Building Consistency in Life and Fiction

Last week I wrote about making time to get things done. This week, I made it to the gym three times. I also tracked my calories more often this week, leading me to lose a couple pounds. Add to that the fact that my room/office is still decent compared to last weekend.

The next phase in improving my situation is to clear off my desk. I have the Book of Wind printed onto some typewriter paper. The taller paper requires more space for work. This work needs to get done because I have a few ideas in my head and I don't want to forget them.

As far as concrete numbers, my goal is to have The Book of Wind up to 20,000 words by the end of May. Overall, I want to have 50,000 words by the end of the year. Publishing this volume in 2019 is in question, but I'd rather put something quality together than something rushed.

Happy Reading!

This is a Rarity

Usually on a Sunday, I am away most of the day tutoring math. I had no appointments today, so a good part of the day was spent doing some Spring cleaning. My floors definitely needed to be cleared of stuff.

My worst problem as of recent is time. Between a full-time job, a side hustle, and household issues, it's difficult to make time for much else. It's more important that I take time to meal prep and exercise. I'm even taking a break from my YouTube channel in order to relieve some stress.

The fact that I'm posting to this blog is a rarity. It was not my intent to go on a six-month hiatus. It was also not my intent to take so much time to write the last two novels of the series. It is my intent to post more often and to finish my stories. I won't commit to a schedule just yet, but even working on them one hour per week will be an improvement.

Happy Reading!

Planning for Victory

It's the last Sunday before NaNoWriMo 2018. For the past couple weeks, I've been making notes about Senator Space, my project for this year's feat. Today, I'd like to share some strategies for preparation.

• Use a Timeline: A lot can happen to your characters in one year. Senator Space is going to take place over a five-year period, during which my main character goes through many personal changes, including career changes, new children, and physical improvements. 
• Relate Your Characters: Besides my main character, other characters include his wife, his son, and his father-in-law. The president, vice president, and senate majority leader will also play major roles in this novel.
• Re-imagine Your Surroundings: A casino recently opened in my hometown. Part of the construction involved moving a landmark church out of the casino's footprint. I figured that I can make the casino even bigger in my novel, or even move all of the churches. I also made a short list of other places I want to re-imagine.
• Use Templates: My character is joining a military branch after his political career sours. Soldiers have uniforms, weapons, bases, and rules. Make sure to take time to discuss what makes a group of characters special.
• Anything Goes: Ultimately my NaNoWriMo project will be a rough draft. If I have a silly idea, I'll put it in as long as it gets me to my word count goals. You could be lucky enough to hit a word count gold mine!

I hope you find these tips helpful. If you have any useful advice, leave it in the comments below.

Happy Reading!

A Return To My Domain

It's been five years since my last post? That's crazy!

What have I been up to since my last entry? I earned a preliminary teaching license. I've worked various teaching/tutoring jobs. I came to the conclusion that those jobs aren't my cup of tea. I was a data entry clerk for about a month and then spent the ten months following that working on and off in a candle factory. Following my last layoff there, I went back to data entry work and eventually landed my current full-time job.

Also, I moved! It was from one parent's house to another, but that's still a sizable change.

Now on to the important stuff: NaNoWriMo 2018!

Here's a list of a few developments:

• The tentative title for my book is Senator Space. In short, a Massachusetts senator has to go to great lengths to clear his name.
• I plan on doing some live streaming via YouTube every 10,000 words. These streams will be announced on Twitter.
• As for the Realms Quintessential series, books 4 and 5 have yet to be finished. With "Real Life" being a thing, I plan on having both books finished by 2020.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy reading!

The Game Maker

Often times when making a novel, the author fantasizes about his or her novel becoming a movie. I feel I am on the opposite end of that spectrum.

Instead of a movie, I feel my series of novels would better suit a video game. The characters can change classes, use weapons, and rank up, just to name a few things. The stories already allow for plenty of boss battles and mini-games. All I would really need is a team of kick-ass programmers and an epic musical score and we could have the next big RPG on our hands.

Deep Breath

I'm getting ahead of myself, of course. I'm still months from writing another book, and my programming skills are novice at best. Nonetheless, I think this is a cool idea and I'd love to get advice/collaborate on this if possible.

Please leave any suggestions in the comments. I look forward to any opinions you have!

Kindly Requested

Thanks to everyone who got a copy of each of the Realms Quintessential books during Free Book Fridays! On average, 36 people picked up a copy of each book.

If you were one of the people who downloaded any of my books, I ask that you head back to the Amazon page and leave a review. What did you like about the books? What can I do differently? Are there any technical issues with the file? All of these are very important to putting out a quality product for my readers.

Also, if you are looking for a guest blogger, I am available to write for you until September 5th. Please contact me if you are interested.

Happy Reading!

Free Book Fridays!

Hello everybody,

Today I am announcing Free Book Fridays! Starting July 12th and through the rest of the month, one volume of the Realms Quintessential series will be available to Kindle users.

To make sure everyone gets the full story of Viribia, FBF is starting with The Book of Fire. The Book of Earth will be free on July 19th. The Book of Water wraps up the promotion on July 26th.

Stay tuned for when these free books go live! Get the latest news from my twitter feed (embedded on the right).

Happy Reading!

Book of Water Released!

Hello Readers!

I am happy to announce that Realms Quintessential: The Book of Water is now available in print and digital formats.

Print copies are available via Amazon and CreateSpace. If you buy through CreateSpace, you can take 20% off your order with discount code UXB9AX46.

Digital copies are available for Kindle via Amazon. It is exclusive to Kindle for 90 days. If you want it from another retailer after that time, please leave a suggestion below!

Again, thanks to all my readers and fans for making this possible. I hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it!

Happy Reading!

The Sub Kit

No, I'm not making sandwiches. Although, that sounds delicious right now.

I'll soon be starting a new job as a substitute teacher. During orientation, we were encouraged to assemble a "Sub Kit." It's basically an office in a box. My mind has been locked on making one since I've been home. The first thing I added to it was my graphing calculator, which hasn't seen the day of light since graduating from Lowell. The batteries were dead and corroded. I'll have to replace those soon.

But I've digressed from my point.

I wish I had this creative flow for The Book of Water. It's been hard to find with all of the job searching I've had to do. Tonight my goal is to plan out the course for the book between now and the end of June. Hopefully everything will be set for a mid-summer release.

I'll post here more frequently. Until next time, Happy Reading!

Recognize!

It's tax season. All of those various forms are coming in the mail. I finished college last year. I worked three different jobs (One of those jobs hasn't sent me a form yet, and it's actually holding me back from filing). However, I did get one form that felt good to see.

It was a form of miscellaneous income from last year. I made $12.66 from my books in 2012, and though it isn't much (the domain name costs about as much for the year), it gives me something I've been looking for: validation. Anybody can write a book, but it's something special when you earn a royalty doing it.

I've been slacking in the writing department recently. I'm still going through unsorted material from NaNoWriMo. A big chunk of it is a Karaoke contest that may either be shortened or removed completely. I'll have to figure out some more back or side stories to link events together. This is just the fun of being a writer.

There's also fun to being a reader. Reading is something I want to do more of in 2013. In fact, I recently received a countdown timer bookmark, and I've been using it to read at least 15 minutes a day. It really gets the creative juices flowing.

I'll try to be on a more consistent schedule with the blog, but my current job is a tricky thing. I'll shoot for once a week for now.

Happy Reading!

Write Quickly!

Hey Everybody! Just wanted to give a quick update before I go to a holiday party (although I live where the party is, but never mind).

I just renewed my domain name this morning, so RealmsQE.com is mine for another year. I am teaching myself some deeper web programming and I'm toying with the idea of game development, though I'm not committing to a project just yet. Should I commit to making a game, I'll invest in some web hosting.

As far as the book goes, progress is excruciatingly slow. The most work I've done in the last week is draw four lines to make names for two characters. I've decided to give my pirate leader the first name Decebal, but he still needs a last name. Washington doesn't have a new name yet. Blame my third shift schedule.

I still intend on entering ABNA, but in order to do so, I need to step up my game. I'll keep you posted. My next update will be in a week!

Happy Reading!

Pitching a Curveball

Progress on The Book of Water  has been minimal this week. My third-shift job has me sleeping most of the day, which has left me drained of energy.

On the plus side, I know I can renew my domain name this month. I'll be putting in the order next week.

Also on the plus side, I have a rough pitch done for ABNA. I received a few critiques over at the Nerdfighters NING and I am making changes accordingly. Among these changes are those to character names. Daniel Beardfree (Pirate) and George Washington (Fleet Admiral) will no longer have those names. Also, I'll be working to change of the tone to something more serious. I should have a second draft of the pitch up by next week.

Another goal for next week is to have my unsorted material placed into appropriate chapters. Once this is done, I can go chapter by chapter for my first read-through.

Happy Reading!

An Excellent November

It's been a while since I posted here, so I just wanted to give a quick update on the past month.

All in all, this November was a good month to me. I got a job (although not my science job). I also won NaNoWriMo for The Book of Water, on the last day no less. Perhaps the most surprising to me is the fact that I finally made my first royalty as an author!

My goal for next month is to edit The Book of Water so that 1) it has a preface, 2) all unsorted text is put into place, and 3) any storyline gaps are filled. I can't pin an exact release date yet, but it will probably be a similar release date to The Book of Earth. There will most likely be a post about pre-orders when the time comes.

My goal for NaNo 2013 is to win before it's cool. By this, I mean winning before November 25. I may also do Camp NaNo in 2013, but it won't be a Realms Quintessential book. I have an idea for a super-natural crime fighting book that I need to write down before it blinks out of my mind.

Finally, I am going to renew my domain for another year. There will be plenty of celebratory tweets from my (face-lifted) profile!

Until Next Time, Happy Editing!

WriMo, WriMo, WriMo!

It's November! NaNoWriMo is officially here, and after three days, I have written a respectable 5,848 words. At this rate, I will be finished by November 25, which I think will be my fastest win to date.

Here's just some of what's happened so far in The Book of Water:*inhales* Pirates, miniature fleet admirals, giant hammers, naked Janie, smelly Jimmy, and Rocky saves the day. *exhales*

I feel like I'm forgetting somebody though... That's right! I forgot Maya Threads! She's only been mentioned once so far, but has had no scenes or lines. That is one way to boost word count. Another way to boost word count would be to detail (and name) the Pirate captain. Maybe he is out to prove something or is out in the ocean for the experience. Either way, I am going to add another 2,000 words to The Book of Water tomorrow (and there's nothing you can do about it >:3 ).

As far as teasers, I post short quotes on Twitter from time to time, but I do plan on having an excerpt posted on my novel's NaNo page after I cross 25,000 words. I look forward to sharing more with you soon!

Happy Reading!

The Power and The Powerless

It's almost here! Day one of NaNoWriMo! What's that? A hurricane is heading for me? Damn.

That's right. Almost one year to the day after Snowtober, Hurricane Sandy is barreling down on the East Coast. It threatens to knock out power for 7 to 10 days, putting us right into the first week of the writing challenge. Without electricity, my laptop would last less than half a day. Troubling times in Viribia indeed.

On the bright side, this may be an opportunity to use up my stock pile of lined paper. Each year, for as long as I can remember, I disassembled my notebooks at the end of the school year, so I've developed quite the stack. Who knows, if the power goes out, maybe I can give away hand written pages with pre-orders of The Book of Water.

But once again, who knows? One day at a time. If I have power, I'll post on Tuesday. Otherwise, I'll post when power comes back.

Happy Reading! 

The Bridge to Oceana

There's about two-and-a-half weeks until the start of November, so I wanted to start laying out some ideas for The Book of Water.

First off, I want to lay out the military and government. Each Realm has it's own service, and the Water Realm is unique in that it has a Navy. Likewise, it has a Fleet Admiral as its top officer instead of a General. I'm leaning towards a monarchy that has a role as the executive branch. In that case, there will be some sort of congress or parliament to bring laws to the monarch. These details will be smoothed out in November.

Another thing that will be smoothed out in November is the relationship between Janie and Jimmy, more so how the Merlins deal with it. I have a scene in mind where Janie's father and Jimmy go fishing so the father can get more details on the boyfriend. I do have a couple battle scenes in mind for the twins, but I don't want to divulge too much information yet.

I am very excited for this year's NaNoWriMo as I already have a list of plot lines and details written down. This should be a successful year, and I look forward to sharing it with you!

Happy Reading!

Funeral March

This will be a short post. This weekend has been very rough for my classmates and I, as we have lost one of our own. His funeral is tomorrow and most of us will be there. It's definitely not the circumstance we wanted to reunite under.

Currently, I am debating if I should dedicate the next book to his memory. I would have had a tough time getting through college without him, as would many of my classmates. He was a brilliant and witty guy, and I can only hope in dedicating The Book of Water to him, I can honor that brilliance and wit.

I'll post again on Saturday, hopefully with some brighter news. We can only go forward from here.

From The Top!

We're getting closer and closer to day one of NaNoWriMo and the start of Volume Three, on which I am ready to take flight! This post itself is a sign of the times, as it will be my last blog post of the month.

I've been thinking about how to boost sales of the previous two volumes, and the best way to go about it is to take it from the top. The Book of Fire was a learning experience for me as a self-publisher. I learned that I have much to learn about the publishing business. I bought a self-publishing guide that has a timetable in it, outlining the steps for putting out a finished product.

The first step is pretty well handled by my print-on-demand service (all of the title registration, ISBN, the fun stuff), so my top step is to get more people involved in the production of my books. That includes editors, cover artists, beta readers, and people who I know own my previous books. Once I get people involved, I need to keep them in the loop.

But I think between now and then, I'll start developing a dice game to go with my series. This will be published if/when I put out a complete collection for Realms Quintessential. I have many ideas already!

Happy reading!

NaNo Countdown!

Today I want to look at three things: what will happen, what I want to happen, and what needs to happen.

First, NaNoWriMo will happen. I plan to write Volume 3: The Book of Water this year. I've been writing down ideas for characters and story twists for this November. Fun fact: should Water win NaNoWriMo, it will be the second Realms Quintessential book to win (Earth was not entered). Another fun fact: it will be my third consecutive win as an author (I lost my first NaNo in 2009, but I have been 2 for 2 since).

Next, I will talk about what I want to happen. I'm still looking for that 10th paperback sale. Once that happens, I'll get my first royalty payment EVER. I'd also like to see kindle sales start up. In both cases, the books need to be polished into the gems I know they can be.

Of course, if there are things I want to happen, there are things that need to happen. My job search has been at somewhat of a stand-still. I applied for five jobs this week, and next week I go into harassment mode. Imagine, instead of a phone on an employer's desk, I'm perched like an owl poking them repeatedly in the cheek. "Hey... Hey... Hey..." instead of hooting.

All in all, I am confident something will work in my favor. After all, I do have that red poster over my desk.

Happy Reading!

Power of 10?

The number 10 is on my mind right now, and probably for good reason. Yesterday was my fourth "Free Book Friday" and I crossed 100 (10^2) total free copies of The Book of Earth. Though I'm excited to have this exposure, it hasn't translated into much else. There are still no ratings or comments on my books. I encourage anybody who downloaded a copy to leave a rating. It will help me by showing where I need to improve as a writer.

Speaking of improvements, I may scale back on Project M, where I make a new edition of my books when they sell 1000 (10^3) copies. Seeing as The Book of Earth is over 100 distributed copies, Project M will become Project C. This way I can work on improving my books between now and NaNoWriMo.

Also, on the note of 10, I need to sell one more paperback copy of either of my books to make royalty. If you buy the 10th copy, I'll make you something out of Perler beads. Okay? Deal!

Happy Reading!