Last week I wrote 18K, which means that this week I hit 250K, so halfway through my prospected wordcount, and there’s still room to go farther. Even if I was not planning to, or taking it easy, I might end up with 500K new words at the end of the year, after all! 🙂
I’m back to the DayJob this week, so maybe I’ll write less. Monday was hectic, and I put down very few words. And I have to update another series as well, ebook and paperback blurbs included, and here’s a sneak peek of the new covers:
A nice guide for audio book authors and Finding the Highest Paid Royalties for Your Audiobooks. I probably won’t make any more audio books, since the Findaway Reports are depressing, LOL! I won’t even listen to the audio books I got through a couple of Kickstarters, but well… it’s just me! 🙂
Last week the bimonthly newsletter went out with a surprise: a free story. I will probably add one from now on, since I’ve become proficient using Book Funnel for delivery! 😉 So if you want a free story every two months, subscribe to the publisher’s site. Next UPB Newsletter is due out on August 1st.
The heat has unfortunately hit this damn town, so I’m going to start my summer hybernation soon… Although the house is still relatively cool, so if I don’t reach it half melted by the 35°C I get while waiting the bus, I’ll probably be able to do something.
I hope you checked out the Cattatute bundle… Where else can you find so many cat stories all in one place? Read more about the 10 books in the bundle here, and make sure to click on each cover for a synopsis, reviews and preview of each book! 🙂
Last week I wrote a little over 10K by the weekend. It was finally the creative weekend, so I managed to finish the pencils of the strip, although now I have to ink and color it. I’m doing a shorter thing first, that should come out this week if everything goes according to plans.
Boy, I had missed spending a day and a half with someone else trying to pursue the same thing! 🙂 I posted videos on TikTok and Instagram, and I used her to have this picture taken of me and my paperbacks so far – the latest, in Italian, should have arrived by now, but not on Sunday when the photo was taken…
So, the pile is almost as tall as me, by the end of the year it should be taller! 🙂 Now, if you want to read on paper, take your pick! 🙂
This week I hope to wrap another project (of shorter works), so next week I can start on a novel – I already have chapter 1, but I still need to figure out the rest. I also need to edit a title in Italian this week, so I might not write much, but we’ll see.
And February is almost over… That’s all for today! Have a great week!
Sooo, it’s a pandemic. It won’t kill 2/3 of the world population like in my Future Earth Chronicles, but then, the unnamed pandemic of that series was only one aspect of the apocalypse. And if you’d like to read how life goes on after the apocalypse, check it out, book 1 is at 99c! 😉
What scares me is not so much the coronavirus flu but people’s behavior. As an introvert, I don’t mind staying at home, and this is probably the closest I’ll ever be to live the hermit’s life. But I miss being able to walk around. You need a permit to be out and about at this time in Italy, and until the lockdown is over.
I have a permit to go to work Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays (because Dayjob can’t shut down – yet), and another for when I need to go to the supermarket or the pharmacy or other urgent matters. I doubt going to the post office to get my parcels counts. I hope they’ll keep my Amazon purchases until this emergency is over.
Does this affect me as a writer? Kind of. The world finally stopped and everybody else’s feelings overwhelm me. I still wish I could move to a co-housing in a cold place, away from the current life and responsibility, except of course now it’s even harder than before. Writing helps, but…
Griffyndiggory wrote on Tumblr (it’s a photo, so he might have taken it from somewhere else): “My problem isn’t that my favorite characters aren’t real; it’s that I’m not fictional. I don’t want them to be real. What I desperately wish is that I could be fictional with them. It’s not that I want them here with me in this mundane and ordinary world; it’s that I want to join them in their extraordinary one.”
Yeah, coming out of those stories into the current world really sucks. But last week I managed to wrap up all the projects, and now seems a good time to go back to those Future Earth Chronicles. I still have five books to write, although they deal with secondary characters from the first five. That first arc is concluded. I wrote 11K+, bringing my yearly total so far to 95K. Might still be a little behind, but I will catch up, eventually.
me, ready to start writing FEC Book 6!
So, since you might end up locked at home like I am, no matter where you live, try to grab some books. And my British friends stay safe, since your leader believes in “natural selection” – we shall overcome! 🙂 You can get some advice from Chuck Wendig on working from home, or you can just chill with your family and watch Netflix.
Here’s how you can use your time in isolation to learn everything you wanted to. Museums and other public places now closed give virtual tours. Social distancing is not a bad thing, and yeah, it sucks to stay in in spring (northern emisphere), but again, it’s only for a few months, not the rest of your life.
I’m currently reading another bundle, the Might Have Been and trudging through Kristine Grayson’s trilogy. I managed to charge KK while I wait for the substitute, so hopefully it won’t die on me before I manage to get to the post office and grab the new one.
Oh, and the Cave Creek Kickstarter? There’s already a short story for backers, but I had to put it in a temporary folder, since I can’t put it on KK. I could read it with Kindle4PC, but I really prefer the e-ink of the normal Kindle (although the All-new Kindle – Now with a Built-in Front Light that I hope to never use, unless it’s different from what I’m thinking. I’ll know when I get mine).
Aaand there’s a new course on teachable, it’s free, so go check it. Kickstarter Best Practices for Writers is up and ongoing. I’m probably going to watch it while I pretend to study from home for DayJob… Not sure when I’ll be able to actually do it, but meanwhile I’ll start checking it!
Might be because I’m off DayJob, but last week was quite productive. Over 15K written and another project wrapped. I started on the third in the series and because I didn’t remember something about a secondary character, I went to check Star Minds Third Generation Snippets… and had two rewrite the ending of #1 (minor changes on #2). Glad I haven’t published any yet, LOL! 🙂
Still off DayJob this week, so I hope to have a good headstart with #3, maybe even get close to the end, so I that I have time to squeeze #4 into May as well. It’s another generation, but he does meet all three protagonists of the other books, so I might end up with a 4-books box set at the end of the year.
It’s short novels, mind you. The first is 55K, the second 32K. The third will probably be around that lenght (30K). All together they’ll be like Star Minds the Trilogy in length – which works well for paperbacks (not-quite-a-doorstopper but still almost 500pages long).
Anyhow, we’ll see. I have ordered a few books I need to read for Post-Apocalypse Chronicles Book 2, and I’ll post an image as soon as the last one gets to me. But I also need to reed 3 paper books for the next vampire novel, so in June that’s what I’ll be doing. And then July POC2 and then I’ll get back to the Heroines, unless some shorter work decides to become a real short novel in the meantime…
And by the end of the year I’ll have reached my goal of writing 500k! 😀
Oh, by the way, I curated another bundle! With all that extra time off DayJob I put together the Thieves bundle with eleven novels (a couple short ones) at 8$! So the vampires are gone, you can now enjoy some thieves – all night creatures, ain’t they? Sometimes, LOL!
Writerly links! Joanna Penn reports from the London Book Fair. I went there once in 2007. Things have changed so much in publishing since, that I kinda look forward to going again. Here’s to hoping I can make it next year. Oh, and “comparisonitis“… ever heard of it? Lots of words of wisdom here too! 😉
Considering that I still need to read both Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible (I have older versions and won’t get the new ones – don’t ask) aaand Mastering Amazon Ads… but at least I’ll know what to expect next year when I get back on the publishing wagon (although… guess what? Things may change in the next months, LOL! But I’ll get the revised version when I’m ready!).
Aaand another bundle is out! Spring Surprise which includes Quests Volume 1 and other awesome books, curated by A.L. Butcher! 🙂 Go check it!
I’m formatting and preparing Nightly Bites Volume 2, so last week I wasn’t supposed to write with that and some traveling… except I wasn’t happy with the story I wrote for the anthology, so I wrote a new one! 🙂 A special thanks to Alex Butcher for checking the typo faeries on that one!
Hopefully I’ve caught all the typo faeries in this anthology, but if I didn’t… well, you know those pesky thingies, don’t you? Have mercy on a poor curator! 😉 Soon I’ll be able to share at least the ebook links, in the meantime you can see a preview on the anthology page…
I also checked that historical novel… not as bad as I remember it, so we’ll see. Now I’m off into the new writing project, but since this year I’m experimenting also with publishing… you’ll probably see them all at the same time!
This summer I celebrate 40 years of writing, so it might be good timing to publish a few new titles all at the same time. We’ll see what I have ready then! Probably some Silvery Earth, some Star Minds and then we’ll see. I made some kind of writing schedule, but I also want to curate more bundles and anthologies, so it’s still not set in stone.
Writerly links! I told you about my week at the anthology workshop last year, right? Well, here’s an even deeper insight on what you do. I am not an editor (and probably won’t be, just a curator for those collaboration anthologies), but I was a writer with Ron and his daughter last year (and yes, they sold, I didn’t, LOL!), so I can confirm everything he says! 🙂
I’m facing some self-doubt these days, especially since I’m reading those bundles and find so many fine writers I sometimes wonder why I keep bothering (publishing, not writing, of course!), so here’s Joanna Penn’s advice for those days.
The bad news is… only 27500 words in January. If I want to reach my goal of 500K, I need to write 10K a week! So I have some catching up to do in that department.
The good news is… I completed 4 stories that are now with the proofreader and that I will submit to traditional markets (one as per guidelines, the others to any available in that genre)!
But the other bad news is… already 3 rejections (2 from December submissions, 1 from January). In this case the good news is… one more story to submit to traditional markets and I have two stories ready for Nightly Bites Volume 2, one published and one unpublished, like it was for volume 1! 🙂
To keep the trend of bad/good news: Bad = still no fixed writing schedule, good = started off on the next heroine novel and going steadily forward, in spite of stopping to rummage through old diaries (in part 1 she’s 15, an age I have long forgotten, glad I was write-aholic even then, LOL!).
I also noticed interesting patterns in old summaries of my stories (the outlines of the stories I didn’t write), but I’d rather not discuss them after the #Metoo campaign. It’s true that we’ve been educated, as women, to just accept certain things that are not okay. And in my ingenuity, I really thought those things could happen.
Oh well, I was a teenager with an overdramatic sense of story, like Samantha says in Ciaran&Harith! 😉 Which you can also read in the upcoming Celebrating Male Lovers bundle, in case you want to try other authors…
I can’t speak highly enough of BundleRabbit, since I used it both for bundles and for collaborations. More to come of both, probably the only publications for the first six months.
I do have a couple of titles still in the drawer (one is a collection that still lacks a cover, the other two still need tweaking or redrafting or I don’t know what else), but expect most of the new titles in the second half of the year.
I have missed a few events last weekend – Superstars of Writing along with 20BooksTo50K in London along with a sci-fi festival somewhere else in Europe, but well… I had just come back from London and I still haven’t requested a new passport to head overseas – as for the third event, I learned about it because a friend posted he was there. Meh.
Now I intend to dive back into my diving cave. I have a schedule to establish, even though I don’t have that new writing computer yet! Have a great week! 🙂
Well, I’m giving up on Giveaways. No entries on this blog for ebooks (except for Tori, as usual, it’s a discussion between me and her, with Joleene or Shafali jumping in every now and then) and Goodreads has changed its policy. Since I’m not in the US, I won’t be able to give away my proofs anymore. Thank you, Mighty Zon. I hope the guy who keeps asking me books to give away stops doing so.
Maybe one day I’ll try a BookBub or something like that, but not this year. Add to this the changes in social media and other algorithms… This year I just don’t care.
I haven’t gotten into my writing routine yet, so I’d rather work on that instead. It might be for the nature of this month’s writing – short stories, so I waste time inbetween stories (and I gave up one after 300 words or so because I’d need way too much research to make it believable). I hope when I get back to longer works I’ll be able to establish my writing routine. I’m still waaaay below my expected wordcount.
More writing and less publishing worries means I might not only catch up on my fiction TBR pile, but also the non-fiction! I’ve had Let’s Get Digital and Let’s Get Visible on my Kindle for years… but still got Amazon Decoded, hoping to get to all of them this year! 🙂
And here’s another list of books that I should probably check… later on! 🙂 I guess I’ll have to develop those skills, sooner or later… sigh! Trying those 7 ways to stay positive as a writer for now! I did join 20BooksTo50K (although I’m still kind of just lurking or commenting on other people’s posts) and I am reading more than before (#1 and 3), but the rest… still some work to do! 🙂
Hopefully at the beginning of February I’ll have a few shorts to submit to markets and I should hear from a couple of places I submitted to in December as well. I think I started a new sub-series with the latest two! 😉
If you’re on Facebook, the anthology page is publishing the authors’ bios every few days… We already had David Miller and Russ Crossley, and more are coming in the next few weeks, so you can start knowing these wonderful authors who trusted me with their stories! 🙂
And it’s not all! The Vampires of the World bundle will go on sale on the same date! Check your calendars, DECEMBER 19, for these great deals… and more! Stay tuned… Have a great Sunday! 😀
Pre-order is live, paperback is in the works… this week has been busy with the small and medium publishers fair here in Rome, so I didn’t have time to format the paperback, but I hope to do it before Christmas, so stay tuned!
I plan on making more next year, gathering my shorter works with nine other authors because I’m math challenged. It won’t be open calls, unfortunately, but if you’re a writer and I know what you write, I’ll ask you! 😉
You can like the Facebook page too… Like Bundles Galore, it will feature all my curated anthologies! 🙂 Actually, Bundles Galore is shared with A.L. Butcher and includes also the bundles we don’t curate but are part of, but well…
Which reminds me there’s another bundle coming out, curated by my co-admin!
Coming soon… 10% of the royalties from the Remembering Warriors bundle will go to the Royal British Legion plus another 10% to Help for Heroes, two charities that support wounded and ex-service personnel and their families, in commemoration of the World War I centenary. Available for pre-order now at https://bundlerabbit.com/b/remembering-warriors
My name is Barb, and I'm a writer, sometimes an artist, mostly a world-creator and storyteller of fantasy worlds. I write in more than one genre, although mostly SFF.
Find my books at UPB.
This is my blog, about the "creative barbwire" that I am - there's no rose without thorns, right?
Enjoy...
Oh, by the way, I curated another bundle! With all that extra time off DayJob I put together the 
Aaand another bundle is out! 
On the bundles front! 
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present you my first curated anthology, compiled through the 
Barbara G.Tarn - writer 