In case you haven’t been following me on Twitter/facebook (why not?), here’s an update of where I’m at: I’m writing! A lot. (relatively) As I mentioned before, over the last year or so I’ve been getting an increasing number of direct requests from readers/fans of the first Untrue Tales… trilogy about if/when Book Four (and the rest of the series) will be available. A couple of phone calls and txt messages received this summer finally pushed me over the edge, and in July I began work on Untrue Tales… Book Four. Then in August I stagnated. But as I recently re-discovered, I really work best & write fastest & most creatively while fueled by hyper-sweet coffee drinks. (Did you know you can now gift money directly to my Starbucks card via Facebook? Weird, I know, but… hey, you’re welcome to!) So by mid-September I was occasionally popping over to my local Starbucks for a few hours of writing at a time, as budget allowed. Then I was gifted a Starbucks card for my birthday, and since then I’ve finished writing Book Four. If you’ve read the first three books and would like to be a Beta Reader for the rest of the series, I’d appreciate your feedback. I’ve already done an initial edit (hundreds of small changes, additions, and consistency corrections), and Wednesday night I read the entire book through, aloud, in one sitting, making a few more notes. Book Four is in pretty good shape, but I’d like a few more people looking at it before I release it as an eBook. Comment/email me if you’re interested.
I started work on Untrue Tales… Book Five on Thursday, and when Starbucks closed & kicked me out last night (Friday), I’d already passed 10k words. My current goal is to finish Book Five before the end of October so I can go into NaNoWriMo with a blank slate & have a more relaxed schedule (a whole month?) for Untrue Tales… Book Six. Which will be the end of the series. Two trilogies. I’m making good progress toward my goals of getting them done, one right after the other, so I can get the entire second trilogy out in paperback in the Spring of 2011.
Depending on time availability I’m planning to start podcasting Book Four on the Modern Evil Podcast starting Friday November 5th, which puts Book Five’s start in mid-January, so I’ll probably hold off on the Book Five eBook release until January as well. Then I can aim to release the Book Six eBook and the 2nd-trilogy paperback around the end of March / beginning of April (April Fool’s day?), 2011… That sounds good. Gives me time to edit & get feedback, lets me do the audiobook versions before the print version (recording the audio version always catches a few more flaws, trust me), but doesn’t make my audience wait too much longer to get the rest of the story. People who can’t afford to buy the eBooks (they’re just $5.99 each!) or the paperbacks ($24.99/trilogy retail, $50/trilogy signed & author-direct) will be able to hear the whole thing for free on the podcast before summer. (Or read the free eBooks not long after that.)
After I finish writing the end of the Untrue Tales From Beyond Fiction – Recollections of an Alternate Past series (fingers crossed; by November 30th!), I can maybe get back to doing research for that alternate/zombie history series I was talking about this time last year. I have at least 10k more pages to read before I’ll be comfortable tackling that one. Lots of histories, biographies, and philosophy books, plus probably another stack of zombie books, and almost certainly a stack of steampunk (since I intend to invent the ‘solarpunk’ genre with the series). But that’s later. Right now, I’m writing about Trevor. Last night I wrote Trevor’s first confrontation with God. It was neat. Trevor and Toni got to go to Heaven, then God took them for a walk in the midst of the Garden. I think you’ll like it.
