Day 178

Spoiler Alert! May contain planning-stage plot/character details or other spoilers!

09 Mar 2017

So I think I found a cover artist! Man, that happened fast! The paper artist from the UK never got back to me, so no original art, but there’s someone with really pro work (up to and including custom photo shoots!) - sadly, from the states so exchange, but I haven’t seen any freelancers with the quality she offers. It was one of those power-of-social-media things, where she liked something of mine, then I checked her out and she was running a promotion, then talks, then there’s a contract waiting and homework to do! I’m putting off sealing the deal until tonight b/c distractions, but it’s looking like a pretty sure thing. And the price is a little on the high range, but I didn’t want to go cheap and ‘Indie-looking’. So around $700 USD for a full cover that I can use for ebooks and print (fingers crossed). Exciting how real stuff is getting, but also scary! Like, now I have to write something worthy of real pro cover art, lol. And probably step up my branding game… One of the real hard things about all of this is the level of investment, both time and money. Without any additional marketing investment, the bill for prepaid services will run well to around $5K, plus 3 years of my time basically full time, plus I’m sure I’ll have to spend something on marketing at some point here, and I totally haven’t looked into printing costs, in case I want to have an alternative to CreateSpace to work with… so yeah, motivation to write an excellent book that people will love and want to buy and talk about, but also mad pressure!

Couldn’t fall asleep last night for some reason, so I polished off Garth Nix’s Goldenhand, which was typically excellent and inspired me to write better fantasy (not that I actually have any high fantasy on the books, but still), and also made me glad I couldn’t remember much about that first book in the Abhorsen series. Because, spoilers. In fact, just don’t read this paragraph. Anyways, so I finished it and wasn’t tired, so I decided to take the plunge on The Lovely Reckless by Kami Garcia, which was absolutely amazing. I read 3/4 of it or more last night, and finished up this morning. Loved it, and I’m not usually that into contemporary fiction. It just had great atmosphere. The romance stuff wasn’t too gushy, but it was appealing, and really explained the whole bad-boy context well (with probably some idealistic spin, but whatever), and all the story line threads came together masterfully at the end.

Speaking of masterful writing (lol), I’m definitely not finishing rewrites this week, but I was pretty pleased with yesterday’s progress. A new record: over 6K words in 3 chapters! With lots and lots of recycling, of course, but still. Given my track record, and start time today, that means I’ll get next to nothing done today, but still! Sneaking up on that climax and ending, so maybe I’ll actually get through this and have a chance to clean it up and check for something that makes sense (fingers crossed) before deadline! Which is good, ‘cause my editor checked in with me today and I think we’re go for the original timeline. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty nervous to get back into trying to sort things out by the book map, but it’s the best/only way to get everything lining up, and I think there may still be too many themes/storylines and ideas floating around muddying the waters. So that’ll be fun. And I’m probably done for this week after today; out to see family on Friday/Sat, so it’ll be amazing if I can even get my webserial TGOoH out on time…

Isn’t funny how some days, nothing changes, and then others, there’s a ton going on? In addition to correspondence with my editor and cover artist, there was a recruiter getting in touch (so, hasty resume polishing) this morning. Would be a massive change of plans to take a FT day job in Vancouver again at this stage of the game, but might be worth looking at funding my adventures…

Thursday

Start Time: 3:45 pm

Location: Abbotsford; home; couch

Post Index