Nothing. I haven’t written new words on a first draft of anything at all this year. But I did finish the first edit of The Rising, Book 2. Now I’m onto the first edit for The Blood Empress. At this rate, I might be able to start my next novel sometime in the summer. I was a bit ambivalent about the likability of the story in The Rising but my Beta’s all enjoyed it, so maybe it will do okay. I’m liking The Blood Empress much better. Great criticism from the Betas on that one are helping me sharpen that novel to a much finer edge.
I did want to mention that I’m using a new productivity tool for keeping track of my novel’s progress. Indie publishing usually involves working with two or more people to get a book out. Following the advice of the guys over at The Self Publishing Podcast, I’ve started using Asana, a web based task organizer for groups of people working on one or more projects. Right now I have my Editor and my Cover/Art Designer involved and soon I’ll rope a copy editor into the group. If your publishing team needs organizing, Asana is a good collaboration tool to try.
We still don’t have a cover artist for The Blood Empress. Both artists on Deviant Art that I tried to contact, have blown me off and not responded. Too bad. So now I have to see what Byron and I can come up with on the fly. That novel looks to be done by summer, too late in the process to hire an artist to work from scratch. Hopefully we can come up with something interesting in the next month.
Meanwhile, the cover for The Rising is pretty much set, just have to wait for Byron to put the elements together. That one’s going to scream Space Opera for sure. All the rest of the Star Series books will have awesome space scenes on the cover so they should do well and be easy enough to execute. But the little novels in between the numbered series books should have more character based covers to set them apart.
I will be attending the first Indie ReCon Live! in Utah this October. If you attend, look for me in the book sellers area!