S.M. Butler's Blog, page 13

Onto the next book!

One thing I always forget to do when I finish a book is to give myself downtime. For some reason, I want to jump from project to project immediately. I always have to be busy, so that sort of makes sense but I forget that I’m human. So, inevitably, what happens is that I burn myself out and end up taking two to three weeks off anyway.

Or you know, in some cases, two years. Ha.

So, I finished His Last Breath, got it formatted and set up for pre-order and did all the email things that I’m supposed to do and I did most of that within a couple of days. Once I finished that, I stared at a wall. I had zero desire to write or do anything creative. Trying to get words was like pulling teeth. Adult teeth. With long roots. For real.

Hell, I didn’t even know what story to write next. 

I took two days off to binge TV shows on Netflix. I got back to work after that, rereading what I’ve already written on Her Last Kill, on the second Section Five story, and this personal story I work on when I need a change.

Turns out that break was exactly what I needed.

Even though I promised myself that I wasn’t going to push myself hard after my hiatus, I still tend to try. It’s like it’s hard-wired into my brain that I need to be in the “on” position all the time. But now I’m starting to recognize the signs and I remember to slow down before it’s too late.

Sometimes now, I purposely turn the switch to the “off” position and go veg on the couch or read a book. Crazy, right?

Introducing a new series!

That's right, ladies and gents! I'm putting out a whole new romantic suspense series! The first book features a Lucky Thirteen character that a lot of people asked about: Christopher Hardy. You don't have to have read the Lucky Thirteen books to pick up this series, but you might see a few familiar faces here and there.

Not all the pre-order links are up yet, but I'll update as they go live.

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​The Reapers aren't exactly what they seem. They're the most elite of the world's fighters--but all they have in common is that their countries and their families can never know that they exist.

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Release Date: December 3, 2018

E-ISBN: 978-1-938927-25-6 

Print ISBN: 978-1-938927-26-3

Pre-Order Your Copy Now:Apple Books (coming soon!)Nook (coming soon!)KoboAmazon KindleAdd on Goodreads

The Reapers aren't exactly what they seem. They're the most elite of the world's fighters--but all they have in common is that their countries and their families can never know that they exist.

Christopher Hardy has spent the last two years in self-imposed exile with a team he built from the ground up. A former SEAL, he was medically discharged when he almost died on a mission. But a brand new procedure made him whole again and now his mission is to save the world or die trying. There's no room in there for love, not to mention it's against the rules.

Abigail Lewis hasn't seen Chris since the day he rescued her five years ago. He's changed, grown darker and more dangerous than she remembers, but somehow that just seems to make him even sexier. But Chris is a high-risk heartache waiting to happen, and she's got bigger problems to worry about, like not getting murdered by her own father.

Every moment they spend together becomes more and more incendiary, both for their lives and their hearts. Trust doesn't come easy and secrets have a way of getting out when you least expect it.

Days until Release Day:


66
Days


01
Hours


17
Minutes


32
Seconds

 

Something new is coming…

I’ve been really quiet on the blog lately because I’ve been working really hard on the new book. It’s almost done, like I’m working on the publishing parts of it now. I’m excited. It feels like a really solid book, and I hope you guys will think it is, too. 

Anyway, I’ll be sharing the cover, title, and blurb in my email newsletter within the next week, so if you want to get a jump on things, go sign up for that. Otherwise, hang tight here, because I’ll be announcing it here a few days after that email goes out.

I just really wanted to say thank you to those of you that sent me encouraging emails, left awesome comments here on the blog or on Facebook. It means a lot to me that you guys have stuck with me through this crazy hiatus and my struggles of getting back into writing after so long away from it. I appreciate every single one of you. 

Now, I need to get off the computer, because I have a date in about ten minutes that I really need to get ready for. Otherwise, I may be going out in yoga pants…

Yikes.

Reading Urban Fantasies

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. There’s a reason for it. The more I read, the more I sit down and write. I can’t have one without the other. I can’t write when I’m not reading because I run myself dry mentally. And I can’t read without some weird spark of creativity that slams right into me.

My reading tastes change a lot. But I decided to go back and reread a few books that I absolutely loved when I first started reading urban fantasy. I started with Ilona Andrews. I picked up the first Kate Daniels book and a week later, I’m completely caught up with it. And it’s not a small series.

I was still craving more, so I moved on to their Innkeeper series, then Hidden Legacy, and just recently finished the first book in the Iron Covenant series. Yes, I binge read like I binge write. But that goes with my whole “can’t have one without the other” thing. 

If you guys haven’t read Ilona Andrews, I highly recommend anything they write. Such awesomeness cannot possibly be human.

I’m thinking about rereading Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files now…

Making the words

You know, I always underestimate how long revisions take me to complete. I write pretty quickly on the zero draft, but then when it comes to editing and revisions, it’s a lot slower than I’d like.

Everything I’ve written seems choppy and bare when I start revising. Of course, it might have to do with the fact that my stories always grow in size by about a third when I revise. Possibly.

Anyway, the reason I’ve been thinking about this is because I’ve been working on the revisions for the first book of my next series, which as soon as I finally figure out a damn title so I can finish the cover design, I can finally announce the whole series. It’s driving me crazy not giving out details.

I’ve always had this rule that I don’t discuss a book in public until the zero draft is written and completed. It’s mostly because I don’t want to make any promises that I can’t deliver on, and being through the zero draft is basically the life or death of the book for me. If I can’t finish that very first zero draft, then that book is generally doomed, or destined to take much longer than I anticipated or planned. It’s also because I kind of think talking about it before the book is done might curse me. *shrug*

So that’s where I’m at. I’m in Revision Hell, trying to get through every crappy word and making them better. Deleting shittastic sentences and superfluous backstory and inventing delicious new visceral phrases that just make me smile when I write them. It’s both torture and ecstasy at the same time. Not sure I could explain it any better than that or if that does any justice to what I’m going through.

And yes, I’m behind where I want to be at the moment on that book. I’m still figuring this whole time management thing out with the Sucky Day Job involved. But any progress moving forward is good progress in my book. And I’m getting closer to being done, which is motivating in itself when a few weeks ago, it didn’t feel like I was ever going to be done with it.

Anyway, I just wanted to give y’all a quick update on what’s been going on in my world. I gotta get some revision pages in and then to bed so I can get up in time for Kid 2’s open house tonight, and then work after that.

Here I go. See you guys soon!

Keeping my promise

I’ve been really careful this year not to overextend myself. It took me six months of 2017 to get back into writing regularly after I took two years off and then another six months in 2018 to build my writing speed back up to where it used to be.

I now feel better than I used to about my writing and I’m far enough along in my current work that I realize that I have to start thinking about the business aspect, as in publishing the work. 

And I’m doing this while simultaneously working on revisions for the first book in my next series. I haven’t exactly announced it yet, so I’m still feeling a little shy about it. It needs a lot of work to make it publish-worthy,  so there’s a few more weeks of solid work ahead of me.

I’m okay with that timetable. I told myself I wasn’t going to push myself too much this year and I’m sticking to that promise. I have a goal to quit my Sucky Day Job in the next year, and if I stay on track, I think I can do it.

And of course, right on queue for me working on revisions, I got the bright and shiny New Plotbunny. I told myself “hey, that’s an interesting idea” and ignored it. But it didn’t want to be ignored and it nagged at me for hours while I was at Sucky Day Job, so by the time I came home, I busted out 3.3k words that were inside my head on this plot bunny.

Luckily, that’s what it took to get it out of my head and allow me to focus back on revisions for the current work. I’m glad that I did it that way, because if I fought it, it would have consumed me. Now, I got what I needed out of my head, and I can work on what I need to work on instead.

Once more, I’m keeping my promise to myself. This year was about change and focusing myself on the goals I’ve set for myself. I feel pretty good that this is what I’m doing.

Back to work

I went back to Sucky Day Job yesterday… I am out of shape. Ugh. I woke up for work today completely sore from head to toe. It was reminder that I don’t do enough on my own to stay alive.

I’ve never really taken care of myself. I am a pretty naturally healthy person. I don’t get sick much, I don’t tend to have a lot of accidents. But I have a horrible diet, and an even worse personal lifestyle. I eat like a picky five year old. This is where a lot of time management issues stem from as well. That’s why I’ve been reading a lot of books that deal with that. I’m trying to get ideas to encourage myself to be better.

I woke up 45 minutes later than I planned today, so I’m kind of in a time crunch to get some things completed before I have to eat and start getting ready for work.

One of those things is to sit down and write, because if I stay on target, I’m on track to finish this book by August 10. I’m super excited to talk about this book, and people have asked about it, but I have this rule that I can’t talk about the book in the zero drafting stage because it’s never certain if it’s a book that I’m going to finish in a timely manner, which makes blogging about it super hard.

For example, I’ve actually been working on this one, in one form or another, for a little over two years. In that time, I’ve scrapped it six times. I’ve probably written the equivalent of four books trying to write this one. I’m finally sailing along on it, and I hope I get it done, but it means I keep it close to my chest until I’ve got a complete zero draft.

Okay. Time for a shower, and then I’m off to write until it’s time for work.

Refueling creatively

I’ve been dangling TV over myself like a carrot, making sure I got words in before I was allowing myself to do anything else. Sometimes it works, sometimes I cheat. But most of the time, I manage to have enough will power to keep from turning on the TV until I get at least a few words on the current project.

It’s kind of weird focusing on one particular project. I’ve always worked on more than one project at a time. But even I have to admit, keeping myself focused on this one book has been one of the most productive things I’ve ever done.

It does take an enormous amount of willpower and brainpower to not think about other books, particularly since I’m nearing the point in every book where The New Shiny Ideas become plentiful and it would be so easy to stop the hard project and work on other easier ones. But if the years of writing have taught me anything, it’s that I do this with every single project.

But focusing on one seems to drain me creatively, and I find it more difficult to write when I do it. Hence the TV carrot. I started watching Burn Notice again, a show I’ve watched a lot in the past, like Friends or Alias. I find myself getting immersed in it, and binge watching for hours before I go to bed. But when I do that, I wake up the next day and I can’t wait to write, even though I’m in this phase in the book where I just have to slog through the words.

It seems to help a lot, and this week, it’s been way easier to get those words. So my TV time has become a goal to strive for, because I’m not allowing myself to do it until I have my words for the day in. I’m sure other writers do this. But I think I do it because I crave the stories. Just watching it, seeing the common elements from episode to episode makes me crave to sit down in front of the computer and write. In fact, I actually stopped the episode I was watching last night to write a scene that just popped in my head, and it had nothing to do with what I was watching.

Let’s see how this carrot thing works to get me through my Murky Middle on this project. Hopefully, I don’t get lost in the swamp.

Consistency over quantity

I’ve been thinking a lot about how fast draft works for me and why sometimes I feel like it doesn’t. I set lofty goals and a lot of times, I don’t always make it. Then I berate myself for not achieving the goals I set.

But what it does do is make me consistent. I have to make the effort to write regularly, and yes, even though I love writing, sometimes, it’s effort to write. Sometimes? I want to blow off writing and sit on the couch in front of the TV, and binge watch DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Consistency and building new habits are why I’ve been blogging more and why I decided to blog about my latest Fast Draft attempt, because it gets me into that pre-writerly mood before I need to sit down and make the words on the book.

I’ve been trying to build a habit over these last couple weeks so that when I do go back to the Sucky Day Job, I can continue to keep up this habit of daily writing. Will I be writing 10,000 words a day?

NOPE. Probably not even close.

And that’s okay. Because 500 w0rds a day will get me closer to finishing a book faster than a binge writing session once a month.

Forward motion is forward motion.

Prepping for a project

I give myself a lot of excuses when I start a new project. I hate a blank page. So when I sit down and start looking at one, the first page of a new project, I suddenly come up with a half a million things I need to do first.

I’ve learned that in order for me to dominate that blank page, I have to remove the excuses. I’m really good at excuses.

So when fast drafted the book last week, the first thing I did was go take care of all the things I needed to take care of. My car inspection. My hair. Grocery shopping. I did it all, so that when I sat down to write, I didn’t have any reason to get back up again.

I started reading the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod a while back, who talks a lot about routine. I think this is where I falter a lot, because I don’t establish a routine. I don’t give myself a set bedtime. I don’t eat at the same times everyday. About the only thing that is constant is that I’m floating through each day.

Creatives tend to abuse themselves and their bodies. Which was why I started reading the book in the first place. I wanted to take care of myself, because I realized that when I didn’t, that blank page completely and totally intimidated me.

We shall see how it goes after I finish reading this book. For now, I’m going to go drink caffeinated courage and write some words.