My Goodness!
Eleven weeks since I last posted here. Wow, does time fly! I'm at least somewhat in the habit of updating The Perpetual Beginner, but I haven't established a habit here, so it tends to languish.
The big writing news of the moment is: I'm an author! A paid author! My first ever paycheck for writing was my first mail of the new year. It's payment for my two articles and some editing work in the upcoming Damn Interesting! book. I was expecting enough to take the fam out for pizza, and actually ended up with a nice little income boost instead. Plus I will get a percentage of any earnings should the book earn out its advance.
This has given a bit of a kick in the pants to my novel writing efforts. After all, if I can get paid for writing non-fiction, surely I can get paid for writing fiction, which is my first love and greater strength?
Towards that end, I've been sending out copies of the first draft of this year's NaNo (current tentative title is Riptide). My brother Bill and his daughter have read it so far and liked it. My neighbor has read it and has a much less flattering reaction. He's currently working on Ghost Dancer, as we're using him and his brother (and a friend in Oregon) as a test audience to see if Riptide makes sense on its own. Among other things, Bill thinks (as does the neighbor) that it may make more sense to attempt to sell them in reverse order.
If anyone would like to take a gander at Riptide, let me know (presuming I know you at least a little). Be warned it's in extremely rough shape, essentially untouched from its NaNo turn in condition, typos, parentheticals, changing names and all.
I have another post in mind regarding comments from the aforementioned neighbor that I'll try to get going here soon.
The big writing news of the moment is: I'm an author! A paid author! My first ever paycheck for writing was my first mail of the new year. It's payment for my two articles and some editing work in the upcoming Damn Interesting! book. I was expecting enough to take the fam out for pizza, and actually ended up with a nice little income boost instead. Plus I will get a percentage of any earnings should the book earn out its advance.
This has given a bit of a kick in the pants to my novel writing efforts. After all, if I can get paid for writing non-fiction, surely I can get paid for writing fiction, which is my first love and greater strength?
Towards that end, I've been sending out copies of the first draft of this year's NaNo (current tentative title is Riptide). My brother Bill and his daughter have read it so far and liked it. My neighbor has read it and has a much less flattering reaction. He's currently working on Ghost Dancer, as we're using him and his brother (and a friend in Oregon) as a test audience to see if Riptide makes sense on its own. Among other things, Bill thinks (as does the neighbor) that it may make more sense to attempt to sell them in reverse order.
If anyone would like to take a gander at Riptide, let me know (presuming I know you at least a little). Be warned it's in extremely rough shape, essentially untouched from its NaNo turn in condition, typos, parentheticals, changing names and all.
I have another post in mind regarding comments from the aforementioned neighbor that I'll try to get going here soon.