Skip to main content

So This is the New Year

I'm supposed to be doing this more. To be fair, technically this is more because, before my last post, I hadn't posted in almost two years. So, this is progress. It doesn't feel like progress, but it actually is.
So, I spoke with my mentor today. We are getting the book done tonight for Kindle, so it should be available very soon--tomorrow is the goal--for download. I am going to make it for $5.99. Eventually, there WILL be hardback copies available--they are already formatted and ready to sell, but until I can buy a bulk batch, I won't be able to reduce the price to a reasonable level for all you lovely people that want one. So, look for that announcement in a few months.
In the meantime, I am going to start writing more. I want to get at least one short story up a month. And, of course, starting today, my part of The Skeleton Friend is done--other than actually uploading it on Kindle, which takes very little effort or time. This means I will start on Book Two officially. My goal is to have The Skeleton Girls published by the end of this year. So, keep a look out for announcements about that as well.
I am also going to put together a mailing list. You will get snippets from the new book, first access to short stories I publish, and all the little details and announcements concerning my burgeoning career and booklist. If you are interested in being a part of this, please email me or message me. I will begin setting it up shortly. Another thing you can keep an eye out for.
Other than that, there isn't a lot going on. I am genuinely exhausted. I got about three hours of sleep. I tried to get four-and-a-half, but after three-thirty this morning, I was wide-awake. Thanks, body.
I stayed up late getting the hardback formatted and finished. Again, I am sorry we can't get it out sooner. I am going to need a chunk of change to do that, so the biggest thing is going to be marketing this book the best I can to get it into the "well-selling" category. I am certainly not expecting the book to blow up overnight. I know it is going to take time, patience, tenacity, and a lot of networking, but I hope that by the end of this year I can consider myself a full-time writer, no-time scrub tech.
Zoscha would love having me home every day.
In three weeks, she and I will be on the road down the California coast to Phoenix for our Left Coast Crime Convention debut. I am more excited about this trip than I probably should be--I don't know if it is because of the convention, or because I really like road trips and I've never seen the California coast. I'm really excited to get going.
So, I am going to go try to work on something substantial--because, despite the fact that I only slept for three hours last night, I won't be sleeping until probably nine tonight. 
Have coffee, will write.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I-5

On a chilly Sunday evening in mid-January, two young women rolled up to the TransAmerica Title Building on the outskirts of Salem, Oregon, just off Interstate 5, to clean the office. It was their usual Sunday job, though today they had gotten a bit of a late start, having to shower and stop for gas, so they didn't arrive to the business complex until after nine p.m. The office had wide, welcoming windows on every wall and, with the bright florescent lights flipped on, the effect was to create a fishbowl-like scene, the women bustling around in their duties like two busy, little fish. They'd left the door unlocked and entertained themselves by chatting to each other, the two of them best friends. They were Shari Hull, twenty-years-old and the daughter of the owner of the housekeeping company with which they were both employed, and Beth Wilmot, also twenty and a fairly recent transplant to Salem from Spokane, Washington. She'd come for work, and along with steady pay, she...
2 comments
Read more

By the Barrel of a Silver Gun (I-5 Part Two)

In early February of 1981, authorities from Salem flew down the Interstate 5 corridor and assembled with detectives and law officials from northern California and southern Oregon. Each detective had a crime, or two, in their jurisdiction matching a particular modus operandi , and the list of incidents just kept growing. When they gathered, they had no idea the scope of the mystery they were unraveling or just far it was going to reach. It started with a robbery. On December 9, 1980, in Vancouver, Washington, a gas station was held up at gun point, the female attendant left alone in the store. A man entered wearing a brown coat and a fake beard. He demanded cash and brandished a small, silver gun to prove he was serious. The cashier obliged.  A few days later, in Eugene, Oregon, on December thirteenth, a Baskin-Robbins was robbed by a man holding a silver gun and wearing a fake beard and a band aid across his nose.  In Albany, Oregon, a drive-in was hit on Dec...
2 comments
Read more

Wah Mee Massacre

On a chilly February night, five days after the start of the Chinese New Year, 1983, three young men walked into one of the most renowned, high-stakes gambling dens in the heart of Seattle's Chinatown International District and walked away with thousands of dollars of cash in their pockets and fourteen lives hanging in the balance in their wake.  The club was the Wah Mee, a sixty-year-old casino and bar that catered exclusively to Chinese clientele and hosted the highest-stakes illegal gambling in the Pacific Northwest. The men were 22-year-old Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, 20-year-old Benjamin Ng, and 25-year-old Wai Chiu "Tony" Ng.  Willie Mak was born in Kwangtung Province in mainland China and immigrated to the US with his family in 1975 when he was fifteen. By 22, Willie was a high school drop out, working various jobs in and around Seattle, and had a penchant for gambling. He was well-known in the International District gambling clubs, including the Wah Me...
2 comments
Read more