Thursday, September 30, 2010.
All day writer’s conference at UVU in Orem, UT.
Folks, this looks like it’s going to be an excellent seminar. Larry Gun-Crazy Correia will be there as well as Brandon Mull, Jeff Savage, Traci Hunter Abrahamson, Rob Wells, and a whole bunch of other great authors. You can see who will be doing what and where right here: Book Academy Agenda 2010 PDF. More details on the Calendar.
You can find registration information on the Book Academy site.
Folks, please resist the SERVANT marshmellow.
Me and my big mouth. I unwisely let it slip in a comment thread that I had Servant up on Amazon (it’s up early because I need at least 24 hours to make sure my purchase gets the ratings going and to make sure everything looks right). And some of you have gone out to purchase it, for which I love you, BUT I should have made clear that we’re still in the proof check phase. That means we’re carefully going over the beta version of the trade paper book and catching the errors you only see when it’s in book form (next time I’ll do the trade paper first and then the ebook). You might not notice the things we’re catching and will be happy with the proof version. But I hate thinking you’re getting anything but the best.
If you’ve already purchased and don’t care, fine. If you do, Amazon has a liberal return policy. For the rest of you: DON’T EAT THE MARSHMELLOW. Give us just a few days. Make sure you’ve signed up for the new book release notification on the left. I’ll let you know when everything is ready to go AND on sale 🙂
Happy holidays!
Locus Magazine, the trade publication for the science fiction and fantasy genre, has listed my novelette, “From the Clay of His Heart,” on their 2008 recommended reading list.
Yea!
Lots of other goodies out there as well.
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The copy edits for CURSE and RAVELER are finished. The artist has also begun working on the cover for RAVELER.
The next task is to review and add anything necessary to make the ending of CURSE and the beginning of RAVELER work in their new roles.
And then it’s pub time. Getting very close now, folks.
I’ll be presenting this Saturday at this conference that will be held at the Bountiful Art Center, 745 S. Main Street, Bountiful, UT 84010. I grew up in Bountiful, and so this is a special treat for me to go back.
COST: Free for League of Utah Writers Members. $25 for non-members. More info at http://www.luwriters.org/.
Tor Books’ production department has moved my book’s release date out one month. I’m getting so antsy to have it hit the stores, but October’s actually a better month, it being closer to the holiday season.
You still might be able to get it earlier if you pre-order. The books actually start shipping in the second half of September. But it takes a few weeks to get them out to all the stores.
Holy schmoly, has this been a ride. I projected the CURSE OF A DARK GOD to be 140,000 words. When I blew by that, I projected it would be 170,000. Today I just typed the last word of the first draft. It’s 230,000 words. For reference SERVANT OF A DARK GOD is 170,000 words.
The bad news is that while I’m really happy with this draft, it IS a first draft and needs some editing. I’m also behind schedule. I hit 140k words just a few weeks after my original deadline (in March), so I pride myself on knowing how fast I can write, but at that point I had, unknowingly, about a normal novel’s worth of material left to write. Obviously, I haven’t quite figured out yet how to estimate the size of these bigger works. The problem is that instead of getting a month or even two to revise, I’ve got two days. Then I have to turn it in to my editors.
The good news is that my editors haven’t canned me, yet. 🙂 And that they have great insight into story. And that I should have plenty of time to fix and polish this thing to make it shine. I just don’t like turning in first drafts. My goal with book three is to get back on schedule.
Having told you my scheduling woes, I am very excited about the characters and storylines and expect readers to enjoy this as much or more than the first in the series. However, I do wish I could get this process down so that I was 99% of the way there in one draft. There are some authors who can do that. Perhaps that will come with more experience. Until then, I get to enjoy revision.
Here are my stats:
For those who don’t know, an average young adult book as from 40,000 to 80,000 words. An average adult novel is from 70,000 – 120,000 words. I’m very pleased I was able to finish this monster. I might not be the fastest writer, but what this tells me is that I should be able to finish two big novels a year if I should ever be so lucky as to go full time.
