Holly Hook's Blog, page 5

Cover Reveal for Destroyers, Book Five

I got a lot accomplished this weekend, including the cover for the final Destroyers book.  There may still be further tweaks or improvements I need to make to the cover (such as making the title stand out a bit more), but here’s what I have so far:

If anyone feels that any improvements can be made, I’m completely open to your suggestions!

As of now, I am still aiming for a mid-April release date for both Ancient and 2:20.  It’s been a lot of work and I do have a bit of catching up to do as several obligations and things have sprang up on me in the past couple of weeks, preventing me from writing at all on some days.

I do, however, plan to get about 1,000 words done on each book tonight to make up for missing yesterday.

I know I haven’t posted for a good month now, but I’ve be...

I know I haven’t posted for a good month now, but I’ve been super busy prepping for the dual release of the fifth Destroyers book and 2:20.  In the last month I’ve definitely been working more on Destroyers 5 in an attempt to get its progress caught up with the other book.  Now that they’re even, I’ll likely switch between working on each one every day.

Right now, I’m about halfway done with both books and plan to do some editing during my spare time in order to reduce some work I’ll have to do come April.  Thanks to my critique group (which I started going to in October) edits should be better than usual.

I still need to create the cover for Destroyers 5.  I’m playing with some ideas and hope to do a reveal on it sometime next week.

New Giveaway!

This month, I am participating in another young adult ebook giveaway, hosted this time by YA author Elle Casey.  I encourage all of my followers to check it out.  Up for prizes are literally dozens of young adult ebook titles, including Tempest among many others!  eBooks come in most formats (kindle, nook, pdf, etc.) for a variety of e-readers.

To enter, simply go here:

http://ellecasey.com/january-anniversary-indie-book-giveaway/

and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

The writing progress meters are back up now!Now I can sh...

The writing progress meters are back up now!

Now I can show everyone that I’m about a third of the way done with 2:20.  I’ve also been working on the fifth Destroyers book, but it’s coming along a little more slowly.  I have a lot of ends to wrap up and five main characters to focus on in the last book of the series.  It’ll be complicated, to say the least.

Mostly I’ve been sticking with my 1,000 word per day quota and it’s been working pretty well.  I do have an occasional day where I’m unable to write much due to not feeling well, but I’m trying to make up for lost work on weekend days or days that I have off from work.  Right now, I’m aiming to have my first drafts of both books done early April and plan to release both of them in late April or early May at the latest.  If the timing is right, I might release both books at the same time.

So what’s coming after I finish the last Destroyers book?  I’ll be working more on the Timeless Trilogy, of course, but I’m also open to writing more books about Tempests, Outreakers, and other walking disasters.  And I do still plan to finish the Rita Morse series.  However, this isn’t my main worry as it’s nowhere near in as much demand as my material for older age groups.

New Goals

I’m not sure what happened to my writing progress meters on the right side of the page.  For the past week they haven’t been displaying, and the website they link to is supposedly down for maintenance.  (For over a week?)  I’ve been trying to find another writing meter to display, but those I can find either aren’t compatible with WordPress or come as outdated plug-ins that I can’t figure out how to install.  There are a lot of html ones available, but WordPress doesn’t like html.

For now, I may have to do without a writing progress meter.  I apologize for this.

As for progress I’m up to about 10,000 words on 2:20 right now, or about 20% of the way done.  I’m still working out the plot of the fifth Destroyers book in my head.  This might take a while.  I generally know how it’s going to start and how it’s going to end, but getting there is the problem.  I hope to begin the first chapter this week.

It’s possible that 2:20 will be out before the fifth Destroyers book, though I hope to release both of them in the spring of 2013.  I’m also working on the third Rita Morse book when I have spare time.

I do have goals for myself, though.  As of this week, I plan to complete 1,000 words per day, total, on either 2:20 or the fifth Destroyers book.  If I stick to this goal, I’ll have 120,000 words done or both books largely completed by April, which isn’t too far off.  Some days I might write 500 words on each book.  Other days I might write 1,000 on Destroyers 5.  There will be a few days here and there where I won’t be able to write, but mostly these will be the days I go to critique group after work.

It’s About Time I Do This…

I probably should have done this much, much sooner: create a mailing list for all of you to subscribe to.

Well, now I have.  If you want to get my email newsletters with news of new book releases and more, it’s only a matter of signing up HERE and filling out the form.  That’s all.

I hope that this newsletter will make it easier for you to stay up to date on my book launches and other news.  (It’s easier than checking this site over and over, right?)

It’s That Time…

Well, it’s that time.  Edits have been wrapped up and I sent the fourth Destroyers book out for publishing last night.  It appears to available on most channels now, with the exception of iTunes and Sony.  Those will likely take a few weeks to be available due to the distributor I use.

Amazon (Kindle)
Amazon UK
Barnes and Noble
Smashwords (pretty much any eBook format you could want)
 
 
Sophia’s teenage years have been plagued with another presence that lives inside her–one that freezes everything around her when it gets angry.  When a new storm goddess arrives in town, it’s determined to get out of Sophia and join her…even it it means Sophia’s destruction and the end of the world.

Possible Destroyers #4 Release Later This Week

If all goes as planned, I might be able to release Frostbite, Destroyers #4 later on this week.

Thanks to me taking off some time from work during the past week, editing has gone faster than I anticipated.  I am now almost to the end, and only need to do some tie-ups and another read-through to catch any typos or mistakes I may have missed.

This will be an emotional book from the perspective of three different characters, though the problems of them all will be included in this installment.  Provided that nothing happens to interrupt my progress, I’m looking to release Thursday, though it may be a day or two before all eBook vendors are available.  I would choose Friday to release, but that won’t be feasible as I have a writers’ critique group to attend.  The worst case scenario would be Saturday.

 

 

Yikes

If you’ve read Tempest, you can probably guess the reason behind my post title today.  I’ve held off writing it for a few days, but I feel now that I should say something about it.

During the writing of Tempest two years ago, I researched and wrote in a fictional doomsday scenario involving a hurricane.  I just went back and looked at it today, and here it is, unedited, copied and pasted right from the book itself:

…The logo for Future Disasters popped up on the screen and dramatic music played in surround sound. 

Janelle stood behind the couch and sniffed.  She had to get it together.  Crying wouldn’t help her situation.  Leslie was still trapped here somewhere.  If any good was to come out of this, she’d have to get herself back under control.   

Gary appeared next to her.  His hand wrapped around hers and squeezed, sending waves of calm through her body.  It felt warm, safe.  It was the only comfort she’d had all day.

It was short-lived.  The screen filled with the Manhattan skyline and slowly zoomed in.  A man narrated with a voice filled with doom.  “New York City.  Home to eight million people and also the economic center of the country.  And also a place not commonly associated with hurricanes.  And yet,” the man paused as the screen changed to a satellite map of Long Island, “New York City is one of the most susceptible cities to their wrath, with damages potentially in the hundred billion dollar range if one were to strike.  And it is not a matter of if, but when.”

When.  That word again.

The screen changed to a satellite shot of an unknown hurricane in the Atlantic.  Ominous music played.  Gary’s grip on her hand tightened.  Joey flinched.  Bile rose in Janelle’s throat.  No, she didn’t want to see that.  She stared down at the leather couch until it vanished. 

The narrator continued.  “If a Category Three storm or higher arrived at or near New York City during high tide, a storm surge of as high as thirty feet could race up the Hudson River towards Manhattan, flooding the island and the subway systems.”

Water rose in a subway tunnel, then around a group of office buildings. “It would rise around Wall Street, shutting down the stock exchange for weeks.  The windows to all the skyscrapers would blast out, raining glass on anyone standing in the streets.  Millions of people would need to be evacuated in a very short amount of time.”

Now, I don’t feel good about this being mirrored in real life.

Really, I don’t.  I feel pretty awful, in fact.  It’s something I hoped I’d never see take place.  Granted, the nightmare scenario from Tempest isn’t exactly what happened in real life, but it’s pretty close.

This puts me in a bit of a quandary about what to do next.  As Tempest has already had thousands of downloads, changing the scenario it contains will not be a good idea.  I’ll leave Tempest up for free download, but continuing to promote the book might not be a good idea due to issues of sensitivity.

Now, this does not change my plans to finish the five-book Destroyers series.  I am still going to release the fourth book, Frostbite, later this month when edits are complete.  I’m slightly more than halfway through with that now.  I also fully intend to complete the fifth book.

But for the first book, I’m still not sure.

Destroyers 4 Pretty Much Finished

This week, I have written the ending (mostly) for the fourth Destroyers book.  There are only a few minor things to tie up.

However, this does not mean the book is ready for prime time.  It’s far from it, actually.  The book is still full of plot holes, inconsistencies, bad writing in places, things that need to be filled out, and so on.  Releasing it now would only disappoint those of you who have been waiting for it.

So it’s on to editing to make it decent.  I am very pleased with the way the actual story turned out, given that it’s told from the perspective of three different characters and focuses on the problems of them all.  (No spoilers here for those of you who haven’t read books 2 or 3 yet.)  It’s now a matter of smoothing it out and fixing it up so that others will be, too.  I expect to work at this quickly and increase the word count of the book as I add some things to help the plot make more sense.  I’m still counting on releasing sometime in November.