Writing about new worlds
So over at Mythology Press which is the fantasy arm of Chris Kennedy Publishing, they had an open submission call.
I shrugged my shoulders and said why not.
Much to my surprise the editor picked my story. We went through several iterations with each other and I think the final story is definitely worth the price of admission. Oh also some really good authors are in there as well like Glen Cook.
Here is the link: https://amzn.to/4b6lCma
Let me know what you think.
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So pumped that it finally released. Also I am super thankful to all my author friends who pimped it to their lists and Keystroke Medium for making me the sponsor of Monday’s show.
Two Years in the making and all of my knowledge of book writing:
Can three friends and an AI take over the world before the Empire comes back to subjugate them?
Almost 500 years ago, the Empire made an example of the planet Randver. They bombed all major population centers and left a fleet to ensure no one approached or left the planet. The Emperor declared the planet Quarantined for 500 years.
20 years ago, A dormant AI reactivated and started working on the infrastructure to repel the Empire when they returned. They couldn’t fight the Empire head to head, but they could start on the technology to fight the Empire ACE to ACE.
In a few days, Mikael, Dagny and Johan are going to graduate from the Randveri Military Academy and be given a choice.
Help the AI take over the world or let the Empire come back and take over.
Will they join with the AI? Will they succeed? Find out in the first of the ACE Cycle books: Raising ACEs.
Buy Raising ACEs now on Amazon
Check it out. Several of my friends say they are already looking forward to the next one….Time to get back to the keyboard.
I have signed up for a few authors sites as beta readers. I am learning craft while I am still working on my books. I feel it is something that I will never perfect since no one is ever perfect and that is especially true with creative works. I am going to ship my first book and realize that I could have changed a few scenes to make it even better. Hopefully I can take those and put them into the next book and make that better and so on and so forth.
They say that it gets easier the more books you write. All I can say is that I sincerely hope so because this is a slog at the moment.
I had a great Career Author summit. It was virtual due to Covid-19. But it was probably a better experience since I didn’t have to go back to the hotel between sessions and I could join all of them. My wife watched the kids and I got in 90 percent of the sessions. It was awesome. Learned a bunch and now I just got to put it into practice. I am looking forward to when they lock down the next Career Author Summit.
A group of authors are getting together for an accountability group. I joined in. So far I have been far more productive than I have in most of April so that is good. Just got to keep up the momentum. Hopefully I can get these books out the door this year.
I have been reading Rick Paltrow’s Drop Trooper series:
Rick is usually hanging out on Keystroke Medium’s live streams and is a pretty cool guy. The series is good too. Those links are connected to my affiliate account but the books are good anyway you get them.
While I didn’t get as much time to finish my book as I had planned I did get 3711 out of 6K of my goal done for book 2 in January.
I have been reading Lucky’s Marines by Joshua James. He is doing a great job of writing a page turner. I got the box set for 99 cents and I have been reading them one right after another. Here is a link and as of me publishing this it is still on discount.
It has me a little worried that all 6 books went for 99 cents since I am trying to sell my first for 3.99. But I am sure they were released for higher.
I also like how he handles the AI talking directly into his mind. My editor and I have gone back and forth on how to relate this in my manuscript. I might change this to mimic Mr. James’ style. It reads really well and you know who is talking right away.
I took another step back and looked at my outside of work projects and how I can finish them all up. I think I am going to aim for May 1st. I want to release it before the Career Author Summit. Which is May 15th – 16th in Nashville. I am going. I am pretty excited to learn a bunch from far more advanced authors than myself.
I am just getting back from a mid west trip. My Wife, my 3 kids and I just did a tour of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois over the last 13 days. The trip was long and fun and we even got a little snow in. Not enough to make this Californian driver worried but enough to let the kids know that there is other seasons than just sunny in the world.
The snow was almost non existent on the ground but we got some sledding in and made some snowmen.
I didn’t get ahead on my production schedule before I left and didn’t make any progress during the vacation. So the plan is to hit it hard starting today and work on getting it to the editor this month. Then get it back by the end of the month and finish up formatting.
Finally release the book in mid-March. Then double down on writing book 2. I have about 15 min of writing minimum each day to work on it. At the point that it releases I will have finished my moonlighting projects so hopefully I can bump that up to an hour in the evenings. Which would mean 1 hour for writing M-F and then 1 hour at lunch MWF which means a full day of 8 hours of writing per week. I can get about 150 words in conservatively per 15 min so 600 words an hour so just speculating here but 4800 words a week. We can round that up to 5K and that means about 2.5 months to finish first draft of book 2. Then a couple revision passes which will be 2 more months and then editing pass and back…so hopefully release around December if I can do it.
The trick of course is if I get any more contract jobs that will eat into that time which will put me back down to 4.25 hours a week of it. Moving the needle but only 2.5k a week so 5 months to finish. Which would put it at august when first draft is done, so not horrible. Of course, all these numbers are made up and the points don’t matter so we shall see how it turns out in reality. All I can confirm for a fact is my butt in the chair writing.
So I follow a few writing podcasts. I know I should put them up on the writer resources page.
Here is a quick rundown:
The Writer’s Well
*The Career Author
The Creative Penn Podcast
Spellslinger
*The Writer’s Ink
*Keystroke Medium
Speculative Works Podcast
Ditch Diggers
*Stark Reflections
How do you write?
Story Grid Editors Round Table
Kobo Writing Life Podcast
*Writing Excuses
*6 Figure Authors
Create If Writing
I Should Be Writing
Helping Writers Become Authors
*The Sell More Book Show
Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast (defunct)
Book Launch Show
Baen Free Radio Hour Show
Well Crap. That is a lot more podcasts than I thought I listened to. An even 20. A few I check the episodes before I listen. Several are must listens. I put a star next to the always listen. The rest I check their topic and decide at that point. I have 30 min commute to work so I get time in then and then also in the morning when exercising I listen to a podcast or two.
The reason for all this is that I wanted to talk about an episode of the Writer’s Ink. Specifically the Josh Malerman episode 5. He is a horror author that just had one of his books made into a movie. He does a great job giving a back and forth wisdom dump with J the host. One of the things that caught my ear in this was that he had a ton of books / manuscripts just laying around. Basically he always keeps writing.
I think the trick here is just keep writing on everything. If you are going to petition agents to entry into the Traditional Publishing world then you need to keep writing and working on your craft. If you are going to release in indie publishing then you are going to need to keep writing and publishing craft. Either way just like anything that requires work and effort the more work and effort you put into it the better you get. Practice makes progress, but if you keep practicing you get closer to perfect each time.
I am up to 24K words on book 2 but I am still on chapter 7 for book 1 in revising. Hopefully kicking it up a notch this next 2 weeks.
So I finished the Wholesale Slaughter series by Rick Partlow. It was pretty good. Reminiscent of BattleTech from back in the day.
I still haven’t finished revising Raising Aces. I am on Chapter 7 and I probably have one more pass to go after I get through this one. I have a target for Feb 1st to get it over to my editor for a final pass by him. I also have time boxed Monday, Wednesday, and Friday lunches for revision.
On the other side of the coin, I have started writing book 2 again. I finished about 10k words last year on it. However the year before I did 88k words. So clearly need to adjust my time to include writing. I set up the same time I did in 2018 so hopefully I can get book 2 done and with some revision god luck out this year as well.
Catch you guys in 2 weeks.
Currently Reading: Wholesale Slaughter by Rick Partlow. I should probably get an affiliate link.
Book 1 state: In the editor’s hands, he said he would get it to me mid month. So pending on the edits, it is probably a July release if all goes well. If not well we shall see. First books are usually rough from what I hear.
I am going to get book 1 out to my editor this weekend. I started up a Patreon -> https://www.patreon.com/ChadBoyerWriter
The Patreon is going to be for two serials that I am going to try for a year. Both to get more writing in and to tell more stories.
I am excited to release book 1. It is currently planned for June which would mean 1 year has passed since I started this journey to publish a book that I wrote. I am hoping to get 2 more out within the year and finish the initial trilogy. When I finish up book 3 I will decide whether to pivot at that point or continue the series, but my goal is a tightly written trilogy.
