First off…hi.
In case you didn’t notice (and chances are you didn’t) I’ve been completely unplugged from social media for about a week. The verdict: it was nice.
The Skullborn
I kept busy on my so-called “vacation”. You may have noticed the City of Scars word count widget on the main page is gone, and with simple reason: it’s done. Well, not done. (Note the clever use of bold there.) The initial re-write has been completed, and now Book 1 of The Skullborn Trilogy gets to go through a million re-writes.
The writing style is different for this book than for the Blood Skies novels. Not better and not, I think, worse…just different. The plot is a lot more complicated. There are a lot more characters, at least a dozen of which get at a chapter or two told from their POV. The story-telling style is much more convoluted.
On the other hand, the prose is much more straightforward, and the descriptions aren’t as thick. There’s also a lot more dialogue. Overall, I think the style is more accessible, even though the plot is ridiculously convoluted…so I guess we’ll see how it all looks once I push it through the edit grinder a few times.
Stay tuned for more about City of Scars next week, when I’ll talk about the setting and plot at some length.
Clik here to view.
No, I wasn’t doing it longhand, but a picture of me typing would be quite boring.
Chain of Shadows
Writers: you know that moment when you’re plugging away, just trying to do your best to hit a word count total, and you just sort of feel like you’re going through the motions? Sure, you have some nice characters and a couple of cool ideas, but you’re not totally sure how it’s all going to come together?
Then…something happens. Like a bolt of lightning. Or love. Or a really good piece of chocolate. And all of a sudden the entire book seems to fall into place in your brain, and the scope of everything you’ve been trying to do suddenly snaps into place?
Yeah. Well, it took a week’s break from social media for that to happen this time around, but I’m happy to say Book 6 of the Blood Skies series is finally shaping up to be what I think might be the best book in the series so far. I pounded out nearly 20,000 words last week, and I don’t see myself stopping any time soon. Exotic foreign lands. Betrayel. Heartbreak. Some surprising new developments. Crippled angels. Giant zombies. A nod to The Martian Chronicles. This one has it all.
(Seriously, I’m super excited about this book. Stay tuned.)
The Blood Skies Omnibus
I also made a small amount of headway doing another read-through/re-edit of Blood Skies, and once that’s finished I’ll move on to the other items being included in the first Blood Skies omnibus (Black Scars, Soulrazor, the original Tales of a Blood Earth and the new 20,000 word short story Crucifix Point). The collected edition will be re-edited, re-formatted, and have all new cover art by Barry Currey. Look for a release some time this summer!
Clik here to view.
The Spider.
Me, on the Web
Even in my absence I managed to smear myself all over the internet.
Danielle Young wrote a very nice character profile on Cross and then put up an interview with me. She’s super cool, ain’t she? Check them out.
Tyr Kiernan featured at excerpt from Soulrazor over on his blog.
And if you haven’t already, so check out some of my epic-fantasy-ish photography on my latest post at Guild of Dreams.
Changes
One thing I learned from my week off: I was overdoing it. Shocker, I know, but sometimes I really need hard evidence to convince me of something that may be completely obvious to everyone else. In my absence from blogging, Twitter, Facebook etc. I noticed my sales miraculously DID NOT come to a screeching halt, as I’d assumed they would…in fact, they pretty much stayed consistent. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I’m going to take it as a good sign that maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to be killing myself with social media marketing.
To that effect, starting this week I’ll be posting no more than two blog posts per week (one of which will be a Weekend Writing Warriors excerpt). You’ll also see a lot less marketing shit in my Tweetstream. I’ll still be very active on Twitter, but I’d like to tone down the “BUY! BUY! BUY!” Tweets if I can.
Clik here to view.
This picture I took of a hawk last weekend proves you should take breaks.
The Verdict
To all of my Indie author friends out there: take breaks from the web. Seriously. It’s nice to clear your head. Unplug and get some writing done, enjoy the real world, and don’t freak out about what you’re going to do to become the next big thing.
Trust me. You’ll be happier for it.
The post I’m Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! (Or, What I Did on My Social Media Vacation) appeared first on Blood Skies.