Yup, a rare, out-of-cycle email. I wanted to share that I finished the first pass of Secrets of Deara. There's a ton wrong with it, but (and this was a better turn of phrase for the previous book) the bones are good. That's the crux of this email. The cycle between books should be shorter than usual. It's ironic that after asking ya'll to rate my books, yesterday I received the worst review I've ever been given. The person clearly hates my writing style of switching between multiple first person PoVs, and jumping in time. Totally fair--I like my style (obviously), but I don't expect everyone else to like it. It's still a bit of a dagger in the gut, not because I take the criticism personally, but because there are so few reviews that the one really prominent negative review will hurt sales. I was considering my options to bolster reviews. My plea in the last email didn't amount to much. There's the carrot option--offering some kind of freebies to you, my friendly and loyal newsletter readers, for leaving a rating/review. Then there's the stick option--threatening to kill off main characters if ratings/reviews don't increase. ("The beatings will continue until morale improves!") Since I'm writing a prequel, the stick option eventually leads to causality problems as I wipe out main characters who are alive in the future. Such a conundrum. But I don't have anything to give away! Well, maybe some book marks. It's also worth mentioning that the face lift for the Guardian League series finished this week. It takes time for the changes to propagate through the Amazon system though, so I sometimes see the old covers pop up. I'll wait and send out updated pics for the next (intended) newsletter. May you get lost this week in another world. Follow me on Goodreads. |
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Click here to rejoin family content. Writing has been tough since the last newsletter. It isn't writer's block, and it isn't too many interruptions--the problem is getting all the complexities I want in the story to be compacted into a storyline that also provides action. I'm definitely not hitting the mark yet, but it's better than it was a couple of weeks ago. I typically have points like this in each story, but this one has proved particularly difficult. I think it's because I locked down...
Click here to rejoin family content. A Dragon's Egg and a Full-Circle Moment Okay, I have to share this—because it's one of the coolest things that’s happened to me as an author. A couple of weekends ago, my family went to one of those paint-your-own pottery places. My wife and kids picked bowls and plates. I chose… a dragon’s egg. (Of course I did.) I had a reference image on my phone—Elliah and the black dragon’s egg from Secrets of Deara—and I was doing my best to recreate it in glaze. An...
Click here to rejoin family content. Not a lot of updates. Between the family trip to the Keys, and a trip to see a set of grandparents, I didn't get much writing time. That's okay... sometimes I need a break from writing as much as I do from work. I did write one chapter, so not zero progress. I sent what I have to my mother, still my biggest cheerleader... the beginning and end of Secrets. She had questions about how it all connects to Guardian League. Maybe I hadn't said this before, but...