A Tale of Two Lives

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A Tale of Two Lives is now active (live!) on Amazon and available for purchase. Alternatively, if you are an Amazon Prime Member and have a Kindle you can ‘borrow’ the story for free!

Sample Text:

Koonin slipped out from beneath the arm of the sleeping beauty at his side and dressed as rapidly as he could manage and still remain silent. With one last look upon her gentle features he stepped out, closing the door quietly after him. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to make it home on time, his wife would be awake soon. The streets were just coming to life, Koonin noted, as the sounds of cartwheels on cobblestones and straw brooms sweeping at store fronts greeted him. He considered himself something of a night owl but he’d always enjoyed dawn. It was a private time, much of the world still asleep and those that were not were too busy minding their own business to bother nosing into his.
Koonin heard the distinctive clunk of Jeppo’s damaged cart before he saw it. The street vendor’s cart had been in ill repair for as long as Koonin had known him, and Koonin wondered if it wasn’t left so intentionally at this point. Jeppo smiled and waived as Koonin approached.
“The usual my friend?” Jeppo asked, pausing in his uphill struggle with the small wooden food cart. Koonin reached for his purse, which felt a bit light. He pulled at the strings and fingered through the contents.
“Perhaps only the coffee this morning,” Koonin said, his shoulders slumping a bit. Jeppo’s pastries were the finest in the city, but maintaining a wife and a mistress cut just as deeply into his purse as it did his sleep. Koonin rubbed at his eyes and toed the misshapen wheel on the side of the cart as Jeppo prepared his coffee. “Still haven’t gotten this thing fixed?”
“How am I to afford repairs if you only buy the coffee?” Jeppo replied, his lips stretching into a devious grin. “Not all of us are capable of working magic.” Koonin chuckled, accepted the small wooden cup of steaming liquid and swallowed the contents in a single gulp. Koonin winced slightly as the hot liquid burned its way to his stomach and wiped the remnants from his beard with the hem of his robe.
“And for my next trick, I shall make it home in the very nick of time,” Koonin said and this time it was Jeppo who laughed as Koonin began to trot away.

More self-publishing news…

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Pushing out my second self-published short story today, though it is in the Amazon review process, so not sure when it will go live (estimated 12 hours!). I decided to go ahead and put this latest story out there as we head into the month of February, since this tale is perhaps the closest to a Romance story I will ever get.

The story revolves around Koonin, a small time mage, and his troubled marriage. Spurred by a dying romance Koonin takes up a second life that he must keep hidden from his wife.  It’s a short story, ~2,600 words (13-14 minutes of entertainment).

An update will be posted when the story goes live on Amazon!

iBooks and eBooks

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This morning’s announcement from Apple has me pretty excited at the prospects of self-publishing once again. Ironically, I had been working over the last couple days to prepare new short stories for release on the Kindle through the Kindle Digital Publishing program (KDP).

Having downloaded the new iBooks Authoring tool, I really wish that Amazon would offer something of comparable quality. Obviously e-ink Kindles would be unable to take advantage of all the rich media functionality, but even just the easy way you can set page breaks, titles and formatting would be a relief. As it stands KDP primarily offers a script file that does conversion of a book or story you compiled elsewhere. While this ties into Scrivener, my primary writing software, it still requires lots of trial and error before I can achieve the look I want. In contrast, within minutes of downloading the iBooks Author I had put together a very aesthetically pleasing ebook (or iBook rather).

Tools like this really might encourage me to switch and start using iBooks as my self-publishing go to spot rather than Amazon.

Draft, Draft, Re-Draft

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Part of the biggest things I need to address as a writer is doing the hard work of writing multiple drafts. In the past I’ve easily been able to crank out words, but always on something new – doing the easy and exciting part of getting a new project off the ground. This month though is all about drafts. I’m only working on projects that have been written before. Approaching with a new eye, the eye of the editor – not the creator. I don’t really expect it to be as much fun, but hopefully the end result will be even more rewarding.

In somewhat related news, here is the cover I’ve put together for the little Christmas short story I’m hoping to self-publish in the next couple days.

So this happened…

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 Right around midnight I crossed the finish line of 50,000 words for the third November in a row. I actually finished before midnight, but then it literally took me many minutes to find the verification tool that would allow me to take credit for winning in the eyes of NaNoWriMo. Either I was just too tired to find it quickly, or the site redesign still needs some tweaking over there. I’ll blame the site for now. :)

I’m excited, pleased, and invigorated to have done this three years in a row and my current hope is to keep the momentum going for the time being. My lovely wife has taken up a part-time evening job, so at least for the foreseeable future, it is possible that I might keep writing and get this years novel into something more like a finished product.

I also have two other big projects I’m working on. One, Vlad the Vegan Vampire has gone on hiatus for the first time in three years. This is, in a way, sad but also exciting. We are reworking some ideas from a gag strip earlier this year and will be coming back with a long form graphic novel (published digitally) in the New Year.  Two, I am working on a tongue-in-cheek take on the story of the Little Drummer Boy, which I hope to self publish within the next week or so via the Kindle publishing service. It’s a short story I wrote a few months back as a reaction to my toddler’s full year of addiction to the Christmas carol of the same name. Obviously any news related to self-publishing will be posted up here as it comes.

 

 

Busy

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Obviously November is a busy month around here, but I did find the time to make a little illustration demonstrating my feelings about the whole OWS movement and what’s going on in the US right now.

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Dragon Express

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Welcome to the future.

Well, not really. Last night, on a whim, I decided to download Dragon Express from the Mac App Store. I’ve long wanted to try voice recognition software, and have even toyed with Google voice transcription and the free Dragon software on the iPhone, however, none of these ever really met my expectations.

Performance tends to be slow and results iffy at best. But still, once or twice a year I get the itch to explore it further. This time it seems to have paid off, or at least thus far. As I’ve said, I’ve only been using it for one night but I’m already getting used to the interface and it allowed me a productive night of writing for NaNoWriMo last night.

It’s funny, in ways you expect it to screw up on the hard words or the unusual ones, just because it would have little practice recognizing those but for me, a southern male, it tends to miss where my tongue is lazy from my southern accent but usually gets the big words right. Of course as a test I’m using it to compose this post now and I’m only having to do a modicum of correction as I go. (though some is still required!)

Being an “express” software it seems to be designed for quick interaction and even has simple built-in functions for Facebook and twitter. One of the frustrating things is that you can lose bigger chunks if you haven’t paid attention and start switching apps without copying the data out of the dictation window. That said, I’m enjoying myself thus far using this new piece of software.

NaNoWriMo Update

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NaNo is happening, but I’m not really where I’d like to be with the story at this point in the game. Week 2 is always a challenge, and this is recognized pretty universally on the NaNo site, but knowing that doesn’t help it be any less of a grind. It’s easier to fall prey to self-doubt than it is to logically know this happens every year, and that every year I move past it.

I’m currently a day and a half behind schedule, but that has grown everyday for the last four or five days, but on the upside at this time last year I had just started over (at day 6 I deleted all previous work and started a new book), so I am ahead of last year me.

Working from an outline is proving difficult as well. I let my characters get away from me (or run free if you want to be nice about it) and when I’m doing that the words tend to flow. Going into this year with a plan was supposed to make things go easier, but what happens is that I constantly have to course correct in each scene to make sure it lines up with where I want to be for the next. I don’t know if this means I’m bad at casting, bad at planning, or just a fan of rat holes.