It's been a long time since I've posted anything in my blog, so there's a mountain of news from the Gilbert pen!
After some long, deep and very meaningful chats with myself, I concluded that starting my indie publishing career (I hope!) with a potentially six book series is possibly a tad ambitious. Consequently, I've dusted off my long-suffering techno-thriller, 360 and begun work on the fourth draft with the intention of getting it ready for publishing before the end of the year.
That means The Wickedest War, my previous work in progress, is being rested and I hope it will benefit from the many lessons I've learnt and continue to learn from publishing 360.
So, I have been working on a project during the last year-and-a-bit of blogging silence. I've been working hard on the fourth draft of 360 and it's been an educational and emotional experience. I've always been poor at keeping the word counts down on my novels and 360 was no exception. The first three drafts hovered around the 142,000 word mark. I lopped off a hundred words here and there between each draft, but I always managed to justify the survival every scene to myself.
Not so with the fourth draft. 360's been on a diet. An extreme diet. When I powered off my laptop last night, the word count stood at a slimmer and svelte 113,000 words. Yep, I've been merciless. A few thousand words will have to go back in to fill in some of the gaps but generally speaking, I don't think it will go much beyond 115,000 words.
I've also rewritten other sections to make the whole thing much tighter and pacier. This week's goal is to finish that off and complete the fourth draft. So, it's very nearly ready to hand it over to my ever loyal and patient beta readers for their views and comments and it'll be interesting to see what they think of the revisions. I know a couple of them liked it just the way it was.
The other thing that's occupied me recently is the development of my online presence and conversations with other writers have convinced me that I really do need to get my backside in gear and knuckle down to keeping my blog up-to-date and my Twitter stream flowing. If you're a tweeter then please do follow me @trebligkcaj.
As for this blog, I'm planning to post a Muse News every Monday with all the latest news on my works in progress and any other events worth sharing.
Then on Thursdays I'll be posting something I'm calling Notes In The Margin. Those posts will cover subjects that I've been thinking about (I do lots of thinking) and will usually be writing related, but I may stray into more general stuff if the whim takes me. The first one (this Thursday) will be about doing accents for audio books, so be sure to check that out!
And if I find anything else of interest to post between all that, I will!
Until next Monday, that's all for this week's Muse News!
After some long, deep and very meaningful chats with myself, I concluded that starting my indie publishing career (I hope!) with a potentially six book series is possibly a tad ambitious. Consequently, I've dusted off my long-suffering techno-thriller, 360 and begun work on the fourth draft with the intention of getting it ready for publishing before the end of the year.
That means The Wickedest War, my previous work in progress, is being rested and I hope it will benefit from the many lessons I've learnt and continue to learn from publishing 360.
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| The Wickedest War - rested but not forgotten! [Photo: Jack Gilbert] |
So, I have been working on a project during the last year-and-a-bit of blogging silence. I've been working hard on the fourth draft of 360 and it's been an educational and emotional experience. I've always been poor at keeping the word counts down on my novels and 360 was no exception. The first three drafts hovered around the 142,000 word mark. I lopped off a hundred words here and there between each draft, but I always managed to justify the survival every scene to myself.
Not so with the fourth draft. 360's been on a diet. An extreme diet. When I powered off my laptop last night, the word count stood at a slimmer and svelte 113,000 words. Yep, I've been merciless. A few thousand words will have to go back in to fill in some of the gaps but generally speaking, I don't think it will go much beyond 115,000 words.
I've also rewritten other sections to make the whole thing much tighter and pacier. This week's goal is to finish that off and complete the fourth draft. So, it's very nearly ready to hand it over to my ever loyal and patient beta readers for their views and comments and it'll be interesting to see what they think of the revisions. I know a couple of them liked it just the way it was.
The other thing that's occupied me recently is the development of my online presence and conversations with other writers have convinced me that I really do need to get my backside in gear and knuckle down to keeping my blog up-to-date and my Twitter stream flowing. If you're a tweeter then please do follow me @trebligkcaj.
As for this blog, I'm planning to post a Muse News every Monday with all the latest news on my works in progress and any other events worth sharing.
Then on Thursdays I'll be posting something I'm calling Notes In The Margin. Those posts will cover subjects that I've been thinking about (I do lots of thinking) and will usually be writing related, but I may stray into more general stuff if the whim takes me. The first one (this Thursday) will be about doing accents for audio books, so be sure to check that out!
And if I find anything else of interest to post between all that, I will!
Until next Monday, that's all for this week's Muse News!
