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My mother-in-law stayed with us for a while around the 4th of July. Nobody tell my kids I threw shots of them in my newsletter or I'll never be allowed to again. (You know who you are, J...!) In theory, my oldest reads my newsletter and will notify me of her outrage directly, but I don't think she actually opens it. We shall see. 😁 Not much to update. Book 2 is still with the structural editor. I made a few paragraphs of headway on Book 3. I cobbled together a first pass of a storyline for that other opportunity I mentioned regarding a book which will be set in a game world, but there's been no updates on nailing down a contract (though I wasn't expecting to hear anything yet either). I don't want to spend more time on it until we have a contract, but I find it distracts me from Book 3 of Thaumatropic Roots. I know many writers juggle multiple storylines at the same time, but it's new for me. I've been reading more of Lindsay Buroker's books in what has proved to be a bit of a down time for me in writing. It's amazing how many of the same paradigms we chose, where I thought I was being original. It still amuses me that I stumbled onto her books by looking at the Amazon "Also Bought" of my books. I had a group unfollow my newsletter after I included a bunch of writing stats a few weeks ago, but I also had several folks who liked and commented on the info. So I decided to kick off a separate newsletter thread with more focus on marketing and all the work that goes beyond writing your book. You can see the first email here: https://pages.sjmorriswrites.com/posts/writer-s-corner-july-7-2024. If you're interested in getting these, send me a reply and I'll add you. (I'll use a tag in ConvertKit). Results from last week's survey: More people like the book collections than dislike them. In fact, only one person disliked them. Sorry, you-know-who-you-are, and I know you get inundated with books and mostly look for my family updates, but the book and book collection blurbs will continue. :) Indie Author ShowcaseI LOVED books like the below as a kid. Yes, I loved lots of things, and still do, but this one woulda grabbed me. Previous Newsletters
May you get lost this week in another world. Follow me on Goodreads. |
If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
I built a tracking page for Father of Stones (FoS) this week. I did not, notably, write very much of said book this week. There's a joke in there about creative avoidance and I'm not going to pretend I don't see it. Anyway — here's what I made instead. Word Count Over Time A live chart of Father of Stones' progress since late June. I'm not smoothing over the slow weeks. There's a very flat stretch from June 'til August where I worked on the Eigenthrope story, then another flat stretch through...
Yesterday I needed to remember exactly how a character destroyed a dragon artifact three books ago. I didn't dig through my own novels to find it—I asked an AI I built to search them for me. It's called the Grimoire: a mini-AI system I put together with Pinecone that I can ask questions about my own books—hair color in a different epoch, a side character I want to bring back, a detail I'd otherwise lose momentum digging for. It keeps me writing instead of hunting. That's the quiet way AI has...
In this one: an old friend from way back, 20k words of progress, and a new reel from Thaumatropic Fractures. Last newsletter I asked for some accountability help. A few people reached out. One was someone I think of as an old friend from high school. But I've got to tell a little story about him. Way back before high school, in 5th grade, I transferred into a new school roughly mid-year. In one of my classes, the teacher insisted I do a placement test. But the placement test was this set of...