Luke Sky Wachter's Blog, page 12

Admiral’s Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire

By popular demand I am releasing Admiral’s Lady: Eyes of Ice, Heart of Fire.  This is a 150 page prequel novella, starring Akantha and which tells the story of how she came to be upon the Lucky Clover.  Written by my brother and co-authored and edited by myself I hope you all enjoy!

After all I had to give you something to chew on until the 3rd book is ready.

Don’t worry we’re still neurotically whittling away on Admiral’s Tribulation as fast as our editing team can get the newly modified chapters back to us for review.

The Deposed King

P.S. - Just uploaded Admiral’s Lady on amazon, so it should be up in 6-12 hours!

(hint-hint: The events of this book start on the planet and conclude right around the beginning of Chapter 25 in Admiral Who?)

In Tribulation

Well guys I’m genuinely conflicted.  We’re going to be done with most of the character/storyline/plot improvements and beveling over those rough edges by the end of this weekend, right on schedule.  Thanks in large part go to Panesgrey, a Beta Reader and bartender (moderator) over at the Jim Butcher forum for helping out with this essential part of the editing process.

But most unfortunately, the head of the editing team (my brother) really wants to wait another week before release.  A fourth member of the editing team,  SuperPsycho over at ourforum.com has been doing a stand up job of locating most if not all of those irritating little misplaced commas, grammar nits, run-on sentences and clunkily worded or indecipherable paragraphs with descriptors or combat actions that don’t seem to make sense.  Alas he’s not done yet and I’m not sure if a week will be long enough.  It might be one to two weeks.

I don’t want to wait much longer, but my brother really wants this thing to be all it can be for you guys the first time you read it.

Can’t say it’ll be the final say on the matter but do you guys think?  Any thoughts on if we should bevel off all those rough edges before release or just send it out now.

I’d say that right now its definitely better than the first book when we initially launched it but we’ve come to learn that’s not good enough.

The Deposed King

Admiral’s Tribulation an ETA

Alright I’m expecting to put book 3:  which has been retitled Admiral’s Tribulation, up on amazon between the 13th and the 15th.

I’m heading over to the Brother’s place for the final round of edits this weekend and then its going to go up on amazon baby!

As a BTW I’ve been playing around with a fantasy story over the past few days.

Currently Titled:   Falon Half Blood (A Half Blood Magistra Tale)

I’m considering a name change to Falon Boar-Knife (evil smile)

Its your typical tale.  Girl daydreams of meeting prince charming and having many fun and wild adventures, and wearing lots of pretty dresses.   But right now her Father (a former squire) is sick, her brothers ran off a couple years ago and in the meantime its up to the sisters in the family to run things and that means someone has to put on some trousers and go out fronting for the Estate.

It was only meant to last until papa started feeling better and got back on his feet or else their five year old brother grew big enough to manage things.   Unfortunately their estate is run down, the older sister is selling her dowry piece by piece to keep them afloat  and then on top of it all, the Crown suddenly decides it needs  to call out the Feudal Levy.

Furious preperations ensue

Enemy armies move into the vicinity

and with a large number of sisters, including herself, in dire need of proper dowries

suddenly everything is riding on the shoulders of a sister who was just pretending to be a brother part time in order to keep their estate from being confiscated.

It seems that trying to take down a 500 pound boar threatening to destroy the family orchard, and their only source of income, is going to be the least of her challenges.

The Deposed King

P.S.

Don’t worry just as soon as book three is out the door, we’ll start editing on Book 4 - Admiral’s Trial!

Book 3 - Beta’s go go go!

Broke the book up into two halves.  The first half is through the initial editing passes and off to the Beta readers.  Just fired off a copy an hour or two ago.

Current thinking is to break Admiral in Spite of Himself up into two separate books.

Book 3: Admiral’s Tribulation

and

Book 4: Admiral’s Trial

But we’ll see what the beta’s think first!  I just don’t want to leave you waiting any longer than necessary.  Hopefully by the time the beta’s have read through Tribulation, the Trial will be through its editing passes.

Anyway, editing and beta’s and such can be a bit longer than it might initially seem.  So fingers crossed!

The Deposed King

242k - First Draft Almost done

Well I’m up to 242k and the first draft is almost done.  I’m up to the first potential stop point but I want to finish my second potential end point before officially calling it.

This next week is the wife’s only free week in the past couple months so while I’d like to declare that I’ll probably be done in a day or two and then race off  directly to the edits.  I can’t swear to it.   Could be tuna could be peaches (ala Look Who’s Talking the Movie)

Anyway regardless of whether its broken up into two books or just one monster book, its nice to be a couple days away from being done with this thing.  The Editing Brain is most definitely different from the creative brain.

With the Creative Brain you have to turn off your little editor check list and just push the product onto the screen, the editing hat on the other hand, while critical to a good enjoyable read, requires a little different mindset.

Not that I can’t help with the edits and make a significant strides toward improvement, its just nice to have help that can take a fresh look and plug those weak links we all have.

I’m starting to ramble.  Anyway I just wanted to keep you guys in the loop and I finally found my password to the Admin side again.  I transferred laptops after my main and back up both went down and I was stuck with no forward motion for 3 days while they were repaired.  Its easy to make comments on existing threads but you have to…

Anyway rambling its an hour or so after midnight over here.

have a blast!

The Deposed King

150k - Update

I’m up to 150k on this Novel and its not done yet!

That said right now its bigger than either of the first two books, which pegged in around 140k.   The current plan is to just keep grinding on it until the story is complete and then go for the jugular!  I mean editing passes.

I don’t think I’ll be split it up into two separate books but I’m not ruling anything out just yet.

Anyway just wanted to keep you guys in the loop!

Its flowing like fire from these fingers!

The Deposed King

Update on the Book

Thanks for all the good wishes on the writing front guys. I’ve been pounding away at it hard the last couple days. Up to 97k as of today.

Target for this thing is generally expected to be in the 140k range (at least that was what the other two worked out to be, I originally aimed for 120k but the things just kept growing).

If I can wrap up the main story line around the 120k’s range, then i’ll probably go back like I did with Book 2 and make sure all the sub-plots are tied up nice and neat. A lot of the Bogart and Suffic plot lines were woven in after the fact on the Gambit. I knew they needed to be in there and about where they’d go but just had to stay focused on finishing the main line stuff first. Otherwise these books could sprawl and sprawl into an impossible size and no story completion in sight ever.

Which is bad.  But easily avoidable.

Right now this book is feeling a little bit bigger than the others. But that could just be closing in on the last quarter of the book blues.

I know the story I want to tell and where the possible end points are on this thing. Some scenes just turn out longer or shorter than originally estimated. So long as the cool story is in there, that’s the main thing, it doesn’t matter the word count.

Anyway Emil had a question regarding an e-mail list. That’s a good question and one we’ve considered. Right now I’m going to focus on getting book 3 out. Either after 3 or 4, probably 4, I’m thinking to revamp the covers and focus on other value added ideas like the e-mail list.

I guess the short answer is no e-mail list at this time, but its a good question and will help spur us onto getting one set up. I’ll try to post it here as well as in the author- discussion section in the author page area, when the book comes out.

Thanks for all the people who say its worth more than the $2.99, its good to hear that, along with all the encouragement. Its in large part thank to you guys, that I’ve been knuckling down here so soon after being sick.

Sweet Murphy but this thing’s been taking off the last few odd days. I hope you guys end up enjoying the read as much as I am the writing of it. This book is going to be a bit different than that other two books. Due in main part due to some difficulties encountered by the main character.

The Deposed King

Book 3 - Product Description

Jason Montagne and the Officers and Crew of the Lucky Clover are back and if you thought the last family reunion was bad wait until you meet his Uncle.

A man who makes his re-acquaintance with Bethany seem all warm and fuzzy in comparison.

This time Admiral Montagne isn’t just dealing with the Vekna side of the Family but an old style Montagne.  The kind that gives other Montagnes a bad name.

-    Childhood fantasies will be crushed

-    An aura of Invincibility will be tested

And its anyone’s guess if the Little Admiral can pull another rabbit out of his hat and put an end to the piracy that’s been plaguing the border of known space ever since the Empire withdrew.

Or if the tables will finally be turned and Jason find himself at the mercy of those he’s been thumbing his nose at for so long.

Discover all this and more in Book 3 - Admiral In Spite of Himself.

“Make it so, Mr. Spalding… engage!”

Product Description yes/no

Who would like a sneak peak at the Product Description as its currently envisioned?

Its subject to change of course but if anyone’s interested drop a comment and I’ll pop it up!

The Deposed King

Been down with Dengue Fever

I’ve been down with Dengue Fever for the past week.  Been in the hospital for the past three days.  Hopefully I’ll get out of here today.  I don’t feel nearly as crummy as when I first arrived.

bye,

The Deposed King