Am I done? Maybe.

My only goal today was to do some writing. I’ve previously mentioned that Once Upon a Time in the Swamp required a long denouement.

My intent here was to wrap things up, but also provide a potential future for Mari. I have no intention of a sequel, but I want readers to know life goes on after her traumatic events. Today, I reached that point.

Mari’s tale came in over 70,000 words, but that’s not real lengthy. I’m of the mind a story will be as long as it needs to be. I like the story, but there are always things to second guess about one. Time for that later.

At some point, I’m going to have to spend some real money on cover art for all these stories. I think they’re worth the cost of good art, and that industry also needs a few patrons. In fact that gives me an idea for a possible Story Empire post in the future.

It’s time for me to embrace the thing I hate most about these projects… editing. I have three finished books at this time. They are tentatively called:

Of Space Chimps & Asteroids

Goodbye Old Paint

Once Upon a Time in the Swamp

I think I’ll pick up Percy the Space Chimp and see if I can shove his story through AutoCrit. This is somewhat dubious, because I’m going to have to try using the ancient Mac for the website, and my iPad for the corrections. Things were so much simpler when I had two iPads, but iOS won’t let the old one update anymore.

I don’t expect this to be a single day event, and know it won’t be particularly easy. If I can make that work, my next step will be to read it from start to finish and make it suitable for the public. This one will be held back until I can write two more volumes.

After that, the other titles will follow that same path… maybe.

Already second guessing this. Old Paint is a Hat story, and therefore, the shortest of the three. Maybe I should try this experiment on that one first. Ugh!

Either way, I’m determined to start this next phase this weekend. That means no drafting of new material for at least a month. Deep breath, but it’s time to shift gears now. Fingers crossed.