It’s available on Kindle, Amazon, Smashwords, Google, iTunes, and Nook.
The prelude to this book will be available as a freebie soon (and it’s going to look great!)
Working on War Mage. There will be an extensive rewrite. I mean extensive. But I have a pretty good outline.
There’s also an interview of me out there somewhere. I’ll link to it when I can find it.
My podcast is live, on darkmysticquill.com.
My books for Grimaulkin are now on order, and should be coming in by June 15. Hardcovers are $24.95, trade paperbacks are $14.95.
I’ve added another date, July 1, at the North Scituate Farmer’s Market. Other dates may show up as available (usually on a one-day notice), so watch Twitter or Facebook for updates.
I’m working on War Mage. Damn if I don’t get that book up and running soon. With the Revise Your Novel class I’m taking, I’m getting a lot of ideas. I know now what to pull out, what makes no sense, and why it looks like a Frankenstein monster. I’ve explained nothing about the world, explained nothing about Brent’s knack (either in the book previous or this one). This book has no plot. Well, it will by the time I finish rewriting it. Because, as usual, I start with a murder.
Finished the final proof of Grimaulkin, so it should be in my hot little hands on or about June 1, ready for launch date!
Unfortunately, the only local place I’ll be attending is the Richmond Marketplace on July 29.
Got the cover art for Grimaulkin’s short story–it’s perfect.
Now I’ve got nothing. I’ve been plowing through War Mage to try and figure it out. I’ve gotten a few ideas that I wrote down, but I have to rewrite this wreck of a book. Every time I read it, I just want to toss it out and start again. but I have to go through this class (I’m on week 6 for two weeks now).
I’ve just finished Grimaulkin’s short, “Self Defense” and sent it to the editor. It’s a first draft, rife with errors probably, but hopefully will be an interesting part of Mike’s backstory.
I’m looking into getting into Necronomicon, the H.P. Lovecraft convention in Providence, RI in August. I’m probably a little too soft-core for that crowd, since my demons don’t look like the horrible things that Lovecraft fans get into.
Right now, pickings are pretty slim in the direct sales department. Hardly any venues this year. Or I’m being choosy because I’m poor.
I am two weeks behind on the surgery with War Mage. I am presently going through my manuscript (for the fourth time) and picking out each and every character, trying to decide if I over-described them or under-described them, and whether they need to stick around. The good thing is I’m getting great ideas for a rewrite. The bad thing is I have to plow through these exercises to clarify how I want to rewrite. I’m giving myself until August 1 to get this revision finished. With Grimaulkin half way in the can, I can concentrate on revising War Mage.
I also did some work on (mostly staring into space and thinking) Grimaulkin Tempted, the second book in Grimaulkin’s series. I stopped that cold when Grimaulkin came back, and it’s been about a month since I touched it. I’m too afraid to open it, because after working on it in my head, I’ve realized a lot of plot holes and tension-breakers. It’s not even a first draft; it’s more like a half-draft. I have to go in and fix those things before continuing on with what I’ve written so far.
Water is at the editor’s. As soon as that one comes back, I’ll put everything else on hold again and work on that. The next series, I believe, will be the Earth signs of Virgo, Capricorn, and Taurus. Capricorn I have to do some research on; Virgo is going to be my friend Casey Donovan; and Taurus, well…I don’t know yet. But I have plenty of time. Maybe I’ll do a NaNo on him.
Ok, so the podcast didn’t drop. Technical difficulties that I can’t figure out. GarageBand has changed its format, so it no longer does podcasts, and my RSS feed has to have artwork, which I don’t have access to.
However, the good news is I got my second edits for Grimaulkin this Thursday and turned it around 3 days. I just sent it back today.
War Mage is still under surgery.
On July 29, I’ll be at a book signing in Richmond, RI. Hopefully I can figure out how to set up the canopy tent I bought. I won’t be at the Big E unfortunately (in a way, I’m glad I’m not, because it’ll cost me oodles of money).
I gave one of my books away yesterday. It was bent and unsellable, and was one of the ten books that was cut too close on one side. So I would have pitched it anyway. Might as well give it to someone who would enjoy it. I just asked her to review it on Amazon for me. Sometimes you have to give things up in order to get something back.
Today is the day I’m hoping to get my podcast to drop on iTunes and Stitcher.
Once I figure it out.
It’s on my website, darkmysticquill.com. Or it will be as soon as it goes live.
It’s only five minutes long–it took me a week to come up with the final 2 minutes. I had one song for the end, and thought it was too depressing, so I put in the first song instead.
While procrastinating doing that portion of the podcast, I started writing Grimaulkin’s short “freebie”. We’re putting together freebie shorts from the Press and passing them out at different venues. It will be about Mike’s getting arrested, his backstory.
Grimaulkin is coming back from the editor’s soon, and I’ve realized that I had to make Mike younger. So Mike is now 18, Scott is 17, Otherwise, I’ve kept things the same.
I just sent off Grimaulkin back to the editor, a day earlier than I promised. What’s next on the list of things to do?
Podcast. Dark Mystic Quill’s website will be up and running on the 30th. I just have to get the podcast finished by then. I’m 2/3 (or two topics) of the way through it, with the music buffers in place. I just have to talk about my bipolar disorder which is the hardest thing to do. It’s also the most authentic, I think, which is why it’s so hard. Not to say that witchcraft and writing aren’t authentic. It’s easier to bounce things off other things I read or hear, but when talking about the bipolar disorder, it’s all me, baby.
I have joined Sarah Werner’s FB group “I Am a Writer” and I’m trying really hard not to self-promote so I don’t get kicked off. I would like to inspire and be inspired by other writers–it’s what I’m missing around here. The RI Authors are so into marketing and selling that they don’t seem to be in the writing. They’re all about exposure to sell books. For example, today, there’s a “Meet and Greet” in Warwick which should actually be termed “Meet and Buy.” Whatever happened to authors wanting to talk about writing and not marketing?
War Mage. I am in the beginning of Lesson 4 which has to do with plot, subplots and beginnings of plots or plots that have nothing to do with the main plot (Anti-Chekov’s Gun, I guess). Eventually I’ll be figuring out what to keep, what to toss, and what I need to fix. I have two sub plots that really need to go, but then the word count will go down considerably. So that’s what I’ll work on for the rest of the weekend. And warming up. It’s cold outside!
I so far have laid down five minutes of my podcast. It’s about “Writing, Witchcraft and Woe, but not necessarily in that order.” I have music that I bought to use for the beginning tracks.
I went and bought a nice expensive Blue Yeti mike. Problem is, it’s too good, and picks up everything. It picks up my refrigerator when it runs (it’s loud, anyway), my furnace when it goes off, and the cars outside. And my cat purring. Being that I’m an idiot when it comes to audio, I suppose I have to do something on the mike to get it to stop picking up ambient noise. So I’m using a headset mike, which isn’t as good and definitely isn’t as clear.
What a pain in the ass editing is though. I have to cut so much space (I wheeze when I breathe). that it sounds like I’m not breathing. I can tell editing now on other podcasts. It makes people sound so intelligent. Now I know why.
Segue into…
I got my edits back for Grimaulkin! I could sit here and say, “Oh, my God, it’s such a mess.” Nearly every page has an edit on it. I’m up to page 92 and there were two pages without edits. I use way too many commas and I don’t believe in the Oxford comma (the one that comes before and in a list). Maybe I should crack open that Chicago Manual of Style book I have if I’m going to line-edit.
There’s a few edits that I’ve chosen to take as suggestions. Most of the edits, though, clarify things or point out whether I should/could do something better. I have the curse of the pantser: I often write description after the object is introduced, not before.
Noticing this, it helps me to work a little on War Mage. I’m still deep in that surgery as well. Right now I’m clarifying the scenes I’ve written and noticed 1) I have no plot and 2) I have no action and 3) Brent reacts to nothing. I think I have to throw in a murder
A few years back, I plunked down a goodly amount of money for an online course on how to revise your novel. It’s by Holly Lisle (someone I never heard of, and someone whose books I’ve never read). It was a fun course, though I never finished it, I found out a few things about how to improve my manuscript and between her and Rayne Hall, I’ve found ways to try an keep my writing clean.
Anyway, I pulled out War Mage and read through it and found out what a wreck it is. Between cutting and pasting, leaving some first-draft stuff, adding seventh (Yes, seventh) draft stuff on top of it, this story, as written, is not what I planned. Even though I knew in my head what I wanted, it didn’t translate on the page because I kept saying to myself, “I’ll go into that in more detail in the next book.” Well, no…I should go into more detail in this book.
One of the things Holly points out is that when you revise, you should start at the 30,000 foot level and then line edit at the very end. Start with the story, the structure, the scenes, then the words. She gives you worksheets to fill out, which might sound stupid, but actually distills your story to a workable form. Right now I’m working through characters, and finding out that my main character carries less weight than most of the secondary and even some tertiary characters. I describe people in detail that should just be “Sergeant So-and-so”.
I would suggest this course to anyone who’s looking at their manuscript and saying, “Where do I start?” Yes, it’s pricy, and 22 weeks might seem long, but you have access to it for a lifetime. I have given myself until June 1 to get this revision done. Also, in June should be the release of Grimaulkin.
Grim is at the editor’s. A few common errors were found in the sample that was sent to me, things that are common for pantsers, like description before the subject instead of after, and use of flat words instead of more specific words. Also the word “that”. I’m going to run a spell check through it and pull out as many “that”‘s as I can.
There’s going to be an author Meet & Greet at the Warwick Public Library April 22, and Grim won’t be ready by then. We hope to have it ready by June. I’ll launch it, do meet & greets, and book signings then, throughout the summer. Definitely not doing Comicon. The Association of RI Authors has a small clique of sci-fi (speculative fiction) authors that get together and do stuff. Because I am both old and anxious, I haven’t found a way to get into that clique. Besides, I have only one book. Maybe once I get a few books under my belt, I’ll get a little less anxious.
Grim 2 is up to 20K and I’ve already completed the main plot. Or have I? I suppose there’s room to maneuver something else in the main plot. Or change the main plot. Or I could do what I did with Grim, and introduce a whole new plot right in the middle. I feel like I’m dragging shit, putting stuff in there for the sake of putting stuff in there. Maybe when I’m done, I’ll be over 70K and have the luxury of pulling stuff out.
I’d probably be over 20K if I didn’t have to worry about my writing environment or timing. I used to write at work during lunch hour, but it always seemed like a warm-up, not actual “good stuff”. I write Champions stories during lunch, when my characters need to do something off camera.
I also have a writing computer where I’m writing this blog. It’s my iMac Mini named Hemingway, located feet away from the only TV in the house.. So what ends up happening a lot is that my son wants to watch TV at the same time I want to write. I can’t write 1) with a TV on in the background, 2) someone else in the room, 3) if it’s too darn cold. so I go elsewhere and let my muse stew. In the evening, by the time he’s done with TV, I’m involved in something else so I don’t write.
I sometimes write between 5-6, but once I get on my office/gaming computer, I’m doing gaming and not writing. Six to seven or eight is when I listen to the news via Sirius XM; 8-9 is when I game. I’m sometimes in bed by 8 or 9. If I wake up before the alarm, I will sometimes do some writing, but I mostly go into work early so I can leave early. That’s my weekdays. Weekends, I like to do my writing in the morning. After 4 hours or so, I peter out and can’t do anymore. Sometimes I’ll take a chores/gaming break, and then go back to writing at night.
Editing is different. Editing, I take as much time as I can and do that, because there’s a time constraint on that. I like to give myself two weeks to turn edits around, three if they’re really bad (i.e. War Mage). I’m thinking of pulling out my old “How to Revise” course that I paid $300 for back in the day and tackle War Mage with that. Of course, I have to find it…