I’m revisiting The Mudbow Sisters, my “Sons of Katie Elder with Dwarves” novel, by sending my query to publishers instead of agents this time. That’s how I got Merm-8 first published, and I miss having a book on the shelves. There are people who do read my work. My wife knows someone who read it because she looks for books by local authors. There aren’t as many publishers as agents who take direct, unsolicited submissions so this won’t take long. Most of them have some excluding factor, like being only Christian or only romance, neither of which my book is. And you can tell by the quality of the book…
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Heavy Work for a Little Improvement?
So I’ve got an age-old dilemma on my hands. I’ve finished going through feedback on my 2nd draft of Dwarves of Katie Elder. It was depressing. Although, it’s not like I shouldn’t have expected it. The crux is the plot starts too late. Way too late. 28K words in. But I knew that. I always knew that. I knew that when I made the outline, when I wrote the text. It’s kind of how “The Sons of Katie Elder” goes. I guess Westerns took their time in starting up plot. But the magic is in the dynamics between the sisters, not so much the plot. You don’t need plot for…
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Dwarves of Katie Elder Draft 2 – Really Complete
So I got done with the second draft of Dwarves of Katie Elder. It’s all nicely formatted into an epub and in the hands of my beta reader (wife). I’m not holding out too much hope that it’ll be published. For being a fantasy story, it’s more character-based than plot-based. And it’s pretty short–not an epic swords-and-sorcery series. It’s more about what happens in those tiny towns the heroes pass through. Weird thing about Dwarves of Katie Elder is, in my sequence order of things to write, that it jumped to the head of the line. I can’t remember why. I think it was just inspiration–the pre-writing was fresh in…
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Dwarf Novel Draft 2.0 Complete
Revision progress Pages complete: 100% Word count reduction: 17.8% Time elapsed: 4 months, 9 days It’s not really wholly complete yet. I have to run it through the macros first. So really, the first “door open” manuscript will be version 2.1. But when you’re doing the pages start to finish it seems to take forever. Doing the macros, there’s more of a light at the end of the tunnel. More steps to see how much you have to do until you’re done. The macros are fairly mindless. It’s more about sentence structure and nitty-gritties. I can do it watching TV. Anyway, enjoy this Gwent marketing art I liked.
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Posting Progress – Dwarves Revision
Revision progress Pages complete: 83% Word count reduction: 16% Time elapsed: 3 months, 30 days I would love to create an RPG playable character with a disability, like being in a wheelchair. But the problem is it would provoke so many more obstacles. Dungeons aren’t handicap-accessible. As soon as I encounter the first set of stairs, I’m done for.
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Why Are Dwarves So Slow?
Revision progress Pages complete: 43% Word count reduction: 11.4% Man, revisions on Dwarves of Katie Elder feels like it’s going so slowly. I started on May 21, and two months later, I’m only 43% done. I don’t know what it is, I don’t think I did anything different. I feel like I’m going to the thesaurus every second sentence. Maybe it’s got something to do with my first draft. I tried more of a “word vomit, just get the first draft done” kind of style where I didn’t fret about word choice. I figured anything that needed fixing could be fixed in post (as we say in the movie business).…
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Dwarf Novel Finished
I didn’t mention this at the time because I didn’t want to interrupt my promotion for “Dwarves Can’t Climb Trees” (still available at the low price of $0.99). But on Wednesday, I finished my new novel. Final count: 96,796 words. Its pre-production title is still “Dwarves of Katie Elder” but that’s obviously not final. Realistically, it might be called something like “The Mudbow Sisters” or “Rimehollow”. It’s hard, because fantasy titles always sound so MAX IMPORTANCE, like “Return of the War for the Light Crystal” and “The Last Kingdom of the Final Sword”. Either making it something simple sounding (it reminds me of “The Brothers Karamazov” or “The Fighting Sullivans“)…
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“The Dwarves of Katie Elder” Has Begun
Yep, I started work on my next publishable (hopefully) novel. Just making a blog entry to mark the date that production officially started.
