Day 16: Full time Author

Posted on June 23, 2016 by CrissyMoss

Last night I went to sleep instead of writing my daily blog post. I wrote until I couldn’t think anymore, then burned through a bunch of youtube videos trying to exhaust myself enough to actually fall asleep. Probably not that healthy for a person.

I did, however, write. I started a short story for the Bradbury Challenge, and it’s going pretty well. I also worked on revamping the print cover for Witch’s Curse.

I start work on Monday… That means less time to work on writing because I will be leaving at 9am and getting home at 8pm. Fudge. 11 hours of my day… gone. I hope I can find time at the new job where I can write. Lunch or something? I’ll make it work.

My To Do List For June:
Finish re-edit “Witch’s Sacrifice” – Half done
~~Format print books, WC –~~ Done
Format print books WS – half done
Format witches trilogy – Half done
Reformat small bites with pictures
Edit/format “Mirror”
~~Cover for the trilogy –~~ DONE!
Finish “Magi” short story
Finish “The Deep” short story
~~Finish Minotaur short story~~ DONE
Write “Half Blood Sorceress” novels – Half done book 1, quarter done book 2.

Four days left, and how much of this can I get finished? Let’s find out, shall we?

Day 3 – Full time Author

Posted on June 10, 2016 by CrissyMoss

words Today has been incredibly productive.

It’s almost midnight and I’m about to go to bed, but I wanted to do my update post for the night.

I finished “Minotaur” today. I’ll be talking about that on tomorrow Bradbury Challenge Podcast. We’ll be recording at 10am on Blab (I think). Check my twitter for updates in the morning.

Overall, I’m really happy with the feel of Minotaur, but I almost want to keep going with it, add another scene or four afterward. But then it wouldn’t be a short story anymore. It’s just over 2k words at the moment, and I almost feel like it could be a novella.

I also worked on my “Dragon Project” today. I just can’t decide on a name yet, so “Dragon project” it is.

The first couple of days were difficult. I felt guilty that I wouldn’t be bringing in a steady paycheck for several weeks. (This isn’t a financial problem, Gregg and I both have nest eggs built for this exact reason, but it still felt bad.) Today the guilt, while still there, wasn’t that bad. I wrote, and I felt good doing it. I almost wanted to keep writing tonight, but I’m starting to fall asleep.

What I am seeing is that I can’t just write non stop. This morning I wrote a large portion of the short story, and some more on the Dragon Project, and then my mind started to wander. I started playing games, and tried going back to writing but just couldn’t. After going for a walk, and playing some D&D with friends, I came back refreshed and able to write some more.

I have always said I write better at night. I don’t know why this is, but the words just seem to flow better in the evening. Training, maybe, but that means I just have to start training myself to write in the morning as well. I’m working on it.

However, I do know for sure that I can’t just keep writing. After a while I need to step away from the computer, go for a walk, talk to someone, or just clean the house. Then, after I’ve had that time away from the computer, I can come back and write some more. I know that going for a short walk today was incredibly helpful to get those creative juices flowing again. I think I’ll be doing that again tomorrow.

Dragon’s Flame

Posted on May 25, 2016 by CrissyMoss

WORKING COVER DRAGON The working title and cover for my new book… at least the first book in the series.

This isn’t the final cover. While it wouldn’t be too terrible, the font isn’t great and it doesn’t say “fantasy” enough for me. I will be playing around with it a lot before the first book comes out. I still like the idea of a girl surrounded by flames, since she is a fire sorceress after all.

A few updates:

I am reworking a few chapters in “Witch’s Sacrifice”. There were a few people who read it who said one scene in the book made no sense, and made one of the characters just appear to be an idiot. I couldn’t disagree with them so I’ve been trying to figure out how to fix it since then. I finally did a few weeks ago (that’s right, it took me a year to figure out how to fix one plot point.) I’ve been rewriting it and will probably republish that book before the end of the month.

Dragon’s Flame… which I’m still not convinced on that name because it’s kind of generic… is coming along nicely. I’m 17 k into it, and I have a feeling it’s going to be about 50 when I’m done. Still not sure about that since I keep adding things to make it more interesting. (Why am I writing this? It seems so boring? I know, set something on fire!)

The original title was “Awaken the Dragon”. I might go back to it, but I’m not sure. It depends on some things. I have a feeling that there will be lots of tweaks and changes before I ever get to the publishing. I just needed a working cover to have something to visualize the book…for now.

What else?

I got a new job, and quit my old job. I have another week before moving on to the new job, and a four day vacation between the two. Lots of writing to be done there. The awesome part was that during the interview they asked me what I had done in the past that required a lot of dedication, without supervision, and no reward till the end of the project. WRITING! We chatted about my books for a few minutes in the interview. It was awesome!

I’ll give you guys another update in a few days.

A quick update

Posted on April 29, 2016 by CrissyMoss

Good morning all you lovely people out there. It’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining. And I am just happy as a clam.

I thought I would give everyone just a little update.

I’m waiting for the final edits on Witch’s Stand. It should be out this weekend though.

I finished Witch’s Sight last night so I’ll be doing some editing on it and it should be out in a couple weeks. I will probably send it to my newsletter tonight as a sneak preview.

I also have some other short stories done. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do with them. Release as an anthology? Shelve them? Print them and make them into wreaths? A couple of them are long enough to be stand alone short story books, but they still need edits and covers.

Otherwise, I’m just deciding on the next project to do. Urban fantasy, or regular fantasy? Dragons or gods? Then there is the scifi young adult book… So many books, so little time.

Thoughts?

Progress

Posted on December 29, 2015 by CrissyMoss

Writing isn’t happening tonight so I thought instead I’d give some updates and let others know what’s going on in my neck of the woods.

First, I have a full house. My daughter came home from school for the holidays so there is always someone in my living room. If it isn’t her it’s my son, who is also off school, or my boyfriend who changed his hours at work. That means recording my videos for youtube, and booktube especially, has become difficult. I’m going to have to set aside a day to do that.

January 4th will be the first episode of the “Bradbury Challenge”. More on that next month.

As for the progress on the third, and final novel of the “Witch’s Trilogy”… It’s so close to being done. I hate this part the most. When you’re close to finishing a project (i’m talking 95% finished here) and all you have to do is put in those last few chapters. It feels like you should be able to just do it, and check off each chapter. But then you sit down to write it and you realize that each of these chapters has something wrong with them, or something difficult to write.

For me it’s the fight scenes. It’s always been the fight scenes. I have to puzzle out all the moves in my head and write them out in a list, then rewrite everything as a story. It’s probably not the most efficient way of writing them but it works, and the results get me lots of compliments. But I’ve noticed that when I read I tend to gloss over the fight scenes and just pick up the highlights. I don’t care for the fight scenes in book form. I don’t even know if I care for them that much in a movie or TV show unless they really stand out for some reason (like the epic battle in Dare Devil.) Most of the time you already know who is going to win, and it’s just a matter of how. So the struggle becomes “how do I make this interesting.” And I’m not good at that…yet. I recognize that fault and so I struggle with them. I try not to write stories that contain fight scenes, but I’m dealing with epic magic and sword battles here, they are unavoidable.

I suppose I need to find some well written fight scenes to read for encouragement. Till then I need to finish this damn book.

Gregg wanted me to finish it by the end of the year. That leaves two more days to finish it. I have six chapters that I need to complete, each of which is about half finished. That’s still another 5000 words or so to completion. Can I do it in two days? I don’t think so, but I’m going to try. I’d like to get at least half of them finished, and then the entire novel complete by the end of the first week in January.

What comes after “Witch’s Stand”? More writing, of course. I have a lot of things planned for 2016. For right now I think I’m going to try and get a few more words before I finally give into the pillow calling my name.

A lot of changes!

Posted on August 27, 2015 by CrissyMoss

So much going on this week.

“Witch’s Curse” is out! The second book in the Witch’s Trilogy is available. If you haven’t read book 1, “Witch’s Sacrifice“, and you’d like to then let me know. I’ll happily give you a free copy.

Since releasing “Witch’s Curse” I’ve been hard at work finishing “Witch’s Stand.” Currently done editing 11 of 32 chapters. The other chapters have been roughed in, but I have to finish writing them. That and all the battle scenes. I am sure everyone knows how much I love the battle scenes.

I’ve also been working on getting more audio books out. “Small Bites the complete collection” was just released a few days ago. It joins “Footprints” and “Prophecy by Barlight”. You can find them all here.

I hope to get more audio books up eventually. I have “The Ring” finished, but had some tech difficulties getting it to work so it isn’t actually out yet. I need to take care of that soon. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to do the rest of them as well.

It will be quite some time before I am able to get the Witch’s Trilogy up as an audio book. Since it is a full novel it’s less likely anyone will do a split pay for that until I have a lot more readers. The short stories are less time investment and gives new audio book readers something to add to their portfolio. A nice strategy for them, and for me.

In between writing I’ve been putting in a little bit of time on Twitch. Not a lot since I’m not looking to make it my living, but I really do enjoy talking to people who stop in to watch.

I also posted a vlog about the house buying process (and the failures there of). And I’ve been pretty active over on Instagram, mostly sharing drawings and sketches that I’ve been doing.

I’ve got one other big project that I’ll be doing this weekend since I have a three day weekend. I think I’ll post some pictures, but for now I will give you this hint: Cosplay.

Geek Speak

Posted on May 16, 2015 by CrissyMoss

I’m a bit of a geek. I know, you didn’t know that, but it’s true 😉

So I thought why not chat about the geeky stuff on my vlog instead of just trying to talk about whatever comes to mind. I’m constantly reading about interesting geeky tech, games, movies, or reading some interesting comic or book. Why not talk about that?

There are two episodes up. It will probably be a weekly thing after a bit, I’m just trying to get a few episodes up for now.

Book two of the Witch’s Trilogy is coming along nicely. It is currently 61k long (about 200 pages). I split the first chapter in two and posted it here and here if you’d like to read it. I’ll be posting little bits of it on G+ from here till it’s published. Then I have the third one to do.

Also, I started getting my books in audio format. The first one, Prophecy by Barlight, is available now! It’s only $3.46.

The next one out will be “Footprints”. I just approved the recording today and it will take about a week for it to go through the system. I’ll be adding a few more of my books to their system. I love listening to them in audio, I hope others will too.

NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 23, 2014 by CrissyMoss

I wrote about my strategy to pay attention to my bodies desires and write for a bit, get up and move around, then write some more. It was a fantastic plan, and I’ve been doing it regularly. The trouble is that things get in the way sometimes. I still have to write, of course, but those things make following my bodies natural rhythms difficult.

SLEEP

I haven’t been getting much. Plain and simple, I just am not right now. Part of this is that my boyfriend moved in, and our work schedules do not synced up very well. I tend to like writing at night after the house has settle down, usually from 10pm to 1am. He wakes up at 5:30am. This throws my sleep scheduled off a lot since I have difficulty going back to sleep afterward.

It’s okay for a while, but I’ve been finding myself taking naps after work lately just to make it through the night. The nice part is that his schedule will change soon and hopefully I’ll be getting more sleep.

Worse? Both of us have been working massive amounts of overtime at our respective jobs. This has left me less down time to just relax and have time to myself, especially since the one day a week I have off is devoted to dentist appointments, shopping, and other necessities of living. I’m tired. I’m writing anyway.

Family Obligations

A while ago I wrote about my daughter coming home and having to go pick her up from the bus. This was a huge sap on my writing schedule and I have been struggling to catch up ever since. I’ve written 2000 words on a lot of those days since then, but with the lack of sleep, and a few other things going on I just haven’t caught up. I’m currently 4k behind and it’s looking like I’m going to stay hovering at 3-4k behind till the very last day.

BUT!

NaNoWriMo, for me, is a learning experience each year. This year I’ve learned that writing 1500 words a day isn’t difficult, and I’m hoping to stay at that level even after NaNoWriMo is over. What really is amazing to me is that over the last twenty two days I’ve had four days of less then 1000 words. FOUR DAYS! That’s kind of amazing for me. And on those days I still wrote almost 500 words most days. That is extremely different for me and incredible in and of itself.

Before this month my average for writing was 3-500 words. That’s it. Some days less, some days more, but never enough to make me feel like writing could be a full time career. A writer needs to do one thing above all others: write. If you aren’t writing then how can you make a living writing? Does a swimmer swim? Does a musician play an instrument? If they aren’t doing that thing then how do they make the money?

So the fact that my writing has increased steadily, and that I now feel comfortable, almost elated to have so many words a day, is fantastic. I know that when I switch over to doing edits that word count is going to drop, but hopefully I can work on a project in the evenings and edit in the mornings. I’m not quite sure about that one yet, but I’ll have a perfect opportunity to find out after NaNoWriMo, and book three of my trilogy is complete.

Around the Web

Posted on October 27, 2014 by CrissyMoss

This week has been a mad dash to finish book 1 of the Mermaid’s Curse trilogy, and come up with names for each of the three parts of the book. I’m tossing around the idea of “Curse Maker” and “Curse Breaker” for the first two. No idea about the third. “Curse Taker” maybe? I have to think about it. I’ve got one chapter that I am doing the final edit for on book 1, and five chapters left on book two.

I’ve also been working on my NaNoWriMo plots. Like usual, I will be working on two story lines. One main project, and one to switch to when I get stuck on the first. That seems to be the easiest way to write for me. This year it will be book 3 of the Mermaid’s curse trilogy (which I have totally plotted out, and it’s going to be AWESOME!) and book 1 of the Eternal Tapestry series. A sort of prequel to Forgotten Ones. I just haven’t decided which will be the main project, and I would love to get them both finished. But that will come about as I start writing come next month.

I’ve also been a bit busy on Instagram and Pinterest with sketches and what not to stay busy. It’s Halloween, and I enjoy drawing pumpkins and skulls, so there you go.

And now for some interesting videos/articles/etc that you might find amusing and/or informative.

The latest Authors Earnings report is live, and it’s all about KU!

Two important publishing facts EVERYONE gets wrong, by Hugh Howey

LeVar Burton reads “Go the F*ck to Sleep” at a charity live stream.

Neil Gaiman on scary stories and little children.

Japanese SF writing contest open to AI and aliens.

From Reddit: What is a science/history mystery that has been solved, but no one seems to know?

And just a reminder, Small Bites 1 and Prophecy by Barlight are still free. And I will be having a couple more promo’s going on next month. And you can always sign up for my newsletter here.

Author Crissy Moss

The art of telling a good story.

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