Keepers Week 5
Rolling, rolling, rolling, got to keep those words a rolling (imagine these words low growled out by Clint Eastwood. Gives it a better effect). I am still cranking out words with regularity. I will be over the 40,000 word mark this next week. This is a significant number because it means I will shortly surpass the word count of my abandoned book. A word count which took me a year plus.
This continues to be a valuable lesson to me. I stuck with that last book too damn long. I fell in love with the characters but didn’t have a story to show them off in. The other interesting thing I am finding with Keepers is how much I am looking forward to finishing and going back and doing the first edit. I have been taking good notes about things I have to fix and points of view I need to tighten up. This book has many players and I want to make sure they all get to shine.
I also feel a little liberated because there is part of me that knows I am writing this book for publication, one way or the other. The plan is still to seek traditional publication but I know I will self publish to the Kindle if that doesn’t work out. My gut feeling tells me I am going to enjoy reading this book over and making it better. It has a chance to be the best thing I have written. It will be a self-contained novel but I already have an idea for a second novel with these fine characters so I am hoping I will get to write them again.
Speaking of self publishing. I have some more news. For all my zombie holiday fans out there. I am planning on writing five more stories. They will all take place in between my Christmas story and my Halloween story. They will not be centered around holidays. I just like the characters and think I have a few more tales to tell. When I am done I am going to pull them all together, hire an artist to give me a cover, and put it out on the Kindle. I thought about trying to get them published as short stories but decided I would probably have just as good a shot of selling a few on the Kindle as I would putting it in a magazine. This will be around a May release because I will need some time to write the stories and then edit them.
These first two shots at Kindle publishing should give me a little bit of an idea if I am totally delusional about my writing skills. It won’t stop me from writing because that is what I do but it should let me know if people are actually interested in what I am writing. This is a thought which haunts and scares me but what the hell. Sometimes you just have to stick your toe in the water and hope the piranhas doesn’t bite it off.
