Tag Archives: fantasy novel writing

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Virtual author event with Black Birch Books in Wasilla 03/28/2020

DDoQ Virtual Author Event

I am doing an author event this Saturday (March 28th, 2020) at Black Birch Books in Wasilla, AK from 2pm to 5pm. With the coronavirus situation, this simply can’t happen in person (mostly, a few people can come and visit, provided we keep our distance). As an alternative, we’ve decided to do a virtual event on Facebook. You can call in to order a book, or ask questions curbside pickup will be available. I’ll share MORE details as we roll into this.

I recognize this appears self-serving —Dave gets to make money off of a virtual event. NO. Not the point. Today, as I sit here, looking at my community, full of fear and uncertainty, I’m trying to understand how my favorite places will still be around in a year. My knee-jerk reaction is to think about restaurants, the most visibly and notably,  hard hit, but we can’t overlook our other critical gathering places and services. With that in mind, MOST of the royalties on every copy of the Dark Queen of Darkness sold will be going to Black Birch Books. It’s a small gesture for an indie author such as myself, but you have no idea how much Black Birch has done or does do for our community and this is the best I can offer to give back.

When I did my very first author event ever, ever, with Black Birch Books, I found something I didn’t expect. A community gathering place. I met people there who I wouldn’t normally find an opportunity to connect with. It was absolutely wonderful. I loved the fact that I got to meet and talk with unique, interesting people about books and writing. The best part is that this was an environment without judgment or expectation. You are who you are and that’s great. This place is a gem.

My author event with Black Birch Books is ON, just online. Block out time from 2-5pm on Saturday, March 28th to join in. I’ll do some reading, answer questions, and sign books.

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Taking a different direction

I made the decision to pull Wine Bottles & Broomsticks off of channillo.com today. In large part, the decision was based around packaging and marketing the book as a whole rather than one chapter at a time (I’m going to pack this up as a novel and put it out there that way) When I first started writing it, the story was just supposed to be a fun little jaunt into unfamiliar territory. As these things sometimes go, I fell in love with the characters and the concept and I’m neck deep in finishing it as a novel and drafting a second one. I’m going to put it out in this format. I’ve got a strategy for getting there, but it’s far too early to say how that’s all going to play out. In any case, the book will be available at some point. I don’t know when, but I have the means to carry it off regardless.

I have no particular beefs about channillo.com. Like any publication, you’ve got to really work hard at advertising and selling yourself. Something I didn’t do after the first few chapters. This is not so much because I’m lazy as because I started to feel that this change in direction was inevitable and I didn’t want to invest too much in a platform I was going to abandon anyhow. Had this been any other story, I’d likely have stayed with channillo, for a whole variety of reasons, but for now, I had to bow out. Perhaps someday, I’ll spin up another series to kick out there, but for now, it’s single minded focus on selling Wine Bottles and Broomsticks as a novel.

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Progress Report

Winebottles_Broomsticks

I feel like I should do this more often, but I’m not sure I’d say too much that was useful. As it is, I don’t know that I’ve had anything to say in a while. All that said, it’s been a couple of weeks since I declared Draft #1 of Wine Bottles & Broomsticks fully drafted. What has been amazing to me in the past few weeks has been the response from beta readers to the book. Not only have all of them actually finished the book, they’ve all done so quickly and provided phenomenal feedback. I spent a half an hour on the phone with my sister this evening discussing character motivation and her general reaction to the book.

Where do I stand right now? First off, I want to say that writing this story was exceptionally fast. The bulk of it was actually written during free time on two trips out of state for training. So, basically 40% of the book was written over the course of less than 2 weeks. With that in mind, I’m aiming (probably optimistically) at having a fully expanded, edited draft ready by the end of the month. This is possible largely because virtually all of the readers thus far have provided feedback that hits the same spots – ‘expand this’ ‘what about that’ and so on. So, now I’ve got a plan to expand the manuscript from just shy of 60K to near 80K. In the mean-time, the channillo.com will continue on with the early draft and probably sometime on Sunday, I’ll turn up the crank to release a chapter a week for a while, then maybe up to a chapter a day. Then, I’ll let it sit out there for a few weeks.

My goal is to have this thing ready for a copy editor roll over it sometime early in February. Then, I guess I’ll see if I can drum up any interest from a publisher. If not, well, I’ve got cover art and the book will have been edited, so self-publishing it is.