought I wrote but didn’t.

Once I gather everyone’s feedback, I’ll do a third edit before sending it off to an official editor to get their feedback and make changes before going live with sales.

I’m beyond excited and I can’t wait!

Second Edit Complete!

It’s been a month since my last update and I’ve been hard at work on reconfiguring parts of the story.

Since the last update, a number of things have changed and gotten completed;

  • Our female lead has gotten a name change — I never liked the name I originally picked, so I went through a brainstorming session (bringing in some others’ opinions, as well) and finally came up with her new name.
  • The band’s name has been finalized as well — the name in the first draft was a placeholder and I knew that from the very first time I typed that name.  The name I picked I feel is strong and fits better with the characters that make up the band.
  • The second draft is complete — I reworked some of the bits and pieces to make the story tie together a little better.  I still have a couple of ideas for things I may change, but I want to get some feedback first.  Which brings us to:
  • I solicited some feedback from friends on the finalized second draft.  I have about half a dozen people reading through the book now who are going to provide their feedback to me.  I look forward to hearing what other people thought.

I’m still right on schedule for end of September, I think.  Though, at this point, I’m at the mercy of other people.  I’m hopeful I’ll have enough time to finish by then.  Things that are left to do:

  • Create the artwork for the cover.
  • Do a final edit.
  • Have a professional editor read through it.
  • Publish to Kindle, iBooks and Barnes & Noble store.
  • (Eventually) record an audio book version (assuming there’s any interest in such a thing.)

I’m getting both nervous and excited.  Only one person has read the book entirely through so far and I’m freaking out a bit having six more people read it.  I can’t wait to hear what they think!