Being Sick Sucks

So, got sick late Thursday, but got the 1st draft done Friday. Got most of the first re-write done over the weekend, but it's not finished yet. A lot of Sunday and most all of today has been in bed.
Hoping tonight I can get back on the the re-write so I can finish that and send out to my beta readers.
Cover has been commissioned, but I see the terms have changed slightly, so not sure how soon the turn around will be now. But with being sick, I'm already a bit further delayed than expected. So not sure it will matter.

For those of you into audiobooks, book one of the Hammer Commission series is now available in audio format on audible / ACX:
The Hammer Commission, Book 1

Book 3 should be out by month's end (Book 2 is already out).

Also, Portals of Infinity, #3 is currently in audio production. I'm hopeful we'll see that one next month.

So the first draft is done

And I'm getting sick :-P
The re-write is going to be fun...

Just an update

So, for those who are curious, I'm hoping to finish the first draft of book 2: Present Tense either tomorrow, or Saturday. Then I'll do the first re-write, after that I'll send it off to my Beta readers and start work on the next novel. I'd like to publish it by the 10th, but we will have to see how that goes, it will depend on how long the subsequent re-writes and edits take.

The next novel in the que is POI #8, however I may write the first few chapters of 'Days of Future Past #3, Future Tense,' before I start on that. Primarily so I'll be able to get back into that world faster when I go to write that book, which will be after POI #8 comes out. Right now I'm cruising along at 4 to 5 thousand words a day (which is still less than I'd like to be doing, but it's a good number), so if I spent a few days on Future Tense, I could get 20K words down on it fairly quickly.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have an aggressive publishing schedule this year, I want to put out six novels, and several short stories as well. I have a lot I want to write about, in the series that are already underway, and if I can keep myself going at my current pace, or better, I think I should be able to do all of that. Present Tense did present a few problems, not the least because of a seasonal funk that I'm sometimes subject to in the winter, but also because the world is a different and new one that I'm writing in, and sometimes certain things have to be developed, often things the reader never even sees, because if the foundation isn't solid the house will fall down and sink into the swamp.

I'm hoping to do several cons this year. I'll be at Liberty Con in Chatanooga (end of June), BLFC in Reno (start of June), another I can't remember the name of in Modesto (August), and possibly some more. I want to try and start selling at some of these, and see what that does for me overall. I also want to try and make it to NY this year to visit family, but we'll have to see how that all goes. If I can combine it with a business trip, for a con or something, then it would be a lot easier to do. Because time off is going to be at a premium this year (see above about aggressive publishing schedule) so on a lot of things, if it isn't directly work related, it's not getting done.

So please, tell your friends about me, get them to buy all my books and call Hollywood and tell them they need to option me for a movie or three. Because I could use a little time off! :-)

First person, or Third Person?

So, thinking of starting work again on the third book in the COS trilogy, this would be the book to follow Interregnum. The big question is, third person, or first person?
The first two books have been told in first person, but book three jumps around to several different viewpoints (and back again) throughout the book. Because it doesn't just follow Raj around, it also follows several other characters from other books in the 'world'.

So if I did it as 1st person, there would be a lot of head jumping, and I don't know how well it would work. If I do it as third person, it will be the first book in that 'world' system done as a third person.

So, comments?

Advertising someone else...

An artist that I know online is putting out a comic that I've been following for a while now.
I actually like it, the story is a little strange, but it's consistent and I enjoy the art.
I'm also very curious as to where this story is going to go, because it really has some interesting twists and turns.

So if you want to check it out:
http://boneitis.deviantart.com/art/False-Start-Issue-1-Cover-301931368

I'd put up a twitter link to the artist (@Boneitis) but I'm not on Twitter. They're also on FA, for those of you who go there.

Portals of Infinity Audiobooks, more coming soon!

Okay, so today I just did the deal with a new voice actor to do book #3 of the Portals of Infinity series. I'm not sure how long it will take for them to do it, right now we're thinking about two months as this is their first audiobook, and not only do they have to get the procedures down, they also have to learn the process of getting the files in the proper format for ACX (which is actually pretty involved).

I'm very happy about this, and they are too. They like the series and they want to do -all- of the remaining books in it. As they have a lot of fans from other work they've done, I'm hopeful that this means the audio books will see really good sales fairly quickly (as we get them out) so he will be more than happy to keep working on them.

Dusty Rhodes (Dustykatt) is the guy who will be doing them. We actually go way back, and when I heard he was looking for a book series to do, I asked him to do it. I'm really happy he's into it, the demo he gave me was really good and I liked it. I very much want to see the whole series done in audio, and I'm hopeful now that it will get done. It won't happen over night of course, at five more books (with another one coming) it will probably take a year to get them all done. But at least the process is going again.

Now the world can see what Governor Brown's neglect looks like

For his entire time in office, Governor Brown of California has neglected state infrastructure, especially as it applies to water resources. I actually think it's something of a fetish for him, along with his ability to fail at pretty damn near everything he does, other than run for office and play political games (i.e. tell lies). When he was attorney general for the State of California, he used his powers and the 'anti-global warming laws' to shut down many major projects, because curing concrete gives off CO2. So he used his power to do a lot of destruction.

And now we're seeing the price. One of the biggest dams in the world is about to fail. It already destroyed the spillway, because no one bothered to take care of it, and when they last did maintenance on it, they did a shoddy second rate job. Then the idiots who run the dam shut the spillway OFF for several critical days, and well now the water is flowing over the 'emergency spillway'. That's a fancy title for 'the top of the dam'. Now true, in the particular area, it was made to be the first place for the dam to breech if the water went up too high. But still, it's not supposed to be used except as a last ditch 'we hope we don't all die' kind of thing.

You see the problem is, the ground beneath that 'spillway' really isn't made to withstand the kind of flows it is now seeing and guess what? There is now a hole in the dam.

They finally opened up the spillway to the max, something the idiots in charge should have done days ago. But these people don't know math and they don't know science, and they could NOT understand that if water is coming in faster than it is going out, the water level will go up, not down. Honestly, they didn't understand that. I'm not kidding. They didn't.

Seriously, they couldn't figure that out.

If the emergency spillway fails, that means the top ten or twenty feet of the ENTIRE lake will suddenly flow out, all at once, unimpeded. What does that mean?

Well it means that Oroville will be scoured clean from the face of the earth. It means that the secondary dam will be destroyed. It means that the Feather River will massively overflow its banks. Same for the Sacramento river, so Yuba City will see serious damage, the Capitol will flood, and probably a few bridges (like I-80 and maybe I-5) will be washed away. It will do billions of dollars worth of damage (it's already done tens of millions of dollars worth of damage)and probably thousands dead. All because Moonbeam is too damn incompetent to do his job. Same for the rest of the democrats in office.

If only we'd elected responsible adults to office here in California. But responsible adults are not what the people of California want.

We have a huge storm coming in a few days. And then there is the huge snowpack that will melt come spring. If they manage to save the dam tomorrow, that is no guarantee that they will save it again next weekend.

On Audio Books

Just in case I haven't mentioned it (I think I did, but I forget), I am working with someone to try and get the audio book versions of the Portals of Infinity series restarted. No promises yet, I still have to find out if this person not only wants to do it, but can do it. Right now they're investigating it and considering it.

This would be their first audio book, but not their first bit of voice work.

We will just have to see what develops. If it doesn't work out, I have a few other things I can try next. I very much want to get more of these done, I know there are people out there who would like to buy them.

So, yesterday was busy...

And I'm sort of playing hooky by writing this instead of getting back into working on Present Tense today. Part of this is because I just ran into this huge tower that wasn't in the outline, and now I have to decide what to do with it.

Yes, these things do happen to authors. I'd always heard about it, didn't believe it, but then it started happening to me on occasion.

So like I said, yesterday was busy, because it ended up a work day. I wrote up the first three chapters (was only supposed to be two) for the proposal for an editor to see if they like it. I haven't heard back yet, so I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. If they don't like it, I think I'll just ask them what exactly do they want, and then try and see if I can deliver that or not.

I also spent an hour beating my head against the wall while trying to deal with my Credit Union's software, thankfully a phone call cleared that up this morning, but still. It wasn't fun. If it keeps up I'll go elsewhere, but I've been with them for about 25 years, so changing isn't something I'm exactly thrilled to do.

I also spent yesterday doing some set up work for the people who do my audio books currently. I had to put together some information for the next two that they're doing, to hopefully make it easier for the voice actor and producer. I'm still incredibly happy that they want to do more of my stuff. And I'm also happy that the stuff they already did is selling so well. They're good people, they deserve the sales. Plus I make money too, which is also good.

I think I may make another post later today about the fact that I write stories primarily aimed at men (unlike just about everyone else these days) and how I don't feel guilty about it, and I don't like it when people think I should.

Hammer Commission #1 and #3 (Loose Ends) are now in Audio Production!

Yes! That's right, the first book in the series 'The Hammer Commission' and book 3 'Loose Ends' which was just released last month are both now going to be made into Audio Books! I've got the same producer (Gregg Savage) and the same voice actor / narrator (Doug Tisdale Jr.) working on them!

Yes, I am very happy, (if you haven't noticed). The books are targeted to come out in the middle of March. I don't know if I'll get them at the same time, or one before the other. I'm just happy that they're going to be done.

So for those of you who said you wanted to wait until Book 1 was done before you'd listen to the series, it's coming!

-John

I really need to do this more...

I really do need to start posting here at least twice a week. If nothing else, so you all know I'm still alive and still writing!

So, I'm back on writing 'Present Tense' the sequel to 'Past Tense' which is the first book in the 'Days of Future Past' trilogy. Audio book sales on that have really been amazing, over a hundred copies sold in less than a month. I hope the sales keep up strong, because I want to see the sequel made into an audio book as soon as I publish. The folks I work with work on a royalty split, because I'm not rich enough to pay upfront :-(  So, it has to sell a certain number of copies before they'll do another one.

At this point, I'm about 16K words into the book, a lot of things came up last week, and as I've mentioned in the past, this is a rough time of the year for me. At least that seems to have moved on.

As for coming attractions, well I finally plotted out the submission to Castalia house. I need to now write the first chapter of that story (the second chapter is already done, because this is an idea I'd been camping on for years). I'm hoping they like it, and that they decide to buy it. We'll just have to see where that goes. I've put enough time into it at this point, that if they don't sign it, I'll probably end up writing it anyway.

Once I finish with 'Present Tense' I will start writing Portals of Infinity #8. I have a good deal of it already worked out in my head. I just need to tweak a few plot points and that will get done. I do want to write #9 this year as well, so we will just have to see how my year goes.

I also want to write a sequel to "The King of Las Vegas' as well as the next book in the Hammer Commission series as well as the last book in the DOFP trilogy.

Oh, and as if that wasn't enough work already, I'm going to start on the sequel to 'Interregnum' at the end of the month. HOWEVER that is going to be done differently than how I usually do my writing. I will post one chapter a month of the story to my Patreon page, visible to anyone and everyone who contributes at least a dollar or more. That does mean it will be slow going, however at least it will get written. Sadly my Children of Steel series doesn't sell very well. And I get it, 'Furries' don't read scifi, and being branded as a 'Furry' story tends to kill most things if it's not all about sex (and it isn't at all). However I wrote the original book before I even knew such a thing as 'furry' existed. And I'm a bit attached to the story. So I'm going to try and wrap up that story arc.

If enough people sign up for it that is.

So, right now I'm looking at another five to six books I want to write this year, after this one comes out. Hopefully my sales will do better than last year, they were okay, but I have some expenses coming up this year, plus I suspect I'm going to owe the government more than I expected (don't we always? Self employment tax sucks - that you have to PAY extra to be self-employed is stupid).

Oh, anybody going to see 'The Musical Box' in SF on the 23rd of Feb? Thinking of going to see them again. Yeah, it means driving into SF, but they really do put on a great show, if you like classic Genesis.