Cheating, Death – chapter 1

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Yesterday, I finally started work on my new novel, Cheating, Death.  As I’ve been working toward, as soon as the first chapter was done, I got to work getting it set up on Smashwords.  My idea is to write the book “live” on Smashwords; to make the rough draft available to readers as it unfolds.  The first few chapters will be free, and after a certain point I’ll gradually start increasing the price so that by the time the book is fully written, the eBook will cost full price.  Because of the way Smashwords handles versioning and rights, once you’ve paid for an eBook you have access to it no matter what the price gets updated to or how many times the text is modified – in fact, you actually get to choose which version of the book to download, if it’s been updated since you purchased it.  So whatever price you pay, whenever you purchase it, you don’t have to pay again and you get access to all future updates, including the final one.

I plan to update the book on Smashwords every time I finish a chapter (or if I’m on a roll, at the end of each writing session with any completed chapters).  I expect to finish the book by Halloween at the latest (because NaNoWriMo starts at midnight on Halloween), and perhaps as soon as the end of next week, if the story really flows out.  (One time I wrote a book over a long weekend, so there’s no telling, maybe I’ll be done by Monday.)  Your feedback on the novel-in-progress is appreciated.  Feedback on the content, the grammar, spelling, the unlikable characters, whatever – anything is welcome.  I’d like to get the thing in as good a shape as possible while I’m writing it.

I plan on doing as much of the back-end work as possible while writing it (plus I’ve already got the cover almost finished, and I’ve just put together several pages on modernevil.com for it) so that within a couple of weeks of finishing the first draft, I should have the paperback in hand.  Then, with any luck, I’ll start podcasting the audio version of the novel on November 13th – one week after Untrue Tales… Book Three is finished on the Modern Evil Podcast… which should give me podcast content until around mid-January, 2010.

Now, semi-secretly, I’ve got at least two other (perhaps 3 other) zombie books in me, and I think 2009 is the “Year of the Zombie” so I was thinking I’d try to get them all out (& preferably in print) by the end of the year.  I’ve been working on thoughts for how those will develop, playing around with some ideas, and trying to figure out a timeline for working on them.  Back before it took me 3 weeks longer to start writing Cheating, Death than I’d suspected (and I still haven’t finished all my ‘research’), I was thinking maybe I could write Cheating, Death in September, the [idea deleted] one in October, and the [idea deleted] one (which would probably be my first Christian fiction) for NaNoWriMo.  But now I’m thinking maybe try to finish this one as fast as I can, try to finish the next one before November, write a non-fiction book (my book on Self-Publishing I’ve been talking about and thinking of all year) for NaNoWriMo, and the third (Christian) one in December (or just start it as soon as I have time).  The fourth one also has something like werewolves in it and I’m told that 2010 will be the “Year of the Werewolf”, so perhaps I’ll save that idea for then.  Or throw it out.  I hear rumor it might be derivative of some TV show I never watched.

Anyway, lots of new fiction on the horizon, most of it with zombies of one sort or another.  The first one is available starting now.  Hurry, go get it while it’s free on Smashwords, and watch how my ideas turn into a novel:

Go read Cheating, Death now.

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Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

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