Believing in Miracles #SFRBlast
Posted by tmycann on Sep 19th, 2016 in indie, writing | 2 comments
I am by nature an optimist. There are days, though, when I wonder if that is my insidious license to a certain kind of laziness. I haven’t gone all out to find ways to spam people with “nominate me” links, even though my Kindle Scout campaign for The Builders comes to an end in four days. I had read about an author whose book spent 98% of its time in the program in “hot and trending” and still didn’t get an offer. And on a different board, that there does not seem to be a correlation between crowd-based interest and whether the author gets an offer. Then there was the article in Slate speculating that what Kindle Scout was really going for were all those gloriously BAD guilty pleasures. At the opposite extreme was an interview with an author who was signed, who found the experience thrilling in all the right ways. I suspect there’s some reality to all of these stories, so I have a hard time getting wrapped around the axle at this point.
You can bet I’ll do a happy dance when the book is finally published, though–regardless of whether it’s through Kindle or KKP–since I’m quite proud of the story.
🙂
One of the promo efforts I had wanted to be part of was this week’s Science Fiction Romance Sale. It includes a bunch of authors from the Science Fiction Romance Brigade group I’m part of. Unfortunately, being a Kindle Scout sort-of freebie didn’t fit the mold, so I’ll have to test that option later. In the meantime, for those of you who like that genre, there are lots of other interesting choices on offer.
There’s also the latest Hotel Paranormal book out: Soleli’s Secret by JC Wardon had a nice teaser over on Constance Phillips’ site and is now on my TBR pile.
On the writing front… I’ve managed a pitiful 751 words on Fire to Dragon this week. I’m incorporating writers’ workshop feedback into the early chapters that now constitues a verifiable pattern: I write the broad bones of a story in my first draft, missing out on characterization and setting details that help ground a reader in what I’m trying to convey. Going back to add those in during the editing process is more time-consuming than the fast-drafting I’m used to, so this feels like working in super-slow-mo to me.
Enough so that I got bitten by a plotbunny that has been playing out in my dreams: What happens in 75 years when the fascists are in power, we’re all connected via the Internet of Things, and it becomes criminal not to upgrade to the latest OS? I downloaded my iOS10 upgrade the day after it came out (neatly avoiding some of the “early glitches”), and noticed the same kind of breathless coverage tracking OS adoption that is the norm for Apple’s releases. Given that there are still computers out there running IE6 (I know, because sites I’ve built have had to be backward compatible that far based on visitor data), this seems some kind of unusual deviation. But from a corporate perspective, being able to enforce a lock-step upgrade pattern offers some enticing ways of controlling their narrative of progress. There’s a lot of meat to that kind of story–even though I’m not a particular fan of dystopian worlds. Even though those are evidently currently in style, considering all of tonight’s Emmy wins for Game of Thrones, Mr. Robot, and Orphan Black…
We’ll see whether my story ever makes it onto my production calendar.
As for exercising, we’re doing pretty well. My phone says I averaged 5,225 steps a day this week. For all those shorter excursions when I forgot my phone, that means I’m guessing I have been walking a total of about 3 miles a day. Not shabby considering we still have some pretty heavy heat and humidity in the area.
We’re down to the final week of this ROW80 round, and I am pretty sure I won’t be completing Fire to Dragon as planned. I’m glad I at least got The Builders as far as I did, but I need to speed up significantly to keep up with my publication plan. I’ll be thinking about how to manage that realistically as we enter the final round of the year. I’ll be back next week to let you know my conclusions.
2 Responses to “Believing in Miracles #SFRBlast”
Leave a Reply to shanjeniah Cancel reply
Story Writing Progress
Links
Virtual Autograph
I love the term “production calendar” and thinking of using it for my own attempts to schedule my writing. Of course, this impulse comes from the part of my mind that thinks if I can only make my life look and sound organized enough, the work will get done faster. Editing and rewriting are maddeningly slow processes, but I indulge in a kind of optimism too. Whatever it takes to keep the story moving. 🙂
Seems like you’ve done very well, especially considering the losses you’ve sustained. Best of luck with more progress during the rest of the year.