Tag Archives: indie publishing

Unpublishing….

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So I’ve done something I didn’t think I’d do….I unpublished a series. I just went into KDP and took them all down, so if you already own them you’ll still get to keep them, but they won’t be showing up on amazon after tomorrow.

The series I took down was my litRPG series, The Hub World. I had three of them out, and I think I made the right choice.

I didn’t take them down because they were bad, but they weren’t amazing either. They were just okay. I can say this after a year of reflection, and writing five books. That’s right, I have two more books in the series that I have almost finished and they are just sitting here. Waiting.

The problem is the books I started writing aren’t the same as what I’m writing now. Or I should say my knowledge of that world isn’t the same. I know more about the mechanics, the people, the creatures, and the gods of this world. So much more of the lore. Even just knowing WHY the two main characters are there, and what they hope to accomplish, is enough to change everything about the first few books.

When I first started the series I just set out to have a little fun. I’m a gamer, so it wasn’t hard to write a story about people playing a game, and inserting some of the history of gaming into the setting. But I’m also a world builder, and I didn’t do a lot of that in the first two books. I added more in the third book but who wants to wait till the third book before they start to get invested in a world?

So…it was okay. I told a complete story, the characters had some good banter, and there was a conclusion. But the world wasn’t deep enough, and that means the books just aren’t good enough to make them worth continuing.

So here’s the plan. I know this world better, so I’m going to rewrite the first three books, finish books 4 and 5, and release them all once I’m done. If I do this right I’m hoping I can get them all done and start releasing one a month for a while.

I am finishing up The Half Blood Sorceress, book 2, right now. I want to have that out by the beginning of April. Then I start on a much needed overhaul of The Hub World Series.

I’m going to do this right. I love litRPG. I want something to be proud of.

So, look forward to Dragon’s Blood by April, and a new, better, litRPG series coming soon.

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One Million Words!

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I just broke a million words written. At least officially.

They say to be a good writer you need to write a lot, and read a lot. Somewhere along the line someone said “You need to write a million words before you start to get good.” I’m paraphrasing of course, but since I heard that it has been my goal. To write 1 million words worth of stories.

Of course I’ve been writing since I could form sentences, so I am sure that I’ve written well over a million words in my lifetime, but I haven’t been tracking them the entire time. I also didn’t think it was fair to count the words that I end up throwing away due to grammar/spelling/etc issues. I count them in my daily word count goals, but not when it came to the big number, the million words written.

In the million words I count the stories that I have finished and published, as well as the current projects I’m working on. I have another section just for ideas, dead stories, and anything that probably won’t get written any time soon.

I found that keeping track of what stories I am working on, how far along they are, and which ones are finished and waiting to be published has helped me keep on track a lot. Before I started doing this I had trouble finishing anything. It’s too easy to chase the shiny new thing instead of finishing the project in front of you.

Of the million words I have in active and published projects I have published just over half a million words. That means my next goal is to publish the other half a million. That could be six novels, or a whole lot of short stories, but I think I can get there. The question is how fast. Let’s see, shall we?