Welcome to the first edition of What I’m Working On. Mostly guaranteed to come out sometime in the first half of every month, I’ll talk about what writing projects I’m doing, editing steps, behind-the-scenes business parts of said writing, and probably whine about something. You have been warned.
Writing: I finished up the Project I Wasn’t Supposed to Be Working On at the end of September, so October is for moving on to Aspect Society #2, Valkyrie’s Call. I was super nervous about this one for a number of reasons.
One, even though I recently did a major overhaul on the first book in the series, Siren’s Song, I actually wrote that book years ago, and I was worried I’d have trouble getting back into the world and getting the tone right.
Two, Valkyrie, being Valkyrie, is closed-lip about everything, which makes her a very difficult character to figure out and get right on the page. Fortunately, after rewriting the opening scene three times, she got annoyed with me and finally explained why she is the way she is. Things are going much more smoothly now.
Three, you guys I love Random so much, so I want to do him justice. Also, he’s in love with Valkyrie, so obviously he’s in for a rough time. Like, really rough. These guys do not get to HEA easily.
Anyways, I’m pleased to report that having started it, I’m unexpectedly excited about it. I project it will come in around 75k to 80k words on the first draft, and am hoping to have it finished by November. Realistically, we all know the book’s getting finished in December but hey, one has to have dreams.
Editing: I’m due to get Guardian of Chaos back from a beta reader in the next week, and need to give it a final obsessive going-over before it goes to the copy editor in late November. Siren’s Song is with the copy editor now, so there’s nothing more I can do for it at the moment.
The Business Side of Things: Erm, so, I have an obsessive tendency to try to do ALL THE THINGS. To explain my current situation, let me take you back four years to when I started the first ever job that required me to commute. I decided a commute meant that audiobooks were the thing to do. Despite being a lifelong reader and working in a bookstore for several years, I had never listened to audiobooks. (Okay, fine, I listened to Neil Gaiman when he narrated his own books because listening to Neil Gaiman talk is like having a gentle lullaby whispered in your ear, BUT I DIGRESS).
So I decided to start listening to audiobooks on my commute, and let me tell you, I hated them. Absolutely hated them. Then I talked to people who loved audiobooks and they were very clear on the fact that finding the correct narrator was key. I researched. I found a beloved narrator reading one of my favorite book series so I tried it. I still hated it. I hated the way she did the voices, everything. But I had paid thirty dollars for the damn thing so I was listening to it. Three chapters in a magical thing happened. I fell in love with the narration. Everything I had hated before was suddenly wonderful. I had just needed some time to adjust to having things read to me, and once I had, I discovered I did indeed like it.
That’s all good and well, you say, but what does this have to do with you now? Well, a year or so ago, before I embarked on the indie publishing journey, I was toying around with the idea of narrating audiobooks myself, because I suddenly liked audiobooks so much. That was a rabbit-hole plagued with too much work to go down at the time, but now that I’ve decided to publish my own books, I thought, why not narrate my own audiobooks?
In theory, I still agree with my decision to do so, and the setup is honestly not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, but like any new skill, there is a lot to learn, and it’s a lot of added pressure and scheduling to try and get it done so I can have a simultaneous audiobook/ebook/paperback release. There is especially a lot to learn on the technical side of things and I am, at heart, not a technical person. But all my equipment has finally arrived, so it’s time to record some test chapters and figure out how this works, so that in November I can go insane trying to record my first-ever entire book when Siren’s Song comes back from the copy editor.
And that, more or less, is What I’m Working On. Hey, I don’t think I even did any whining this time. What are the odds?