Wednesday, April 18, 2012

#ROW80 - Mondo Week

It has been a productive and exciting week. Yep, every now and then you'll have those, right? This past one saw me release my second-ever work for public consumption. In one literary stroke, I've doubled my portfolio. Exciting, to be sure.

Now, it was only a novelette. I always feel like I have to qualify that. Perhaps I shouldn't, but one of my biggest fears of releasing a shorter work is that a reader will pick it up and be all: "WHAT?! I THOUGHT THIS WAS A FULL NOVEL! /RAGEQUIT READING FOREVER!" Okay, so that's very unlikely, but I'm sure I'm not the only author that is obsessive about making their readers happy. (This isn't to say I believe I can make everyone happy... just that the ones I can, I want to knock that out of the park.)

Still, The Only Sparkle is on sale, links here. We've sent out a Newsletter with an unlimited free code in it. If you missed out, sign up for our newsletter and then shoot us an email letting us know you'd like the code. I'm more than happy to give it out. Or just pick on someone that did get the code. We've tried to be encouraging as far as sharing goes. I want to give you guys the "hook ups!"

This isn't promo-post, though. This is #ROW80 check-in post. Thus, we need to check on the goals:
  • Lesson Learned - I wrote a bit about titles yesterday. In the past week, I learned that apparently I contributed to a naming trend with The Binder's Daughter. The good news is that I'm the only one talking about Binders; it's the daughter part that's been hot lately. As fellow ROWer Nadja pointed out in the comments, following a trend can be a bit of a double-edged sword. You'd like to be original, but snagging the occasional lucky search hit isn't a terrible consequence. Basically what I learned here is more a reaffirmation of my titling process. It treads firmly in the middle ground that I'd like to reside in.
  • WIP Progress - The goal was to get TOS up. Nailed it. 'Nuff said here. I've also nearly completely my latest round of editing for Fates' Motif. I plan to enter the final round in this next week and have it out by the end of this month. A two release month! When it rains, it pours.
  • Blogging - 4/3 here. The extra release posting helps pad things. 3/3 on the gaming blog, and I knocked out a personal post. Go me.
  • The Not Goal - So far, I hath resisted the siren's call of reading (apart from my usual steady diet of blogs and news and such). It's been good, as I've been getting to bed early while getting things done. The problem with loving reading is that, even when my nights are full, I'll stay up an extra hour to get in that chapter. Not always a good thing. Taking a reading break has helped me focus on these releases.
All in all, like I said, a pretty stellar week. I'm mondo-excited (because mondo is unappreciated this days) about people reading TOS. I had a blast writing it and am hoping it's as hilarious for everyone else as it was for me to cook up. It's really my first foray into a less serious side of fantasy, but I think it turned out wonderful.

We'll end with the traditional look at the word counts:
  • Since last check in: 3,841
  • New Fiction: 0 - Editing Mode
  • Round 2 Total: 7,554

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on the new piece. Bah, I don't think you have to call out that it's "only a novelette". If the piece speaks to the reader, they won't care if it's a short story, a novelette, a novella or a novel. You had a great week! I hope they continue to be as productive. Good luck :)

Matt said...

Thanks. I suppose I've always just read novels, so this shorter stuff is new to me.

Anonymous said...

Congrats Matt! Sounds like you had a great week. I will admit, I envy your word count. I've met my 100 words a day goal but feel I should be cranking out so much more.

Will check in on you again!
Melanie

Matt said...

Keeping three blogs really pads the count :-).

I generally don't count words (except for this once a week). I try to make my goals other things like "time" or "pages." This provides me an "out" for those days where stuff isn't flowing well, and also a bit of a reward for the days it does flow well. It all seems to level out and the important thing is that the words get put down... one way or another.

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