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Drovers Update: Draft 2 finished
Huzzah!
I just typed the final words of draft 2 of the first book of The Drovers. It now goes to my beta readers (I’m the alpha reader, the one who sees draft 1). And while they’re reading, I will begin draft 2 of the second book.
This is the shortest novel I’ve ever written, clocking in at 61,000 words. My target was 50,000 words, the average size of a Louis L’Amour western. But this will do. Depending on the beta reader feedback, I may add or cut a few thousand words. But not much.
I still don’t have a series name, dang it!
The Queen’s Drovers?
LTUE presentations
Life, the Universe & Everything is coming up in a little over a month on Feb 12-14, 2015. It will be held at the Provo Marriott Hotel & Conference Center. Some reasons to go.
Number one. Toni Weisskopf, the editor and publisher of Baen Books, is the guest of honor.
Number two. LTUE and LDStorymakers are the best two cons in Utah for learning how to write, but LTUE is lots cheaper.
Number three. Lots of local authors will be there. It’s a great forum for hearing their insights and finding out what they’re doing.
I will be giving three presentations.
- Plotting Secrets: Action. In this one, Larry Correia and I team up to share a model of plotting that should make developing your action story much easier. Attendees will be able to use the methods on a novel idea Larry, Joe (Larry’s son), and I came up with called Mech Runners. Basically, Larry turned to Joe and said, “What’s awesome?” Joe said, “Giant robots, bandits, and murderers.” We took it from there.
- Plotting Secrets: Romance. In this one, I team up with romance author LL Muir to share a model of plotting that should make developing your romance plot or subplot much easier. Attendees will be able to use the methods on a story idea Lesli and I came up based on The Hobbit. It’s called My Precious.
- The Story Setup: A Powerful Tool You’re Probably Overlooking. The story setup is a fabulous tool that’s not only helped me drastically cut down the time it takes me to develop my ideas, but it has also helped me develop better ideas. In this presentation, I will explain what the story setup is and how you can use it to help you nail your novel.
I hope to see you there.
Need your Dark God T-shirt input
I’ve got a deal to make t-shirts for my book available, and I have to make some decisions. The problem is that I am terrible at making these kinds of decisions. So I’m asking for your help. Any input would be appreciated.
Mind-boggling question number 1
So we’ve decided on the design. It will say “Servant of a Dark God” on the font as shown. We might put “Welcome to the Grove” or “Beware, the Mother is Watching” on the back. It will NOT have the Tor logo indicating it’s a book. Who knows what that is anyway? Instead, the question is whether to put my name on the shirt in some fashion.Option 1
Some suggest that it’s better to just have a shirt that has the crazy label, suggesting the wearer is a servant of a dark god. It’s provocative, and if someone asks, the person wearing it can talk about the book. With this option we would NOT put my name on the t-shirt, just a small open book icon under the title. The idea behind this is that those who would buy the shirt would already be fans and the provocative statement will do more to spread the word than my name because going this route will make the shirt more fun to wear.
Option 2
Others think that you should have your name on the shirt to advertise. So we’d put “by John Brown” underneath the title. Or we’d put it on the back of the shirt. But some say it would make the shirt less fun.
What would you prefer and why?
Mind-boggling question number 2
Because of the way we’re going about this, the color of the letters must be fixed. So the question is do we simply let people choose their own shirt colors that they thing will work with the color of the lettering or fix both the color of the lettering AND the shirt?
Option 1
Fix the shirt colors. Brown for guys and plum for women. Make the lettering a fantasy green or cream.
Option 2
Give people as much choice as possible and choose a font color that will work with the bulk of the shirt colors here: http://gildan.com/distributors/colorpalette/.
But what would color would do that and still say fantasy, or would it matter?
So which option to you think would work best? If you chose option 1, which colors?
Mind-boggling question number 3
Why is John worrying about this? Shouldn’t he be spending his time tracing his ancestry back to old grandpa lemur?
The answer to that is that John’s mind works in mysterious ways, dear Reader. You must bear with him. And you must now face your greatest fashionista test ever: which colors would say fantasy and still be something people would want to wear? I will be making shirts up for the book store employees to wear before I come to signings. So I have to decide. Someone suggested plum is all the rage this year for women. Make the letters a nice new willow green. We could have another color for men. Any ideas of what would appeal broadly?
I await your ideas.
(Ha, look at this. It appears one of my greats did indeed live his life out in the Prague menagerie. Hum.)
Bad Penny Cover
I know that many of you loved the Santa Muerte cover. But it was communicating the wrong thing. Alas. I love that tattoo. On another site I polled, everyone leaned towards the road and vanishing point. Then everyone I polled personally liked the initial concept for the one below. I liked the road, but the bullet holes won. Here is the final result.
John guests on Writing Excuses season 3 episode 18
Here’s the second episode I recorded with the Writing Excuses guys.
In the first podcast we talked about putting and not putting ourselves in our writing and making characters who don’t all sound like the author. In this one, we talked about how to not repeat ourselves in ways that make the reader feel like they’re getting the same old same old.
As usual, the guys had some great insights. Check it out: How to Not Repeat Yourself.
Curse update: April 1, 2014
Today is a fine US holiday. And so I took the day off to write. I just added over 6,000 words to the final big battle climax of my novel. And what a climax it is. It’s almost 50,000 words long. I still have another 5-10k to go.Folks, this is longer than a lot of short novels.
I guess it would be more accurate to say I’m writing act 3. The book will probably exceed 200k words. So 60k isn’t too long for the final act.
I will now sigh in contentment.
*sighs*
I’m enjoying the heck out of writing this.
At the same time, I’m hoping to figure out how to make book three in this epic fantasy series shorter so I can get the story out to readers in a more timely manner. I might be able to write two normal sized novels instead of one monster. I will think hard about it.
In the meantime, I hope to wrap this rewrite of act 3 up over the next few days. And then it’s just line and copy edits.
