Snippet from the Wild Hunt

I’m working on setting up  The Wild Hunt in Scrivener to begin revising it . Sadly, the opening scene will need to be extensively rewritten, since it isn’t the opening scene anymore.  Anyway, here is a snippet that I like.

 

The wooden floor was cold and hard against her back. Pain and sorrow whirled inside her, there were moments when she could swear that the walls themselves fed her pain. The sound of footsteps penetrated through the fog in her mind, and Brid whimpered softly. Brid curled up in a ball, in an attempt to avoid the pain her father’s sorrow caused her.

“ I’ll let you go.”

The words penetrated the fog surrounding her brain. Slowly, Brid lifted her head, and looked at her father. Did he say what I thought he said? Brid looked up into his eyes,the pain in his eyes cut through the rest of the fog. Brid swallowed a whimper.

“It pains me to see you like this. I’ll have someone escort you to Tanglewood, and help you construct the buildings you need to survive.”

A lot of Juggling

I think I have a bit better grip on  working part-time and writing now.   Which is a relief, since I signed up for Before You hit Send, which starts tomorrow. I’m so looking forward to it, I’ve wanted to take it for a long time but I lacked the money.   I’ve decided to work on Queen of Sind, since it needs a lot of revision.

I also started working on the Archangels hunt. So far I have 5000 words. Woot!  I really like what I got so far. And I also found the perfect cover for it, and for the spin-off novella I want to write.  I would buy both of them on the spot, except the novella isn’t titled. And since it is pre-made, I need to have title for it. sigh.

As for the self publishing, I created an account with Publit, which is a swedish distributor. Sadly, they don’t distribute to Kindle, so I’ll need to get an EIN from the IRS. BUT they do distribute to Kobo, Overdrive (!), Ibooks plus the major swedish stores and swedish libraries  so I’m happy.  Since there are rumors about Amazon opening a Swedish/Scandinavian store soon, it is possible that they will start distributing to Kindle too. Except I should probably get it up before since I think you need to be Kindle select to get 70% in new markets. Urgh. Sometimes Amazon is confusing.

The next more writing related step, is to find a better editor  for Daughter of the Dark. The first one was…not good. ( I might have mentioned it before. )  I do know which editor I’m contacting, though. *fingers crossed* ( Kari did tell me she loved Daughter of the Dark on twitter. I still haven’t gotten used to that, although Laura Anne firmly told me to :))

I’m also looking to hire a cover designer, or buying a pre-made cover.   ( I’ll probably hire one, since the pre-made covers I have seen don’t *quite* fit what I’m looking for.)

I’ve also been thinking about marketing Daughter of the Dark.  What I think I’ll do is to have a multi pronged approach of offering a free serialized short story (Exiled)  the month before release, and sign up for a blog tour.  I’m thinking Bewitching Book tours. ( They have a 45 dollar package for one week tour, which I’m ready to pay to get the word out.)

Searching for a new normal

I began a new job three weeks ago, and I’m struggling to find a balance. Before I begun this job, I had been unemployed for a long time. And while it was hard on the economy, it was glorious from a writing perspective. I could spend my days writing.

Except now I suddenly can’t.  On the other hand, I set my own schedule. Which I really appreciate. The downside is that I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to work 4-5 days. I know that once the backlog is finished, I’ll be down to 2-3 days/ week. Maybe I should go down to 3 days to make it last longer? On the other hand, I suspect there is more backlog that they are planning on handing over to me. We will see. But I should be working 30 hours per week in April too. I could work more, but it is a balance between money and mental health. More than 30 hours, and the work starts to make me gloomy.  And it isn’t worth that.

But I’ll adjust to it, since I’ll do this for at least one year.  Meanwhile, I’ll just keep on inching forward on the writing, until I had found a balance.

 

 

 

 

 

The duology that challenges me

I  love all my stories, but there are some I’m especially fond of.  The Demonlord’s Escape, the first book in the Heaven and Hell duology, is one of them. Maybe it is because the plot was slippery, and that I had to make two tries before getting it right.  Maybe it is because of all themes I have in the first book. Maybe it is the fact that I love my version of Hell.  The draft is good, but needs another round of revisions, at least.

But the sequel,  tentiatively titled The Archangel’s Hunt,  have scared me for years. Why?  Because it begins in Heaven and I had no clue of what it was about. Or that is not entirely correct. I knew it featured Cat, Kate’s cousin. ( Yes, their names are similar. And no, I’m not changing them.).   The rest of the story slowly, very slowly matured in my head.

A couple of times I took a look at it, but it felt too unclear, too many pieces missing.   When I poked at it last year, I even began writing an outline.  But I  left it unfinished.

So now I’m  starting the synopsis from scratch. And I’m in love with the things that I get. Seriously.  I’m dropping in things that I *know* will be clues to the end. More, I know exactly what the villain wants. Which to be fair, I’ve known ever since I wrote book one, but I know other things too. Things that sets up book 3.  Hopefully book 3 will be written sooner than this book. This book is what I need after all the revising and editing.  But don’t worry, I’ll  get back to revising once I’m finished w the first draft. Which should be in early May or late April. ( Yes, roughly two months from now. A) I currently work 4 days a week, which might change in April.  B) This is longer than the Portal Universe novellas.)

Oh, and I’m also much better at writing synopsis now. Seriously. 🙂