My Stories

I write adventures for those in search of a good story. My novels fall in the Fantasy genre, but many people consider them Sci-fi too. Each story is written with what I look for when I read a book: action, adventure, twists and turns, love, heroes, vicious enemies, fighting (weapons and hand to hand combat). I write because I want to share the stories that are inside of me. I hope you enjoy the adventures as much as I love writing them!

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

I'm still writing

 Just to let you know, if you haven't checked out "The Shadow Dragon: Orbs of Fire", it is free.  It is doing really well as a free book so I decided to keep it that way for awhile longer.  

Here is what else is going on my Writer's World:

My daughter is taking a look at my book that is closest to being ready to publish.  I decided to let her because she loves editing.  She just finished Advanced Language Arts.  And will be in Honors Language Arts in the fall.  Her teacher was quite impressed with her writing skills and she tested really well on the PSAT.  She told me she enjoys catching errors when she reads things.  (sounds like a future editor to me)  Plus, it never hurts two have another set of eyes, especially when they belong to someone who is bluntly honest with me.  

I have another book that I'm waiting on the edits for.  This is my long one.  It is 230,957 words.  If I double spaced it and used 12 point font using Times New Roman (which is how you figure out the approx. length it will be in book format) it is over 900 pages.  Making it my longest book so far.  The Shadow Dragon series would be longer, but I did not write that one in one go.  I had no idea there would be a third book until I my son had me listen to "Demons" by Imagine Dragons - 3 years later.  Anyways, this is probably my favorite book I've ever written.  Don't get me wrong, I love all my stories (I wouldn't publish a book if I didn't love the story), but this one might just take the number one spot.  I still have to make the decision whether or not to chop it up though.  As a reader, I personally don't like multiple books - I don't care if it has a cliff hanger ending or not.  I don't want to reach for another book, I just want to turn the page.  However, as a writer, there's the cost of the book to the reader and how much I will make off it (all the blah blah stuff that I don't want to care about).  I know that it's easy for a reader to say about an ebook, that there's no reason it should cost more than a couple of bucks.  But as a writer, I put in hours and hours, at all times of day, everyday of the week.  I poured my heart and soul into it.  And let's not forget all the ebook stores skim a bit off the top.  To be honest though, if money wasn't a necessity for food, housing, medical - if money was just about buying things to have more stuff - I'd make all my books free, because I just want to write books for people to read.   So back to my dilemma:  One long book or "cheaper" multiple books?  I think that a bigger book is hard for people to want to buy, especially because I am in independent writer.  They don't know me, and they don't know if they'll like my writing, and therefore they don't really want to take that chance.  In the end, I may have to chop it up so you don't have pay much for one book.  Or I might just take a risk and see if people will take a chance on me.  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait until the time comes to send it to copyright.  If you'd like to leave a comment of your opinion/what you prefer, please feel free to do so!  

I am also finishing up another story.  I am mad at my writing at the moment, so I put it aside because it makes my brain mush when I try to work on it.  It doesn't help that I changed an event earlier in the story, so I am at a critical point where that change was a big part of the story, and then I also have the issue of the scene is so much cooler in my head than what I wrote.  Plus, frustration is a horrible writing blocker for me.   This story is complete in that it has an ending and there is nothing to bridge together, I just have to improve the section I am at.

I also am working on a new story (in third person) which is very close to the end.  I finished a huge chunk of it before my other stories over took my brain.  A huge chunk = 96,000 words.  A novel, I believe, is at least 60,000words.   So 96,000 and still not at the end is a great start!  I had intended to write this story were the main characters just had run-ins with each other for most of the book, but they disagreed and, at least for the male protagonist, it was love at first sight.  There's not much I can do when they have made up their minds... besides, who am I to intervene when it comes to love.

And one last thing that is going on in my writer's world.  For the last week or so, I have a clear picture of a male protagonist who is giving me very limited details about his story.  This makes it super hard to start writing.   Beside this fact, I like him very much.  So expect to hear about yet another story that I have written.  


Hope you are enjoying your day!