Week Two: 11366 words

Worked a little on three different books this week, Dragonsgate, Squire, and Nobody Nowhere. I'm still a little nervous about not staying focused on one project alone until it's done, but so far I'm pretty happy with everything I'm doing and satisfied with my word count. 

With Dragonsgate, I'm finally hammering down exactly why each character is in the novel. You think that's something I'd figure out before I started writing the book, but sometimes when I write characters just show up and stick around, volunteering to do more work. On the flip side, I also have legacy characters who wind up in the book just because they were in the previous books and I feel like I should do something with them. These are frequently more challenging because, if I did my job right in the previous book, they've already had a character arc that resolved their emotional conflict and brought them to whatever goal they were pursuing in the last book. Finding a new challenge and motivation that grows out of their previously stated goals can be tricky. 

Two of my characters, Anza and Zeeky, have really just been along for the ride in this book. I'd given them surface reasons to be present, but hadn't really dug deeply into their emotions, and why the mission they are on is important to them. This week, I finally got my handle on Zeeky. Anza, though, is still shrugging off most to the emotional conflicts I keep offering her. I feel like if I can find her grand goal, the book is really going to come to life. But, who knows? It might be the second draft before she decides to play along. I might just have to write a draft where she does what she needs to do to advance the plot and figure out why she's doing it later. Step one of writing a good novel is to first write a bad novel. There are a hundred balls you have to keep in the air while you juggle all the elements of a book. Sometimes you just need to let a ball drop if you want to keep the other 99 in the air. 

Squire is turning into an interesting project. I've made a decision to keep the chapters short, under 1500 words. This isn't completely arbitrary. I'm hoping to target some younger readers with this series, and writing short is forcing me to keep things simple and direct. I think my ordinary style is pretty readable, but I'm also aware that I can be somewhat wordy. A lot of my epic fantasy chapters get close to 6000 words. Part of this is because of the "epic" modifier. A have large casts and lots of plot threads and take time to describe exotic creatures and settings. Squire is going to have a single POV character and a much smaller cast than my previous fantasies. It will still be recognizably epic fantasy, but streamlined. 

My last project, Nobody Nowhere, has been the most fun to write so far. It's still in the early stages of character introduction and plot initiation. My challenge with it will be deciding how many POV characters I want to use. I've already introduced three. I feel certain I need at least one more. But the book has so many interesting characters the temptation is to give them all a little POV time. There are artistic reasons to restrict the POV characters, but another part of me is wondering just how big a mess I'd create if I just went for it and crammed in a dozen POVs. Oh well. Well see. The best way to find out is just to keep writing! 

Reading update: Didn't get to listen to more of Master and Margarita because I had a bunch of chapters of the audio version of Dragonseed to listen to this week. But, I'm close to a quarter of the way through Roots now. It's definitely a great book, but the pacing lags in parts. I can only assume there are some really big time jumps later in the book if this story is supposed to follow the family through to the present day. 

Week 1: 10,400

10,400 words for the first week of January. I've downloaded a tracking calendar that tracks Sunday through Saturday, so I'm cheating a bit on this first week by including writing numbers from last Sunday and Monday, Moving forward my weekly word counts should be cleaner.

This week I wrote two chapters of Nobody Nowhere and finished a chapter of Dragonsgate. The Dragonsgate chapter was pure infodump for the last 3000 words or so, and this informatuion will almost certainly will be chopped up and spread around in later drafts. But, it's a relief to have it behind me. "Show, don't tell," is on most people's list of good writing tips, but it's also probably the number one source of writer's block. You have something big and important to convey and you tie yourself into knots thinking of how to convey it without just having a character deliver a long monologue. But, sometimes, you just need to write the monologue. And at least my monologue is vital to the plot. It's not like Victor Hugo in Les Misérables veering off into a dozen extraneous chapters describing the sewers of Paris.

Goals for the next week: 10,000 words, duh. Very likely in a similar configuration of one Dragonsgate chapter and two Nobody chapters.

Also, along with my writing goals, I'll start posting reading goals. Right now, I'm reading Roots. It's about 900 pages and I'm only 30 pages in, but it's got a good, clean style and engaging characters. I'll try to read at least 200 pages this week. In audio, I'm listening to The Master and Margarita. I listen to audio less frequently since I don't have a commute any more, but hope to listen to at least two more chapters this week.

2019 Goals

2018 wasn't a bad year for me as an author. I released three new novels (The Lawless Series, available here), a collection of novellas (Dragonsgate: Preludes & Omens), oversaw the release of five audio books (you can see all my titles here) and did eighteen conventions in four states. I also wrote three novellas and two short stories that went out free to readers of my newsletter. (See the header above for the sign up link.) Foolishly, I didn't write down anywhere how many newsletter subscribers I had at the beginning of the year, but I think I've added roughly 150 new subscribers. I've also released four of my titles in hardcover.

All and all, between the novels, the hardcovers, the audiobooks, and Dragonsgate, I've got twelve new products to sell. Again, not a bad year... except for one kind of important aspect of being a writer. I've got no idea how many words I wrote in 2018. Only one of the Lawless books, Victory, was started in 2018. Big Ape did go through rewrites, and the Dragonsgate collection went through multiple drafts. My best estimate based on final word counts is that I wrote, plus the chapters I've written on my latest dragon novel, amount to about 180k of first draft material. Which is an underwhelming number. Under 3500 words a week. I quit my day job for this?

Back when I had a day job, I told people I could produce 10,000 words a week. Which I could, but only for a few months at a time. Then I'd take a break, and switch into editing mode. It's hard to keep 10,000 words of first draft coming out each week because the imagination runs dry. On the other hand, I've got no shortage of ideas. I frequently find myself staring at a blank screen while I'm working on my latest project while ideas for other books prance around before me. I normally shoo these uninvited ideas away and try to focus on the project at hand.

It's time to shake up my habits. My goal in 2019 is to master the art of working on multiple projects during the same week or even the same day. If one set of characters doesn't show up that day, I'll write whoever does show up.

Second, it's embarrassing that I don't have a precise word count of what I've written this year. That changes moving forward. For the rest of the year I'll be posting a weekly update of my word count for the year. My goal is still relatively modest: 10,000 words a week, with two weeks of vacation, to produce 500,000 words of new first draft this year. This is a huge leap past anything I've done before, or event attempted. I did 366,000 words a few years ago, but there I had an elaborate system of crediting myself fractional rates for second draft and third draft, and gave myself bonus points for releasing books or selling short stories. This time, the 500,000 is a goal only for fresh writing, though I will count blog posts and other non-fiction.

Wish me luck!

Best Photos of the Year: Up Close

This year I logged over 1850 miles biking, hiking and kayaking, usually with Cheryl at my side, at least once she recovered from knee surgery at the beginning of the year. These are some of our favorite photos from the year. As befits the category title "Up Close," there are a fair number of selfies. The next post will be "Big Picture," and we won't look quite as obsessed with ourselves in those shots.  

I've been to "the Point" at Garden City a dozen times, but this was the first time I was there when the tide was low enough I saw all the sea urchins. 

Yes, this is a zoom lens, but we were still very close to this gator. He lives in a pond near Myrtle Beach and people obviously feed him scraps despite signs saying not to. In any case, he doesn't mind being photographed. 

Technically, we didn't actually get close for this photo. Probably 200 feet away with a zoom lens. But we were in a kayak. Getting something to focus at maximum zoom while you're bobbing on moving water is a challenge. 

It was a good year for beautiful spiders. 

We didn't have to go out into the wild to find this buck. He was just munching on leaves in someone's front yard. 

James Maxey Discovery Day 12-15-2018

I'm dismayed to report that there are still some people in the world who haven't read all my books. I sometimes wake in the night, covered in sweat, with the nagging feeling that I've failed humanity. We live in a troubled age. I can't help but think that if everyone was reading my books, many of the world's problems would seem less daunting. Yes, there's E coli in our salads, dysfunction at every level of government, and our oceans are filling up with plastic. On the bright side, unlike the characters in my novels, we're very unlikely to be eaten by a dragon today, or be crushed by a giant robot, or hunted by space-gorillas. Mine is an enduring message of hope! I feel compelled to share it with the world.

It's time to take action! Saturday, December 15, 2018, is hereby designated "James Maxey Discovery Day."

What is James Maxey Discover Day? That's the day I make it easy for you to download most of my ebooks for free or for drastically discounted prices. Some of the books will be free or discounted for a few days, but a few are for Saturday only, so get 'em fast! There's a little something here for everyone. Action! Humor! Romance! Mystery! Monkeys! Dragons! Robots! Pirates! Singing cowboys... oh, wait, sorry, no singing cowboys. Look, you can't have everything. But you can still have a lot of things. For free!

Here's the full list of free and discounted books for the promo:

FREE BOOKS for December 15, 2018

Nobody Gets the Girl: A Superhero Novel

Who can save us? Nobody!

Cut Up Girl: Lawless Book One

Exploding clones to the rescue!

There is No Wheel

Dark, funny, twisted short fiction!

Bad Wizard

War Zeppelins versus winged monkeys!

Dragonsgate: Preludes & Omens

Bitterwood confronts his greatest enemy!

Available at 99 cents on December 15:

(Some don't change prices until 8:00am PST)

Bitterwood: the Complete Collection

Post-apocalyptic science fiction dragon war! 

Dragon Apocalypse: the Complete Collection

Dungeon-crawling, monster-stabbing, treasure-grabbing high adventure!

Big Ape: Lawless Book Two

Man-ape battles robots and dinosaurs!

Victory: Lawless Book Three

Aliens have stolen the moon!

Covenant: A Superteam Novel*

Superheroes hounded by dark secrets!
*And, apparently for this title, I set the discount for the UK only and didn't discover the error until early Saturday morning when it's too late to fix it! My apologies to the rest of the world! But the book is only 2.99, so it's still a pretty good deal! 

The Jagged Gate

Twelve tangled tales of suspense! 

Since the dragon collections each contain four novels, if you download everything on this page you'll wind up with 17 novels for less than you'd pay for a footlong sub. Grab 'em while they're hot! And, if you decide to buy the sub instead, tell them to hold the lettuce.

A Year of Conventions, Hardcovers

2018 was my busiest year ever for conventions. I did more events in 2018 as Piedmont Laureate, but those were mostly workshops, readings, and panels. While the workshops required a lot of advance work, for the most part the actual events only lasted an hour or two, and all events were confined to within an hour of my house. This year, I travelled as far away as Kentucky and many of the events were multi-day affairs like the Louisville Supercon, three days of sales, plus two days of travel. With 18 events under my belt for the year, I'm in a strange space between completely burned out and extremely invigorated. 

The burn out is obvious. I essentially run a travelling book store. Every event requires a lot of set up and breakdown, plus there's the accounting hassles of trying to keep up with sales taxes in different jurisdictions, keeping up with mileage and receipts, and the headache of keeping up with stock. As great as it would be to just order several hundred copies of each title I sell in one big order at the beginning of the year, the reality is that I only have so much space available for storage. Our spare bedroom is already stuffed with cases of books. I also can never be quite certain what's going to sell at a convention. At most events, my big dragon books are my best sellers, so I normally keep a stock level of at least two cases of each title. But, I've also done events where my dragon books get ignored while I sell out of superhero titles. If I had some crystal ball to know how much of each title to bring to an event, it would make my life a lot easier. It's depressing to cart home full cases of titles, and a little stressful wondering if I might have sold more if I hadn't run out of a title. 

While there's a lot of work and planning going into the events, I'm also invigorated by them. Today, online, I've sold about twenty books. This isn't bad, but it's happening in the background and doesn't carry a lot of emotional weight. But, at a convention if I sell twenty books in a day,it's a rush! My last sales day of the year, December 2 at Louisville Supercon, I sold 32 books, and probably interacted with close to a hundred people in order to make these sales. This much socializing really helps keep an introvert like me from withdrawing completely into my own head. 

Some of my favorite encounters at a con are with people who don't even buy my books. I keep little toy dragons at my table, plastic, about two inches long, and I give them free to little kids drawn to my booth by the colorful images. I gave one to a little girl maybe six years old at my last con and saw her walk back down the aisle an hour later holding the dragon in front of her swooping it up and down like it was flying. That made my day. I've also had very geeky conversations about obscure superheroes, gotten to talk with readers about books we had in common, and heard some terrible, terrible jokes. I was giving my pitch to a guy about Bad Wizard, my steampunk Oz novel that involves that essential steampunk mode of transport, the rigid airship. The guy asked, very deadpan, if I knew why Zeppelins were no longer economical to fly. I said I didn't know, and he said, still deadpan, "They're prone to inflation." 

This year has come with something of a learning curve. I've spent a lot of time tweaking marketing material like banners and business cards, and refreshed covers on a couple of books. I've also started adding hardcovers to my line up, and have definitely sold enough to make it worth the effort I put into getting them set up.

Right now, I've got the four titles above available in hardcover. The two dragon books were obvious choices to put out in this premium format. There is No Wheel is the least obvious choice here, since it's a slow seller online, but it actually sells quite well at conventions. Bad Wizard also does well at conventions, and it captures a lot of readers who are only marginally interested in science fiction and fantasy. Many of these readers like the hardcover format. 

Long term, I plan to do a superhero collection called The Complete Nobody, and another collecting my Lawless series. But, first, I need to write a fourth book for each series. I'll also probably do a Dragonsgate collection once I finish that series, and already have in mind a deluxe short story collection that would combine all the stories in There is No Wheel, the Jagged Gate, and new stories I've written since those were published. Some of these are likely to see life in 2019, some probably won't become reality until 2020. 

For now, though, if you want a great gift for the holidays, it's not too late to get your hands on these books! Just click on these links: There is No Wheel, Bad Wizard, Dragon Apocalypse: the Complete Collection, Bitterwood: The Complete Collection.

Or, come buy them from me personally next year! I've already got close to a dozen events lined up, most in North Carolina, but with Virginia and South Carolina getting visits as well, and I'll probably do at least one Tennessee event again as well. Want to know where I'll be and when I'll be there? Sign up for my newsletter! 

Dragonsgate Update: 9 chapters, 45014 words

Just finished chapter nine of Dragonsgate, bringing me to 45014 words on the first draft.

At this point, the two major plots are well under way, though the biggest, most difficult problem the characters are going to face still hasn't been introduced or even hinted at. Structurally this is a problem I'll need to address in the second draft by writing some scenes that are going on outside the awareness of my core POV characters of Bitterwood and Burke. So far, only one chapter has been told from a dragon's POV, which is a very different from the previous Bitterwood books. Of course, in the previous Bitterwood books, I had humans and dragons with close bonds. Jandra's relationship with Vendevorex and Hex was an important part of her character. Shandrazel negotiating with Pet in Dragonforge also gave me a lot of character scenes where dragons and humans had reasons to be together. This time, I'm missing a human/dragon friendship or partnership to work around--so far. The dragons have a lot more to do in the second half of the book.

I feel pretty good about the pace I'm writing the book. Finishing the first draft by the end of the month is still vaguely possible, though I suspect mid-November is a more realistic goal.

Right now, the thing I'm least satisfied with are the emotional plot lines. In the previous books, Jandra really provided the emotional heart of the books, and a lot of the other characters were mostly static as she changed and grew. The great thing about Jandra was that she could make mistakes and have doubts. The problem with using Bitterwood as the actual protagonist of a Bitterwood novel is that he's competent and certain. He's haunted by his past, yes, but I've established him as someone who doesn't agonize over his options before he takes action, and as someone who doesn't waste a lot of time second guessing what he could or should have done. I've got a slowly building subplot for him that will lead him to an emotional revelation, but it's tricky. If I bring it to the forefront, readers will likely guess my plans for him. If I leave it slowly building in the background, his later epiphany might look forced. Oh well. That's why there's first drafts.