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!

Writing progress

Writing a novel while having a full-time "day job" gets difficult. I make the most progress when I don't try to force it and instead wait until I feel inspired (that's the best word I can come up with for the feeling) to write. Which is often in the middle of the day ... when I'm working and can't put words down; not for my personal purposes, anyways. Thus, my progress is very uneven - I might make no progress for a month, then throw down 5,000 words in two hours.

That's how things have gone this summer. Life is busy! I don't make money writing books (at least not right now!) which means I don't have much time to write books. Even when I try to make time, I don't get much done unless I'm feeling it, whatever "it" is. I've written far less than I would like over the course of the summer, though when I do write I feel good about it and am plenty productive.

Current progress: I'm almost done with Part 1 of City of the Lords, the sequel to Lord of the City. Soon I'll see how I do writing from someone else's perspective than Kenton's in this world. Hopefully, it turns out well.

Why I love to hate automated spell checking

Automatic spell checking tools are great. They're a wonderful technology and have definitely gotten better over time. Without question, they've made life easier for a ton of people and made a lot of students happier with their term papers.

Why, then, is the first thing I do when I install a new word processor turn off the grammar and spell checking?

I'll answer one rhetorical question with another. Why do misspellings of "their" "they're" and "there" really bug some people? Because, like other homonyms, they're all correct spellings according to automated software - which means they don't get caught. While general misspellings have gone down drastically in the last 15 years, homonym misspellings have gone up. Once people started assuming that spell checkers would get all issues in a paper, they stopped paying attention to whether they actually spell correctly.

I'm not going to claim that I spell perfectly, but I do pretty darn well, especially for rough drafts. Typos and misspellings are very rare - and I'll always use an automated spell check tool to go through a draft right before sending it out, just in case I missed something. I'll also admit that I need to use custom dictionaries more to make my life easier. Either way, though, as soon as I start leaning on the crutch that is automatic spell checking and assuming that everything's OK unless there's a squiggly red line underneath it, I'll start losing some of my own ability to catch when I miss a word.

Next time: why grammar checking is just as bad to leave on when you're writing a novel!

Sequel to Lord of the City

I've been working on a sequel to Lord of the City for a while now. I'm about 20% of the way through the first draft, but I have the outline roughly worked out and know how the story is going to go. Unlike Lord of the City, the story will be split into 3 parts, and will be told from several perspectives (though Part 1 is from Kenton's perspective - the protagonist from Lord of the City).

No idea when the text will be finished or even ready to send out for feedback to people, but I am hoping to have it completed in 2012. Time will tell.

Lord of the City is now available in print!

I'm proud to announce that you can now purchase a physical copy of Lord of the City as a trade paperback from CreateSpace! The book is 8.5" x 5.5" (larger than a standard paperback) with a glossy cover.

Many thanks...

I'd like to give a public "thank you" to the many people who helped support my ideas and my time while working to finish Lord of the City (and other projects). Your encouragement was invaluable, especially those who helped proofread and provide comments before the project could come to fruition. Publishing the book couldn't have come without your help!

Lord of the City is published!

  Kindle Version

 Non-Kindle Version

After starting this project about two years ago, it's great to see it finally become available.

Publishing initiated!

Lord of the City should be available for both Kindle and other e-readers (via the B&N online store) by the end of the weekend! I'll post up links for both when I get back online on Sunday. Until then, have a great weekend!

Almost ready...

Here's what the cover is probably going to look like. The eBook is almost ready to go!

2011 has been busy! I've been editing, revising, and incorporating feedback. I've commissioned some cover art from Jeremy Gregory, who does great artwork up in Tacoma, WA. Once it comes in I'll post a picture up here. At that point, I'll be ready to push the book out to the public through one means or another.

Waiting for feedback

I've sent the manuscript out to a selected set of volunteers. Only heard back from one person so far but I am hoping to get more comments. Meanwhile I need to start prepping for a query letter to agents...

Editing - Novel 2

In a marathon session tonight of about 2 hours, I finished putting in my edits to the computer and did one last set of tweaks to the first few chapters. It's done! Hooray!

I'll now start sending copies out to people who have requested it, to hopefully get comments and criticism coming back in. I'll collect those for a few weeks (depending on how long it takes people to get a chance to read it) and after one final set of updates it will be time to start sending out query letters to agents.

This is a big step! I'm tired but very happy to have assembled a real first draft which is of good enough quality to be seen by others.

Editing - Novel 2

8 more pages tonight. It's not much, but every little bit gets me closer to the end.

Editing - Novel 2

47 pages in a bit over an hour tonight. 70-odd pages left - another 2 hours and I'll be done with this part! Hooray!

Editing - Novel 2

Another 20 pages in about half an hour tonight. Pace for this part seems to be 40 pgs/hour, roughly. Some pages have no edits to enter, while others take quite a while with dozens of changes marked down.

Editing - Novel 2

Got through another 40 pages tonight in a little under an hour. Excellent progress! I'm about halfway through. A few more sessions should get me where I need to be.

Editing - Novel 2

20 more pages worth of editing put into the computer.

I'm spotting a few more things as I go through, and disagreeing with some of my earlier comments, but all in all I'm getting a lot of good changes in place. I use commas too much! I end up with some sentences that are too long, and I've been chopping several into pieces which seems to make the paragraph as a whole flow a bit better.

The editing is keeping the length steady at about 96,000 words, which is around where I expect it will end up staying. I have some thoughts on places I could add more if I wanted, but I expect I won't do so unless the length drops significantly after C&C from friends. That might be the time that I chop out whole sections and do one last pass to try and tighten up the prose before sending it in with queries to agents.

Editing - Novel 2

Got from page 37 to 62 tonight in entering my editing changes into the computer. This should go much faster than the actual editing process. My biggest challenge right now is setting aside the time to sit at the computer and put things in. It takes a surprising amount of energy, but that's probably due to the way I did the edits initially - there's a lot of places where I simply marked a phrase or word as sub-optimal, and now I'm doing the mental work of figuring out just what would go better there.

Editing - Novel 2

Hooray! Just finished (finally!) the first round of editing comments as noted in the last post. Now I need to go through them all with the computer and put them into the soft copy. After that ... it's time to start sending it around.

Editing - Novel 2

This first round of editing is tough stuff! I'm making progress - slowly - but getting good comments down.

I'm following someone's advice and have a printed copy that I'm reading to myself out loud and making notes with as I go. I'm about halfway through, then once I finish I'll need to update the "real" copy with all of the notes and comments. It's a real pain in the butt but it's very important; there's plenty of things that I'm finding need correction.

Probably my biggest single issue is repetition. I'll write two paragraphs and use the same word or expression in both, when I should really be going back to something different either the first or the second time. Many of these I'm just noting for now and will update when I put my editing comments back into the computer.