Month: February 2020

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.