The final cuts

Last week I finished my final cuts for my first book, Arrival of the Traveler: Waldgrave Book 1. It is now in the hands of my faithful editors, and still on track to be published by August 31st. I decided to take a one week break between editing books to allow the conclusion to breathe; I'm hoping it will allow me to give a good intro for Book 2.

In the mean time, I've been focusing on my cover art. I have always been artistically oriented, so doing my own cover art was a huge perk to writing a book. :) After several drafts, I believe I've got some great covers for the 3 books due out this year.

Today, I wrote a draft version of a letter to send to potential reviewers, including a synopsis of the book and a brief overview of my life. I sent the note to a few friends for review, and one of them wrote me back that it was kind of sad to sum up the last 10 years of my life in 4 sentences. I laughed; it wasn't my whole life, but it was the parts that I thought people would find interesting, minus the ones I couldn't talk about without getting certain friends in trouble. I included my college degrees and my eclectic job history; I left out my husband, my pets, and my love of gardening.

I think I'm going to fine-tune my synopsis a little more, but hopefully it will be posted to this site soon.

Al

Anyone want a free book?

I am now within 3 chapters of the end of my first book, and thinking ahead, I am trying to find reviewers for the books.

Any volunteers will receive the entire trilogy in your choice of format (ebook or hard copy) for free in exchange for your thoughts posted as an online review somewhere.

Please contact me for further details.

Exhaustion

Having signed off on the first twelve chapters, and sent them off to my editors, the end is in sight. The first book in the trilogy will be eighteen chapters long. I'm struggling with a part of the book (in the middle-ish) which I initially thought was pretty good, but am now finding a little boring. Perhaps it's just me, so I'm going to see if the editors say anything.

I started a new job last week. My previous job, a student research kind of position, had me sitting at a desk for most of the day. My new job, a database and warehouse management kind of position, has me moving around a lot more. I am physically and mentally exhausted, which is making the editing process ten times harder because I want to come home and sleep every day. I'm hoping that the issue is related to the unfamiliar hours I am keeping (early morning to early-mid afternoon). I am a night owl, so I'm hoping that when I get to switch my shift, I will no longer have to fail at the endeavor of going to bed before the sun is down and waking up at the colon of dawn.

Here it is.

Well, here it is--yet another blog, like many other blogs I've started over the years to communicate with friends, organize my thoughts, and share things that I like.

This one, with any luck, will be where I organize my effort to finally publish the many manuscripts I've written over the years. My plan is to have my first book available by September 2011, with two more to follow by the end of the year.

Yesterday, I edited up to chapter 6; I still haven't figured out how many chapters the book will be. I initially wrote it in installments, and going back to add chapter breaks has been tedious.

That's all for now,

Al