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I joined a new book club recently. Benefits..learning how and when to advertise.
Book sales already set up. Three pending and maybe a fourth.
Also, learned about a book award before the deadline and sent in…The Lost Branch, vol. 3. More will be revealed.
Happy Thanksgiving, and a special thanks to Native Americans for helping the Pilgrims survive that first winter.
I did another full edit. More editting will follow it’s completion.
I am please with the storyline. I just wish for a different writing style, but that is on me.
At my writing group, I am learning a great deal about becoming known. This is difficult for an extrovert/introvert.
Next book? Either, a sixth sci-fi book ora fourth serial killer book.
Rethinking my books, I find many of the books have at least one death. Death is everywhere after all. No leading character deaths as far as I remember.
Getting on, I am going back to writing Ezra as the plotline is not yet complete.
I decided to edit Ezra for too frequent word use. Of course I decided to check the companion books and found I forget to do that. Now I may have to unpublish both of them. This is what happens to me because I have no help. Bad words and then I move on.
As Ezra is nearly finished, my mind keeps asking, now what?
I was thinking of writing a fourth book in the serial killer series.
A sudden thought cam to me that I could just as easily write a sixth book in my Enemy/Friend sci-fi series.
No decision has been made as I am babysitting my fireplace until tomorrow when they fix it. Until then, I keep writing a few words a day.
How do I write? I wrote in High school and college. I fulfilled my teachers expectations. They told me what to write about, and how long it needed to be. Of course, they gave me a deadline.
After that, I was busy with work and home and life. I still thought about writing, but I read thick novels and I just couldn’t make my brain think about more than 5000 words like my school papers.
Years later, I got my first laptop. Soon afterward, a co worker was taking a lot about a book she was writing. A thought crossed my mind. . ….A novel is nothing more than a bunch of short stories on the same subject. Two years later, my first novel was in print and in my hand.
Selling? Not my forte. But I love to write. I now understand about a lot. That is for another day.
By my ninth book, another friend published a great sci-fi book with a nearly free publisher compared to the first eight.
It took a couple more to figure out my path.
First, I size the page. Then. I set the margins, headers, footer, page numbers.
Next I start with the prepages, including list of books, forward, dedication,and all. Then I write, chapter one..
If the story stalls, I edit the entire thing and by then I know if I lost a character and need to give them a chapter so the reader knows what they were up to and then I write another hundred pages or so before editing from the beginning again. One more time and a full edit. Recheck format. Select all and search for over used words, check character named to make certain the name doesn’t change spelling.
One more thing, keep the character’s character the same in all the books.
Most books are available, but with brick and mortar stores closing it is had to know what to do. New and used book stores still exist, but on line shopping is taking over.
However, a huge percentage of people over 35 or sometime less, just don’t read anymore or wait for a book to fall in their lap. I think this is sad. Not just because I am an independent author, but because non readers are missing so many great escape stories.
So, if you hear of a book write it down and the author. Call a bookstore and order it and pay for it and it can be mailed to you for your enjoyment.
Just a thought
I have two pages left to edit in the third book of my espionage series, Ezra. It takes place in the Seattle area and Greece. So far there have been two one way flights and one round trip. Everyone is home and the plot is building. The next 100 pages or so will be a challenge to ramp things up.