Thirsty Thursday #11

Thirsty Thursday is my own recurring meme whereupon I lift a glass (metaphorically speaking) to celebrate the triumphs I have experienced in the last seven days. They can be big, they can be small, but there has to be something because I believe life is all about looking at the positive. It's simply too short and too unpredictable to focus on the negative. So with that in mind, here is why I'm raising a glass today:

1. This isn't necessarily news to those who subscribe to my Facebook feed, but I finished off the rough draft of Bitter Nights last week and am into the Read-through edit phase of the process. Here's how it should work from here, but don't hold me to this because the process is organic:
- Read-through edit is merely trying to see early on what parts of the story need shoring up. However, since I'm close to the material, I obviously need help which means...
- ... it'll go to a few Beta Readers once I have the edits in. I'm going to try and be respectful of the schedules of my readers but theoretically they would get right to it, make their comments and I would be back into the comprehensive edit/revision by the middle of August.
- Comprehensive edit/Revision is just that. I start from the back of the book and work my way forward and try to objectively look at each paragraph and see how to make it better mechanically. Along the way I look at ways to take the reader suggestions and incorporate them to hopefully make the overall story better.
- Once that's done, it's off to a couple of select readers who have final opinion on the product. Assuming it doesn't require any more major revisions, I will run the manuscript through Serenity editor to point out where I need to fix things mechanically.
- Somewhere in that process I'll finalize the title and get a cover commissioned.
- Once all these things are done, then it'll be ready for release. However, in order to make sure there's some "buzz" to go along with the release, I will get advanced review copies out to about five blogs that will be set to post a review on "release day".
- No timeline for any of this. Again, it's an organic process.

2. My daughter turned four today. FOUR!! Where the heck did the time go?

3. Quick shout out to my old childhood friend Devon for the birth of her baby boy, and to an old friend of my wife, Diane, for the birth of her baby girl. It's a baby-fest! That's the third person in about a month who has had a kid, and the fifth in the past year. Love babies. Don't necessarily want another one myself, but I'm happy for others.

I think that's it for this version of Thirsty Thursday. I know it's not much but lately I've been pretty busy and haven't been keeping track of a lot of the little things that I used to. Ya'll stay happy!

I have a blog?

I am not a prolific blogger. It's important to note that this is merely an extension of my life as a whole. I only have enough energy to go around, and as the day wears on, depending on how everything went on said day, my capability to form more than single word thoughts starts to deteriorate. Which is why you'll see gaps in this blog and in my twitter and in my Facebook page that encompass days or even weeks. It's usually when I'm too busy to get around to it, or at least busy enough that it's not the first thing I think of when I have a free moment. Family, School, and Work come first. Writing is a distant fourth. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before but it bears repeating. Some days I can rearrange the order, except for Family because my wife and kids always come first, but at the end of the week, that's generally how it's all laid out.

Bitter Nights (working title) is currently in the first Read-through Edit phase. In this phase, I attack the manuscript as a reader and do my best to focus on the story and any glaring editing issues that need to be stamped out before moving on to the next phase: Beta Readers. I'm working on my ability to show versus tell, the overall pacing, keeping the exposition down to necessity, and doing my best to keep out major repetition of ideas or events. The more I write, the better I get at spotting these issues, which will ultimately end up making for a stronger read.

A lot happens in this book, both on a personal level and on a wider scale. My hope is that I've properly conveyed the issues Cheryl is facing and that her decisions at least make sense. They do to me, but then I'm biased. There's also an expansion of the lore of the Eternal War and you will learn a lot about Father Harold. He steps up to the role Rev occupied in Spiral X, as a side-kick to Cheryl, but at the same time it's a different dynamic than what those two experienced. All the usual characters are there along with a few more. Some you will like, some you won't. I'm looking forward to showing you all here in the next few months. No firm release date, not yet, but I'm going to do my best to make sure the wait isn't very long.

I guess that's it for now. I'll do what I can to make sure the time between blog posts isn't more than a week though. We'll see.

Have a nice day!

Thirsty Thursday #10

Thirsty Thursday is my own recurring meme whereupon I lift a glass (metaphorically speaking) to celebrate the triumphs I have experienced in the last seven days. They can be big, they can be small, but there has to be something because I believe life is all about looking at the positive. It's simply too short and too unpredictable to focus on the negative. So with that in mind, here is why I'm raising a glass today:

1. A special shout out and lead off entry to my best friend Dan. He and his wife have brought a brand new baby boy into the world and I couldn't be happier for the both of them. Congratulations you two.

2. We have pumpkins! I color this as a reason to celebrate because, despite the fact that it's several months still before Halloween, the pumpkin plant in our garden had done a lot of growing and taking over (to the point where I jokingly refer to it as the pumpkin infestation) without a whole lot of producing. That has now changed as we have two growing and a what looks like a couple of more on the way.

3. This actually took place over a length of time but it is only now that I feel like it is an actual accomplishment. My son has graduated into a full-time potty-user. If you're a parent, you understand the significance of this statement. Now we just have to work on my daughter, who has half the equation down and still goes to bed with a diaper on. However, we fully expect by this time next year, or even sooner, she will have broached this milestone as well.

4. We stayed within budget on our grocery shopping this month, but actually ended up buying much more in terms of worth. Our coupon-saving efforts have worked out and we're going to attempt to drop our monthly grocery budget down a bit since we don't need to buy as much for a bit.

5. I discovered something awesome last month that has me giddy and hopeful for my future as a writer. Over the course of about a month, in the Sony e-book store, The Plan, my failed contest short story, had been downloaded over 300 times. I have done no actual marketing on it, so people are basically coming into it on their own. It has also been downloaded a lot in the iBookstore, and while I don't have any numbers there, it has 19 "reviews" (current standing at 3-stars, which just reinforces my thought that I could have done better). I'm also interested in seeing the numbers on B&N when they come in. As an experiment, and to see if it'll help sales to Spiral X, I have permanently reduced the price of Split to FREE on Smashwords and its distribution channels. This was the plan anyway, for later this year, I'm just accelerating it a little bit. The sales were minimal at best, so doing this isn't going to hurt and might even help garner me some new fans.

That's it for now. I'll see you guys in a couple of weeks.

Thirsty Thursday #9

Thirsty Thursday is my own recurring meme whereupon I lift a glass (metaphorically speaking) to celebrate the triumphs I have experienced in the last seven days. They can be big, they can be small, but there has to be something because I believe life is all about looking at the positive. It's simply too short and too unpredictable to focus on the negative. So with that in mind, here is why I'm raising a glass today:

Thirst Thursday

Today I want to highlight the following, which have happened at various points in the last few weeks.

1. As posted before, I'm a huge Dallas sports homer (except for the Stars... NO GOAL!), so consider this my fan post about the Mavericks NBA Championship. YEAH BABY! I got my sports cry on the next day watching the mini movie put out by the NBA on YouTube. The point I got choked up was when Shawn Marion and his mom were hugging and she was crying and saying, "We did it baby!" Indeed they did. The players are the ones who do the task, but it's the coaches, the trainers, and ultimately the family members who back them up. When they won, everyone won. *sniffle* Consequently, that's why I haven't been around for the past week.

2. Finished my previous classes, Small Business Management and Intro to Java Programming. I aced both classes. For my SBM class I had to submit an actual business plan, which I did for my business as an author. The professor (Dr. Fail!) said it was very well done and wished me the best of luck. That said, being able to see three years into the future and what the goal is by that point, I'm better able to put the present into perspective and realize that I have time before this become viable as a career.

3. Son finished pre-K and he's set up for Kindergarten. Looking forward to not having him around for a bit during the day. Won't be complete silence because daughter is still only going to Pre-K, but a couple of hours of childless silence might slow down some of the grey hairs creeping in (not really).

4. New Boss-Boss at work. I have a lot of confidence that he will bring about positive change to the culture around there. Which is a good thing, cause things haven't been all roses and kittens for a couple of years.

And that's it.

June 9th Journal

Starting Word Count: 65,824
Ending Word Count: 66,867

Much better day writing wise but I was seriously distracted most of the day and could have gotten more done.

Line: I pulled the trigger, and in a split second the back of the vampire’s head disappeared in a spray of blood, bone, and brains.

Earned one hour of playtime from writing, but I also did some schoolwork and chores so I tacked on an hour for that as well.

Game: NBA 2K11

Summary: Two tough games. Miami game was a loss, mirrored parts of the series going on now, down in the 4th but fought to come back and came up short. Then a last second loss to Orlando as well. Ah well, can't win 'em all.

June 8th Journal

Starting Word Count: 65,614
Ending Word Count: 65,824

Didn't get a lot done today because of a couple of reasons. The first of which is that today was the first day of the new term, so I had to go through the usual start of term rigamarole of introductions and syllabus and such. Plus, at work we're doing a fair about of installs for a refresh project and I didn't have a whole lot of free time. Plus, when I did have free time I found myself looking up articles about the Mavs win last night.

Line: Father Harold had always said the vampires, at their core, are still human, and still thought much like a human.

No earned playtime but I decided to use my 'banked' hour after my Mobile Systems seminar.

Game: NBA 2K11

Summary: Game against the Suns. We killed them and won by 20. Next game is against the Heat. Let's see if I can beat them senseless. /smile

June 7th Journal

Starting Word Count: 64,596
Ending Word Count: 65,614

Close to being done with Chapter Twenty-One. Going much like I expected. Sometimes what you figure is going to happen ends up changing a little as the story is told, but there isn't too much deviation from what I had outlined. I did recognize something I need to change to sort of have things make more sense, but I'll get to that in the revision.

Line: For a long moment, the flash and blur of movement too fast to catch fully with the human eye was all I saw.

I did a little over 1000 words so that's one hour of playtime.

Game: None. Watching the Mavs in the Finals, so I'm banking this one hour for the weekend.

Summary: N/A