There are a lot of things going on right now beside the obvious Christmas things. Foremost, my schedule at work has cooperated with my plans to spend the holiday with family in Palm Harbor. I haven’t seen them for several months, so it will be good. My nephew is coming to pick me up sometime Wednesday evening, after I get off from work.
My son is spending the day with his mother. My daughters are spending their holiday with their friends. That’s what happens when a family matures and we all go off in the different directions that our lives lead. You plan for maybe a get together for the next year and see if the events of the intervening year allow for that to happen. Lately the plans haven’t always panned out. For that I’m responsible, I suppose. I’m the one who doesn’t have a car and whose income isn’t sufficient to support traveling around to be with family. Will that change in the next year? It could. There’s always hope, right? There’s a best selling book that will be made into a movie – someday. Yes, I can dream but I really have that kind of faith in my stories.
So the questions remain, this time next year, where will I be and what will I be doing? Generally, if the past in any indication of the future, I’ll be doing a lot of same things I am now. I’m never sure where I’ll be living. Such is the nomadic life I’ve been leading since deciding to write full time. I suspect I’ll stay in this area, though, as I have a part time job that I like. So, unless I start making gobs of money on book sales between then and now I’ll still be doing the part time gig and that is an anchor for the present and immediate future.
By this time next year I should be making a decent amount form the publicity work I do along with writing. I plan to have public appearances and book signings over the next few months. That will cost awareness of my books locally, at least. In the next few weeks there will be some breaking news that I can reveal quite yet. So be looking for it in upcoming blog posts. It’s exciting and I’m very happy about it.
On the book revisions front: I’m about two hundred pages from the end of Book Five of The Wolfcat Chronicles. I should finish it this week, depending on other interruptions, of course. But I’ve set a target of Sunday. I doubt I’ll have much time to work on anything next week. I plan to be preparing Book Six for revision by then. I hope to have that one finished early in January. There are some restructuring issues with the chapters in book six that I need to take care of first, though. I expect it to take most of a day to work those details out before I can dig in and start revising the text.
Yesterday was a good day all around. I made a lot of progress with Book Five and I chatted online with my muse, the friend who inspired the character Ela’na in The Wolfcat Chronicles We’ve stayed in contact over the years but don’t converse or correspond as much as we used to. Certainly nothing like it was when I was actively writing The Wolfcat Chronicles about ten years ago.
Since then both of our lives have changed, sometimes for the worst and other times for the best. At some point a few years back I sent her a massive volume of all ten manuscripts. Those were the result of three or four passes of editing and revisions. There have been several others since, the most recent prior to this in 2010 for the entire series and 2012 for the first seven books. She has given me some feedback that I have been incorporating into the revisions. Or chat yesterday was not really about revisions. I’m sending her a copy of Fried Windows to read. Even though the book sort of connects in with wolfcats – the stories are mentioned – it was written well. Over time my writing style has evolved. I’m seeing a good bit of that in the revision process. It’s good because I’m updating things a bit, putting a fresh coat of paint on an already great story.
It was just nice to talk with her even if it was via text. We used to have some interesting conversations, some of which led to bits included in the books. That’s what happens with writers and at least some friends who inspire us to write. People we know wind up in our books, somehow or the other.
There have been a few changes to The Wolfcat Chronicles over the course of the current revision. Most have been minor. I’m sure other things will change while the book goes through substantive and content editing. That always happens. I had a good, working relationship with my editor on Fried Windows and was pleased with how well things turned out. My only complaint was that everything was so rushed toward the end, but that is how it always is when pushing against a deadline. I’m also aware that regardless of how careful and meticulous the editing process is there are a few errors that get past everyone’s eyes. There is at least one misspelled name that I know of. Some feedback has told me there are a couple of grammar errors as well but when I looked at the spots those occurred in dialogue and they are attributed to the way the character speaks. We opted for authenticity in places, so those are intentional lapses of grammar.
Anyway, for the next week or so I’m not sure how many blog posts I’ll be making. I’ll do a Throwback Thursday later on today but since I won’t be home next Thursday, I’ll probably skip the one for next week or do it early, like on Wednesday morning. I’ll post a progress report for when I submit Book Five and perhaps one when I start digging into Book Six. So maybe there will be three posts I’ll make. The rest of the week I’ll be silently working on revisions or engaged at work or spending time with family.
#TheWolfcatChronicles #FriedWindows #revisions #writing #publishing
The One & Only Elgon 
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