I came close to missing the newsletter this time--just wrapped up in other stuff, and the date snuck up on me. In terms of life news, it looks like I'll be exiting retirement soon. I have an offer, but since I haven't accepted yet, I'll just hold off a bit on the details. The job would be a jump back into the semiconductor industry. I'm still working through my second pass on Secrets of Deara. It's fun that the pacing problems of this book are entirely different from the last book. Bones of Cenaedth was very linear, which is unusual for me, and I struggled getting the timing right in terms of the pulse of reading. The new book has several threads that need to diverge and then come back together, more than once. So it presents a different sort of pacing problem, one more like what I dealt with in The Guardian League series. Because I've learned, and gotten better at this craft, I'm more particular. That generally means it takes longer, but ends up with a better result (hopefully). Let me put it this way--when I wrote Guardians, I didn't think about pacing. Or sentence structure and how it relates to story pacing. How narrative versus exposition can be used to speed up or slow things down. Does being aware of it make me better at it? Ultimately, probably. What else is going on? A couple of things. One is that we should start the cover for Secrets in Feb. I have another, but I'm going to wait until it solidifies a bit more before I bring it up. Next newsletter I think. I wrote an update to my writer friends on my marketing efforts. That's just so others can learn from my mistakes. If you're new to my group and a writer, AND you're interested, let me know and I'll add you to that email group. I already put the results of the last polls in my unscheduled newsletter, so nothing new to share there. That's all I can think of! I hope you all have a great couple of weeks. All books by Steven J. Morris Indie Author Showcase Previous Newsletters
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Resending (sorry, can't seem to work out the family updates section) My oldest came back from college (Univ of Arkansas) for the weekend, my middle daughter turned 18, and my youngest just about has her standing back-flip nailed. I haven't tried adding a video in a while... let me know how this goes. Busy (but very good) family time, and busy with work, so my writing got the short end of the stick for a bit. But lets face it, that's the right call.Click here to be removed from family content....
My oldest came back from college (Univ of Arkansas) for the weekend, my middle daughter turned 18, and my youngest just about has her standing back-flip nailed. I haven't tried adding a video in a while... let me know how this goes. Busy (but very good) family time, and busy with work, so my writing got the short end of the stick for a bit. But lets face it, that's the right call.Click here to be removed from family content. Shepherds of Truth — the last two weeksTwo fresh chapters landed....
I had a couple of things I wanted to mention. One is what looks like a weird new scam that I haven't worked out yet, and the other is just an update on how I'm doing in marketing. Scam Alert! So, the potential scam. I received an email that looked like this: Your book just gained new reviews from my readers community.<screenshot of a GoodReads book review>Did you get it?Looking forward to hearing from you I followed up with a couple of emails, and I basically think the paid-book-review people...