So, good news, computer disaster resolved so things back on track for edits. Expect Stolen Time by then middle of summer!

Another damned delay.

What this time? Computer death. What am I posting from? Tablet. It technically could be used for the editing and might be, but it sets things back a spell since the WAY the editing was being done there’s not a tablet made that is suited for it.

SO, all WIPs are on indefinite hold.
Damn it.

So … Stolen Time is still being edited.
Yes, I know, this is taking a bloody long time. This is what happens when your editor with OCD has a mild meltdown, though.

She’s feeling much better and hopefully the editing will be finished within the next few weeks.
Once it’s done I want to make one more pass to make sure everything says what I’d intended it to and then it’s off to publication.

So maybe sometime in May look for it.

Well, I’m not going to make a Christmas deadline, nor (I think) a New Year one.

Well, it’s editorial delay and out of my hands. Shan has, in her defense, managed to edit the Prologue and Chapter 1 (finally), but that’s as far as she’s gotten.

Puppy can be left to his own devices for periods, but not long enough ones — and sometimes he manages to have some interesting misadventures. Needless to say he’s still a serious distraction.

Too the weather’s been chaotic and that’s never good for anyone’s general state of health — an epidemic of the blahs occurs every year around this time here.

Anyway — yes the book will be coming out. It had bloody well better be coming out before July. I’d like it to be out before February. I’m just no longer holding my breath it’ll be out before Ragnarok at this rate (I truly hope I’m exaggerating).

[[Image is out of copyright. It is a public domain part of the artwork for Lewis Carroll's fantastic story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that was drawn by John Tenniel.]]

So I know I said that the sample chapters would go to Chapter 6, but that was before I realised just how much of the story that actually was. As a result the samples now will only go to 4. I’m considering sliding 5 in as well, but don’t hold your breath on that one.

Stolen Time is still in Editorial phase.

This was unavoidable. In addition to the puppy, my editor caught a nasty flu/cold thing and has spent a week unable to edit a See Spot Run book, let alone something with complex sentence structure.

Still I hope to publish within the month of November, but I’m setting myself a deadline of the Solstice. I assume (probably a touch optimistically since both myself and Shannon are notorious procrastinators … we’ll see though) that this is an attainable goal.

Anyway, as soon as Stolen Time is out, it time to look at the story of how Anastasia (yes, the same one from the story) wound up one of Darrien’s Daggers, a story about a young Sweytzian girl on a student exchange trip to a Confederate world, and of course Lady Salarissa’s Salon (which I hope will become an irregular series of short story collections), and many others.

With that backlog and others I didn’t feel like mentioning yet, I really wonder what’s going to come along to top the puppy for reasons to miss deadline. I’ve terrible visions of walking outside to find a small hyperactive cria, or something. We’ll see, I guess.

Stolen Time will not be released on deadline.

To the right is a picture of Einstein. He’s a puppy. He is hyperactive. He is adorable. He is far more interesting than editing my story which Shannon still needs to do (honestly I’d be held up doing anything too but I’ve got this job thing I have to go to and since I’ve nothing better to do there I work on my story).

Still, probably by sometime around Thanksgiving.

Still not 100% sure about the simultaneous release to eBook and pBook, but you’ll know when I do.

cheers

Well, for those of you looking forward to it publication is just around the corner.

I’ve finished writing the story, all there is left to do is get it into a computer, make it fit for human readership, and then to get it out to the eBookStores.

I have decided to delay the dead tree edition until after new years. Depending on how well the ePub sells I might be able to do it before Christmas.

Also the next installment of the Sample Chapters will be the last. I’m cutting off at roughly 1/3 of the total story. I’m not cutting by word count so you’ll have the entire 6th chapter, but to read 7 – The End you’ll have to buy it.

Well, first off the apology. I forgot to upload sample chapter 4 this weekend. I lost track of the date and thought it’d only been a week since the last upload. I don’t do such good maths when time and date things get involved.

Progress has been good, though not as good as I’d hoped. I’m still hoping for my 23:59 31.10.11 release deadline (or sooner of course), but that’s possibly going to have to be an early November date instead.

In further news, the initial publication will be ePub. There will be a dead tree edition for those of you who still prefer them, I promise. It just might have to wait until January or February 2012. Blame it on the ISBN folks. From what I can tell they used to sell blocks of 10 or more ISBNs for what they now sell 1. And considering that by the time you are getting more than 10 you’re getting over 80% and 90% discount it’s quite obvious they’re just trying to rip off small publishers and self-publishers.

Some advice for other writers out there: From what I’ve read, unless you’re talking about submitting short stories to magazines that still do that sort of thing, just skip the major publishers and a lot of the agents. There’s a whole list of reasons spread across the blogs of various authors and several news articles and so forth, but suffice to say right now the royalties blow, the advances are laughable, and the agents and publishers both keep not paying people (or at least skimming more than their contractual share).

These websites are your friends:
Smashwords — if you can work a word processor and follow very simple instructions, then use a webbrower (once again following simple instructions) this will put you in virtually all ebook stores currently out there. If you find this process difficult by all means contact me and I’ll do it for you for us$75 per title. I accept .doc, .docx, .pages, .odt … oh screw it, don’t use anything too obscure and I’ve probably got a way to open it.

Lightning Source — this is the deadtree version of the above except the formatting is less picky. The important difference is you’ll have to get your own ISBN. That leads us to …

isbn-us.com — Why pay $125 per ISBN when you can pay $55? What’s the difference? ISBN databases will show “Independent Publisher” instead of “[[Insert name here]]”. Are you really so vain you’ll pay $70 more for that?

Cheers

So this is just an arbitrary post to give an update on the status of the redraft, and because I found that really cool picture and wanted an excuse to use it (the images used in this update aren’t random — there’s a common thread to them all, but I’m not saying what because I think it’ll be hilarious to see what people start theorising about that now I’ve said something).

As those who care have seen Chapter 1 is up, and I’ll hopefully be done editing Chapter 2 in time for Sunday. I’ve penned chapters 3 and 4 but haven’t typed them and am well on my way through Chapter 5.

For those who are thinking ‘holy shit, this guy isn’t going to finish before Christmas, let alone Halloween,’ it might be worth noting that this is closer in length to such works as A Princess of Mars, Treasure Island, and similar works (and is more largely inspired by them than any more modern works you want to dream up — odds are I’ve never even heard of whatever it is you’re thinking to compare me to unless it was written by Terry Pratchett, Ed Greenwood, or Spider Robinson, and other such geniuses).

Things should go smoothly enough to manage my deadline. Weather permitting (in this world?! Weather?! How!? Don’t you have air conditioning, or heat or indoor plumbing, or walls?! Yes to all, and that’s the problem. I detest air conditioning and find it stifling and distracting. Walls also are uninspiring. I do a lot of my best thinking at a park by a local lake — or even out on the back porch where I can laugh at playful squirrels instead of doing that writing thing that’s so much less important.)

Yes, this is a lot less professional looking than the other updates. I never said those were professional looking on purpose, did I?