Jon Ray's Blog: The Writer's Tower - Posts Tagged "goblin"

Last month I completed and published my first novel. It's called "Gorp: Goblin Janitor" and is a fun fantasy novel I wrote during the 2010 NaNoWriMo competition. The book was written in 30 days, while I was working a full-time job in Arizona. I finished the 50k word deadline and had my manuscript, where it sat and await a rewrite and edit that never came until this year (2017). I never mentioned in the book or elsewhere, but all the artwork for the book was created by myself as well.

In 2011, after having written my first novel, I was looking for another self-challenge. That year, I decided to do a fantasy related drawing/art piece every single day of the year and called it "Drawing a Day". It was very hard at times while working 16 hour days at work and having a young child to take care of, but I was able to accomplish this feat giving me 365 original works of art at the end of the year. While, drawing I sometimes took the opportunity to draw up characters and places from my Gorp novel and planned to use these for each chapter in the final book. I was contacted by a French magazine/book publisher and ended up having all of my art published in their magazine "Collections: Volume 3" with an interview as well. In addition to these, there were a few chapters that did not have what I wanted, so I drew these just for the novel right before publishing.

After moving around and spending sometime in Hollywood, I eventually ended up in Sydney, Australia where I currently reside. Having the time to dedicate to my finished manuscript, I worked on the rewrite and edit for the novel, which went much better than I had anticipated. The self-publishing world however was a bit of a hassle trying to navigate. After a step learning curve I was able to get all the pieces put together with a new book cover and convert the paperback version over to eBook. Now begins the long task of selling my book and trying to get it out there for others to read. To date, it's still be less than a month since my book was first published and I've not year sold my initial goal of 10 books, but I have sold a few copies, which gives one hope. Diving into the fantasy world I created for Gorp, ignited my imagination and love for writing again, so I've begun the task of turning Gorp into a series and am currently preparing to write the second book in the series. Being a book author was one of those childhood dreams and today as I sit here typing this from Australia, I feel very accomplished, but still yearn to create fantastical worlds for others to explore through reading.

Gorp: Goblin Janitor

To order the book directly click here.

So...I've decided to use this month's NaNoWriMo 2017 to write the 2nd book in my Gorp the Goblin series. Originally, I wrote the first Gorp book back in NaNoWriMo 2010 in 30 days. This year I hope to do the same for book 2, but I will not wait 6 years to sit on it and edit the book. I plan to hopefully have the book edited and published sometime in Dec. 2017 or Jan. 2018. As of this writing tonight, I'm currently 12k words into the story and am trying to reach and pass the 50k word mark. I'm hoping this will be a bit longer book than the first but will have to see what comes of the editing. Sometimes chapters get cut, other times I add in new characters and scenes. So far however I seem to be on track and it warms my heart to know that there are fans of the Gorp series awaiting the next novel.

Last night with 50384 words, I crossed the 2017 NaNoWriMo Winners line by going over the 50k word count. However, "Gorp 2: Dungeon Overlord" is proving to be a much longer novel than the first one "Gorp: Goblin Janitor".

In this continuation of the series, we see a lot more of The Kingdom as it is called, from Hallstorm in the north to the City of Tents in the south. There will also be new and updated maps from the first book. In addition to becoming a series, I'm planning on doing a revision of the first book to format it for easier reading as well as a new book cover. I'll also be updating the few maps that were listed inside.

The 2nd book in the series, which I'm working on at the moment during NaNoWriMo will end up being around 80k words, so I plan to continue writing this novel well into December. Then without skipping a beat, I plan to edit the book and sometime in January or February 2018 will published the novel.

I've enjoyed revisiting and expanding the Gorp universe, but I still have other projects calling to me to pick up the story and finish them as well. Of though will be more short works to be compiled into an Anthology series called "Agrobathe Stories". I'm also looking forward to returning to my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series "Agrobathe Adventures". 2018 will prove to be a very busy writing year for me and I'm ready!