I took off a few hours early yesterday. I have gobs of vacation, and since I have the house to myself, I wanted to get some things done. Old What's Her Face* made her annual trek south to watch the Super Bowl with her brother. There really isn't much more attraction there than that, and I decided to watch Otto. (That's code for getting stuff accomplished.)
With the extra time, I stacked the deck for today. Last night, I finished my beta read and made some detailed notes for the author before sending them out the cyber-door. Then I assembled and scheduled next week's Lisa Burton Radio show. I felt so good about it I made myself a drink before bed.
This left me with some time to move my projects ahead. Otto let me sleep in a little bit, but we were still up before 7:00. I fed him, and myself, filled the humidifiers, and made the coffee. Like all days, I started with email and social media.
I moved on to The Yak guy and added several thousand words to his story. He's starting to have bigger thoughts, and placed himself in real danger for the sake of others. He only has to do it one more time, then take a group of helpless folks across a wasteland, have an epiphany, earn his reward, and it's done. It sounds like a lot when I see it written out, but travel time will have to be pared down and explained more than lived through.
I could be done in about three more writing days.
I surfed through all the sites again, picked up the mail,and found Karen O.'s awesome review of my second Experimental Notebook. Many of you are writers, and Karen is a prolific reviewer. Maybe you ought to introduce yourselves over there. She's associated with other reviewers too, and it's good to know a few. Hit the link above, and you might convince yourself to pick up my 99¢ masterpiece while you're there.
Then I picked up The Enhanced League. I wrote another micro piece about behind-the-scenes corporate evils. This project is about three tales away from being finished too.
After finishing the micro piece, I made a chart for the playoffs. I can't detail the whole event and keep reader interest. When I refer to it though, I want a cheat sheet so I can be accurate. Right now, I want to return to the television guys so they can detail the playoff structure for everyone. Then I'm going all the way to game seven of the World Series, which I'm calling the The World Championship. (This isn't Major League Baseball, and I don't want to step on their toes.) After that, I have one post-season tale that ties up some loose threads for my pseudo main character. Then it's done.
I might add another anthem piece, but it depends on how I feel after it's all assembled.
Many of you are writers, most of you are readers, here's a question for you. The Enhanced League is coming together with more micro-fiction than short stories. Would this be an issue to you as a reader? They all serve to tell a bigger tale as a sum than they do standing alone. This makes the book different than my Experimental Notebooks. Would you feel ripped off spending 99¢ on a book of mostly micro-fiction?
It's been pretty quiet in Cyberspace this week. I hope it all means you're tearing it up on your own projects, or doing something fun while I'm working. I'm not counting much on tomorrow, but may spend an hour with The Enhanced League. Yak Guy requires deeper thought, and after calling my parents I don't know how much time I want to dedicate before turning on all the pre-game stuff.
I want to end with Go Steelers, but that ship has sailed.
*Entertaining Stories, protecting my wife's identy since 2013.
I think if you labelled the book appropriately, no one should care about the length. If you are saying you’d publish ten microstories at $0.99 each then you are going to have the series nightmare of people dropping out. Of course, I really won’t know for sure until I try them. Sounds like a productive weekend. Go Falcons.
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It will be bigger than that, and a couple of the stories are quite long. I think you’re right. It has to be experienced.
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🙂
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Holy cow! That sounds like a VERY productive day! Just checked in to say ‘Go Falcons!’
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Glad you have purchase in the big game. I wouldn’t cry if I missed it, but I’ll watch it anyway. It was a fair day. I’m looking forward to getting these two projects out there.
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For me, its not about the length of a story, but the quality. I know I’m going to get good stuff from a Craig book so its really not an issue. I don’t think you need to worry. And seriously, if anyone quibbles over 99c, really, they’re not the kind of readers you want. Anyone who’s not sure will download a sample first. It will be grand. Go for it.
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You always say the nicest things. It’s such a pain to make one permanently free. First you have to post it elsewhere and make it free, then it baits Amazon to price match. Ugh. 99¢ won’t break anyone. I suppose I could post them individually on my blog, but where’s the fun in that.
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No. It has to be a book. Go for it Craig.
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I’ve got a book that is free everywhere except Amazon, for months. How long does it take? Very annoying!
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It may cost me some action, but I’ve been with Amazon exclusively since the beginning. I know it can be done, because that’s how Macabre Sanctuary was set up. That’s an anthology I’m in.
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Maybe do a total word count of all the stories … see if that feels like a 99c price point you can live with. 😀
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I can live with it, I don’t know if readers will. In a perfect world, we’d never get less than $5 per copy, but greed took care of that for all of us.
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I don’t think that’s too much at all! And like Ali said, we know you so we know what we’re getting! Quality stories! I finished reading the revision book I wanted, now I’ll begin going back through and putting things in action starting Mon. On the weekends, I mostly concentrate on blogs and reading when I’m not writing. No plans for the games, other than food, lol. It used to be a big deal when my dad was still alive but that’s been almost nineteen years now.
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I have a couple of craft books I’ve been dragging my feet on. I might dive into them after these projects are out the door. My novella projects are screaming at me to get started.
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I’m reading one by Joanna Penn right now. She’s really done well as an Indie. Though for myself, I don’t want to get into teaching and the whole entrepreneur thing. I’m just not able to do that.
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Craft books are helpful, in that all of them contain nuggets of good info. I don’t think any of them can define the path for everyone.
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True.
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It’s never a bad time to say, “Go, Steelers!”
As for microfiction, I don’t think it’s a problem. I’d be more concerned with total page count rather than length of individual stories.
As for my Saturday, I planned on working on my WIP, but I got sidetracked reading this awesome book called The Cock of the South. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? 😉 I’m about 65% through and I think I’ll just stay up and finish it tonight. So much for the WIP, but this diversion was worth it.
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I’m shocked! You seem like more of a paranormal type. So excited that it’s working for you. Go Steelers, and Hail Cobby.
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I think $.99 for that is perfectly reasonable.
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Much appreciated.
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Sounds like a well-balanced day 🙂
I’d pay 99 cents for a micro-fiction book. Micro-fiction and shorts of all kinds are generally my portable reading.
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It was a good day. I may need Tommy John surgery from throwing Otto’s ball so much, but now I can relate to some of the players. Good to know about short forms. I think the world is headed that direction.
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I envy you your time with your words.
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It’s a rare weekend, but sooo satisfying.
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Reblogged this on Anita Dawes & Jaye Marie.
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Glad to hear someone is getting work done. I am trying to work on my new project, but I hurt my leg and it’s driving me nuts. Being drained or something next week, so not expecting any joy yet. Quite hard to be creative at the moment.
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Thanks for sharing the post. Sorry about your leg, take care of yourself.
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at least I am getting more work done!
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That’s a positive spin.
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Having written a 130K+ word novel that has stand-alone chapters/shorts/flash-fic interspersed with an ongoing story arc that the stand-alone’s feed into, I say – go to it!.
The Playground turned out great with a similar approach. 😀 The Enhanced League sounds like a punchier version of TP and if the overall word count is in the novella zone then 99c is well spent! 🙂
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Thanks for the vote of confidence.
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I’d have no problem spending .99 for a book of microfic. I’m sure you’ll have a good number of stories so the length of each shouldn’t matter.
Sounds like you had a good productive day. I’m off to hit copy edits again and hopefully be productive before the game tonight. Enjoy your Sunday!
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That seems to be the consensus. Now I just have to sell the idea of American Baseball as a setting. It may have limited appeal, but it’s something I wanted to write.
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Micro fiction is never a rip off. It’s tough to pack a lot in so small a space without sounding like a timeline, so as a writer I can appreciate the skill it takes to whittle and hone a perfectly concise piece. And then to start on the next…
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Me too, but these are going to be a bit different. Some of them won’t stand outside the covers of this book. It’s a gamble.
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I’m watching this space… 😳
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I’ll try not to make you wait too long.
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Ps – I wanted to say Go Broncos, but our ship didn’t sail. It sank…
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I’m with you on that armada.
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Not at all. If you’re worried, though, then include it in your description.
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Thanks, Sue.
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