Wasted time not so wasted

What was supposed to be a week buckled down writing The Duel turned into a week of broken air conditioners, followed by thunderstorms. It seems every time I sat down to write, something called me away. While I made some progress, it's coming in at a crawl. However, all was not lost, as I spent some time putting Scoundrel's Answer out to Google Play, and at some point I realized that my tablet had a word processor on it.

However, I hadn't brought the original notes for The Duel along with me. Thus, I decided to work on another title whenever I could.

As much as I despise typing on a tablet, I still managed to knock out about three times as much on the new title as I did on The Duel, just standing in lines or while waiting for people. This has taught me a few things. First is that I need to get a more up to date tablet whenever I can. Second, I need to start using cloud storage for my work, so I can access it from any device.

Nine times out of ten, I've got access to my main computer, but on weeks like last week, it might be helpful to be able to work on my writing wherever, whenever I can. Lesson learned, I guess. Do I feel like last week was wasted? Yes and no. I would have loved to get more done on The Duel, but the fact I now have another work which should, if all goes well, be released shortly after The Duel is something of a bonus.

Sneak Peek at The Duel

Very little to add here today, but here's an excerpt from the draft of 'The Duel'. Enjoy!

From her quarters within the ruined tower, Lady Alisson Heartstone cast her hazel eyes down upon the courtyard far below, and then further beyond, past the fortress walls to fields of gray tents, black banners, and armored flesh. A growing wind carried the voices, scents, and general din of both besieger and besieged up to her high perch, even as it flattened her brilliant white robes flush against her curves. Her long, auburn curls were tossed and sent aflutter by that same stiff, cool breeze. One delicate hand rested against the worn, crumbling surface of what used to be the tower's masonry, in ages before that tortured stonework had yielded to the weather and let a sturdy wall become a grand and irregular window.

Ludum Hold had certainly seen better, grander days in those years when the land was still untamed and strongholds peppered the hills and valleys like stone fairy rings, springing as if from the very earth. Now, as war returned to a land that had grown fat and complacent during years of peace, Alisson could only hope those ill maintained ramparts could hold the swarming legions under General Grendec's black banner at bay. Of course, no fortress could hold out forever, and there were no allies or reinforcements to rally to the aid of Lord Aldmere's tattered army.

As Court Wizard, Alisson was privy to such information, just as she had been made aware of their supply situation. The fortress's old cisterns could still hold water, so long as rain provided. Food, however, was another matter. Even with careful management, Lord Aldmere's men would be on empty bellies within a week, two at the most. Her magic could only do so much to alleviate that.

Mere days ago, when Grendec's men had broken Aldmere's line, the old lord had ordered the retreat to Ludum Hold in the hopes that the Lord of the Black Banner would find laying siege to that stronghold too costly to be worthwhile. Aldmere's lands had merely been a conquest of convenience after all. A mere interlude between its much larger and richer neighbors. With free reign to cross those porous borders and move onward to better plunder, surely the General wouldn't need to wholly eradicate a broken, dug in force merely trying to stay out of the way. The gamble had not paid off. Bottled up in a dead end fortress, with no hope of outside rescue was not a position anyone wanted to be in.

As the Lady wizard contemplated the mismatched armies below, a fluttering white flash of movement caught her gaze. From the enemy line, a lone figure under a flag of truce timidly made his way toward the ancient gates of the crumbling fortress. Perhaps they were sending forth terms for Aldmere's surrender. The thought did not put her heart at ease. General Grendec was not known for his clemency, nor Lord Aldmere for his humility. The idea that the dark army would accept anything less than total submission, or that Aldmere would bow his head to a foreign flag were equally inconceivable. Still, at least they would soon know the details of what appeared to be their inevitable defeat.

First Sales

So I've sold my first copies of Scoundrel's Answer, and though the going is just a trickle, it's already technically paid for what was put into the cover art. Admittedly, that wasn't much, but it's nice to know that theoretically I'll be ahead of the game except for my time, right out of the gate. It's a bit of a weight off my mind. I've submitted the book to some promo sites, so we'll see in the coming days and weeks just how well that turns out.

There is absolutely no reason I shouldn't be further along on my next project, except for feeling a little under the weather. Progress is, however, being made. The Duel will most likely go direct to ebook. I've got a whole week of 'vacation' time with little to no interruptions coming up, however, so I will likely be able to squeeze a little something free in, at some point. I just haven't decided on what yet.

Scoundrel's Answer available.

Scoundrel's Answer now available! Through Smashwords at least. Amazon's review process took a smidgeon longer than I expected, but it should be up shortly. I'll edit this when I see it pop up. For now, those who wish can pick up the fantasy swords and sorcery erotica adventure at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/437124 for what I hope is a reasonable price of $2.99.

Here's to hoping that my very basic formatting is suitable enough for most people.

As promised, the link for Scoundrel's Answer on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K9TE7T2

Scoundrel's Answer - Ready to Go!

After a long few days doing editing, some minor rewrites (my attention to continuity was atrocious in some instances), and then formatting, Scoundrel's Answer is ready to go! I have already put it up for review on Amazon, and will provide the links for there and Smashwords when the time comes.

In other news, I'll have The Duel well underway this coming week, if all goes well. I also may or may not have thrown around some ideas for a sequel to Scoundrel's Answer. I can no longer say I am completely against the idea, so it will really depend on how well Scoundrel's is received.

I suppose I should get around to putting together a bio to post to some of these author's pages. Or I could just go for the brooding, mysterious type, and let my writing speak for itself.

On Self Editing

Still chewing through editing and corrections, but I'm in the home stretch. Now, I'm absolutely certain that I'm going down the wrong road doing all the editing myself, but what editing talent I've managed to talk out of other people have given me turnaround times that are far in excess of what I feel comfortable with for this first release. So, I've put my QA hat on from times past, and gone through everything myself. I'm almost done with this pass, which I think I will dub the final pass.

I did have the benefit of the ratings in this particular instance, to weed out what chapters need the most work, but still this has taken me a little longer than I thought it might. I am, however, quite satisfied that I was able to weed out some gross continuity errors, as well as awkward wording. I have to trust in my own innate grammatical eye to catch any technical errors.

A little backstory on Scoundrel's Answer: I wrote this in basically two stretches, separated by almost six months. It was initially released in serial form, and during those six months I didn't work on it, I churned out another little book released under a different name elsewhere. This gap in work, however, left a lot of little details between the two halves of the book mismatched.

The second half received better ratings overall than the first, so I have to assume that knocking out that little novel in November and the lessons learned from its editing and rewrite taught me a few things. The bulk of the work in fixing Scoundrel's Answer has therefore been in patching up the first half to fall more in line with the second. I think I have succeeded on this, but I won't know for sure.

I would love more sets of eyes on my future releases to give me more specific feedback about what works and what doesn't, and I think in the future, I'll go the extra mile to do so. However, for now, has anyone else had success with just a self review and editing pass?

On another note, I've started a short called The Duel in my 'idle' time, while traveling or waiting in line and such. I adore tablets for that, even if I despise thumb typing. It's a sappy little love story about two wizards, a little bit of a departure from Scoundrel's Answer, but a nice one, I think. I'll try to get a sample of it up here when it is polished enough to do so.

Toiling Away

So I've gone and done my first round of research on ebook promotion, and, pending seeing how effective it ends up being, I'll give a more detailed explanation in a later post. I've also got the initial cover art for Scoundrel's Answer. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but for something done on the cheap, I'm hoping it will serve until such point as I manage to better afford a higher quality layout. I'll do some work to correct some of the artifacts on the layout before final release of course.

I'm going to be using the ratings garnered by the individual chapters posted to determine what needs the most work in editing. So far, the response is better than I expected for what is basically an unedited draft. This is somewhat problematic, since I was counting on some sort of criticism to tell me what sucked and what didn't. As it is, I'll have to use the ratings divergence to point out weak chapters. I already have two that I know I will have to rewrite, and one that I want to, time pending. Nothing that will change the overall story, but hopefully it will help fill in some details here and there. I'll try to allot some time for it over the next few days. Then it's just a sweep through to catch glaring errors and all should be set!

As for future projects, last night I sat down and did some brainstorming on a few ideas, and came up with about a half dozen or so shorts to fill out time while I find out if the Reavers of Aethwin concept is something worth coming back to. My main problem with the setting is that it is VERY generic, purposefully so. While that does make for a fun and familiar setup to quickly put a story together, it does give the setting itself a sort of 'sameness' feeling to those familiar with certain role playing game and fantasy tropes. I feel that I want to world build for my next major non-short story project, but such things take time. I guess we'll just have to see how things go while I get some short stories out.

Tonight's my Tuesday Night Tabletop Game, so I think tomorrow I'll settle down to start the rewrite process. Until next time!

Setting things up

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