Starting in on Book 3 of the Bladesmen Lords!

I came back from a short vacation and was able to finally figure out some of the things that have kept me from starting in on Book 3 of the Bladesmen Lords series. Specifically it was the point of view of the first part of the book - there were two "candidates" who would each have been able to witness the necessary portions of the outline that I'd written, but each one was going to give a very different take on the events and I'd been struggling for some time as to which one to write as. It came together on the ten hour drive home yesterday, though, and I'm off to the races! Chapter 1 is written. In an example of how things go for me when I have a good outline to write from and some time to think about it, the chapter is about 2700 words (approximately 8 pages in my usual format; I try to keep chapters between 5 and 11 pages long) and took about an hour to write.

With approximately 35 - 40 chapters outlined, if the book ended up being exactly what I've laid out so far it would end up right around 100,000 words - a bit shorter than Lord of the City. Since I haven't outlined the whole thing that I have in mind, I'm (very) tentatively expecting it to end up about the length of City of the Lords, though I could be wildly off base in that - things never go where I expect them to while I'm writing.

Looking for Bookstores

I've had some luck with placing my book in independent bookstores around here. I've had the Bladesmen Lords books on both consignment and sales and am comfortable with both. If you know of a bookstore in your area that might be interested in carrying them, let me know and I'd be happy to reach out to them about either method.

Thanks in advance!

How an outline can come together

My approach to writing an outline and getting my ideas blocked out has evolved with each novel I've worked on. For Lord of the City, the outline was more a set of ideas and milestones I saw for the story - this event is followed by that event, then this happens, and so forth. I started putting words down for the actual story when I was about halfway through the outline, and I tried to keep the outline progressing a few chapters ahead of the main story. This worked reasonably well, and made it so I wasn't too boxed in when I found the story changing drastically as I wrote it from what I'd originally had in mind. At the same time, it didn't really lay out where I wanted the characters to go and how I wanted them to develop, leading to a fair amount of backtracking and adding onto early sections once I got to a section of the story where the characters were really missing some earlier progress.

City of the Lords worked out differently. I had the overall idea of the entire story blocked out early, from knowing that it would come in three parts to getting a good idea of why the story would be told by a different person in each segment. The story had fewer changes as I went along than Lord of the City did (though there were still plenty of them as I worked it out), and I think the structure came out better for it. Still, the outline wasn't terribly detailed and while it gave me a "feel" for each character up front it didn't really spell out why the characters were growing as they did.

For this third book in the series, I'm finding myself outlining in more detail than I did before. It's not only events, but also some pretty in-depth notes on how the characters feel about particular scenes and how they react to them, giving me a deeper sense of each character before I've put down a single actual word of text for the novel itself. For the first time each chapter is blocked out from the beginning (at least for the first section where I have the most detail); while I don't plan to stick to the chapter breaks if they don't flow well when I'm writing, it gives me a great guide as to how I can expect the progress of the first part to go.

Here's some examples. Before you keep going, if you haven't read my first two titles, be warned that there may be minor spoilers below. Ready to continue? Ok. From my original outline for Lord of the City, I've got a bunch of notes describing "here's the state of the City, here's some general history, here's how human magic works", and then the story is listed as something like this:

•  -       Set up scene, say why mission needs to go
• -          Ship gets built/tested, crew set up
• -          Trip begins, people settle into roles
• -          First site visited. Nope.
• -          Trip to second site. More bladesmen seen.
• -          Second site visited. Nope. Light contact?

Yeah. Not a lot of detail, and a ton of changes happened along the way. Let's look at my notes on City of the Lords:

• 3 parts. P1: Kenton.
• Humans settle. City landed in unclaimed area between 3 small "nations". Lords rule some, advise others, etc.
• Hear of a City with many (2 dozen?) Lords, "retired" from public involvement. Other nations basically pay for their upkeep so they leave the world alone.
• 3 years after landing, Viala has a son. Soon after, the humans are attacked by a nation who is also at war with another nation the City is working with.

Still plenty of alterations from this original outline, but a lot more detail put to paper (though much of it was still in my head). And now an example of what I'm coming up with for the next title; here's what I have for the equivalent of what would have been one bullet point above:

•  Nobody hears from Ikami for nearly a day afterwards and people are getting worried. Suddenly, Ikami sends a message (cross-continent!) and says she needs help. The message is stronger than it should be, even for Ikami - Cord has concerns about what's happening over there. Ikami creates a temporary portal between the City and the research encampment near the CotL where she’s currently at, and Cord/Viala/Ather/Wesnoq/Apashae (taken over training of Human mages since Dural died) go through. Kenton stays behind, needing to manage the crisis in the City. He cautions them based on the earlier incident; clearly torn between going investigating with the rest and staying to do his duty at home.

(chose that one because it gives away the least amount of spoilers; it's clearly partway into the story)

Sure, there'll be changes (there always are!), but I've got a much better idea of how I want my characters to feel and progress through the arc of the story, meaning that I can give a better setup to lead them in the desired direction. It's not just more story detail, but more character detail.

Anyways, it's been interesting watching my own evolution as I gain more experience in completing and publishing novels. Hopefully this small glimpse into my process was interesting for you too!

Time to start on a new one!

After finishing a writing project, I always need some time to let my mind wander around without focusing on any specific topic. This is the time where I come up with new ideas, review old ones, and sometimes throw a few words at different stories to see if any stick without really planning on doing anything about them.

It's been a few months since City of the Lords was published, and in the last week or two my creative mind has started itching again. There's a story that I've been thinking about for a year or so and working on here and there, but after much review I determined that that one's not quite ready to be finished. I went through my collected backlog of old story ideas and found one that I'd put about 20,000 words into. It's pretty good, actually, and I really like the idea. But the writing is from several years ago and is not what I'd consider up to spec now, so those 20,000 words would take a lot of rewriting.

Last but not least, of course, is the fact that the Bladesmen Lords story is not yet finished. I had one reader who sounded a bit disappointed when I told her that I was considering working on something else next, and the next book keeps bouncing around in my head. Today I opened up a fresh new document and after reviewing some pertinent information on City of the Lords began an outline on the third book. It's very high level at this point and barely scratches the beginning, but it's a start.

City of the Lords

City of the Lords has been available for about 3 weeks now - see my main page at http://www.bryanleegregory.com for details on ordering. I've got it out via CreateSpace, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo (the last three for their respective ebook versions). Let me know what you think either here or via email!

City of the Lords looks great!

I received my first printed copies of City of the Lords today and they look great! It's significantly thicker than Lord of the City - I was surprised by the weight difference just holding them in my hands. The spine looks nicely consistent with its predecessor, too, so the two will fit just right next to each other on a bookshelf.

I'll be taking some copies down to Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha today or tomorrow. In addition, both books will be available at the Alliance Seattle stand up at NorWesCon in Seattle next weekend so you can pick them up there as well. Finally, you can always order copies of City of the Lords directly from CreateSpace (oddly, I get almost double the royalty from a direct CreateSpace order than I do from the Amazon site, even though both companies are owned by Amazon...).

And, of course, the ebook version is available from Barnes and Noble for your Nook, Amazon.com for your Kindle, or Kobo for your Kobo eReader!

I'm always happy to sign books for people in-person wherever they buy them. I've set up an Events page on my website and will be updating that with new events as I get them added.

City of the Lords is finished!

After a ton of effort to get things completed this week, I'm happy to announce that I've submitted the final manuscript and cover design to CreateSpace for a proof of City of the Lords! It's been a long road but it's good to have the end in sight. If everything goes well I'll have the first copies by next weekend.

Why next weekend, you might ask? Well, that's because Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha has invited me to be a featured author at their grand re-opening party after a month long remodeling! Come on over on Saturday, March 23rd from 7pm to 9pm and meet not only me but several local authors writing in a variety of genres. I hope to see some of you there!

Self-Publishing Platforms

Let's talk about some of the choices I've had to make over the last couple of years as to how and where to publish Lord of the City, and what I'm looking to do with its sequel.

If you're going the traditional publishing route and have an agent and a publishing house already lined up, congratulations! For this topic, though, assume you've chosen to self-publish your novel. There's a lot of options out there, many of which I spent a fair bit of time researching before settling on some specific choices. It's worth checking out local presses - for example, I found an independent bookstore up near Seattle which would only carry self-published books if they used its press and no other. Something like this might be what you need if you're looking at specific distribution channels.

After looking at some online presses, I ended up choosing to use CreateSpace due to its tools, its pricing, and its quality. It also integrates very nicely with Amazon distribution (not surprising since Amazon bought it a few years ago!) in a way that other presses do not. Since at least right now I'm selling more online than anywhere else, this is very important for me. I was not impressed with Lulu's tools or physical quality when I tried it for a different project, nor was I tempted to try other competing offerings after poking around their toolsets.  If it takes you 20 hours to prep your book because you have to fiddle with their toolset, it simply isn't worth it. I'd like to try other choices again at some point if they improve, but for now I'm sticking with CreateSpace for City of the Lords as the project nears completion.

I would strongly recommend making an ebook available alongside whatever physical publishing choice you make. Despite several years of hard pushing by Amazon and others, ebooks are still a minority of total volumes sold ... but there's already several authors making the majority of their money on ebooks, and whether it's another year, five years, or twenty, ebooks are pretty surely destined to take over the market at some point. Why wait to prep an ebook until later?

There's pretty much two competing formats at this point, ePub and Kindle. Amazon, of course, would like you to do everything Kindle-specific. If you look at KDP Select (Amazon's "borrowing" program for Kindle books, where Amazon Prime users can borrow the ebook for free), one of the conditions is that your ebook is distributed only on Amazon.

Epub is a format accepted on every reader *but* the Kindle. This means the Nook, a Kobos reader, various tablets, etc. can generally read an ePub book with no issues. I originally made both a Kindle version and an ePub version of Lord of the City available. When KDP Select came online, I signed up for a 6-month exclusive period to try it out, which meant delisting the ePub version. Now that that period is almost up, I haven't renewed my KDP Select inclusion because of the exclusivity agreement. I'm going to try posting up the ePub again on both B&N and Kobos to see how that goes for a few months.

While there are other ebook formats out there, why would you pick a different proprietary format when everything reads ePub or Kindle format?

In other news, I've been continuing to edit City of the Lords. The first hard copy of the manuscript is sitting partially read at home and I've been trying to hit a few chapters here and there whenever I have the chance. Lots of markup so far which I'll need to enter back into the soft copy once I get all the way through.

First draft complete for City of the Lords!

Today I finished the first draft of City of the Lords, the sequel to Lord of the City. It felt great to get through the last few chapters and tie things up. It clocks in at almost exactly 129,000 words, or about 30% longer than Lord of the City. I've already done a full revision run-through of parts 1 and 2, so I just need to crank through part 3 before I've done a complete pass on the entire text. That means I'm well on track to have it released by the end of March as both an eBook and a paperback.

If you're interested in getting an early look at the manuscript and giving comments and criticism, please contact me via email at bryan@bryanleegregory.com. I've done enough revision that I don't expect any major rewrites of sections between now and publication, but there's always places where I'll make grammar mistakes or continuity errors (though I've hopefully weeded those down to a minimum!).

Thanks for your continuing interest. I'm really looking forward to getting the story published and available!

Cover Art and other news for CotL

A few quick pieces of news about City of the Lords:

- I talked to Jeremy Gregory (http://jeremygregorynow.blogspot.com/) about doing the cover art. He did the (excellent) cover art for Lord of the City, and I look forward to keeping the same style on this one.

- I've done another editing pass over Part 1 and am ready to start passing it around for initial comments from one or two people. I need to do the same thing for Part 2 and finish Part 3, then print the whole thing out and do an out-loud reading for myself to mark up.

- Last but far from least, I did a full read through of Lord of the City and matched up some details and timelines from that book to this one. For example, I'd messed up the number of continents claimed to be ruled by the Bladesmen on their home world - in the first book it was stated to be four, while I'd initially written in only one for the sequel. Glad I checked back and got that one right!

Beyond that, I'm still aiming for a release by the end of March. I think everything's on track to make that happen.

Timing

I've been making great progress lately on City of the Lords. Having it ready by the end of March is looking more and more likely as the days go by. It's just over 120,000 words (365 pages) right now, and I'm right before the big climactic scene at the end. I'm looking forward to writing it - hopefully it ends up well :)

One thing I needed to do tonight was go back and make sure my timelines are correct. As I've noted before, the last two sections of this book take place simultaneously from different points of view, and that makes things a little tricky. There's some points of crossover where I had to make sure I had everything right, and I ended up plotting out day by day where the important characters were in the story. It was entirely worth it here at the end, though, as now I can be sure that I've been consistent and that everything makes sense. Now that I'm right at the end of the book I had to be ready for certain events to have happened with the right amounts of delay between them.

Happy 2013!

I hope everyone had excellent holidays of whatever type they choose to celebrate! 2012 was a great year and I'm looking forward even more to 2013. I'm making good progress towards finishing my first draft of City of the Lords later this month, and that puts me still on track to have a finished product ready by spring.

I'm close enough to the end that I know pretty firmly what's going to happen from here on out. The book will probably end up between 120,000 to 130,000 words (compared to Lord of the City at about 96,000). It's exciting to be this close, though I'm not looking forward to the editorial slog afterwards where I get to find out just how many mistakes I made in the first draft!

Here's my plan for that process, based on what worked (and what didn't work) for Lord of the City:

1. Read through each section on the computer and make corrections as I go. Assuming there's no major rewrites, I'd like to do each part in one sitting.
2. Run an automated spell check over the entire document, which takes a lot of manual intervention (one of the problems with any fantasy novel, I imagine).
3. Print the entire book out on paper and read through it aloud. This is a piece of advice I picked up a while ago and it definitely makes you spot problems with the writing that you wouldn't otherwise notice. Corrections are made on paper and then entered back into the software version.
4. Ask friends and family (F&F) to review this near-final draft.
5. Make one final quick skim and possible corrections or minor rewrites based on feedback from F&F.
6. Format the book three times - once for CreateSpace (hard copies), once for Kindle, once for the more general ePub format. At this point, the ebooks are ready for publishing. I need a cover by this point!
7. Order a proof from CreateSpace and check it out. Last time it took me 3 proofs to get the cover correct, though hopefully I won't need so many iterations with what I learned from the first book.

So there's a lot of work left after the first draft is done, but it's very different from the initial writing. I'm ready to start on these steps, just need to finish those last few chapters!

First Person Problems

I like to write in first person. It allows me to tell a story from inside someone's head, with all the associated thoughts, perspective, and missing information that we know from our own experiences. I love the immediacy that it lends to a story, and I enjoy the twists and turns I can throw at a protagonist because of their limited perspective - and when I can surprise the narrator, I know I can surprise the readers, because they don't have any more of a view on the world than the character does.

It has some problems, too. I don't worry about the meta-narrative implications of needing to explain why a story is being told from a first person perspective; I don't need to introduce the narrator as the purported author. I like to think that my readers are smart enough that they don't need an artificial construct to explain why they're reading the story; hopefully they can simply enjoy the tale. But what happens if a protagonist dies? How can the reader be as invested in the story, even if it continues from another viewpoint? That immediacy, that sense of knowing the protagonist from the inside, becomes a bit of a liability when the reader's attunement to the narrator is suddenly thrown aside.

If you've read my first novel and are waiting to read the second, I bet you'd like to know if and how this applies to City of the Lords. Tough luck! I won't tell you! You'll just have to wait and find out yourself! On that topic, City of the Lords just broke 100,000 words today (hooray!). Parts 1 and 2 are finished (at least with the first draft) and Part 3 is probably halfway done. I'm tentatively hoping to push it out in early spring of 2013. Wish me luck!

Book Signing this weekend!

I'd like to remind everyone that I'm having another book signing at Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha this weekend as part of a Westside Independent Bookstores promotion! Four excellent indie bookstores in Aloha, Hillsboro, and Tigard are all hosting signings and events on Saturday, Dec. 8th - come out and make a day of it! I'll be at Jan's Paperbacks from 1 to 4 PM. Come on out and say hi!

In other news I'm up to 90,000 words on the sequel to Lord of the City - probably 3/4 of the way through. Great progress is being made!

Writing progress and another book signing!

Good afternoon everyone! I'm making steady progress on the sequel to Lord of the City; I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first draft as of right now.

Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha has invited me back for another book signing on Saturday, December 8! If you weren't able to make the first one, this is a great opportunity to come out and snag your own signed copy of Lord of the City. In addition, Jan's Paperbacks is working with three other local bookstores to cross-promote multiple signings around the Beaverton-Hillsboro area so you can make a day of it! There are few things more enjoyable than spending a day browsing through indie bookstores and meeting several local authors.

Thank you!

I'd like to thank everyone who came out on Saturday to the book signing. I appreciate your interest!

For those who didn't make it, I left a couple of signed copies at Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha, OR if you'd like to purchase them there, or you can get one directly from me.

Book Signing - Oct 6th!

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be participating in a book signing at Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha, OR (http://www.janspaperbacks.com/) on October 6th from 1-4 PM for Lord of the City. You can see their page for it here: http://janspaperbacks.com/event/charlton-gregory-book-signing. I'd love to see people there!

Continuing progress

City of the Lords continues along, though not quite as fast as I'd like. I'm making steady progress on Part 2 and have the beginning laid out for Part 3. Due to the way the story works out, I'll be writing parts of Part 3 before I'm done with Part 2 - the two occur simultaneously in certain chapters, and I want to make sure to keep things consistent. I've got a fairly complicated timeline worked out, more for my reference than anything else - the story doesn't end up too complicated when it's written, but one thing I've had hammered into my head from decades of reading other peoples' work is that consistency matters. Few things bug me more than reading someone's story and realizing that it simply couldn't have occurred the way they laid it out.

A Different Perspective

Part 1 of City of the Lords is done! Well, the first draft, anyways. On to Part 2... in which, for the first time, I approach this world from a perspective other than Kenton's. To find out why you'll need to read the book!

It's an interesting experience. I find it much easier to write using first person perspective than others (third person limited would really be my other choice here, at least in the way that I have the book planned out), but all of my writing so far has been from one specific person's view. Like any of us, Kenton has a particular perspective on the world around him that is by necessity different from that of the others around him. I'm grappling with that different tone in Part 2, but the task is made somewhat easier by the way in which this part of the story begins. It's not that it's hard, really - in fact I'm pleasantly surprised so far by how easily I slip into a writing from this alternative viewpoint and making it clear that it's not Kenton who is talking here - but it's a new experience for me and a little disconcerting. I find the protagonist thinking about people very differently than Kenton, and having to reevaluate all of the supporting characters in this new light.

How about Part 1? Well, I need to do a first sweep of revisions on it. Based on my experience from Lord of the City (as well as my first manuscript, which is still unpublished), there'll probably be some pretty sweeping changes. It comes out to a bit under 45,000 words, or slightly less than half the length of Lord of the City. It's a nicely self-contained story, but absolutely necessary to lead into parts 2 and 3 of City of the Lords. One nice thing about having the story separated out like this is that I'll be able to send out Part 1 to F&F (friends and family) for initial feedback without waiting for the whole thing to be done. That's after at least one (and maybe two) rounds of revision, of course, for everything from grammar and spelling to pacing and consistency.

If each part ends up around the same length, I'll end up with a book between 1/3 and 1/2 larger than Lord of the City, which isn't a bad thing.

Lord of the City available at Jan's Paperbacks in Aloha, OR

Jan's Paperbacks (http://www.janspaperbacks.com/) in Aloha, Oregon is now carrying Lord of the City, my first novel - see their Local Authors section at http://www.janspaperbacks.com/local-authors. Head over there and see the book in person!