I’m writing this in advance of posting, so if anything sounds out of date or odd now, apologies. It’s Saturday, and I’ve spent the day meeting an old friend for a catch up over coffee, writing more of a new story in Starbucks (and exceeding my caffeine quota) and sitting here with my husband at his office waiting for him to finish work so we can go out with another friend.
It’s been a good day and I managed to get quite a lot written in Starbucks, which is noticeable because my arms are aching now as I type this and my fingers are tired and very unresponsive.
Last weekend, the muse decided that he enjoys me writing more than editing, and gave me two new stories to play with. Both of them are angel romance stories, and they fit with my other one, Her Dark Angel, so I’m writing them as a trilogy of sorts. They’ll be able to read as stand alone stories, but the characters will make appearances in the others. I had a rough plot idea for both of them at the time, and when I finished editing Her Dark Angel on Tuesday, I knocked together the plot for the next one, Her Fallen Angel. At first it wasn’t working but eventually we got there after a little thinking time.
I started writing Her Fallen Angel in earnest on Wednesday and it was a very slow start because I had been gearing down to have a break over Easter, so was coming out of writing and editing mode for the first time in a few months. Also, someone at my work is leaving so Friday lunchtime was spent out with them and the team, and Friday evening was a write off due to a couple of glasses of wine. Unless I want the characters to suddenly get together without reason, it’s not a good idea for me to write under the influence of alcohol.
I have caught up though as today I spent a few hours in Starbucks and managed to get 7,700 words written on and off (I was very distracted and procrastinated quite a bit or I could’ve reached 10,000 like a good girl). Still, I reached my target of 20,000 words total on this story, leaving the remaining 10,000 words to write next week.
Once I have Her Fallen Angel wrapped up in first draft, I’ll plot out the story for Her Warrior Angel, which will also be a 30,000 word novella. I’m looking forward to writing that one too, but these novellas are heavy on the love scenes which often means they take me a while to write as I’m never quite in the right mood or the right place for writing love scenes. It’s rather difficult to write one when someone is sitting next to you on the train for example. You sort of have to wait for a time when you’re alone or at least have more privacy, and that means I procrastinate and do other stuff instead. Say, watching anime when I should be working!
I’m still unsure about what to do with Her Dark Angel, and in turn these stories. I’m tossing about the idea of submitting them to e-publishers, but my past experiences with them haven’t been great, and sales were rather low. I’ve had amazing sales of my self-published romance ebooks, and it’s very tempting to self-publish these three novellas too. My Amazon Kindle sales at the moment are very good, and I’ve always sold a lot through Fictionwise, and I’m quite confident that I could make these three stories sell very well on those platforms, as well as directly… so it seems the only reason to approach an epublisher with them would be to have them on my writer’s CV for when I’m gunning for agents again with my next novel.
But then, I don’t think epublishers hold much weight with agents. Probably about as much as being self-published does, so I’m bound to end up selling them directly as I have done with all my previous stories.
I’ve also been debating trying to edit down Love Immortal to a more reasonable length, without losing any of the plot. I think that’s the trick and that’s what’s going to make it very difficult. I don’t want to sacrifice the plot for the sake of bringing the length down. I’m sure I could cut some fat off it, but it still might not be enough to make it appealing to agents. I’ve had zero luck with touting it so far and I think it’s because they see the word count (158,000 words) and basically flee. I wish I could say I think I could chop 40,000 words off it without causing problems, but I don’t think that I can. I’m sure I could do something though, if I had the time, which I don’t right now unless I put other things on hold and the backlog of stories that need editing time isn’t getting any shorter! I think it would probably take me 4 weeks to chop the story down and revise it, and then I’d have to proof and polish again. So probably 6 weeks total to get the work on it done. It might be worth it though. I’ll have a fiddle with my schedule and see what comes out. At the end of the second draft the story was 128,000 words but needed some plot stuff added as well as improved description. A lot of the description stuff I could probably chop back and hone, but the plot stuff was really necessary… I do like a challenge though. Maybe it’s worth it in this market of tight word counts for new authors. I’ll have more chance touting a 120,000 word and 110,000 word paranormal romances together than a 158,000 and 110,000 word ones.
Off to sort out my schedule. Poor Ascension is never going to get edited at this rate!
