So my boss has requested I return to work on May 23rd. That gives me another 9 days of isolation before I have to go back to my other job.
Mostly, I’m nervous. This feels too soon to me, but unfortunately those decisions are completely out of my hands. More critically, if I want to finish another novel for the end of June (and I do!), that means about 30-40k words in the next week (more or less), since I won’t be able to keep up this pace once returning to “more regular” hours.
Blargh. I really wanted another few months of this. But, what can you do.
I’m going to reach out to the folks I would like to be my agents (again), see if they’re still considering The Queen of the A.I.s for their representation work, and if not that gives me another 4 months to finish one of these novels as I publish that one. And if not (or if they continue to say nothing, which considering the times, might be what happens) I should still have time to finish this Tintian novel by the end of June. Or July at the latest. Which would still keep me on pace, although certainly less so.
Anyway. I should get back to it.
Oh, one quick positive note: I think today marks the first time I’ve ever sold two physical copies of a book on the same day! I have sold 9 or 10 digital copies in a day, but physical copies tend to only come in one at a time… so that’s another kinda sad, kinda happy note to my career thus far. Hopefully that pace picks up soon!
Isolation, Day 58: All Good Things
Well, yesterday my boss (from the store I work at to pay for my editing) reached out to me about returning to work. I’m still freaked out about going out in public if I can avoid it (we are nowhere near done with this pandemic), but I don’t really have much choice in the matter.
Nothing has been finalized yet, but he’s obviously considering asking me to go back to work in the near future. And that means less time for writing. Which sucks, but again… what can you do?
Also went grocery shopping today, which was an experience (first time in a month!). The store was pretty empty and very well stocked of most things. I made the mistake of grabbing a small shopping cart and therefore didn’t get everything from my list, but I didn’t miss anything critical (and certainly nothing worth risking a second trip… did I mention being out in public still freaks me out? Definitely still freaks me out).
sigh
Oh well. I guess I’ll have at least a few days of writing full-time before I have to go back, but I don’t know. We’ll see how things go. And who knows, maybe my boss will decide to give me more time to write before having to go back. Only time will tell, but there is definitely a tunnel at the end of the light.
Isolation, Day 53: The New Normal
As always, I continue to celebrate the little victories this pandemic has presented: opportunity to do way more writing, way more baking, more time with my partner and cats… more time, in general.
More stress, of course, but that’s okay! Things are still going well.
Just a quick footnote, for those who want a brief peek behind the curtain: in the week and a half since my latest novel came out, I have sold 11 copies (thank you everyone who bought one!) and it has been read approximately 11 times through Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Lending (free ways to download and read books that grant me a royalty per page read… thank you everyone who downloaded Caitlyn Morcos that way!). This is pretty good for me, actually… usually it takes me about twice that time to hit these numbers, which means I am, so far, about twice as successful as I was with my last two book releases (assuming the numbers continue for the rest of the month, of course). But that’s still nice!
Now, as for where I want/need to be… we’re not there yet by a long shot (I need to sell about 1,000 copies of a book for it to break-even with the editing and cover art costs, so about 50x more successful than I am currently, assuming the book continues to sell about as well for another month), but still, positive growth is always nice!
Isolation, Day 49: 7 Weeks!
Well, it’s official… seven weeks ago was my last day at the job I used to go to in order to pay for editing and cover art (and little things like food and shelter, but MOSTLY editing and cover art… the important things in life…). It doesn’t feel like seven straight weeks, but can’t argue with math!
I think I’ve managed to get a lot accomplished in that time (a novel, two short story submissions, an audio short story release, and 40k words on two more novels), but unfortunately I am no closer to being a full-time paid author than when I started. I mean, aside from working on my portfolio, if you think of it that way.
Still, I’ve had pretty good sales (by my standards) of the recent novel, and hopefully that will result in people picking up other novels that I’ve written. And some people have picked up the book through Kindle Unlimited (it shows me the number of pages that have been read by people), so that’s great! Again, hopefully it inspires them to check out my other work, and as my body of work gets broader and deeper, more people will hopefully convert into future sales.
Anyway, the point of this is that after 7 weeks isolation, I’m still doing really well. Spirits are good, health is okay (not great, but I’ve started biking every day and that will hopefully help… although I’m only doing an hour most days, I’m going to increase that as soon as I get bike shorts that stop my butt from going completely numb!), and I’m pretty proud of how this whole time has been going.
I don’t know how much longer this pandemic will last, but I’m really happy with how well I’ve handled it so far. Here’s hoping I can keep that up!
Hope everyone out there is doing amazing (or as amazing as possible!), and staying healthy and safe!
Isolation, Day 46: Short Stories
I managed to finish another short story over the last few days, and with that done, it’s time to get back to the novels! I guess that’s the nice thing about short stories… they don’t take nearly as long to take from idea-to-complete. Usually one or two editorial passes, sometimes a beta reader or two, and then boom, done.
This one is another White Noise short story (although not an episode of the Black Cacophony, which I will work on after I finish the next novel while waiting for it to get edited). Not as much action, a little more thoughtful, but that’s okay. Most of the stuff I have been reading has been heavier on the thoughtful, lower on the action, and so it makes sense that it’s the kind of story in my head at the moment.
Anyway, other than that not a lot to report. I’ve gotten back to biking (indoors, obviously, with everything going on) and that’s been a really fun way to exercise except my butt is killing me. I was not meant to sit on a bike for an hour or two a day. But I’ll get through this, and hopefully it gets less painful as time goes on. I’m going to keep track of how “far” I bike, factoring on 20km/h, and then when all this is done we’ll see how “far” I got!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 44: Post Publishing Highs
Well, the book has been out for 2 days now, and it’s on pace for my best selling novel I’ve released! Certainly one of the stronger First Day releases I’ve had, and that’s nice! Thank you everyone out there who bought a copy during these difficult times!
As for me, I’m mentally preparing to get back to the fun part of writing (the fun part, for those of you keeping track, is “writing”, and not all the other stuff that comes along with publishing a book!). The two novels I’m working on are both just over 20k words, so they’re about 1/4 done, but that’s okay. Plenty of time and energy to pump into those!
In unrelated news, I’m trying to switch my major for the English degree I’m working on, make sure everything is going according to plan, but that’s hard due to everyone only meeting via emails and, more specifically, people not reading the emails I send and rather just assuming what I want. Such is life… still have a few days to sort everything out. But frustrating! Oh well, I still have 4 years worth of courses to take (more, if I have to stick with distance learning, because I really struggle with online courses). But whatever, it’s getting done! I did really, really well in the two classes I’ve had so far, so hopefully I can keep that energy up!
Hope everyone is staying healthy and safe!
Isolation, Day 42: Published Novel 4! Woo!
Yay new book available! Caitlyn Morcos, Interplanetary Marshal Service is now available through Amazon, and I hope everyone out there enjoys it! You can find it on the main page (which I have reorganized to put my newest books first), and as always my biggest, most heartfelt thanks to all my Patreons for making this novel possible.
The elevator pitch for CMIMS is space-western crime procedural. Think Firefly meets CSI. I’m really proud of how it turned out… this was a novel that I wrote a lot of the outline and rough work years ago, and then for the last few months have updated, cleaned up, and modernized it to bring it up to my standards. It was tough, but rewarding work. And I hope everyone enjoys it!
You can find it on your local Amazon, or just through the links here:
CANADA
UK
AUSTRALIA
USA
Now to take a nice relaxing 20 minutes of vacation before I dive back into writing Novel 5! Ah, the life of an independent author…
Oh, hey, if you do buy the book and enjoy it, can I ask that you submit a review for it? Those really help small authors like me to get some traction for our work. It would mean the world to me! Thanks folks!
Isolation, Day 39: Only 20,000 Words to Go!
I know that sounds like a lot, but 20,000 words of editing is actually a pretty quick process! I should be done today, major catastrophes notwithstanding. And I’m excited to have this draft finished, because then I can put it down for a few hours, and tomorrow do the final draft before it goes live!
Self-publishing my books is still not the preferred way to do it, but for now it’s the option I have available to me. And it still gets books into your (my amazing readers and supporters) hands, so I’m gonna call that a win. In order for each book to break-even, I have to sell about a thousand copies, and to make anything remotely like a profit I have to sell about two thousand copies. That’s about ten times more than I’ve sold of ALL my books, combined, at this point, but that’s okay! Because hopefully as people read my work and realize that I’m both a consistent writer and a quality one, they’ll pick up other books I write and so on, and so forth.
I’m still not doing much (read, any) marketing for my work because, as it stands it’s just shouting into the wind unless I have way more scratch to burn (which I don’t), but I figure when I have about 10 books under my belt I’ll be able to start really pushing some ads out, hopefully direct a few (hundred) people towards my work.
With that, I should get back to it! Those last 20k words aren’t going to edit themselves!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 36: My Father's Birthday
Today, my dad turned 81. It was an unusual birthday, I suppose… I mean, I haven’t seen him due to the whole “isolation” thing, obviously, but I suspect it was unusual.
Still, I gave him a call, told him that I was giving him snow for his birthday (it has been snowing all day today, which is pretty unusual for late-April, but this year, “pretty unusual” barely twitches the needle any more!). He seems to be in good spirits, happy with how his work is going (he owns his own company), and relatively optimistic about the future.
Which I suppose is nice. I’m more… cautiously pessimistic about the future. I think the COVID-19 thing is going to be pretty brutal to the States, but we Canadians are probably going to be mostly okay. Probably. A lot of this depends on people being willing to listen to experts and scientists, and we haven’t had a great history of that, but we will see, we will see.
More progress on Marshal Morcos today, the editing progressing nicely. I think this is the last of the major edits I have to do, after which is one more read-through to catch as many of the minor mistakes as I can, and then jumping through the hoops to get it self-published! Hopefully by Saturday! It will be nice to get back to writing, rather than editing, though!
Isolation, Day 34: Editing the Novel
It’s Sunday, it’s 34 days into my self-isolation, and I’m working on the novel I’d like to publish next week.
Got the cover (you can see it on the front page of this here blog), finished one of the two completely new chapters the book is going to need (which is nice, pushing it back over 50,000 words again), and going to start the arduous process of converting the document into ebook format early next week.
Just plugging away. I love writing more than I like the process required to get books self-published, but it’s part of the process. And that’s okay! Looking forward to getting it done and then back to work on the next batch of novels!
Oh, and I submitted a short story to a market. Fingers crossed. Still hopeful to get another one submitted in a few weeks.
Anyway! Work! What are these “weekends” people used to talk about? ^_^
Isolation, Day 31: One Month!
It has now been a full month of self-isolation. I have written about 36k words (not including short stories, blog posts, or course work), I’m submitting a short story to market this week as well as having another novel available on Amazon in the next few days.
All in all? It’s been a pretty good month! To say nothing about walking more, exercising more, eating better, eating out less (that’s a little sad, really, but still healthier!)… if I could just see my friends, this would be my best life, no question.
As it is, I know this is going to end someday. Not soon, probably not for at least another month or three, but it will end. And that’s a little terrifying and sad, but all I can do is focus on today. Writing as much as I can, being kind to myself about my pace (about 1k words a day is okay! It’s not as fast as I want, but it’s okay!), and just keeping my eyes on the goal of eventually, EVENTUALLY becoming a full-time writer.
Just gotta do the reps, ya know? You know.
Anyway! Happy with how the podcast yesterday turned out, happy with how the editing for the final draft of Marshal Morcos is coming along! All the small things coming together!
Hope everyone is staying safe!
Isolation, Day 30: The Black Cacophony, Episode 2
Back in November (gosh, six months ago!) I finished up a short story and sold it to the White Noise podcast, a lovely group of guys that run a weekly “Infinity the Game” podcast.
The basics of the story is a group of heroes wandering around the galaxy beating up bad guys, with a loose connection that each of the hosts is also a member of the crew of the starship “The Black Cacophony” (get it? “White Noise”, “Black Cacophony”… I thought it was quite clever myself). Anyway, the first episode was pretty well received, and the second episode went live yesterday! Woo!
You can give it a listen through this link if you’d like:
https://benandmarty.libsyn.com/the-black-cacophony-episode-2
I’m really proud of how it turned out (and it was a TONNE of work to get all the voice actors together, and then Jenna, the person responsible for all the sound engineering, did a fantastic job with cleaning up everything and getting it all to work together!). You don’t really need to listen to the first episode, but it does provide some cool context for what’s going on, even if the sound engineering (which I did) isn’t nearly as good as what Jenna did.
Anyway! Hope you all enjoy it, and are staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 28: Edits Received!
My editor sent back the edits for the next novel, and that’s very exciting news! I’ll be shopping for a cover, incorporating the changes, and then putting it up for sale, hopefully all this week!
Editing is always a bit of a slog, just because of the amount of work and the care/time that has to go into not repeating sections or removing important clarity, and the quick notes from my editor mentioned maybe adding a few sections (good advice from what I can tell), so these won’t be as quick as my usual edits, but that’s okay as well because, hey, turns out I have a bunch of time to do them! Woo!
Anyway, excited to publish my first novel of 2020 very soon, and then get back to writing my 2nd novel for 2020 immediately after that!
I’m all the excites! T’is a good day to edit!
Isolation, Day 26: A Day Off!
So this will be the first day in the last 26 days that I’m taking completely off. No writing obligations (I almost didn’t write this post, but then these are never “work” just a thing I happen to do for work… work-adjacent, I suppose?), and just relaxing and painting and napping and eating.
Basically, a day off.
It’s weird to think that while I haven’t had my secondary job (the one that consumes most of my time and currently pays most of my bills) in a month, I have also been working constantly since then. Don’t get me wrong, that’s resulted in me having about 25-30% of a novel finished already, but by the same token, it’s an exhausting time in general and working constantly isn’t helping with that.
I may even start building some LEGO I have from when my isolation started. Mmmm… maybe not, maybe, I don’t know right now. We will see! But that’s a nice decision to have to make.
I’ll get back to writing the novel on Monday. I’m going to see how far I can get in “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey” tomorrow. I think I’m about 40% of the way through that one, and it’s been neat exploring ancient Greece.
Hope everyone out there is having a relaxing weekend, staying away from large meetings, and being healthy and happy!
Isolation Day 23: Slowing Down
Well, my writing has slowed down a little, and that’s frustrating. Again, trying to be kind with myself over this, since these aren’t exactly ideal conditions, but still frustrated.
Ah, the human condition. Truly a marvel.
But, with that stated, I am still progressing! Which is important. And still finding time to do stuff I enjoy (writing, painting), exercise (walking, mostly, at this point), and doing my best to maintain healthy emotional and physical habits (no more junk food, for example, and I’ve certainly eaten way less take-out than I have been in the last year).
Which is all good… but still, I’m frustrated by the speed at which I write.
Oh well! It’ll get done when it’s done.
In more optimistic news, I have continued onto the second round for a grant for the writers group I organize and run, and that’s great news! It’s actually better news for the people near me than it is specifically for me: the funds, if I manage to land them, are all earmarked for people who I respect and think could use the extra scratch: $500 for an artist friend of mine to design some promotional material, $500 for a cafe owner friend to secure space and beverages, and the last $500 for other members of the group to access editing and submission help. It would be great to have the money just to help out everyone else!
But I’m still not assured to get it, so I’m holding off being too excited about it just yet. But it’s nice to hear that I passed the first stage! Go team!
Right. Time to get back to writing.
Isolation, Day 22: Three Weeks! Huzzah!
Well, technically 3 weeks as of yesterday, but close enough. How are things going at Casa Questus?
Really well! Writing has slowed down a bit, but that’s to be expected. Still on pace to finish the novel in a few weeks, at most, so that’s good news. Still eating really well (I’m thinking about making pizza dough from scratch… I know a lot of people out there are going goo-goo for sourdoughs, but honestly I’ve been there, done that, and I’m not a fan. Too finicky. I’ll stick with my baking yeast, thank you!), going on daily hour-long walks to listen to podcasts (that’s been a lovely habit to get back into… although at this rate I’m going to have to subscribe to more podcasts to keep me in new content!), and still contributing to podcasts and short story competitions and all that jazz.
I miss my friends, of course, and I miss petting random cats and dogs I encounter on my walks, but those are small prices to pay for the amount of work I’m getting done and the general sense of accomplishment I have.
Which is good, because all signs are pointing towards at least another few months of this. Which I know is hard for a lot of people out there. But not here, not yet!
I’m going to go on my walk while it’s still early and there aren’t too many people out. Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 20: Are Weekends Even A Thing Any More?
With so many days blending together, I have to wonder if weekends still have special significance.
My usual day is wake up, go for a walk, write, eat, write, and then sleep… my weekends are basically the same, all things considered.
But they still kinda feel special, I suppose? Like, I tally up how many words I’ve written over the week on Sunday. And Mondays are still my busiest day, for whatever reason… ah well, I guess it’s all good.
Writing was slow this week. Only about 10k words for the full seven days, which is significantly less than I’d like, but I’m trying to be kind with myself. It is a very stressful time, and my output is going to slow as a result. Regardless, I think I’m pretty happy with how the new Tintian book is coming along, so that’s nice! Story is moving at a healthy pace (maybe a bit too quickly, honestly, but I can always go back and add detail later if I feel it needs it). I’m still undecided about whether I’ll fold both of the original stories (The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure) into a single novel or not. I guess I’ll make that decision based on the final word count… I’d really like the finished novel in the 60-70k word range.
Anyway! Progress progresses. Things are going well, and I look forward to celebrating 3 full weeks of isolation tomorrow! Not sure what I’m going to do to celebrate… probably nap? I think I haven’t had a nap this entire time yet. I should do that.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 17: Successful Excursion was Successful!
Yesterday I spent 2 hours outside of my home getting groceries. It was a somewhat surreal experience, but at the same time it wasn’t uncomfortable or weird. Just… didn’t feel “real”.
I managed to get enough groceries for a month, if not significantly more. Not enough fresh veg to last that long, obviously, but lots of frozen veg and canned goods, if needs be.
The nice thing is knowing I have these supplies, and going through my existing emergency food supplies and making sure everything is up-to-date and tasty. I plan to eat a lot of chickpea curry, for example, because I have a tonne of coconut milk and chickpeas… but this is great! Because I love chickpea curry.
Anyway, neither here nor there. Just an interesting life blip, I suppose.
My editor contacted me yesterday, let me know she was still working on Novel 4 at a rate of about 2 chapters a day. It’s not a long book, but I honestly can’t remember how many chapters I put in there, so… it’ll be done when it’s done. And then I’ll finish the final edits, find a cover for it, and put it up for sale! It always feels a bit weird to put new work out in the world… satisfying, but also terrifying. I hope people like it. It’s a departure from my usual style. More “Western” than “Space” in this case, but obviously a healthy dose of both.
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 15: A Little Big Brother History Revision
The eagle-eyed and attentive among you may have noticed that the “Coming Soon!” page has changed from March 2020 to April 2020.
I mean, today is March 31st, so I waited until the last possible moment, but such is life. The COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in many things being pushed back, and now my next novel is one of them. Oh well!
This isn’t really a setback, as I think I mentioned before. The goal is to get 4 novels written and published this year, and as long as the next one is ready to go by June, I’m still on track. And it does look like the next novel will be ready to go by June. I’ll give my editor more than 3 weeks to prepare for it, and we should be good.
Still, a little sad to push that date back… but it’s for the best! It will result in everyone getting an amazing novel to read in a week or two.
Other than that, finished my last assignment for school for the semester (woo), and am going to spend today writing another 5k words for Novel 6 before switching over to edit a short story for submission.
It’s a good day to write. Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Isolation, Day 14: Two Weeks! Woo!
Well, if I had been traveling internationally, I would now be in the clear. This also probably means that I didn’t get sick while at work or from any of my colleagues at the game store I work at to pay for my bills, and that’s a comforting thought.
But for us, this is probably… oh, a quarter of the way through isolation? We’re doing our best, and aside from a couple trips outside for walks, my partner and I have done a remarkably good job staying indoors over the last two weeks.
Tomorrow I’ll be heading out to forage for another two weeks (or three, maybe four) of food. We still have plenty, but I’d rather stock up to avoid emergency rations if we can avoid it. Plus… fresh veggies. I miss those.
But! That’s okay! Writing work is continuing at a breakneck pace (I’ve been averaging 3,150 words a day thus far, and I’m going to try and crank it up to 5k words a day from today on out). I have my final school assignment of the semester due this week, so I’m going to try and finish that today as well, and then guitar lessons after all that. Oh, and some editing for a podcast, and cooking…
Mondays are always busy. So nice that some things haven’t changed, I guess?
But mostly I’m grateful. Grateful for the opportunity to keep writing, grateful that my stories are getting finished, grateful that I have work I can do to keep me busy and entertained.
Grateful for all of you who read my work, who support me on Patreon or by checking out my silly, ramble-y posts.
Well, back at it! 30 more minutes of audio editing before I can get back to writing, but the day is yet young! Hope everyone is staying safe and happy out there!