I think I might take a few days off from this whole thing. It’s not bringing me joy like it used to. All I see are books not selling, audiobook links not claimed and deadlines approaching me like the fast zombies from the remake of Dawn of the Dead. There’s nothing to really blog about, unless you want me to start commenting on pop culture – and trust me, no one wants that.
I’m sorry to sound so mopey. I know there are people struggling with real things, and I’m just looking at a spreadsheet and seeing zeroes.
I’ve had an interesting few days. I had to go live in a hotel for a couple of days while our bathroom floor was worked on. My wife is going to lay down the tile.
Her optimism knows no bounds.
I found that I can get more work done when I have no good access to my YouTube channels. Who would have thought that the Internet would be a huge time suck?
I am working on two horror stories, thanks to an online writing program called AutoCrit. You might have seen their advertisements on FaceBook. I know I have. I’m giving it a chance while I write the second draft of Serve Me Now. I didn’t like the first draft all that much. I just didn’t really feel confident that it was horrific enough – the standard being vosmic horror. In fact, I described it as ‘cosmic horror without the tentacles’. So, I am using this program – which has some decent editing features to it beyond the usual spell and grammar check. It allows you to compare your manuscript (which you can write on it, or import a file) to writers in the genre you’re writing in. Naturally, I am using this feature to compare it to Lovecraft. I am hoping (fingers and tentacles crossed) to get this done in two and a half months while I am still working on Tribal.
Tribal is coming along nicely and I have the lowered word count to thank for it. Only five hundred a day since I’m trying to get this one done by June to get it edited down and out there by Election Day. I can knock out five hundred words in about half an hour to forty-five minutes on a good clip, so I can work on it at lunch. Serve Me Now is going to be a thousand words a day, which I can also do at work (I don’t think anyone I work with reads this blog) when the boss leaves for the day. I have about an hour to myself, and if I can get my work finished quickly enough, I can use that hour to write on the computer. This is the only advantage to AutoCrit right now. Normally, I don’t like that, but for now it’s proving useful.
The Show Must Go On is getting edited down now, and I am still optimistic that it’s going to get released in a year – depends on how fast it gets read and edited. It might not see the light of day until next year. I only meet two times a month with my writing group, so that’s a hamper on things. I might go on ahead and run it through the editing programs I have now. I just want to get a book out this year.
Speaking of getting things out this year…did I mention that The Catastrophic Christmas Party is an audiobook? Yeah! Went up on April 1st. Go check it out.
In fact – I am going to run a promotion. First fifty people to respond to this blog will get a promo code to get a copy of the audiobook for free. Choose to get either The Dreaded Day Job or The Catastrophic Christmas Party. The code will be emailed to you and all I ask in return is that you give me a good review.
That’s all the news for now, I am off to help tile the floor. Stay safe and I’ll see you in the next one.
Seething Apathy 