SPFBO success
If you've been reading these newsletters, you know I have enjoyed entering my books in contests for indie authors. Last year, Daros was named a semi-finalist in the first-ever Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC). This year, I entered The Woeling Lass in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO), which is a more established competition (this is its eighth year). The 300 books in the competition are divided among ten blogger groups, and each group names a finalist. The Lass ended up in a four-way tie to be the finalist from its group, which was very exciting (and not good for my peaceful sleep as I waited for the results). They broke the tie and selected one of the other three tied books, so I'm out of the running, but they said some very kind things. Here's the review, and here's a picture I made with a couple of the quotes.
Space Marines!
I just finished the first draft of my current project, which is another science fiction book set in my far-future setting where Earth and its early colonies have succumbed to a vast and terrible war, and humanity is rebuilding along the fringes that escaped the conflict.. They've formed a governing body called the Council, protected by the Patrol, and they've encountered some aliens both friendly and hostile along the way. That's the future history I developed for Daros. This year, starting on May 19th, I wrote another book that uses the same broad future history storyline as a setting, although there's no other connection between the books.
This book is about a former marine in the Patrol, Jess Amiko. She has had a rough time since mustering out, and she's now working a security job on a far-flung world named Kenai that's just been discovered by humans. It turns out there are some alien ruins there, so by law, those need to be explored and documented before Kenai can be settled. It turns out there's a mystery behind the ruins, and also some plotting and deception among the humans, all of which Jess becomes involved in without wanting to.
I had a lot of fun writing the first draft, and I really wrote up a storm at the end of October trying to get it finished before November, when I wanted to take part in my fourth NaNoWriMo with a new book. I didn't expect Jess' story to run as long as my earlier books, but it turned out I was wrong. To do justice to what she uncovers and to work towards an exciting conclusion, I ended up at about 104,000 words. Here's the last week or so - you can see my pace picked up a lot, with over 7,000 words on Halloween.
I've got to do a detailed editing pass, and then I need to share the book with my early readers and incorporate their feedback, and then I need to send it off to my copy editor, so it's a way out yet before it will be available to read. But this is a huge step, and an exciting one. I really like how the story turned out. Now I just need to do some fixing, supplementing, tuning, and pruning. I do have the cover art ready to go, so I just need to get that to the designer now. I'm really excited to share it with you.
NaNoWriMo
I'm planning on taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) again. This is an annual event where writers try to focus on writing for a month. The official goal is 50,000 words, which would be a pretty short novel, but which is a very quick pace. I've done three NaNos before (the past three years), and I've reached 59K, 25K (but I gave up halfway through that year because of turmoil at the college where I worked), and then last year, my first one as a full-time writer, I wrote an entire 103,000 word novel (Got Trouble, waiting on some feedback, hopefully coming out soon!). I don't know if I can match the pace of last year, but I'm eager to get going on it and see. I've barely got an idea for a first scene, so I have no idea how it will go. I need to finish this newsletter so I can start!
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