Let’s Talk Process: What Have You Guys Been Up To? (aka: where have you slackers been?)

I have have only a vague idea of what Luke has been up to.

Okay, that’s not entirely true.  It’s summer, everyone is busy, travel blah blah blah.  He’s been doing that stuff as, to a certain extent have I.  He also went to Gen Con, which I ended up not being able to do, and thus, we haven’t talked much in the last couple of weeks.  I visited friends in Hagerstown though, and that was pretty cool, so..

I do, however, know where I’ve been writing wise.

First, a Hero Handlers update:

art by RJ Keith

I pre-sold enough copies of the e-book to make a $100 donation to MetaVivor, which is rad.  I planned to donate any royalties earned on July 20th to same and made $0.  Ah well.  Good effort and I’ll definitely do more fundraisers for them in the future.

I did a free day toward the end of last month and there were around 40 downloads.  Yay.  Not much other movement.  Boo.

Which doesn’t mean you should be shy about buying copies for yourself and all of your friends.  If you do order, set yourself up through Amazon Smile – Amazon makes a % of purchase donation to a charity of your choice from a list of their partners.  Mine is Wounded Warrior.  Yours is up to you.

If you have already purchased or downloaded Hero Handlers, thank you.  I truly hope you enjoy it.

I have a cycle planned that is, at the moment, outlined through book four and flirts with the adjacent series I also have planned out to four books thus far.

What’s New:

I’ve been is plugging away on my sophmore effort, tentatively entitled Chaos.  It is not, strictly speaking, a Hero Handlers novel thought, as mentioned above, it is… adjacent.  I’m not going to tell you how for the moment because a) the inimitable Jenny Melzer has her first-pass hands on it and I need to know if my attempt is worth developing/salvaging and b) suspense is fun.

This banging it out thing is very new to me.  My first book took three years plus to have ready for publication and it went live because I just couldn’t stand the suspense any longer.  It was as good as I knew how to make it at the time (and I’ve learned a lot since).  I continue to be proud of it as an achievement if not a piece of literature, but as an unknown, indie writer, that pace isn’t going to give me a chance to go pro.

The aforementioned Jenny, who has been doing the writer thing for a while, helped me plot my course.  Most newbs who don’t have a publisher (and even some who do) usually get noticed around book twelve of their catalog.  Removing Shaman from the equation Hero Handlers is my book one.  In a semi-perfect world (in a perfect world I’d have been able to up and quit my job years ago to do the writer thing full-time), I’d like to be writing full-time (or at least for reals part-time) by when my youngest, now three, is in first grade.  That means three to four books per year for the next three years.

Damn, that’s a lot of words.  A tad bit easier, perhaps, now that I have eight books outlined, but damn, that’s a lot of words.

It appears it all comes down to confidence.  Part of the reason Shaman took so long is that I had zero of it.  Glass empty, tank empty, a whole lot of empty.  Sales did nothing to boost that, but admittedly, I was somewhat lazy about marketing.

Since then, I’ve managed to add a few drops to the various vessels.  Not a ton.  Probably not even a quarter tank, but even a residue is an improvement over completely dry.  And this confidence is based, not so much on the support of others (though goodness knows, I crave that, need that, and appreciate it to the ends of the Earth and beyond) but instead on the fact this year, for some reason I can’t quite pinpoint, I decided I was comfortable with myself.

Not as a writer but as a person.

I turned thirty-seven last month.

Long, long haul.

I’m trying not to look over my shoulder too often or too far back.  There are a lot of bumps and a fair bit of road rash.  Some broken bones and, at one point, a broken head.  There are things I would be tempted to go back and change if I could.

All those things I would change, though?  They got me where I am.  And I like where I am.

There are always tweaks.  As with the books we write, we are never finished products.  But liking where I am, liking who I am, has given me that little trickle of confidence to believe I can do the writing thing.  That what I write, while never perfect, while always ripe for work from tweak to slash and burn, has a solid foundation that can be crafted, with the help of an editor, beta readers, and you guys, into something worth reading.

Which means, rather suddenly, I find myself with the ability to stack things higher even if the balance isn’t perfect.  Even if the whole stack may very well fall on my foot.  To let things go, to accept constructive critique, to trust myself.  To giggle when the opinions of others are wide of the mark.  To be fine with the knowledge that not everyone is going to like what I write.  To trust my fledgling ego is tough and flexible and won’t shatter.

To know my words are worth something.

So.  That’s where I am.

Check back with me next week when I have the edits on Chaos back.  I might be suffering a regression.

But probably not.  Most likely, I’ll be forging ahead to get that bastard ready for your eyeholes.

And there’s something to be said for that.