Author Notes Vol 4

Working Hard On My Next Book

It’s been a little while since I wrote my last author notes and that’s not just because Pokemon Pokopia came out. I’ve been working hard on my next book, an alien abduction story that i’m around forty thousand words into. I think that’s probably just over half way as i’m aiming for somewhere between seventy and eighty thousand in total.

I was planning on writing the book all the way through before doing the second draft, but I had a change of heart as I reached the mid-point and instead of carrying on I started to re-edit the first half. The reason’s will become more apparent when you get to read the book, but without spoiling anything I just needed all those extra little character details in line before the big event and aftermath that happens after it. Basically, despite my pre-planning, I had to get the story straighter on the page than it was in my head.

I’m very pleased with how it’s going so far. I really enjoyed writing Unclaimed Outpost but it was always going to be a difficult book to market and get people to read (a handful of sales have backed that theory up) but I think this one has a lot more potential readership wise, as well as being a bigger and more challenging book to write. Including my previous writing in a different genre I think this will just about be more biggest book to date, and definitely the one with the most characters (although I still think it’s pretty focused)

I always tend to know if i’m writing well if I get emotional at my own work. It lets me know that as well as the fun stuff, i’ve also included the right amount of heart and care within the characters i’m putting through the wringer. This stories put a lump in my throat a few times so i’m taking that as a good sign, rather than just being a mark for my own writing lol (does that term apply for things outside of wrestling?)

Unclaimed Outpost

As mentioned, sales have been slow for my debut sci-fi novella Unclaimed Outpost. Slower than I even expected, and my expectations were very low. It was a difficult book to market, especially with how little social media presence I currently have, and how little marketing I actually done for it. No-one currently knows who I am, and it was never going to be a book that naturally sold itself.

I knew all this when I put the book out, but it’s still been slightly disappointing. I won’t dwell on it, and have already written half my next book and have developed a fair bit of another idea, but my hope is that one day people will go back and give this one a go. That over time i’ll see reviews (positive or negative) pop up for it.

Self publishing is hard. In my previous life it took a couple of years to build a readership so I know to be patient. I know the mixture of hard work, talent, and luck have to magically come together in order for things to happen and that takes time. So, i’m not going to beat myself up about this one arriving to crickets, but as mentioned, I hope one day people will give it a go as I think it’s a decent little story.

Short Stories

Work on short stories has been slow recently due to all my attention going into the alien abduction novel, but I plan on editing the few I have written over the next couple of weeks. I’d like to keep up the pace of putting a short out every month on the website and think with a little discipline I can maintain that.

I’ve really enjoyed writing the short stories and playing around in the different sci-fi sub genres, and the new ones I have written continue that trend. One of them is a bit of a take on a military sci-fi story and that definitely inspired some ideas elsewhere (possibly a future book) The other is what i’d describe as typical of my writing in tone, but with a bit of a sci-fi twist to it.

With a bit of luck you’ll be reading them in April and May, while my most recent short Time Travel Paradox is now available to read on the site.

What Does The Next Month Look Like?

While I want to spend most of my time getting the whole story down for the Alien Abduction novel and editing those two shorts, there’s also another idea that I want to work on a lot more. It’s a story that i’m considering writing with Traditional Publishing in mind, but that’s probably a whole other blog, and something that I haven’t completely decided upon yet (might just be a knee-jerk reaction to the Unclaimed Outpost lack of sales)

It’s a more complex idea than anything i’ve written before, and is inspired by a lot of the older sci-fi I’ve been reading, but it’s something that’s just in the background at the moment. I need to see what shape it takes before I decide how to proceed.

I’’m also running out of scheduled movie reviews so I need to go on a bit of a movie marathon as well. I’ve been reading and writing a lot of late (as well as playing the aforementioned Pokemon Pokopia) so movies are the thing that’s taken a back seat, but I haven’t missed putting out two film reviews a week yet since starting the site so hopefully I can continue that trend.

Think that about wraps up the notes for this entry, anyone reading them feel free to go and buy Unclaimed Outpost, and hopefully i’ll have a bigger update on my latest book for the next entry.