Hunting for Silver Linings

I knew the first six months of 2022 would be rough - two projects at work and Book 4 to release at home. But this week was super-overloaded. Every year, my company has a review of "everyone" in order to set raises and promotions--we did that this week, and we'd moved to a web-based interface that kept locking up. The work will bleed into next week because of the bad interface. In addition, I had to take my wife's car and my car into the shop (separate mornings), and we had to juggle "return to school after COVID" doctor appointments. On the other hand, some of the kids' activities were cancelled because so many folks were out with COVID, so I guess there was a flip side that eased our schedule too. Give me a break here--I'm hunting for silver linings.

Oh, silver lining #2--part of the busyness this week was planning a trip to Italy with my wife. Every seven years, Intel gives you a three-year window to take an 8-week sabbatical. I'm in the "use it or lose it" phase of my third one. So this summer, after my work projects finish up (so I better hit the targets on those, and it'll be TIGHT), we will fly to Italy for around ten days. Never been. My wife has never been to Europe at all (pre-COVID, I had to travel for work, Israel and Germany). I wish we could stay longer, but we can't afford to bring the kids, and we can't leave the kids behind any longer than that either.

Writing Updates

I plugged away at editing Book 4 in the shadows of my days. I’ve hit the parts that need structural edits, and made a first pass of changes. I don’t think they workedr, and I’ll have to scrap them and try again. I think the ideas behind the changes were right, but they don’t integrate well. For now, I’ll admit to myself I bumped the needle and scratched the record, but I’ll let the song play out, then try again.

It would be great to have a couple of structural ARC readers that could help me. Structural feedback has to be the toughest kind of feedback for readers to provide--it requires them to have their own opinions about the characters in someone else's story, about how people behave, and about how the story could be presented differently.

In this particular case, I want to create some subtle hints of events early in Book 4, so that when THE BIG BAD WOLF comes in, it's believable. But my hints have all the subtlety of a hammer on the forehead.

Book Plates--My helpful Street Team walked me through creating Book Plates. I ordered a few of those to send to folks as signed stickers that can be added to printed books (way cheaper than mailing a signed book). I didn't know that was a thing!

I still play around with the idea of trading cards as well. I continued with the one for Elliah. @forteza_twins says the dragon (my logo) is too much, and it should maybe go on the flip side. It doubles the cost to do double-sided, but it would allow me to put quotes or whatnot (game stats? do we need a Guardian League game?) The trading card effort, along with the character reveals that @inkqueenmarketing has created, makes me realize that I don't have character sketches for a lot of the characters: Rocks, Bear, Cynthia, Smith, Gav, Slooti, Cordoro, Lani, Venki, Simmi, Thudd, Matt, Melani... I checked my database and I have 82 characters (obviously not all main characters). I better get started on pics!

o To-Do list for writing last week: