Last week I wrote a little over 10K and wrapped the Future Earth Chronicles Prequel. Then I added a short story to complete it, although I finished it on Monday. I didn’t write much during the weekend because it was a creative weekend with my friend Cristina, so I concentrated on other things – namely the next strip, since Star Minds Kids and Teens ends in September.
And it was also time for another title up, my first with an F2M protagonist. When Azur revealed in Himalayas he’d been born Anna, it shocked even me, and I had to tell his story! So go check it out! 🙂
I also started preparing the new paperbacks – new covers and corrected interiors for the first five books, then this week I’m formatting the new ones, including the one that will come out in October, so it will be ready and come out at the same time as the ebook, haha!
While prepping the new paperback covers, I noticed Book 4 had a missing graphic and a white dot where there shouldn’t have been one, so I also had to update the ebook cover and all the banners on Facebook and the publisher’s page. Sigh. It used to go so smoothly, but this year I keep messing up! 😦
So I’ll probably postpone the Curated Antho I had in mind to next year, since most of the authors are Americans and they have enough trouble at the moment. After the elections maybe they’ll listen to me, and I can even send out a reprint – again I don’t think now is the right time.
But there will be my vampire story in that anthology coming out October 10, so you won’t be completely abandoned after FEC 10 comes out! And November 1st, as is tradition, another vampire novel, about the apocalypse and beyond. The story starts five years after the end of Kristine the Youngest, which means… 2020!
Unlike the previous novels, this is a multiple points-of-view story, seen through the eyes of Rajveer, Kris, Ingolf, Miyako and Claire, whom you’ll meet in FEC 10… but she gets the cover on this one! 😉
This week I’m off Day Job, so I’m working on those paperbacks and beta-reading for an author I love (as soon as he publishes this series, I’ll let you all know, it’s wonderful). Which is good after abandoning a couple of novels found in bundles – one because it didn’t grab me, the other because oh boy! It badly needed an editor/copyeditor/proofreader whatever it’s called.
Even in the reviews they mention it badly needs editing (or possibly just someone going through it before the author hit that publish button!), so I won’t name it, but I’m considering more and more to offer beta-reading/proofreading services to fellow authors. Spellcheck won’t see the right words in the wrong place, the missing words, the extraneous words and all that stuff that makes the prose unreadable.
I mean, we all deal with those darn typo faeries, but in some cases it really looks as if the author hit “publish” a little too fast. If you have a spouse or significant other or best friend who loves to read, please give them your manuscript. Or pay someone like I do because I’m ESL writer and I don’t have friends who read English in a timely manner, therefore I pay Mighty Editor Zoe to go through my manuscripts.
Does that make them perfect? Hell no! When I go through them, especially printed out, I still find mistakes. And even if it’s a hassle to re-upload the manuscript to all retailers, I try to do it as often as possible (I think I re-uploaded the first 5 FEC books 6 or 7 times already…).
It might definitely take me longer to update the paperbacks, but since they don’t sell that much… 😉 Now I better go back to working on those new paperbacks and writing a few more stories before the end of the month. Gotta submit something while I wait for the replies on the current submissions… Have a great week!
CHILD TORIK: Er… I’m Torik. I’m Human. I have no magic. I’m short-lived. I’m a barbarian to the Magical Races. I’m ignorant. I know nothing of gods and goddesses. I’m scared of dragons. I’m ten, but I already help my dad chopping wood.
Are you involved in a relationship? If so, with who and what is it about them that you find appealing?
I’m a Fajrulo cub, barely over a century old. When Torik is adult, I can be considered a dragonette, since I’ve grown in size – from donkey to elephant – but I’m still a cub. I will live about nine centuries, so my life is still in its infancy, sigh.
And since #8Sunday was so successful, I’ll keep going with Beautiful – and since I have the drawings, I’ll post the 8-10 sentences referring to that particular vignette… have a wonderful weekend! 🙂 By the way, tomorrow Himalayas goes live… book 4 of the 
Don’t mind this grumpy old spinster, don’t forget to 
Check out the story of 
So, you must be the gorgeous guy on the cover of the book! Tell me a little about yourself!
Then we have 
Finally we have Quests. It’s set in 1405 and as you can see, the borders are shifting. Soon the Varians and the Blackmore will start the long war that will end with the birth of the Varian Empire (
Here’s the complete journey, improvised as I wrote along that brought the wordcount up to 40K almost. I hope to finish this weekend, like I said, but simply looking at the map made for an excellent plot of the heroes’ journey! 😉
So, Kaylyn is done and going out to betas… They should get back to me by June, so in July I have time to revise and in August I can go to the London public libraries if I need to fact-check something! I already booked the editor for September, when I’ll set up the pre-order button on Amazon with a temporary manuscript. The other pre-order button will be set up as soon as I have the cover.
And another title is out, a collection of all the contemporary stories I’ve written so far, both with the discarded pen name and the main one. 
