Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

I am loath to admit it, but my publication process has stalled. I had a formatter, but they appear to have gone incommunicado. I hope they are okay, but I need to move on.

To that end, I have decided to dip my toe in the waters of formatting the book myself. To be honest most of the work has been done, just some tweaks and corrections remain.

After that, a pre-publication copyright to be obtained, and then arc copies distributed to reviewers ahead of publication.  I also planned on having  an experiment with paying for pre- and post publication promotion/publicity. I still need to write advertising copy for all three books so I can do an Amazon ad blitz for all three around the release.

And that is the full extent of my efforts this time around. I could try more, but a lot of what I described above is new for me, so I won’t push it too far, as if I try too many new things I won’t have as clear an idea of what works/helps and what doesn’t.

So I’m going to be playing with software for a bit, then applying for copyrights and contacting businesses. Once the businesses are contacted and a timetable for them is agreed, then I’ll have a likely publication date. I’ll share it once I have it.

I have been distracting myself with further learning about story theory, and by working my way through plotting my 40k fast fantasy novella. I had a hard time with this as I created three interesting characters, but then had a hard time bringing them together. I followed some intuitive advice, wrote my way in circles around the subject, and in re-discussing the world and set up, re-imagined how to bring everyone together and in the process gave myself a fairly (it is me) straightforward plot. I just finished giving it a beginning middle and end. Hurrah! It’s going to need some tweaks, but I think I can progress to a scene by scene and see how it hangs. I suspect the scene by scene will subsequently need to be adjusted to fit my various character arcs/beats, which will be complex for me as I now, in a short piece of fiction, have four, not three, protagonists.

I just wanted to write something fun and fast, I remind you. Ever do I get in my own way – but now I have a plan to do so!

My next full length project is still percolating, but I think I need this shorter piece to play with first.

That’s it for this week folks. Keep juggling your own projects and priorities, I hope far better than I!