Despite good intentions, it has been too long since my last post.
So, what is my justification for the wait? What excuse do I offer? Well, I have been publishing. (Bows, and waits for the swell of applause . . . and waits . . .)
Last summer I finally put two of my Starship stories together in an ebook for sale the Kindle Store on Amazon. Starships got a couple of good reviews along with very few sales. Promotion is the thing, and I didn’t do any—at least not yet.
Now I have my King’s fantasy trilogy up for sale. Several people have inquired, so I thought I would relate a short history of my writing process for these books.
I started writing the first book, King’s Exile, February 18, 2011 after rolling scenes and plots around in my head for several years previously. By November of the next year I was nearing the climax of King’s Dragon, the second book. Writing King’s Crown took from mid-February 2013 to December 19 of that year.
I did a fair amount of revision while I wrote. Some days the main story line just stalled; I didn’t know what came next. When that happened, I would go back and revise. It kept me in the story, and it give me a chance to fix some really crappy writing. On occasion I also had to return to what I had written because as the plot forged ahead, I changed things and make up stuff that forced me to go back and make adjustments.
At the end of December, 2013, I sought help from a professional editor. After working on the plot and characters in a developmental edit, she helped me with copy editing—ensuring I used nothing but the bestest grammar. Four rounds of editing finished up in the late summer of 2015. At that point I enlisted help from my former professional colleague, Sherry Howard, to prepare the final copy.
That was hardly the end of the story. The final proofreading and editing took longer than expected (as does everything I attempt). At that point, I had to reformat everything and upload the files for publication. January 12, 2016 King’s Exile went on sale in Amazon’s Kindle Store. The other two books followed shortly. Getting the files ready for Create Space took additional time, but I’m in the final stages of having print copies of the books available. I also put the books up on Smashwords where the ebooks will be distributed to Apple’s iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and others.
Even without me having time to promote the books, sales are chugging long. I’m actually making money at this. Well, sort of. I haven’t recovered my costs yet, but at least the flow of money has reversed. Unfortunately, getting these books on the market has meant I’ve had to postpone writing new material. Dragon-Bound Thief, a fourth book in the Chronicles of the Dragon-Bound is about a half to two-thirds done. I have a third Starship story which crashed last summer, and I have not had a chance to get back to it for revisions.