School, Writing

Still Alive!

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Wow, four months went by just like that. I’ll admit I hit a serious period of burnout thanks to last semester. Taking three creative writing workshops at the same time was not the best idea. Still, it frees me up for much easier semesters now, and next fall so it was worth it.

A whole lot has happened since then for me personally, but very little has been done writing-wise. Avatars & Identity still needs to be published, and I almost have everything I need for that. My original goal was to have all formats out and available at about the same time, but that is turning out to be fairly unrealistic. Each platform requires different formatting, which includes the cover. Right now I have two of three done. I could go ahead and push it out the door, but that means the audio book version won’t be ready for some time. Probably best not to wait any longer though. I think I’ll make submitting everything for publishing my goal this weekend. On top of homework of course.

As for this semester, I’m taking my senior creative writing thesis class (undergraduate level). This is the senior project or capstone basically, and as creative writing majors we get to pick what we want to do for this project. Naturally, I picked writing the third and final installment to Stephen’s trilogy, Revelation. I know I’ve been putting off doing this pretty heavily for some time. Part of that was not know where to start exactly. Another was just being tired of dealing with the same characters for yet another novel. A third, and something I hadn’t realized right away, was that I have a pretty good idea of what some of the major events are going to be, and they’re going to be hard to write. As tired as I may be of some of these people, it will still be hard to say goodbye. The good news is I’m already on Chapter 4, and I’ve just finished my second full week of classes. The goal is to hit about 1k words a day, which gives me more than enough time to finish the book before the semester is over. My professor for my senior project class has never received a finished, published novel before. So that’s the goal. I may not be able to get the full print version here in time, but I can definitely have a pre-pub copy ready to turn in.

Now if I just knew where this next chapter was going…

Publishing, Writing

Kindle Scout: Three Days Left

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This entry is part [part not set] of 5 in the series Live Writing

There are just three days left for my Kindle Scout campaign for my novel Avatars & Identity. As of midnight this morning my campaign page has a total of 105 hits over 28 days. That’s a little less than four hits per day. While I have no idea how good or bad that is since Amazon doesn’t reveal anything about their selection criteria, my gut instinct tells me this isn’t good enough by far. I find this to be pretty disappointing, but also not the end of the world. The book is ready to publish so even if Amazon doesn’t pick it up, I’m prepared to put it up on all of the usual self-publishing sites. There’s still the small hope that I’ll get picked up regardless, but I’m definitely preparing for the opposite. Hopefully I’ll know by Friday/Saturday, though the decision may not happen until Monday.

Business & Moore, Publishing

The Kindle Scout Campaign Continues

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

With seventeen days left of my Kindle scout campaign, my book has 72 views and has spent 0 hours on the Hot & Trending list. Not really the response I’d hoped for, but also not altogether unexpected. My ability to promote through social networks is minimal given my limited presence. I’ve considered ramping up my social media posts, outlets, etc., but I don’t really have the time or dedication to make that work I’ve often seen it advised to stick to what you enjoy using. I’ve never been all that fond of putting my every little thought out there either. This blog is the closest I come and I am far less verbose than many blogs I read.

All this boils down to not having the media clout to really push my campaign. I could try to make up for my lack of exposure by repeatedly posting updates on my campaign, but as someone who has been on the receiving end of such things by my friends that option falls firmly in the No category. As a compromise I will only be posting a few updates and reminders. Better to have the book stand or fall on its own merits. At worst, I have a third novel 100% ready to publish. In the meantime, there are several promising books I’ve noticed through the Kindle Scout site. Once I have a bit of free time I plan to use my remaining two vote to help get someone else’s books published.

Uncategorized

My Kindle Scout Campaign is Live!

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I was super excited to get the email telling me that I’d been accepted and that my campaign would go live today. So now I have 30 days to get as many nominations as possible. They don’t reveal the number of nominations unfortunately so I won’t have any idea of just how many are coming in on a daily basis. No idea what their threshold is for acceptance. Basically the most any author can do it submit the best, finished book they can. Avatars & Identity was the first book I managed to find a copy editor for so I can at least be confident that it’s my best work so far. Getting published by Amazon would be a big step forward, of course. Having someone actively pushing your book can only help with getting the word out.

The whole system is pretty cool. Anyone with an Amazon account can nominate up to three books a month. I’ll probably spend some time in the next couple of weeks checking out other books up for nomination. I’ve got two free slots to fill after all! For anyone interested, this is the link to my campaign:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2IWW36YM9USU5

Here’s hoping I make the final cut!

Business & Moore, Publishing, School, Writing

Frantic

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

I’m really hoping the frantic pace I’ve had to maintain this past week and weekend won’t be the one needed to get through this semester. It was my first full week of classes. Today is Sunday, and I’m exhausted. I had a paper due today, I’ve got another due (much longer) Tuesday, with two more due soon after. I suppose the hardest part for me is keeping track of each little task required for each class and making sure I get them done on time.

I managed today’s deadline for the paper (an obituary for my non-fiction class), but it really was a struggle. I think it was mostly because the obit wasn’t about someone I knew personally. That made research and fact-checking more time consuming than actually writing the damn thing. Thankfully the next assignment is based on personal experience.

The bit that’s due Tuesday is for my fiction workshop and is a short story based on a dream I had last Thursday. The dream was so vivid and provided such a strong basis for a story that I went to school early to start working on it. By the end of the day I had ten pages done. Clearly fiction is my strong suit.

In other news, formatting and all of the necessary bits for Avatars & Identity was finally done this evening. Which means I was able to submit it all to the Kindle Scout program. According to their info, I’ll hear back from them in a day or two if it gets accepted. Then it’s a month and a half wait to find out if enough readers like it for them to take it on and publish it. Of course I’m hoping to get published as having Amazon push my book for me is a very appealing thought. More importantly though I think it will go a long way toward establishing my presence as an author. That’s the idea anyway. Time will tell.

School, Writing, Method, Business & Moore, Publishing

First Impressions

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Now that I’m in my third week of classes (but only my first full week thanks to our ridiculous starting schedule) and I’ve had at least one session with every class I have mostly put my fears to rest. I like all of my classes, though some more than others. Unexpectedly, I am seriously enjoying my ENG242 English Literature class. It’s one of two required for all English majors and covers English Literature from the late 18th century onward. We’ll be reading “Pride and Prejudice,” “Wuthering Heights,” and other classics. So far though we’ve only gone through selections from Kant’s Analytic of the Beautiful and Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man. I’ve been far more interested in this very thick and heavy reading than anything from my previous literature class. My least favorite class so far is my creative non-fiction workshop. Mostly because I’ve always been a fiction writer, and reader, at heart. I’ll read most any story if it’s done well but somehow fiction has always resonated more with me. Still, it’s very early days.

What I didn’t underestimate, and fully expected, was the workload accompanying taking four English classes: one literature and three workshops. I’m already a very busy bee doing classwork. Pile on top the copy edited version of Avatars & Identity that I still need to finish plus the audio book version of Transformation that I need to get through ASAP and I’m swamped. I really wish both of my book items would have been ready for me before school started but thems the breaks, as they say. For now I’m up to date with homework and slowly chipping away at the rest.

Publishing, School, Writing

New Semester, New Beginnings

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

Gotta love coming back after a summer of not blogging only to discover your site has stopped working thanks to a random WordPress update while you were away. Serves me right for being away so long. The good news is everything is almost back to normal. I just have to reinstall two plugins that I had to FTP in and remove just to be able to login. Then WordPress wouldn’t update to the latest and greatest and in fact couldn’t find the update page. After some intensive Google searching though I managed to find someone else who’d had the same problem. Turns out one little line added to a config file magically fixed the issue. Woot!

Now that I’m through an exceptionally lazy summer (where writing is concerned anyway) and I also have my main computer back up and running, it’s time to head back to college. This semester started strangely schedule-wise with classes starting the Wednesday before Labor Day. This meant my first week excluded ALL of my writing classes and included only my required English Literature class. Then Labor Day came along and I still haven’t been to my Create Writing Poetry workshop. Ah well, next week. Next week.

I was actually pretty upset about the whole scheduling thing until today when one of my teachers happened to mention that this semester is extra long and ends on a Tuesday. Clearly they’re making up for their own scheduling stupidity. Would it really have been to hard to start classes on Monday even though it would have been August 31st? Apparently.

The classes themselves have been good so far, though it’s really hard to say at this point how they’ll really pan out. The first sessions are all syllabus readings and constant introductions. Today I had both my non-fiction and fiction workshops. Pretty sure I’m going to like both but man am I going to be busy with three workshops and my lit class. Then there’s my own writing and publishing that I have to find time for.

Speaking of my writing, I just got Avatars & Identity from a copy editor I found on a site called Fiverr (it’s like the eBay of personal services without any actual bidding). Started going through his edits and discovered that at some point in my life I completely ignored what I’d learned about commas. Apparently I’m allergic. (Not really, I just think the so-called rules call for so many commas that they break up the flow of narrative.) Still, I’m accepting most of the changes since I want my book to be on its best behavior when I submit it to the Kindle Scout program.

For those who haven’t heard of this yet, and I’m sure there are many who haven’t, Amazon is becoming a full-on publisher with their Kindle Scout program. The way it works is you submit a fully completed and copy edited novel of at least 50k words with an awesome cover, blurb, and one-liner. They’ll shop it around to a select group of readers. If the readers and Amazon’s own people approve you’ll get to sign a contract. This contract in fact. After reading and hearing about all of the horror stories regarding contracts with the big publishers I was very happy to work through Amazon’s very simple and straightforward contract in fifteen minutes flat. It’s for worldwide e-book and digital audio rights for a 5-year term that renews barring poor sales or voluntarily on the author’s part. There’s even built-in guarantees that if you don’t earn enough through royalties you will get all of your rights back. From a new author standpoint I have to say this contract is a better deal than what you’d get from almost anyone else. I’m super excited to get Avatars submitted and see what happens.

 

Whelp, that’s enough for now. Homework beckons.

Life

Fun with Hardware

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

While I’ve been waiting for the graphics for my Fuzzy Adventures series to be completed I’ve been doing my personal edit of Avatars & Identity, making corrections to my first two novels in preparation of some business stuff, as well as dealing with a bunch of personal issues. This has kept me pretty busy but now I’ve got a serious wrench thrown into my plans: my main computer is having issues.

Now I’ve been building my own PC’s for the past 17 years or so which means I’m no stranger to problems. I’ve had some that were seriously difficult to figure out and fix. This one takes the cake though. My PC is randomly crashing to a black screen. No BSOD so there’s no error messaging from Windows. I can’t even replicate the crash as the conditions vary so wildly I don’t know what’s causing them. Part of the issue is pieces of my PC are over 4 years old now. This includes my PSU, motherboard, CPU, and RAM. I’ve run just about every software test I can think of and they all pass with flying colors.

This leaves me in quite a quandary. Based on my research this is most likely an intermittent hardware issue indicating one of my core components are failing. The most likely culprits are the PSU, motherboard, and graphics card. I’d like to think it’s not the graphics card since that is barely a year old. If it’s the PSU, then it is not the 12V rail that is failing. I can read that through GPU-Z and that sucker is super steady at 11.5v with no real fluctuations. So now I’m going through the process of re-checking all of the physical connections. Again. Dusting and cleaning. Again. Ultimately culminating in a re-installation of Windows. Fun times. I’d rather be working on my book/gaming series but without my main PC I’m pretty much dead in the water. Here’s hoping I don’t have to shell out money I don’t have for new PC parts.

Gaming, FuzzyAdventures

Let the Fuzzy Adventures Begin!

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With my summer now in full swing (even if the weather disagrees), I’ve started work on my new Fuzzy Adventure series. This was item 6 in my post about what I planned to do this summer and I’m super excited to get to work! I’ve done a test session already with a short run through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to see how my setup works:

A screenshot of an initial Fuzzy Adventure test run.
A screenshot of an initial Fuzzy Adventure test run.

 

I’m using a StarTech USB3HDCAP to hook up my consoles to my PC and XSplit to handle both the Twitch streaming and video recording. The cool thing about the capture box is it can handle any console so I can play and record on anything from my old NES up to PS3. Since I just picked up Ni No Kuni I may end up doing a regular Let’s Play as I work my way through that.

As for the Fuzzy Adventures, I anticipate doing at least one episode per week. Each episode will probably include about an hour or more of game time (no doubt subject to the game being played) along with the written portion.  Since this is all new to me I’ll have to see how much writing is involved for each hour of game play.  I’ve also engaged the services of a professional graphic artist to handle the graphics for the videos. I really want something that looks well-made. All of this should be ready within the next week or two. Can’t wait to get started!

Crowdfunding, Gaming, Writing, Imagination, Live Writing

The Semester’s End & Things to Come

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This entry is part [part not set] of 73 in the series The Writing Life Blog

So yesterday I had my last final. I’m really glad it’s done but I’d also like to kick the person who decided to hold finals and graduation on the same day. Seriously stupid. Why not have graduation on Saturday instead? Makes way more sense. Whatever, it’s done and I’m pretty sure I did well on both of the finals I had to take. My hand is still mad at me though. Nothing like having to hand-write a five page essay in under an hour. Fun times. Now though it’s time to move on to super fun things!

Starting Monday, barring any life events, I will be starting my new Fuzzy Adventures series. All of the gear I needed to make it happen came in on Thursday. Took me a good day or so to get everything set up as well. Still have to do a few things on the software end but that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Tested out the video capture card by hooking up my trusty old PS2 and booting up the first game I’m going to use for my Adventures series: Castlevania – Symphony of the Night. I wasn’t sure I was going to start with that one but the Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night decided me. For those who haven’t heard it is a gothic-themed side scrolling action adventure RPG made by the same guy who co-directed Symphony of the Night (SOTN). In his opening video he says that he’s wanted to do another game like SOTN for a long time but the AAA publishers say there’s no demand for such a game. Considering the campaign is already at $2.1 million with 27 days left to go I’d say the AAA have their heads up their asses. That’s not news though. Personally I’m really glad crowdfunding has allowed game developers to give AAA pubs the finger and do what they and the gamers want: make awesome games without publisher oversight and interference. Just look at what happened to Maxis and Simcity. EA took a beloved franchise and forced Maxis to limit and monetize the game to the point that it was a huge failure. Then EA blames Maxis and closes them down. Fuckers. But I digress.

I’m excited that I’ll be using my Twitch channel quite a bit more. I still plan on doing Live Writing sessions since I have plenty of writing to get done this summer. Each Fuzzy Adventure will entail quite a bit of writing per episode. I haven’t decided how long each finished video will be since I don’t know how long it will take me to do the writing for every 15 minutes of game play. I suspect that will vary greatly from game to game. SOTN isn’t exactly plot or dialogue heavy so I’ll be making a lot of stuff up to tell an interesting story. If and when I get to games like Final Fantasy 6 or Crono Trigger though I’m sure the writing portions will be much, much longer with less deviation from the game plot & dialogue. Either way I’m super excited to get going on this!