Blog Post No. 438
Surprisingly, the sample copies of my new novella, Break/Interrupt, came in earlier than expected. Not surprisingly, there was a mistake and I had to pay to upload a new file in order to fix it. The books came in last week, but I spent the weekend searching for coupon codes online in hopes of avoiding the steep cost of making the fix. It was just a little thing. The text on the back cover was off centre. Some of the issue is from the wildly varying printing and cutting tolerances that comes from print-on-demand books. Also, I was relying on the previous book’s cover as reference and since this book is significantly larger, the spacing was off. Continue reading “Surprise, Surprise”
I’m once again in a holding pattern while I wait for the sample copies of 
I think it would be fair to call this an update, but the title came before content so I’m leaving it. As I write this, there are 14 days left in the month and left to get the coveted discount on the sett-up fee at the printer. I just finished the last review/edit of 
Editing continues for Break/Interrupt. I’m currently waiting on a couple of reviews. While I wait, I’ve been trying to keep busy with other things. I’ve said it many times, including a little bit in the 
I totally get the end of a year being a meaningful starting or ending point for people. We perceive the passage of time naturally in days and seasons, but we created weeks, months, and years to make it easier. It’s not like because we started a new year that everything is reset, though. The same issues we had a week ago are still here (unless it’s something you’ve already taken care of, in which case, good job!).
October is coming to an end and while I’ve stumbled with the edits on Break/Interrupt, I finally feel like I’ve made some headway. I’m still behind (a state that I unfortunately fallen into way too often) but with some elbow grease, I may be starting the second draft on November first. Maybe it will be my not NaNoWriMo project. 
The first draft of the new novella is done. I finished on Friday with a big push and took the weekend off. It’s way too big and not just because it’s longer than I wanted it to be, there is a lot of fat to trim. For the first time in close to 70 days, I’m not writing. To be clear, I only spent 56 days on Break/Interrupt (the other days were finishing the Invasion Novel) but that’s 25 days longer than I had hoped and longer than the marathon writing I did last year for 
I feel like over the last few years the posts on this blog have tended to be more about whatever is going on in my life in the moment and less about thoughts and ideas. It’s easy to just knock out a few hundred words about the week when I have an event or reading going on, or if I’m starting or finishing a project. It’s a little more difficult when I’m just at home trying to write every day. I just did an update last week, and since the only thing that has changed is the word count, I want to avoid repeating myself (more than I already do). I had the idea for this topic a while ago and it’s been sitting in my draft folder so I figured I’d give it a shot. 
It’s been over a month since I started writing Break/Interrupt and I’m not finished. I think I’ve done well, though. I wrote every day and after 31 of them, I was at 37 000 words. That’s good. That’s almost a good novel pace. I’m not closing in on the end of the story, though. And that’s bad. Once again, the story is too long and it’s taking me too much time. Not that there is much I can do about it but keep writing and try to focus on the goal with as little extraneous writing as possible. Its the same problem I had with the Invasion Novel and I had hoped to make better progress at being efficient with my writing. I have a mountain of editing ahead of me, and the length of the novella is adding to it. 