Grave New Draft

25.7k/65k (estimated)

Not bad for a week of work.

I’m trying something new with this draft: crank it out as fast as possible and worry about the details later.

Okay, it’s not entirely new. I’ve done it before. Hell, it’s how I wrote the original GNW. But I’ve been taking on various projects over the last few years and the paid work always comes first, which means I tend to work on my own ideas in fits and starts. Some authors work well in that way; I…don’t. I want to get the entire thing out on the page and then finesse it into shape afterward. If I linger too long on anything it starts to go bad. I don’t lose interest — it’s worse than that.

I start to hate it.

I’m pretty sure most authors go through a phase where they hate what they’re working on. I will go through it myself regardless of how fast I write or how good the first draft is. But I have a unique sort of work loathing that pops up when I hang out with characters for longer than I should. Familiarity breeding contempt, I guess.

Anyway, Vibeke and the gang are trying to weasel their way out of the latest situation. I have a general outline I’m following, but leaving myself wriggle room in case exciting ideas spring up. I’ve also had a little help — this will be the second or third iteration of book three, which means I do have a lot of previous material to draw on if it’s suitable. So far, a good amount of it has managed to work. So no, that 27k isn’t entirely new verbiage.

My plan at the moment is bang through the first draft, then set it aside to percolate while I do a heavy revision on another zombie adventure (yes) in the pipeline, as well as put the final edits on a new serial coming out this summer, if all goes well. Then it’s back to Grave3 for the heavy revision, and eventually it would be nice to get the thing out this year.

Maybe.

We’ll see.

As we’ve seen before, I’m quite good at screwing things up. 🙂

DBG is up at B&N

Nook users, it’s there.

This time around, getting it properly formatted for Nook was almost a bigger challenge than for Kindle; I’m not sure what’s changed since releasing GNW last October, but while looking at it on my Nook and at the various B&N previewers, I came across some irritating bugs. I think they’re stamped out — like I said, hiring a pro for this later — I’ve been through it twice on my Nook and on the previewer, and everything looks okay this time.

It’s priced at $2.99. For a 65,000-word book, I think that’s fair. It’s still cheaper than any latte you might sip while reading it.

The next step — for the existing books, anyway — is probably to purchase ISBNs for them. I’m happy with Amazon and B&N, but an ISBN can open the door to other markets, namely Apple Books, Kobo, and some others. They tend to be a bit pricey on their own, so   buying them before I knew how this would all shake out didn’t make sense, but you can purchase them in batches, and now that I’ve got three, well…why not.

Wonder of wonders, I have some interviews coming up (well, one, anyway) so I guess I better brush up on sounding vaguely intelligent.