R.W. Krpoun's Blog, page 6

I have begun Grog 5, and have got ten thousand words of rough draft. The storyline has survived the introduction, and the so far the arcs are dropping into place, but I definitely do not want to jinx things by saying it is a clear shot by any means. Still, it feels promising.

I also have a possible plotline fix for Dark Journeys, so of Grog 5 stalls, I will switch over to that, but hopefully it won’t come to that.

So, a week did not lead to a breakthrough on any of my pending projects, although word counts were advanced. Therefore, this week I am still going to pick away at the stalled projects while doing prep work for Grog V, and investigating a possible plot resolution for Dark Journeys.

Grog will be a priority, however, as Dark Tide has yet to sell a thousand copies, and sequels always sell fewer than the book before. By comparison, Grog IV sold well over a thousand copies in the first month after its release.

Meanwhile, get out and vote (but not for Beto, he’s an ass).

So as I mentioned, I was burnt out on fantasy, so I have been working on two stalled projects ans wrote the opening chapter on another, which is my usual method. Grog started out just as a chapter, and then a project that started and stalled repeatedly over several years. I told myself that if I did not have a viable project going by 1 November, I was going to start work on Grog V.

So anyway, I have written thousands of words, but the projects had not achieved any real momentum. Until last week, when a stalled project sudden picked up several plot arc solutions and is humming along. So the deadline is moved back a week. I’ll post again next Monday.

Hope everyone enjoyed their Holloween.

Not talking about my LitRPG trilogy. I’m the sort who lays down and ten seconds later is unconscious; thanks to the Army, I can sleep almost anywhere, and I go deep and stay there, so I dream a lot, and vividly.

Now, I do not believe that dreams are anything but parts of your brain playing solitaire while the rest of the system is down for scheduled maintenance. That said, I always reflect on my dreams when I get up, because you never know what can pop up.

I believe that the keenness of Human senses and the brain’s ability to store data is greater than most people’s ability to process or recover data, and that this is the source of ‘gut feelings’, ‘instinct’, and the like. I have always trusted those feelings, and they have never led me astray.

So while I don’t place great stock in dreams, I reflect on them because I find that they are often related to topics that have been on my mind. And a topic I often have in my mental In Box is my current project. For example, last Friday I resolved plot issues to two projects while dreaming about inheriting a restaurant in a strip mall.

Why I was dreaming about inheriting a restaurant in a strip mall, I have no idea, although it might be related to my favorite local Chinese restaurant (which was in a strip mall) recently getting closed down because of yet another Human trafficking charge. I am still in recovery on that issue.

The key point is that while the dream ran its nonsensical course, I picked up those aforementioned points.

Some years ago I got the core plot for the novel Buffalo Riders from a dream.

So my point is, give your dreams the once-over after awakening, especially if you are involved in creative endeavors. You never know what bit might pop up.

So I regularly get requests for sequels or addition to series, and in truth I want to write them. Recently Grog IV even got a four star review with a request for continuation of the Phantom Badgers or a sequel to Zerk.

Few of my books are written with the intention of being stand-alone novels, but as I grow a bit as a writer, I have to confront the facts: I will write one or two books per year, so I have to choose wisely.

The simple fact is that if I want my work to be read by the most people possible, I have to have my choices guided by shown interests. The sad truth is that more people have read Grog I (the first of the series) than all the Phantom Badger books combined. Zerk, for another example, has had less than a thousand readers.

Since the hard and fast rule is that each addition to a series or sequel will be read by roughly half as many people as the book before, continuing a series, or adding a sequel to an existing novel, where the preceding book had less than a thousand readers is a poor choice. The exception would be Floating Hunger, where the idea I had let me write it in just a couple months.

So while Dark Journeys and a Zerk II exist in my Projects folder, and get worked on when I have time, my focus must remain on series like Grog, whose readers are numerous enough to warrant the time, or on new novels who might catch the public’s eye in a way that my other books have not.

Now, my name is getting around enough so that every one of my 25 published books sees some sales every month (which was not always the case), so the situation is not static; as interest in several of my older books, the Phantom Badgers in particular, is steadily growing, and with it, my incentive to add another book to the series.

I’m not going to stop writing, so don’t give up on your favorites.

Although I should point out that The Zone, Chains of Honor, City of the Way, and Sunstone are single novels, and the Dream Trilogy is complete.

Grog IV is selling well, and it has already gotten 46 reviews, which is incredible.

Meanwhile, I’m reviewing and working on a couple stalled projects, and pondering Grog V.

Series are a bit heart-breaking, because generally each successive book sells fewer copies, but I take heart in the fact that Grog sells copies virtually every day, and besides, I really enjoy writing about Grog and company.

I have broken with my long-standing practice of not taking my writing too serious by reserving a table at the next Texas Author Con, to be held in Richardson, Texas next July.

So after a marathon editing session, and the increasingly efficient Amazon publishing process, Grog IV is available for sale.

The paperback should be available in a couple days.

Third edit is underway, and the cover image has been chosen. I’m afraid the price will again go up, as the ongoing political and social drama has driven the prices of declarative punctuation, especially exclamations points, sky-high.

I am guessing that it will reach E-book publication right after Labor Day, with paperback trailing a few days later.

But it could be sooner.

SO the first edit of three is done. It added about 750 words, bring the book to just shy of 87,000 words. I won’t speculate on a release date yet, but we are clearly moving towards a release.

First round of editing and review have begun. I’ll keep things posted.