No, this isn’t a trick. I really am posting my monthly update on the first of the month. It wasn’t a particularly thrilling month as far as writing goes. I spent the whole month revising novels and short stories so my total count was a feeble 5,312 words. I haven’t checked but I suspect this is the least productive month I’ve had since I began my writing streak 1,372 days ago. I did squeeze in some outlining of the next zombie novel in there, plus a few paragraphs for an Urban Fantasy series I’m planning that I would love to be working on instead of all this revision. Most of the revisions were on the first two books in the zombie series, but I’ve also started compiling a collection of my short fiction. Which I guess is a sort of announcement (although if you’re on my mailing list you’ll already know about that). At the moment it looks like there’ll be about 22 stories and 85,000-ish words. There’s one more story I’m considering that would bump it closer to 100,000 but I’m undecided on that one. No title for the collection yet, but there’s three possibilities in the running at the moment. … Read More
A Year in Books – 2016
Following on from my end of year wrap up, here’s the 101 books I read last year (thanks to Goodreads for the massive image) That’s a lot of books and almost 8,000 pages more than last year’s total. Looking back at that lot, there’s a lot of really good books (there were one or two bad ones as well including a couple I didn’t finish and one or two I didn’t post on Goodreads). It’s hard to pick favourites but here’s some of the best full length books (roughly in the order I read them): Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig (this is currently on offer for $1.99. Just saying.) Mockingbird by Chuck Wendig The Cormorant by Chuck Wendig The Bureau of Them by Cate Gardner The Voodoo Killings by Kristi Charish Young Slasher by S. Elliot Brandis Necrotech by K. C. Alexander Little Dead Red by Mercedes M. Yardley 50 Shades of Brain by Jeff Chacon A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Mallerman That last one would be my pick for best book I read all year, with Mercedes M. Yardley’s Bram Stoker award winning, Little Dead Red a close second. They’re all worth checking out though. Plenty of good … Read More
September Writing Update
Another month down, another thirty days added to my writing streak. September was a very focused month with me spending all of my writing time working on the last book in the Leah King trilogy – The Girl in the Machine. Total word count for the month was 24,382 words which should, in theory, have been more than enough to wrap the book up. But of course, it didn’t turn out that way. This last book will easily be the longest of the three. At the moment it looks like it’s going to come in around 70,000 – 80,000 words which is somewhere around the 300 page mark. So much for breaking up the work on my zombie novels with a couple of quick novellas. Ah well, 24k words is a good month, it’s a good story and hopefully it should be done by the end of October. Outside of the day job and working on The Girl in the Machine, most of my time was spent preparing for the launch of The Girl in the Wilderness on Tuesday.* This time around I created my own ebook using a tool called Vellum. It’s a very quick way to create gorgeous looking books, and I’m very happy with the results. So, I also converted … Read More
41 Days Later…
My original plan this year was to post a monthly update on how my writing is going. That hasn’t worked out too well so far. The January update was late and thanks to an unexpected and extended trip back to the UK the February/March updates have been MIA… until now! First up, February. It was a moderately productive month on the writing front – 18,210 words spread across a couple of projects. The first was book two of my zombie project. I wrapped up the first draft and it clocked in at 95,296 words which is a) longer than the first book and b) longer than I expected. I suspect it will drop a bit during revisions but it’s a very healthy first draft. I’m very happy with how the book turned out. Sadly, the first book is stuck in editor limbo and I’ve just heard it’s going to be delayed even longer. Needless to say, I’ve got a different editor lined up for the rest of the books. Once Project Zombie Book 2 was out of the way, I wrote a new short story. I’m not talking about this one much at the moment, but I will say it’s destined for a very … Read More
Three Books Worth Reading
Time to talk about someone else’s books for a change. I’ve read a few really good novels recently, here’s three of the best… Zer0es by Chuck Wendig Chuck Wendig has been making waves (good and bad) recently with his new Star Wars novel, Aftermath but a few weeks ago he released a technothriller called Zer0es and it’s very cool. I’d pitch it as Hackers meets Terminator or maybe Hackers meets Transcendence. Or Hackers meets The Lawnmower Man. Or Hackers meets some other film where there’s a sinister AI. Anyway, whatever shorthand you settle on it’s a compelling story of a team of misfit hackers vs dubious government agencies. The Martian by Andy Weir This recommendation is probably redundant at this point. With a big budget movie on the way, the self-publishing success story that is The Martian is riding high in the charts. It’s unashamedly nerdy and I’m not sure how that will translate into a movie – I suspect they’ll focus on the action rather than the detailed descriptions of how to survive on Mars – but nevertheless I’m looking forward to seeing it on the big screen. I wanted to read the book before then though and opted for the audiobook. I wasn’t disappointed. R.C. Bray’s … Read More
Wise Words from Delilah S. Dawson
I think I’ve mentioned Chuck Wendig’s fantastic blog before (and if I haven’t I should have) but yesterday’s guest post by paranormal author, Delilah S. Dawson is fantastic so I’m going to link to it repeatedly. It’s called 25 STEPS TO BEING A TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED AUTHOR: LAZY BASTARD EDITION and it’s both funny and useful which in my book is a winning combination. Here’s a quote (that happens to be very timely for me) “Any author who says their first drafts are fantastic is either lying or highly delusional or John Scalzi, who is neither. A first draft is meant to be a malleable chunk of clay that you barf out onto the worktable. If you keep reworking that first sentence, first page, first chapter, you’ll never get to the end. So just barf it all up. Without judging yourself. Without showing anyone. Without rereading it. Without thinking of genre or sellability or trends. Tell your story in any way you can, in whatever way feels best. Does it change POV or tense in the middle? Do aliens land in your historical romance? WHO CARES? KEEP WRITING. Don’t look back. You can fix it later.” There’s a whole host of … Read More
O Wendig
If you’re not reading Chuck Wendig’s blog, terribleminds, you should be, especially if you’re a writer or would like to be one. Because: He’s smart He’s funny He posts things like this. His books are pretty damn good as well. [O Wendig by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 24 July 2013]