NanoWriMo Starts in November!

While part of Camp NaNoWriMo I got more writing done than the previous six months. This was due to the energy and fun that my "cabin" generated. I wanted to hit my writing goals and was disappointed when I could not contribute as I wanted to.

It was great fun over the summer. I am now looking forward to the November edition. I plan of finishing the second draft of Last Airship From Khartoum and get some work done on a novella as well.

Sign up and join the fun at http://nanowrimo.org/

Dueling Covers

The sequel to the CSS Appomattox is coming along. I have nearly finished the first draft. So I spent some time on the cover. I had a friend work on it (Thanks Marshall Thomas). Anyway, Thomas Devareaux and crew are assigned to assist the British in the troubles they are having in the Sudan. Here are the covers that I have so far for the new novel.

So which one do you like best? Anything I should change?

Next Projects

The Last Airship to Khartoum is winding down. I should have the first draft completed by month end. Then it is off to editing land.

So while that is happening, I was going to pick up on two old projects and work on them.

The first is Eliazar's Promise. This project is about an archeology team that finds an unexpected scroll in a cave near Hebron. The archeology team is attacked by terrorists and must find a way to escape and reveal their findings to the world. What's in the scroll? A testament of one of Abraham's followers - Eliazar.

The other is a modern take of a guy just trying to make his commute to work on a Thursday morning. But instead of a normal day, he finds himself in the middle of a terrorist attack.

So which story interests you more? I am willing to push forward with the one you are more interested in.

Short Lived Triumphs

As soon as the short story went off of the free promotion, interest seems to have vanished. It was quite fun while it lasted though.

Anyway, I have been making great progress lately with the sequel to CSS Appomattox. I should be able to have the first draft completed by month's end.

The Home - First few days

I put the short story on a free deal almost as soon as it went up. The results have been pretty good. I only advertised on my Twitter account and here on the blog. The results have been great.

I went on-line this morning and here is where it was sitting:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,512 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Science Fiction & Fantasy
#23 in Kindle Store > Kindle Short Reads > 45 minutes (22-32 pages) > Literature & Fiction

The book reached the top 4,000 of all free books in the Kindle store and reached #2 in one of the categories. This may be a fluke but I have to say that I am quite pleased.

If you have had a chance to read it, please let me know what you think. I would love to hear back from you. Should I write more of these, stick with the longer novels or do something else?

Thanks.

The Home: A Zombie Survival Short Story Published

Well I went ahead and hit submit on the short story. It went live at 4am this morning. I got some early feedback and ran it through both Hemingway and Ginger editors. I fooled around with a cover and came up with something that I liked.

Anyway, I am running a free book promotion on it tomorrow. I don't want to charge the default $0.99 for it since it is a 7k word short story, but I can't figure out how to convince Amazon to lower the price under Kindle Select.

Also, I have finished all of the edits for CSS Appomattox. The 2.0 version is now up on Kindle as of yesterday. Very happy with the edits that Allison did. She did a great job. Hopefully, if you have the previous version(s), the 2.0 update will be pushed out by Amazon.

Anyway, happy reading.

You Ever Get Distracted?

July was a very productive month for my second novel. I am 3/4th of the way done with the final draft (22,482 words added for July). I was making great progress, then an idea grabbed me.

In Camp Nanowrimo, I was going through some personal issues. My mother had to be moved to a memory care facility as she was no longer able to care for herself. Through the support of friends and family, it has been much easier than I thought possible. As it is written, "A merry heart does good like a medicine," humor came out of the pain.

One of my friends writes zombie stories. In our discussion an idea for a story came out. It hit a point this week where I could not work on anything else. I stopped everything and the story started to come out. In a burst of effort, a 7,000 word short story came out of a five minute conversation.

Now, the question is, what do I do with it?