What I've been up to

 So my last post was... almost last year. I'm apparently not good at blogging about fiction-related things. (But I do have a blog with trip reports from my various adventures now so if you really wanna know what I'm doing you're probably more likely to find info there!)

As for the fiction-writing side of things I've been very busy. I've submitted to various mags and publishers and burned myself out. I wrote... idk 500k words already this year? And I'm also feeling the burnout from that. (Not that that'll in any way stop me.)

I'm also getting ready to publish some more stories to my Amazon/KDP account. These will be four full novels of 60-100k words. I've been working on those for a long time now and feel like they're ready. I'm also exhausted waiting for publishers/agents/whatever to get responses to me so self-publish it is.

The four novels are:

Glass

This one is a treat. It's about a machine, an object owned by an inventor, a bit like if clockwork girls were real. Glass's father, the inventor Makriakoff has disappeared, but there's one way she might be able to find him. The Wishlord Trials are about to start, and if Glass wins, she'll get a rendez-vous with the Wishlord. As his name implies, he grants wishes, but only one to the winner of the Trials. Glass is determined to get in and battle her way to the end, even if the judges and other contestants don't think a delicate girl made of glass and metal can fight against human muscle, weapons, and cruelty.

The Angels of Phnom Penh

Binh Ca, whose name used to be different, is a tattoo artist's assistant and nothing more since the Java-Celebes Military Junta destroyed the Neo-Angkor People's Alliance, but when her old commander, a woman by the name of Kattina comes calling, her life once again changes. Kattina wants her to take up her old armour, to infiltrate a factory that used to produce the singlemost powerful weapon of her people: The Angels of Phnom Penh, and find something possibly even stronger. The Angels of Death. To do that, Binh Ca has to use her wits, her ally Hy Kim, and every memory of the war she can summon. Only if she can find the Angels, she might have a chance at kicking the JaCelebes out of her country and returning safety to the streets.

The Lifesmith's Daughter

 Kat (name might still change) never knew she had a different father until the General came to find her. He needs her, but his urgency has nothing to do with love. He needs her to confront her demonic mother, to trick a goddess into giving him her power, and only then, he will release the Lifesmith who has raised her. The goddess however offers a different deal: if Kat frees her, Kat will have her power, to do with as she pleases. The problem is that Kat doesn't have any magic- she'd never been taught how to use it. The only things she can call her own are the swords and shields, the animals, the tiny war-machine she whittles from wood like the Lifesmith showed her.

The Nightmare Conquest

Xia Shan thought she left the life of a Command tactician behind when the war against the Kines ended, but now, she's starting to dream about them again, and the things they did to her people when she was young. After the war, she sequestered herself on a tiny farming planet with a boy she saved from the destroyed planet Kalkattan, but when the boy starts to show signs of an alien illness and her old General calls, she has to choose: fight for Command once again and risk the peace she's gained, or flee the people who nearly destroyed her in their battle against the alien foe, and try to save Horus's life.

 

The books have been professionally edited and I've so far got covers for Glass. I'm working on the rest. (It's more difficult than I thought to get exactly the cover you want!) I'll update if there's any development or the date has set for these babies to go live!

Side note: I'm still trying to find a way to get stories to you for free. That's also more difficult than I thought. But let's see what happens!

See you then!

WIP Progress Report

Hey everyone!

It's been a long day already for me. I finished editing Catching Fireflies's bonus draft (I did not choose the adding-another-8k-words-to-the-story life! The adding-words-life chose me!) and it's complete at 9k words. These 9k words were edited over the last three and a half weeks since my post on 10X WIP here.

Today I'd like to report on my progress and show you what I have done since I started setting actual tangible goals to work on every day. If you want, you can read my initial post about these 10X WIPs (by the way from Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule) through the link above.

Let's get started with my WIP list as it was three and a half weeks ago.

• editing the fairy tale Catching Fireflies.
• editing Of One Mind.
• editing Eye in the Sky.
• editing Hourglass.(And the other books in the series)
• finishing Ris's story.
• writing the NEW STORY.

• publishing short story collections. Into the Deep, Xenos, and (placeholder name) nice magical stories.
• publishing Elegy of the Stars.
• publishing Warlike/The Torn Earth.  

  I've so far done:

• editing the fairy tale Catching Fireflies. (The updated version will be on KDP tomorrow! Yey! Hype!)
• editing Of One Mind.
• editing Eye in the Sky.
• editing Hourglass.(And the other books in the series)
• finishing Ris's story.
• writing the NEW STORY.

• publishing short story collections. Into the Deep, Xenos, and (placeholder name) nice magical stories.
• publishing Elegy of the Stars.
• publishing Warlike/The Torn Earth.

I have also edited Immortal, which was not on the list to begin with, and am writing two more short stories as well. These are a bit more difficult and longer than my 9k average short story word count. In addition to this I'm committed to one blog post a day (at least) and have been actively improving my author profiles on various sites and finding/hiring new artists for book covers.

Let me give you some thoughts on how planning is working out for me.

1.) Having goals actually makes me sit down and work

2.) I often don't feel motivated to write still but I do it anyway. I have a goal to hit.

3.) The more often I sit down to write the more often I will find SOMETHING to write

4.) In the last three and a half weeks I've been more productive than during the last two years before them

I think the last point is the most important. I started to plan as an experiment (I'm usually someone who does not like to plan what they will do and when) and to be able to talk about my experience with it. As soon as I sat down to plan I found out I actually LIKE planning. I just don't like when my plans go awry. (But of course they do). Still. The numbers don't lie and the numbers are quite awesome (see 4.) again!).

Why don't you join me in my experiment? Come and be productive with me! I promise you'll still be able to procrastinate (still working on getting rid of that habit...) BUT you will also get much more done than you ever thought you could!

Try it out? Tell WriteBot about your own experiment! Let the comment section be open!

Have a good day/night! WriteBot