{"id":2092,"date":"2016-01-05T11:15:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-05T11:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/?p=2092"},"modified":"2016-01-07T17:41:53","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T17:41:53","slug":"2016-strategy-part-1-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/2016\/01\/2016-strategy-part-1-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"2016 strategy part 1: Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 2016 sees me enter my seventeenth month as a self-publisher. To date, I have four books published, the fifth is imminent and the sixth is written in first draft form. The seventh is already taking shape in my head. All of these are part of the Brightmoon Annals<\/em> world, a connected series of (mostly) stand-alone books. There is also a new project, tentatively entitled the Allamont Annals<\/em>, a series of Regency romances. The first of these is almost finished. In 2015, I wrote 318,000 words.<\/p>\n

In terms of sales, the books have had some modest success. Total sales 4,000, borrows 2,000 and over a million pages read. This is nowhere near bestseller status, but it\u2019s satisfying to know that there are complete strangers out there who read and enjoy the books. In addition, I\u2019ve given away more than 20,000 copies for free.<\/p>\n

But now that I\u2019ve worked out how to write a book and publish it and market it, what next? Do it all over again, of course! Here are my writing plans for the rest of this year.<\/p>\n

The Fire Mages<\/em><\/strong>\u2019 Daughter<\/em><\/strong> (book 5 in the Brightmoon Annals<\/em>)<\/p>\n

This one is written, edited, proofread and already loaded onto the Amazon servers ready to launch on Jan 15th. It\u2019s a sequel to The Fire Mages<\/em>, featuring Kyra\u2019s daughter, Axandrina (or Drina for short), who is summoned to the capital as a potential heir to the Drashona. Bennamore\u2019s neighbours, the unsophisticated Blood Clans, have a new boy god, and Drina\u2019s unique heritage comes into play as events unfold.<\/p>\n

The Dragon<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s Egg<\/em><\/strong> (book 6 in the Brightmoon Annals)<\/em><\/p>\n

This is finished and brewing for a while until it\u2019s time to start editing. This is a little different from most of the other Brightmoon books, in that it features several point-of-view characters, and it\u2019s more of a quest than many. For anyone who\u2019s read The Magic Mines of Asharim<\/em>, and wondered about the cache of dragon\u2019s eggs Allandra and Xando discovered hidden under the mountain, this book will answer your questions. It also features some familiar characters from previous books. Likely publication date: May 2016.<\/p>\n

The Second God<\/em><\/strong> (book 7 in the Brightmoon Annals<\/em>)<\/p>\n

A sequel to a sequel! This follows on from The Fire Mages<\/em>\u2019 Daughter<\/em>, picking up Drina\u2019s story after some five years. It\u2019s again focused on the Blood Clans, and what happens when a second boy god is discovered. I\u2019ve only just started writing this, so I have no idea at the moment where the story will take me. Possible publication date: autumn 2016.<\/p>\n

The Allamont Annals 1: Amy <\/em><\/strong>(book 1 in the Regency romance series)<\/p>\n

This is my new venture. Regency romances in the vein of Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer were my first love, and I still have a partially completed manuscript, banged out on a manual typewriter, in a drawer. These stories are intended to be shorter than the epic fantasy, and amusing rather than exciting. They\u2019ll be traditional (which means drawing room, not bedroom), and I plan to write six books in the series. Once I have the first four written, I will start publishing them a month apart. The first should be finished this month. Possible publication date: autumn 2016.<\/p>\n

Writing faster<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, I\u2019ve managed to publish a book every four months, and for epic fantasy, I\u2019m happy with that. My books tend to be long, convoluted and, for the later books, built on the back of the earlier ones. In The Dragon<\/em>\u2019s Egg<\/em>, for instance, the characters travel to Mesanthia and meet up with Allandra, Xando and Zak from The Magic Mines of Asharim<\/em>. This means a certain amount of rehashing of previous events to remind those who\u2019ve read the earlier books what happened and cover the basics for anyone who hasn\u2019t. But it also means making sure nothing contradicts the earlier books. I\u2019m very bad about making notes as I go, so I end up rereading chunks of the earlier books to find out the details I need. That\u2019s not a process that can be rushed.<\/p>\n

The Regency books are shorter, but I\u2019m finding I need to do quite a bit of research to get the historical details right. Did they have afternoon tea? Nope, not invented until 1840, but they did have sandwiches. What is an Earl\u2019s mother called? She\u2019s a Dowager Countess. How do guests sit down at the dinner table? Still working on that one. But it all takes time.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I\u2019d love to increase the amount I write each day, not so much to be able to publish faster, but to give myself more time to develop these stories with a little more breathing space. I\u2019ve found a couple of ways to help me produce more words.<\/p>\n

1) Write in several short bursts during the day. Some people call these sprints, but I\u2019m too slow a writer to qualify for that. Plods, maybe. But several a day, each one producing 200-300 words, plus a longer session in the evening, gets it done nicely.<\/p>\n

2) I have a rinky-dink little computer – a tablet\/netbook hybrid – which runs Windows and therefore allows me to run Scrivener, my writing software. It\u2019s also small enough to be easily carried round with me. So anytime I get ten minutes free – tappity-tappity-tap.<\/p>\n

In part 2<\/a>, I\u2019ll look at the marketing side of things: launches and promotions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 2016 sees me enter my seventeenth month as a self-publisher. To date, I have four books published, the fifth is imminent and the sixth is written in first draft form. The seventh is already taking shape in my head. All of these are part of the Brightmoon Annals world, a connected series of (mostly) stand-alone books. There is also a new project, tentatively entitled the Allamont Annals, a series of Regency romances. The first of these is almost finished. In 2015, I wrote 318,000 words. In terms of sales, the books have had some modest success. Total sales 4,000, borrows 2,000 and over a million pages read. This is nowhere near bestseller status, but it\u2019s satisfying to know that there are complete strangers out there who read and enjoy the books. In addition, I\u2019ve given away more than 20,000 copies for free. But now that I\u2019ve worked out how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,170,176,145,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}