Eric Kent Edstrom's Blog, page 26

Undermountain News

I've been working to get Undermountain available for Nook and other eReaders. Today I finally got my MS successfully through the meatgrinder at Smashwords.  I could have prepared the file myself, but my brain was fried, so I had http://ebookartisandesign.com/ do it. They turned it around on Christmas Eve! I highly recommend there service and plan to use it again. The upshot is that the book is now available through Smashwords in all the main formats. So if you don't want to wait for the Nook store to have it, you can get it here right now!



I've already had a bunch of people ask about the print version, but that won't be happening for a few weeks.



Okay, time for me to get back the Packer game!

Review: The White Panther

The White Panther by Theodore J. Waldeck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I developed a love of reading when I was in the 5th grade. The book that sparked it was the White Panther, and it was about an albino panther, orphaned during a storm. It took me weeks to get through this relatively short book, but it lead me to other great kids books: Black Lightning (about a black panther), White Fang and the Call of the Wild.

The story starts with the panther becoming orphaned during a storm. The rest of the story involves the cat exploring the jungle, learning to hunt, dealing with hunger, having fights with other cats, and discovering how dangerous other animals can be.




View all my reviews

The Twelve Days of Xmas: Kettlebell Style

Ugh. Ryan over at TNT Performance nearly killed us this morning with this morning's Xmas eve kettlebell program. The good news is that I've banked a lot of calorie deficit for today's binging.



The theme was the 12 days of Xmas, and it looked something like this. This is from memory, so ... you know ...



1. HEAVY Farmer walk (I used 32s and 40s, depending on what was handy)

2. Burpees (yeah, 2 of these is no big deal ... at first)

3. Alternating swings (not a big deal)

4. Overhead lunges (2 per side, don't lose your balance when exhausted)

5. Goblet squat

6. Rows (3 per side)

7. Snatches (alternate sides each time through)

8. Presses (4 per side)

9. Two-handed swings

10. Cleans (5 on each side)

11. One-handed swings (other side next time through)

12. Turkish Getups (6 on each side.



So you get the idea. You start with 1, then 2 and 1, then do 3,2,1, etc.



Good times!

Undermountain Available from Kindle Store

I'm thrilled to announce the release of my first novel, Undermountain, a YA adventure novel with science fictiony elements. Though it's targeted at teens, the book will appeal to anyone who likes a good story. Buy it now at the Kindle store.

Six teens and a grizzled old guide embark on a ten day expedition into the wilds of the Canadian Rockies. Some come for adventure. Some come to learn. Some come to escape the troubles of home.



For sixteen year old Danny Michaelson the hike is his first trip away from home without his parents .... Too bad his older sister had to tag along as a chaperone.



For Breyona Lewis the hike is an escape from a terrible memory—of an assault she tries to deny, even to herself.



But when Danny and Breyona encounter a creature out of legend—an enormous beast they immediately tag as "bigfoot"—the hike suddenly becomes a race for their lives.



Swept into a secret underground city and told they may never leave, the hikers find themselves in the middle of a war between the bigfeet and their rebellious servant race, the tangoga. In their deperate attempt to escape, Danny and Breyona uncover the terrible plans that both races have for Earth.



To escape, to survive, to save the Earth—Danny must fight. Breyona must surrender.

From today through midnight Jan. 1st, 2012, all my royalties will go to charity. I'm using donorschoose.org to support literacy projects for disadvantaged kids.

Draft #2 = 100%

Although, it's not quite done. How can this be? Well, it is 100% in terms of word count, but I still have 11 to do items on my list which involve going into some chapters to add, remove, tweak, etc. a few things. If I do it right, the word count will actually come down a bit. Currently sitting at just of 98k! I can't believe it.



This process has given me great respect for writers who crank out 150k or 300k novels. My conclusion? They're nuts.



 But this the book is turning out soooo good. I'm very excited by the changes and additions I've made so far. I've added depth to the characters and their relationships, and I've made the story much more fun. And despite adding nearly 35k words, the pacing is better and the stakes are higher. Much higher.

Draft #2 is 98% Complete

I had to re-dictate a few chapters because I made some important changes that effected everything downstream. But now the ending is in sight.



Once this draft is done, I've got to address a list of things that need to be tweaked, or added. Overall, I'm feeling pretty good how it's working out. This draft is much better than the first one.



I'm definitely on schedule to get this in my editor's hands by Oct. 1st, if not before. That will be a great relief.

Dictation Complete

I finished up dictating my outline this morning. It only took about an hour, but only about 3000 words. I began assembling the transcriptions this afternoon and I already know the word count will expand.



Apparently, I dictate a bit thin, which doesn't surprise me in the least. When I'm walking and talking I feel like I need to capture what's happening in the story without much decoration. The small bits of description I do are little short hand phrases to myself so I know how to expand upon them later. I want to do more of this.



Much like Mary Robinette Kowal uses brackets. Her blog post was a revelation, reminding me to get the story told and not agonize over the perfect turn of phrase in the midst of creative flow.



I'm very happy with how the dictated chapters turned out, though. Going through the text, fixing formatting issues and correcting basic grammatical stuff wasn't painful in the least. It was fun!



Earlier chapters in the book were also dictated using Dragon Naturally Speaking, which worked great. But I prefer using the transcription service because I can dictate in any environment, even with a bit of extraneous noise. It's more expensive, yes. But it's accurate and you don't have to speak the punctuation.



I'm moving the progress bar up to 93%! The progress will slow a little as I spend time passing through existing text. I'll declare draft #2 complete once it's ready to send to my editor.

Long Walk, Three More Chapters Written

Ah, dictation be a revelation. Progress bar moved to 73.8% today and that doesn't count today's chapters. This is fun! I expect to get the transcriptions for todays work back tomorrow or Monday which should move the bar another 3 or 4% more.



The thing is, I've only got six more chapters to go, so I'm starting to think the final word count for this draft is going to end up being closer to 85k than 100k. This is great news!



Here's the path where the magic happens.

Moved the Progress Bar to 70%

This is based on an estimated 100k words for draft #2. I got back transcriptions for a couple chapters today for 4400 new words. These are not polished chapters by any stretch, but they give me something I can work with. I read through a little of it, and aside from character names spelled wrong and some difficulty the transcriptionist had in determining what character was talking, it turned out very, very well. I'm also quite happy with the quality of the "writing" considering I was just making it up as I walked along.



I found I have a habit of switching to present tense while dictating. Oh well. That's easily fixed. It's certainly easier than using Dragon speech recognition since I don't have to dictate all the punctuation.



What I really, really love about this process is how fast it is. Because I couldn't see what I was saying, I couldn't go back and change it. Dictating forces me to keep going forward in the story. I went for an hour walk and came back with 4400 words! It would take me all day to type that because I'd be obsessively rewriting the whole time.



Even more good news: I did it again today. I went for a long walk (nearly two hours) and dictated two more chapters, one of which is a very difficult one that I was a little trepidatious about. But the first draft of that is behind me now. Well, actually its somewhere in the cloud waiting to be transcribed. I expect today's work to be another 5000 words.



Tomorrow I hope to knock out a couple more chapters. At this rate, I'll get the first draft of the last third done quickly, and then I'll be able to go through it and refine and complete.

Outline Complete

So I had to delete the last 3rd of the book. I now have the new last 3rd outlined and I dictated three chapters today, so not too shabby. I won't increment the word count bar until I get the transcriptions back, though. I expect they'll require significant editing and rewriting. But still, it feels good to be going forward again, rather than in the other direction.



Let me use this opportunity to say how much I adore OmniOutliner!