NaWriNoMo Bust and Future Plans

As the title says, this year's NaWriNoMo is a bust.

I couldn't get the writing traction I needed to write those 50,000 words. I went in with only a half-formed story idea, one or two sentences for the first dozen chapters, and little else. It's not the story idea was bad --- it's just I didn't do enough groundwork before NaWriNoMo to make it a successful month, and that's my fault. I also had a couple of days when I didn't feel well enough to write, so that was an additional hurdle in my way.

Still, it wasn't a total bust -- I did writing 31K worth of words and I did work out a nice chunk of the story's background. But that should have been done beforehand. I need to let it marinate a little more, but I think I can go back in a couple of months and do the groundwork and resurrect the novel. If I have my say, the novel, Operation Skyfire will see the light of day sometime in the future.

So, now what?

Now, it's back to plotting The Assassin Prince, and writing short stories. I need to firm up the background of the novel, make sure the story holds together at the outline stage and maybe expand the chapter details out a little more. As for the short stories, I have several I need to revise, plus another I just started, so I can relieve my writing itch with them while I work on The Assassin Prince. I'm aiming to have the outline finished by the end of the year. 

Still, I haven't forgotten about the two Outcast Ops novels I co-wrote. Red Ice has been ding well, staying above the 100,000 rank level, and has a couple of reviews --- 5/5 Stars. African Firestorm has been bouncing up and down, but it has a reviewer's rating of 4.7/5 Stars. So, while they're not megahits, I am happy that people like the novels.

African Firestorm is on Amazon and is part of the Kindle Direct program. African Firestorm on Amazon! For those over the pond in the UK, click here! If you want to read Red Ice, it is here: Outcast Ops: Red Ice on Amazon!. and for those in the UK, It's here!

That's all for now -- back to writing!

Craig

Red Ice and NaWriNoMo

I should have posted this last week, but I got caught up in NaWriNoMo.....

Anyway, Outcast Ops: Red Ice is out and available for you to wither buy (or to borrow) at Amazon. The link is here: Outcast Ops: Red Ice.

It's great seeing Red Ice finally out. It was more of a challenge to write. It's longer, more involved and a lot more action than African Firestorm. I hope that you read it and enjoy it. If you do, I have done my part as a writer, Rick has done his part and everyone wins. It's off to a great start, steady in the mid-40K ranking, but I really want to see it go higher. So please do your part to get it up there.

I mentioned NaWriNoMo earlier, and I'm doing it again -- 5th year in a row. So far, I'm only 2 for 4, and I really want to push my average up to .600.

The problem is that I had planned to use October as my planning time -- outline, detailed synopsis, the works. But reviewing Red Ice took up so much of my time, I had only time to create a general outline for the first several chapters, the basics for a series like Outcast Ops, and away I went. I'm making it up as i go along folks, and I'm behind the 8-ball and about 5,000 words behind the word target. I have only a vague idea of the protagonists, a little firmer concept for the bad guys and a general direction to take the story in.

Now, I have surprised myself -- I found myself writing a chapter I didn't have in the first scribbled notes, but I think would look great on the film screen, something that sets the tone for what I want to see. The back-story on the main organization is coming in bits and pieces that are finding homes in the words I write.

That's it for now. I will expand a little more on the story once I actually know where these characters are taking me on this NaWriNoMo ride.

If you want to read African Firestorm, it's on Amazon and is part of the Kindle Direct program. African Firestorm on Amazon! For those in the UK, click here! Again, Red Ice is here:  Outcast Ops: Red Ice on Amazon!. and for those in the UK, It's here!

Later!

Craig

Red Ice Final Check is done and future plans

Well, Red Ice's final check (from me) is done......

It was like crawling over broken glass. I went over the novel, word by word, making spelling and grammar corrections, cutting words here, adding words there. And I noted every change in another file (I don't have a full-function Word program to use --- I've used WordPerfect 8.0 for years, and I like it. Besides, I don't have the money to buy Word and even if I did, I wouldn't). Below is an example of the changes I made....

Prologue

Page 3, 3rd Paragraph, 3rd line --- Changed "he'd hadn't" to "he hadn't"

Page 3, 6th Paragraph, 1st line --- Changed "begin" to "begun"

Page 5, 5th Paragraph, 2nd line --- Changed "sub as the" to "sub was the"

I had to note the changes because Rick needed to know what I changed when he makes his final check. So, the manuscript has changes in red, and the second file has entries like the ones above, telling Rick what changes I made, and in a few cases, why I made the changes.

Going over the manuscript word by word is tedious and slow. More than once I was asking myself, "Who the *#&@^ wrote this?" There were many, many changes that had to be made, all types , each one changed and documented like the example above. Sometimes, changes in one place cause a cascading effect down the page, leading to several more corrections that had to be made.

But it's done.

Now, what am I going to do? Well, three things:

• Work on several Battletech short stories.
• Continue plotting The Assassin Prince
• Start plotting my own thriller for NaWriNoMo

So, Red Ice is done, onto the next project(s). I'll be expanding on two of these projects in future posts. (The Battletech stories will be handled in my other blog, The Battletech State)

If you want to read African Firestorm, it's on Amazon and is part of the Kindle Direct program. African Firestorm on Amazon! For those in the UK, click here! Red Ice should be be for sale early in November.


Take care,


Craig

Red Ice -- The Final Run-Through

Rich Chesler finished up his part of Red Ice and sent it back to me for my final go through. So, The Assassin Prince outlining has been put aside as I go through Red Ice. It should be simple and straightforward, right? Just read through it again, stamp my approval and send it back, done in a day, right?

Er....Not exactly.

One piece of advice I have always heard that once you finish a story, you set it aside for a period of time before you go back and edit it. This is so you can see the story with fresh eyes and find things you would otherwise miss. It's been a while since I read through Red Ice, and my read through now is. . . .humbling.

I have found so many minor and a couple of less minor mistakes in the first four chapters that it stunned me. Things like missing possessives, wrong tense, extra spaces, missing commas or dashes. In less minor mistakes, I wrote a scene about meeting of four people with five people speaking, and having people smile or scowl while wearing industrial-grade dust masks!

I doubt there are any major plot problems, or Rick would have pointed them out. But this isn't going to be done in a day or two. If the rest of the novel is as error-filled, it's going to take a few more days of reading every line, testing them, and noting changes. Making sure everything is as near perfect as I can make it.

One of the reviews for African Firestorm said the following:

 A fun easy beach read need to be more careful about misspellings, bad grammar. And duplicated words in same sentence. Tighter editing.

Mind you, the reviewer did give it four out of five stars, so the clearly liked it. And to be fair, I didn't do such an intense scrutiny of African Firestorm as I'm doing this time with Red Ice. And the reviews have been great for African Firestorm -- 4.7 Stars out of 5 --- but for some reason, that short, mildly critical review is the one that's stuck with me. So, maybe I'm a lot more critical with Red Ice than I would be otherwise. To the reviewer, if you ever read this, thank you for reminding me that an author's job isn't over when they write the last word of the story -- it is only half the job.

Now, I need to get back to Red Ice.....

If you haven't read African Firestorm, it's on Amazon, but NOT part of the Kindle Direct program (I was wrong about that....) but is part the Kindle Unlimited Program, and is free to Amazon Prime members -- African Firestorm on Amazon For those living in the UK, please click here

Take care,

Craig
(The last paragraph has been edited several times in the last ten minutes, due to my incompetence. Will try better next time....)

Outlining The Assassin Prince

For most of the time I've been writing, I've been winging it. Most of my short stories and my attempts at novels have involved me sitting down and banging away at the keyboard with only a few scenes and a vague idea of where the story is going. Fine for short stories (Though I have outlined a few when I pitch for an anthology), no so fine for novels.

One thing that writing both Outcast ops novels is that I need an outline of some sort for a novel. Now these outlines aren't hard and fast -- both African Firestorm and Red Ice have changes from the outline to the first draft, but for the most part, they follow the outline that Rick Chesler and I created.

So, I'm taking that same concept to The Assassin Prince. I am writing a chapter by chapter breakdown of the action in the chapter. I have a few names, some idea of the world-building I need to do, and how the action is going to happen. At this stage, if I come up with a subplot several chapters in, like I did the The Assassin Prince, I can go back in the outline, add a sentence or two in a previous chapter and continue on, adding the subplot when I need to.

I have the first eight-plus chapters plotted and it's going along pretty good. I haven't determined a lot of the background or the details, but right now, it's getting the plot down on paper. Once the plot is down, I can start looking at the details and decide on what to go with for the universe's flavor. I have no idea how long it's going to be -- it will depend on how the story unfolds.

If you want to read African Firestorm, it's on Amazon and is part of the Kindle Direct program. African Firestorm on Amazon! For those in the UK, click here!

Take care,

Craig

Future Plans

Rich Chesler is still working his way through Red Ice, but he's busy juggling several other writing projects and it looks like he won't be able to commit to another Outcast Ops novel in the near future. I may go ahead and outline another OO novel, but it won't be a priority.

So, what does this mean? It means that I am free to work on my own projects and I've already started outlining a fantasy novel, The Assassin Prince, which I hope will be the start of a series I plan to call The Night Blades.

Why the change in genre? A change of pace. I love technothrillers, both reading and writing them, but I also love fantasy and decided was the time to try. It more worldbuilding then with technothrillers, because, it's literally a whole other world that has to be built from scratch. While I wait for Red Ice to be sent back for my look-over, I want to use this blog as a guild to how I build this world.

I won't bother with the African Firestorm updates anymore, but if you want to read it, it's on Amazon and is part of the Kindle Direct program. African Firestorm on Amazon! For those in the UK, click here!

Later!

Craig

Red Ice is done!

Well, at least my first run through it......

The revision is done and I sent it off to Rick Chesler to add his part of the story. He'll go through, note what he sees as problems, list questions he wants me to clarify, makes his additions to the story, then send it back to me for my review. Which means with a little luck, Red Ice will be in the Amazon Kindle store by the end of September!

This novel is longer than African Firestorm --- 80,000 words or so, in comparison to Firestorm's 65,000 words -- and takes place in one city (See the picture above.) It didn't start out that way, but the story didn't fit into the smaller word count. After discussing it with Rick, we decided to try for 80,000 words --- and that's what it ended up as.

Why is it longer? For one, there's more action in Red Ice, on both sides of the table. After some discussion, there was some altering to the outline, but it did add more action. I was willing to increase the length, because I want to see if I could sustain the story for another 15K words. And I think I have!

As I wait to hear back from Rick, I'm working on other projects. Once Red Ice is out, I'll talk about the writing process more and maybe even answer some questions about writing.

And for the snapshot of AF's current standings:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#170,808 Paid in Kindle Store
#482 in Kindle Store > eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Military
#1129 in Kindle Store > eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > War & Military
#1256 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers & Suspense > Military

While that doesn't look like much of an improvement, it's only because I caught it on the downside. The last three weeks have been up and down -- as low as #368,051 (August 30th) and as high as #56,604 (September 11th) On September 14th, it was ranked at #57,154. Sales are still steady, so we shall see.

As for overseas.....Amazon.uk

#85,096 Paid in Kindle Store

#277 in Kindle Store > Books > Crime, Thriller & Mystery > Thrillers > Military
#1438 in Kindle Store > Books > Crime, Thriller & Mystery > Thrillers > Action & Adventure
#1601 in Kindle Store > Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > War & Military

Again, higher than last time.......

If you are a member of Amazon Prime, Outcast Ops: African Firestorm is on Kindle Direct! Use this link! African Firestorm on Amazon! For Amazon UK, click here! And please check out the other two (soon to be three) novels in the series!

Back to writing!

Craig