September 15, 2021
Day 349, Week 49
- Emotional State: Overwhelmed by my own ambitions
The First Book
The first book has been out for 3 weeks. While in the midst of the flood, my copies of the book arrived and I couldn’t look at them. I didn’t have the mental capacity to and I was not in the right frame of mind to do so. And then I got over my drama and opened up the box. And it was amazing. And I cried. Of course.
I’ve just sent off all preorder copies to my fabulous fans; I only hope they survive the journey as I ran out of clear tape to seal the ends with. It’ll be fine. I can always send a new copy, right?
Speaking of copies, I’ve sold forty-seven since launch. Mostly eBooks, since it’s $0.99 and low risk for people to read, but still a handful of the paperbacks. And this means I’m three copies from my second goal of fifty sold copies. FIFTY copies of my book out in the world read by some people I may not know.
Speaking of people I may not know, I’ve also generated seven reviews on Goodreads and two on Amazon. Both of which move me closer to my goal of 25 reviews in six months.
All of which means… I’m making it happen, one book at a time. It’s not a flood of preorders or going viral, but it’s getting there. I lost a little momentum due to the flood and not pushing anything on social media for about five days, but I’m gaining traction again. I just need to keep on keepin’ on.
Side note. Most of the reviews are positive – they enjoyed the story, they found it fun and engaging, and they loved the world building. But also found it complicated. So I think I may have high fantasy world built for my urban fantasy novel. Oops. This thought led me on the mash up that is my book.
I’m not exactly one lane here. It is:
- New Adult College aged protagonist in a YA-esque coming of age story and no romance
- Character-driven storyline, with a mystery plotline
- High Fantasy-type world building, with an urban fantasy setting
- Two protagonists, each with their own POV until the final chapters where I’ve jammed them together (no one seems to have an issue with that when they’re reading it, which is awesome!)
I like making my life complicated – this is the only way I can describe what I’ve done here. And this leads me to… the next complication.
The Second Book
I’ve started writing the second book. I’m about 19,000 words in, written and completed 10 chapters, plus started on chapter 11, and introduced a few new world building projects for my husband to figure out. Yes, I’m sticking to my guns on the complicated world building part of it. I’m already all in, I’d better stay there.
The interesting thing about book 2 is that I’m pantsing it. I have no idea what’s happen or why. I’m moving through the setup, just completed what I think might be the catalyst and am heading into Act 2. But I might have just written the midpoint and not realized it. This means I may have to flesh out the beginning part OR cut a bunch of it to get the setup done quicker. Otherwise, this book is going to be enormous.
But there’s some fun world building in it – my poor husband got inundated. The more I write, the more he needs to figure out if it works, what it looks like and if what I have fits with the confines of the massive world we’ve created together.
I’m also trying to fit in a few of the book 1 folks, because they were awesome and I need a little bit of Ro and Finn, and potentially Demi in this book too. They are all becoming her Scooby Crew, even if there’ll be a few bumps along the way (no spoilers, but who-boy have I got some stuff planned).
I want to write it quickly, but take my time on edits. And so I’ve set a goal to get it completed by 10/31 (for a very specific reason I’ll detail in a moment). That’s going to be 10k words a week, if I’m honest with what needs to be written. I don’t know if I can do 10k words a week, plus blog posts, book promotions, social media promotions, house stuff and you know, work.
So we’ll see if I hit that goal or if I bleed over into December.
Because November is NaNoWriMo and I plan to use it to write (drumroll please):
A Cozy Mystery Series
Yes, you read that right. I’d like to create a separate series of cozy mysteries. Something I can pound out on the page fairly quickly (all the world building will be done in the series set up phase), but also enjoy writing.
And why wouldn’t I? I love mysteries and I love writing. And I want to write full time. I need a backlist to really contemplate writing full time and I need to pump out the books in a way that: a) I enjoy; b) is sustainable; and, c) isn’t too far away from my original series genre.
No, my cozy series won’t be in my fantasy world. I am planning on it being in the real world. But I have a kind of cozy mystery in The Deep Space Between already, so it would be taking that plotline and creating a different series. Maybe with an older protagonist who’s all out of fracks, who may also be a frustrated writer who edits on the side…or owns a bookstore.
So my brand would be stories with books, bookstores and mysteries, just not in the same universe or style as the others. I think I can make it work. Whether I create a pen name or not for the cozy series remains to be seen. That decision can be made later. And whether I try to trad publish those also remains to be seen.
So the plan is to write 70k words over the next 7 weeks and then write around 60k words in November on the cozy series.
And then use December for any wrap up on rough drafts. Because in January, I’ve got another project in mind.
Yes, that January.
A Deep Space Between Companion Novella
Hear me out. I have a lot of materials I created in the process of writing The Deep Space Between. And I think it’s all fun stuff to put out there for the fans to read. Some of them are on the blog, but a lot are not.
The plan here is to take those materials, edit them, add a few more stories in the same vein, and then publish the companion novella at the six month mark of the anniversary of the book. That falls in February, so it might be closer to April – oooh, a birthday release could be fun! – and will help boost the book and the series to the fans while they wait for book 2 to release sometime in August of 2022. Or at least that’s the plan.
The Novella would include chapters from the book from the secondary characters’ perspective, a few in-between scenes for those secondary characters, the original Act 1 material that was cut completely from the book, and the backstories of the secondary characters, some of which might be fleshed out more. It would really be a companion novel, but wouldn’t take that much to put together.
Laying it all out, it would look something like this:
- Sept/Oct: Finish rough draft of urban fantasy (UF) Book 2
- November: Write rough draft of Cozy Mystery book 1
- December: Wrap up either rough drafts, if incomplete, otherwise work on Novella
- January: Work on Novella
- February: Edit Cozy Mystery book (which should be shorter)
- March: Edit Novella & Prep for publishing.
- April: Publish Novella; Edit UF Book 2
- May: Edit UF Book 2 / think about book 3
- June: Publish cozy series; Write book 2 of cozy series
- July: Prep urban fantasy series book 2 for publishing
- August: Publish Book 2 of the Fantasy series.
This would give me 3 books published within in a year, plus a solid set up for publishing at least two books a year – one in the cozy series and one in the fantasy series. It seems completely crazy when I lay out like this because it completely ignores all of the other writing I’ll be doing, but I think it’s doable.
Maybe. Or the flood + publishing of my book has completely messed up my head.
It could be both.
To read more of my weekly whine fests and writing journal journey posts, click here.