After a great start to 2016 in terms of my writing goals and hitting them day after day, I hit a bit of bad luck, hard times, call them what you will. In short, it affected my writing and yet as I am writer, I know it won't be a permanent thing.
It could be life's way of saying slow down and focus on some other things. Perhaps. But it's like anything one is into, one has to do it, otherwise, the Cranky Monster will appear. Everyone knows who the Cranky Monster is; it just happens to be different depending on who you are and what you like to do. For most authors, they will feel very cranky if they don't get some writing done.
A lack of writing does not infer a lack of writing focus. In my case, I was finalising tweaks to the concluding segment of the Dark Winter trilogy. There's always mini-errors and omissions that one will find. Over the course of a 110,000 word novel, you bet there are.
Will it be a happy or violently bloody end for Romilly Winter?
However, my process involves viewing it in Word, as a PDF, printing off the entire thing from my own printer, sending it to beta readers, before viewing a proof edition. Even then, I am not finished.
But I am close. The book is available on Kindle via pre-order, with its official release being 21st February 2016. Once I had decided to move the date from October 2015, I felt I could deliver the final edition that I wanted to do. The end will please some, annoy others, but as JK Rowling herself said about the closure of her Harry Potter series, as the author of the work, she was happy. I am too with my own series. And now it is over to the good readers out there to tell the world what they think.
I've already had one review on Good Reads (thank you J Kahele) and I hope more of you will read the book (and the series, because the final book is not a standalone) and up until 21st February, both Dark Winter (I): The Wicca Circle and Dark Winter (II): Crescent Moon can be bought on Amazon for 99c/p each. This changes after 21st February - they will never be 99c/p again.
Kobo. Oh yes, I love Amazon who do help authors a lot to get their name out there, but I am branching out to other platforms too, and on Kobo you can already get Murderous Little Darlings on there, Amazon, iBooks and Nook.
But I will be adding The Ghost of Normandy Road (Haunted Minds I) to the platform in the next day or so, so Kobo users can get it there. But if you can't wait, look it up on Amazon for now.
With Dark Winter III done and basically dusted, fans of my works can look forward to the fifth vampire tale - Reunion of the Blood - which I hope to release end of April. I realise it is nearly a full year since book four - Dream the Crow's Dream came out, but you know I have been busy writing all new works.
March will see the paperback edition of my non-fiction How to Write, Keep Writing and Keep Motivated: Tips for Aspiring Authors book coming out. Kindle version here
So the wait is nearly over for that one.
Currently Writing:-
i) A dystopian tale to thrill and chill you. Anyone who knows me knows how highly I rate George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four, so expect something that I admit was inspired by this work, but will have my own unique take on the genre.
ii) A tale about a writer who plans to quit his successful career to spend the remainder of his years with his wife. Things don't quite work out as planned.....
I am excited about both, but made more progress on the latter. So it is likely that will come out first.
See you next time.
