Tag: Counterattack

Book Launch!

KenMcConnell

Tuesday, 26th of July is the release date for COUNTERATTACK, the third book of the Star Saga. This is the final chapter of the Starforgers Trilogy.

Starships led by Captain Ardel are blasting the Votainions out of space in a relentless show of force. 

Their success on the battlefront is too easy for Ardel and her fellow captains. They all know the enemy is pulling back not being driven out by force. However, the President of the Alliance is convinced that the Empress is seeking a truce and he’s made Ardel’s ship the official envoy. If that wasn’t bad enough she’s also burdened with a half human half Votainion child interpreter created by a top secret program to help with the negotiations.

Empress Nykostra lingers just out of reach, marshaling her forces to take back the legendary home world of her people. Her eroding mental health has the Chief Strategist contemplating her murder in order to ensure their victory over the Alliance Fleet. Can Captain Ardel and the Alliance Fleet ward off the largest counterattack in the history of the war or will a mad Empress fulfill her destiny and bring down the fledgling Alliance?

 

Writing Update, December 2015

KenMcConnell

Workspace 1_001

As 2015 winds down I thought I’d update you all on my writing adventures. 2014 and 2015 saw me producing two novels and two novellas. The novellas (Devon’s Blade and The Blood Empress) have been published as ebooks on Kindle, but the novels are still being edited. I hope to release them in January or February of 2016. The first one out will be The Rising, Book 2 of the Star Saga and the second one will be Counterattack, Book 3 of the Star Saga.

Currently both are being edited and both are waiting for cover art to be completed. Since I have to rely on others to provide me with both editing and cover art, I can only move as fast as my partners. In the mean time, I’m currently writing a novella that takes place between Starstrikers, Book 4 of the Star Saga and XiniX, Book 5. The novella is called K’nat Trap and if focuses on Kiloe and Tamia, two Starstrikers Special Forces personnel on a mission to steal a new Votainion starfighter. I’m having fun with this one which is a bit like Devon’s Blade in that it focuses on starfighters and those who pilot them. It’s just set in the middle of the Great War and takes place a year or so after Starstrikers.

After I finish that novella, I’ll be diving into XiniX which takes place a few years after Starstrikers and will star all four Alpha Team members and various other characters introduced in Starstrikers. Unlike last time, I’ll make an effort to get both K’nat Trap and XiniX out in ebook format before the end of the year.

I recently switched laptops from an aging Dell XPS 13 to a new System 76 Lemur. I’m loving the Lemur and of course, still using Ubuntu Linux as my operating system and Plume Creator as my first draft tool of choice. I’ve started transitioning away from Sigil and over to Calibre for my primary ebook editor. Sigil is no longer supported on Linux so that’s why I’m moving to Calibre. I’m still using LibreOffice 5 for my editing software.

 

 

 

Workflow Update

KenMcConnell1 Comment

GDocStructure

 

Recently I posted about my writing workflow. In that post I exported my first draft from Plume Creator to OpenOffice for editing. The problem with using Write or Word to edit is that you wind up with multiple version files and comments or changes can be lost or not backed up. So for my current WIP (Counterattack), I’m going to use Google Docs. I’ll export from Plume Creator as usual and then upload it to GDocs and label it Draft Two. Do all my editing in GDocs and then when done, let my Beta Readers read directly from the document and add their comments to it all at once. Then I’ll stop sharing it and either take or reject their comments and clean up the document again. Rename it Draft 3 and then invite my editor to edit the document. When he’s done, I’ll make his changes and then clean it up again. This will continue until the Copy Editor is finished. When the document is all done, I’ll use Jutoh to create the ebook and break out the chapters to RTF to send to my Graphics Designer for the paperback layout.

At this point in time I only have a few chapters left to write on Counterattack. Then I need to self-edit Draft Two so that it’s readable by the Betas. I’d like to be to the Beta Reader stage by December. Somewhere in there I’ll be starting to write Devon’s Blade with an eye to getting that one out next year too. We’ll see if this new change to GDocs speeds up the post production flow for a novel and if it works for Counterattack, I’ll probably make it my default workflow.

Progress Report on Counterattack

KenMcConnell2 Comments

I didn’t get to write every day this week as I kept a few lunch dates with coworkers. Sometimes the writing that I did get to do went smoothly and sometimes I struggled to imagine the scene I was writing, and at least once I went completely off course. Today’s writing session will be about getting back on course and wrapping up the first chapter. I’m sitting around 4K words at the moment but that will get chopped by about a thousand, I’m guessing. I don’t really want to add another chapter, so clipping and sanding is in order until it fits.

Then it’s onto chapter 2 next week. Bring on the bad guys! It should be fun to get back into the head of Empress Nykostra and see how she is running the war. Having just wrote a complete novel about the child empress that pretty much sets up Counterattack, I’m looking forward to continuing her story. Counterattack will mark my third novel written in Plume Creator. Unless someone comments that they have done more, I’m pretty sure this is a new record for that piece of Open Source writing software. Which is cool. If you get lost in all the options of Scrivener or are outgrowing Word, do give Plume a try. It’s free and it works great on all three operating systems. Oh, and it looks flipping awesome on Ubuntu.

I’m going to try and do a Progress Report every Friday to let you know my status. Not sure if I can keep that schedule, but it might provide me some added incentive to you know, write more.