Month: May 2011 (Page 1 of 2)

Progress (such as it is), and a Poll Winner

May 27, 2011 / Jean / 0 Comments

I’ll spare you the daily word count and just tell you that I only wrote a total of 2,721 words on Dominion this week. Monday and Tuesday, I didn’t produce any words of actual story, but I did go over the outline and ended up adding several scenes. Yesterday, I didn’t write at all, using the day instead to run errands and do chores and generally be domestic. On the days I did write, I didn’t write as much as I would have liked to. I blame a client WordPress project that’s been giving me fits all week. The stress is definitely affecting my writing.

Said project came to a screeching halt today thanks to some installation problems that won’t get dealt with until next week, so I suddenly find myself with a couple of free hours. I really wanted to spend it writing some flash fiction. I would love to institute a Flash Fiction Friday for this blog. But I’m totally coming up blank. I’ve even tried several different story idea generators (of which I think this one is my favorite), but I’m just staring at them going “durrrrr.” Clearly, I can’t brain today. I think I’m just going to watch Glee instead.

But not before I reveal the winner of my cover poll. Each cover got at least one vote (and “none of them” got no votes, which pleases me), but Cover #1 was the clear winner, with four votes here and another two write-in votes on Facebook. So (barring a little more tweaking and/or the owner of the original creepy little girl pic getting back to me), here is the probably official e-book cover for Hungry Child:

Thanks to everybody who voted and left feedback. Y’all are a helpful bunch.

Logo!

May 25, 2011 / Jean / 4 Comments

I still have to mail in the paperwork to make it official, but Daydreamer Publishing has a logo!

Here’s the black and white version that will be used for print:

And here’s the full color version for the (eventual) web site:

It’s simple, but I’m happy with it.

Four Covers and a Poll

May 25, 2011 / Jean / 12 Comments

Well, the owner of the pic I used in the last Hungry Child cover mockup has never gotten back to me about permission, which is a shame because that pic would have been perfect. Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.

I found a nice, moody picture of a road in the woods on Stock.xchng, and if I’m understanding the license correctly, I can definitely use this one. So here are four cover variations that I mocked up. Take a look, if you please, and then answer the poll at the end of the post. Feedback comments are also welcome. Danke very much.

So… the Cousinjean thing.

May 21, 2011 / Jean / 10 Comments

This, That and a Cover

May 20, 2011 / Jean / 7 Comments

First, my writing progress for the week:

Day	Project	Wordcount
Saturday	Dominion of the Damned	572
Sunday	Dominion of the Damned	0
Monday	Dominion of the Damned	0
Tuesday	Dominion of the Damned	1134
Wednesday	Dominion of the Damned	922
Thursday	Dominion of the Damned	0
Friday	Dominion of the Damned	2001
Total		4629

That brings the grand total so far up to 18,367. I can’t remember why I didn’t write Sunday, although I think it probably has something to do with just needing a day off. Monday and Thursday were just too jampacked with appointments and client projects to even get in my 250 words. All in all, that’s not bad progress.

I’ve decided to go ahead with setting up my own publishing imprint. I realize that it would be silly to let my accounting software preferences be an obstacle to this, and who knows what kind of doors my own independent publishing company might open down the road? So Daydreamer Publishing is soon to be an actual thing.

I’ve got two more scenes to go on the revision of Hungry Child. I think I actually don’t have to go anywhere this weekend for a change, and it’s too wet to do the yard work that needs doing, so I’ll be able to get ’em done.

The other day while I was trying to transition my brain from Dominion to Hungry Child, I mocked up an e-book cover for the latter.

Office Makeover

May 18, 2011 / Jean / 2 Comments

I debated which blog to post this in, but since it involves my writing space, I thought it was appropriate for this one.

I’m still four scenes shy of finishing the second draft of Hungry Child. Yesterday, I had a little writer’s block on that story, and I didn’t have any pending client projects, so I decided to clean my office in the hopes that some physical activity might jog something loose in the story center of my brain.

When I started, I only planned to spend an hour or two dealing with some of the clutter and then get back to editing, but I ended up doing a thorough spring cleaning and decluttering that took up the rest of the day. But you guys, it was bad in here. I’ve been neglecting my office lately–I haven’t even worked in here for over a month. Aside from cleaning the cat boxes (my office doubles as the cat room) and vacuuming occasionally, I haven’t really done any cleaning in here since filling it halfway up with my deceased mother-in-law’s files and things.

I don’t have to tell you how bad it was, I can show you. Continue reading

Dream Child progress, and a new title

May 14, 2011 / Jean / 1 Comment

I ended up being too scatterbrained yesterday to get any editing done, but today I made good headway on my novelette-length short story, Dream Child.

Among other things, I settled on a new title to replace the working title, and that new title is Hungry Child. I think that sounds a little more ominous, don’t you?

I originally wanted to cut a few thousand words and get it short enough for possible submission to some short story horror markets before going the self-pub route with it, but I keep adding new stuff, including entire new scenes. I think they make the story stronger, but they’re keeping it firmly in novelette territory.

I’ve got about four more scenes to edit, assuming I don’t add any more new ones, and then I’ll be looking for beta readers. While that’s happening, I’ll work on a cover design, and then do a final story edit followed by a line edit and formatting.

And then I’ll publish that puppy. I’m thinking one more week (or two, depending on how busy my clients keep me this week).

Meanwhile, I’m still plugging away on DotD. 567 words today, for a grand total of 14,305. Not bad for under three weeks of work.

Progress Report

May 13, 2011 / Jean / 0 Comments

Instead of posting my word count daily, I’ll try to reign myself in to a weekly report. Here’s this week’s progress (so far) on Dominion of the Damned:


.	Daily Word Count
.	Date:	Project:	Word Count:
.	5/9/2011	Dominion	549
.	5/10/2011	Dominion	780
.	5/11/2011	Dominion	1007
.	5/12/2011	Dominion	1273
.	5/13/2011	Dominion	774
.	Total		4383

Total project word count so far: 13,738 — all that, and I think I just got to the story’s true beginning. :/

I’ve also made good headway on editing my short story Dream Child (working title). I’ve found myself with a day off from client projects, so I’m going to try to knock the rest of the second draft out today, and then I’ll be looking for beta readers.

All in all, especially considering that my clients kept me pretty busy with my “day job” this week, I think it’s been a pretty productive week, writing-wise.

To Imprint or Not

May 12, 2011 / Jean / 2 Comments

The other day I bought the domain daydreamerpublishing.com, although I don’t know yet whether I’ll ever actually use it. I’ve seen some great arguments in favor of self-publishers going to the effort of setting up their own publishing imprint.

The Plan

May 7, 2011 / Jean / 2 Comments

I think it’s probably best to start this journey with things I’ve already written–otherwise all of this is a bit premature, since my current project, Dominion of the Damned, is only about three chapters done.

First up will be This Old Haunt. I’ve already taken it off of Scribd and disabled public access to the blog where I’d posted it a couple of years ago (I cannot believe it’s been almost two years since I put that blog up. I thought it was only one. So much *^#!& has happened in the past year that it’s gone by in a blink). It’s going to get another edit, a new cover and ~~possibly~~ probably a new title, and then I’ll learn the process of publishing it as a proper ebook for Kindle and whatnot (I haven’t decided yet whether to make it available as a paperback). I’m a little concerned because I’ve asked my husband to give it a read through, and this might slow things down considerably. If anyone else would like to give it a beta-read and notify me of any plot or structural problems that I’m not seeing, if you want to race Matt, you’ll probably have plenty of time to get it back to me, so let me know.

I think TOH is a safe choice to be my guinea pig as I figure out this whole process. After that, I’ll move on to that short story collection that I’ve been threatening to publish for a couple of years now. Meanwhile, I’ll keep plugging away at Dominion, and hopefully by the time it’s finished and edited and ready to publish, I’ll be old hat at knowing what needs to be done.