Revving the Engines

 

[Revving Engines toward launch--source]

Update: I apologize. I'm still poised to publish the first Doomimals book. I've just been working 12-16 hour days and have not been able to squeeze out the energy and time combined to get my fully prepared manuscript posted. But the holidays and time off is coming. I should be posting a publication date soon. We have a webpage prepared to go with it. It just doesn't have links yet. Chickens should come soon after the launch of Doomimals. Also, soon after, will be the first Kindle Vella segment of my first romance novel, After the Dream. It is coming soon. I'll let you know as soon as I have dates. 

Revising for a Contest

[Romance novels-source]

Last blog, I mentioned that I was working on a couple of Christian romance novels. I started my serious revision on the first one, including filling out the story, adding to the first section that will be going up on Kindle Vela soon. I then submitted that first segment for a contest. I've also been reading a lot of romance novels, so I would better know how to revise and structure these novels. As any writer knows, a good writer also reads their genre. 

[McGuffin Puffin-source]

Meanwhile, my boy, Ax the Narrator, worked on revising short stories for the same contest.  He has a character who is a silly parody of Indiana Jones, McGuffin Puffin, who is always on the quest for a new McGuffin and drags the chickens along. We worked on fleshing that story out as well as revising another. He now has 15+ books and several shorter pieces that just need a final revision and a cover.  

[Main Character of book 1, by Ghostelle.]

Meanwhile, I'm finishing the major revision for book one of Doomimals, Cockadoodle-DOOM, today, and then I will be proofreading as well as choosing and prepping a cover and formatting, hopefully this week. We're close to getting ready to launch on KDP. I'll soon be announcing a release date as well as the launch of a new webpage since we took the old one down.  We're really close. 

Beta Readers and Roadblocks

[source]

There's good news and bad news.  The good news is I'm about to have a break in my work schedule due to the holidays, so I will have serious time to work on my books.  Most days, I only get some editing done on my boy's books at the end of a day filled with hours of other work.  It would be so nice to do this full time.  Also, I finally have found some readers for my books, so I've at least had most of the first half of my series read by someone else and have had feedback given.  Two of them are willing to tackle more. 

[source]

The bad news is my illustrator has had serious technical difficulties and may not be able to proceed much further with illustrating.  She was all but done with the second book.  This leaves 8 books to illustrate and 9/10 needing serious revision (the first one is mostly done with revision, though it still needs some).  But I have time for a while to knock out illustrations, figure out Scrivener in order to work over the whole set, and have been told by a handful of readers that they've really liked what they've read.  This all gives me hope that in the next month, I can really accomplish a lot, possibly get this first set ready to go.  Here's hoping.