R.W. Krpoun's Blog, page 10

It was painful but undeniable: extensive testing established that my PS4 has bought the farm. The sudden, expected loss of a loved one is a tragedy that has broken lesser men, but I carried on.

Luckily, I was able to purchase a PS5 a couple days later on Amazon for only 180% of the suggested retail price, but when a challenge to the stability of all that is right and good arises, a man does what a man has to do.

I got it in today, and I’ve got numerous hours of downloading yet before me to put things to rights.

The destruction of my plot troubled me for much of the week, even as the gift of writing flowed upon me; I was able to cobble together the broken bits of plot and stay a half-chapter ahead of my writing until the weekend, when a long session of mowing \allowed me to put the plot back together.

Right now the project stands at 30,000 words, and hope is born anew.

I found and purchased a map-maker better suited to my lack of visual art skills. It is not great, but it does show the the relative bearing of places to each other.

Each hex is about twenty miles across.

I will continue to try to map out other areas in the series, and then expand into the Phantom Badgers if all goes well.

So, set against the backdrop of one man’s heartbreaking saga of his TV suddenly not recognizing his PS4 in the midst of a world-wide shortage of PS5s, my tale takes a heart-wrenching turn.

I’ve been hammering away, knocking out 2000+ words a day while bingeing on an unlikely Brit TV series, when I run into a gaping plot hole like Wiley E Coyote hitting a brick wall.

To some writers this would be a severe setback, coming as it does to a lined-out novel plot, but fortunately my style is more organic (meaning I tend to make it up as I go along), so I expect it will be sorted out in short order.

Anyway, that and the annual plague of mosquitos is about all that is news on my front. Hope everyone is doing well.

So I’m still suffering from fatigue and a cough, but I wrote 8000 words over the weekend and am eager to keep hitting the keyboard. I’m healthy enough to mow (about 3 acres of our place is lawn), which as an activity is very conducive to pondering plot issues.

Not much else going on. Sales are excellent, reviews are trickling in, and hope springs eternal. I hope everyone is doing well.

Well, it appears that the flu my wife brought home was COVID, but NyQuil and Blue Bell were up to the job, and I’m back to normal, insofar as that goes. Work continues.

So the week before last I stood under a 6″ wide branch and knocked myself flat and getting a six-day headache. Last week, as my skull finally quit hurting my wife came home from a conference in San Marcos with a bad case of the flu, which obviously, I got too.

So my productivity has taken a moderate hit recently, but I am still working the keyboard, the hunt for inspiration, and the building of plot arcs. My problem right now is one of focus: I’m getting all sort of interesting ideas, but they are spread across five different projects and three genres. Still, better too much than too little.

Benson is still selling well, and while the review count is a little low, they are all good ones.

Grog got a three-star, but it was nicely-written. I actually expected a lot more push-back on the slavery issues with that book, and almost didn’t bother publishing it because of that. I based the slavery in the book on that of the Roman period, as opposed to the cotton-based American experience, so Grog’s loyalty to Master Horne would fit in more accurately.

Anyway, the flu is waning, and the keyboard calls out to me.

Greetings, all. Not much to report, I’m afraid. Still hammering away at the keyboard ever day and hunting inspiration. Gathering plot ideas one bit at a time while working on a project which is currently 41,000 words. It is not, however, Grog 3 or Dark Journeys; both of those projects are still getting plot arcs and concepts hammered out.

Thanks for all the reviews and purchases. I’ll keep you appraised.

A busy week. Benson is selling well, and I’ve gotten awesome reviews, which inspire me beyond words. Every time I prep a novel for publishing, I am convinced that it is pure crap, and it isn’t until the reviews come in that I relax.

I have about a third of Dark Journeys written, but it is stalled on major plot arc issues. The cliffhanger is giving me fits, and I will have to do a lot of pondering to bring that project home.

But while I ponder, I am still hammering at the keyboard, and I have reached 36,000 words on the current project. It has story arc issues, too, but more minor ones. 2021 is going to be a year of story arc issues; I have three projects started, and a fourth hovering in the wings, and the question facing me is where inspiration will strike hardest.

Well, Benson is up, selling steadily, and I’ve got four excellent reviews that certainly buoyed my spirits. I expect that Benson will be one of the slow-but-steady sellers rather than the hot items like the Grog books, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Once I commit to a project’s completion, any thoughts and ideas on other projects are simply jotted on scrap paper and set on the corner of my secondary desk. This is especially true during the final few thousand words and the the extensive editing and re-writes. I even cut down on my inspiration-hunt, as I need to stay focused on the project at hand.

Now with Benson done and cast adrift in its bottle, hoping to reach readers on distant shores, I gather up the notes and start cleaning them up and plugging them into the appropriate projects, which is where I am now. I hope to resume intensive writing this comng week, because I really feel the need.

After extensive review and the addition of about five thousand words, Benson is complete. The uploads to Amazon have been made, and the e-book should be available in 12-24 hours, with the paperback taking 2-3 days.

And on to the next book!