Ruth Nestvold's Blog, page 48
March 28, 2013
Being accountable: Progress on my first quarter goals, 2013
End of March, time for some navel-gazing, to see how well I did on the goals I posted back in January. Since I strive to stay as positive as I can (not always easy in this business), I will start with the successes, the things I did achieve in the last three months.
Revisions and rewrting:
- Did a complete pass of my novel Chameleon in a Mirror
- Finished revisions on my Story Hunger collection
Publications:
- From Earth to Mars and Beyond
- Published Never Ever After to Dra...
March 18, 2013
Book in a Week, or rather two (or more) — and finding the WOW
This is my attempt to recreate the blog post I lost a couple of days back, with updates and some tentative conclusions, a few more days into the experiment. And this time, I am not writing the original post directly in WordPress. 
Luckily — since I wrote it Sunday evening, and while I was working on it, our Internet connection gave up the ghost!
After my Fast Draft fail a while back, I still hadn’t given up on finding a way to write faster more consistently. I once had a 5,000 word day, many...
March 13, 2013
A lost post – and a new story free on iTunes
I’d written a long post about the BIAW course I am presently doing, but then I hit an unintended key, and it disappeared. I looked and looked, and I couldn’t get it back.
Shoot and more shoot. Next time I will write the first draft outside of WordPress.
Sigh and weep.
At least as compensation, I can now offer “The Leaving Sweater” on the iTunes stone — for free!
I’ll be back.
March 3, 2013
Real life distractions and a bunch of unannounced freebies
I have a translation deadline for 10 am tomorrow, and seeing that I’m a night owl and that’s about the time I get up in the morning (one of the joys of being a freelancer), I had to finish tonight. It’s now off, and I can finally get around to an update.
Given the developments of the last few days, I really will be eating my words and keeping Shadow of Stone in KDP Select for another round. In the last three days, I’ve made nearly as much in borrows on SoS as I made on Yseult in all other ven...
February 27, 2013
Eating my words: preliminary results for free promo of Shadow of Stone
I’m running a free promo for Shadow of Stone right now, which I had intended to be the last. At the end of this term in KDP Select, I was going to take the book out and offer it elsewhere.
But now I have a dilemma. I’ve had very little time the last couple of days, and I didn’t do any announcements for the freebie like I usually do. An ad got cancelled at the last moment as a result of the changes Amazon is making to the Amazon Affiliate program, and the book didn’t get picked up by either of...
February 24, 2013
Brainstorming new Pendragon novel, more cover art, and progress on time travel
I’ve been quite busy this week. Not only am I still working on revisions on Chameleon in a Mirror, my Restoration time travel starring Aphra Behn, I have also started brainstorming a new novel in the Pendragon Chronicles, tentatively entitled A Wasted Land. I want to share with you the artwork I splurged and bought for the novel, by the incredibly talented Teresa Yeh:
Of course, researching, brainstorming and outlining is difficult to quantify, especially if you’re doing it on scrap paper, li...
February 16, 2013
Cover reveal for Island of Glass and progress report
I have my final cover for Island of Glass. Now all I have to do is revise, send it off to beta readers, find an available editor, revise again, format, and publish …
Right. Anyway, here’s the amazing cover by Rachel Cole:
If anyone is inclined to be a beta reader for a fantasy novella set in an alternate seventeenth century Venice and revolving around the glassmakers of Murano, please let me know! Right now, it’s in dormancy, an important step in my creative process, but I think after about a...
February 10, 2013
Tales of Love and Magic: 99c Fantasy, 3 Days Only, Feb. 10-12!
The latest group promo is underway!
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February 9, 2013
Revising the Aphra Behn time travel
After completing the first draft of Island of Glass, I started on revisions of Chameleon in a Mirror, my popular literature homage to Aphra Behn. Commercially, this one will probably be a washout, since it’s balancing on so many chairs, and none of them comfortably. The subject matter is literary history, but the approach is conventional, accessible, with nothing much innovative to challenge the reader. I certainly don’t have anything against innovation — I’ve written hyperfiction, after all,...
February 3, 2013
First draft of Island of Glass finished!
This incarnation of Island of Glass is finsihed!
But very definitely a first draft, so there is still work to do. In its present state, it is coming in at just over 16,000 words, so not quite novella length yet, but this version still has several “placeholders” — notes to myself where I need more description or whatever. So I am reasonably confident that the final draft will at least make it to the SFWA definition of novella (17,500 words).
Just for fun, I’ll share the beginning:
Chiara wiped...
