The Paper Mountain Grows

I didn’t make new year resolutions, but I think if I did keeping this blog updated would be my number one. Having said that, this is the first post of my new blog schedule. For the time being, I’m only posting on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday – I do a post on my blog on my website on Monday and Friday. The posts on my site are what I would call ‘update’ posts. They’re little windows into what I’m working on that day. The posts here will have a more structured schedule to them. Tuesdays will be general updates on all my current WIPs. Wednesdays will be any tips and tricks that I’ve learned through my many, many mistakes in the writing ‘business’. Thursday will be any competitions that I stumble upon on the interwebs that I think any fellow writers would be interested in. I’m hoping to eventually add book reviews and a few other things to this blog eventually, but for now I’ll keep it simple so I don’t get too stressed out trying to keep things running. So, with that out of the way, back to the post!

I got a lovely new desk for Christmas last year so that I would have an organised space to do all my freelance and writing work. At the moment, my desk is not visibly for the masses of piles of paper that cover it. This could be seen as a bad thing, but it’s not. Those piles of paper are the printed version of That’s Charming, so it’s a productive mess.

That’s Charming is coming along nicely in editing, if I do say so myself. I recently split all of the chapters into two or three smaller chapters as they were really too long for a middle grade audience. I’m about a third of the way through with my own editing – about to start on the major rewriting of scenes (woo!) – and then I will send it off to my lovely new editor who will turn my lump of coal into a shiny diamond.

The plan is to submit to agents – probably during the summer – and hope that by winter one of them says yes! It’s a big dream, but I’m hopeful that it will work.

Speaking of editors. I have a different editor looking at Ashlyn and the Lost Prince. Since it’s release in February of last year, Ashlyn has done relatively well considering my lack of promotional skills and social media savvy. With 916 copies sold (at my last count), it’s done way better than I thought it would. Granted about 900 of those sales were free copies through the Kindle Select Program. I’ve still made about £20 royalties from it overall and I am pleased as punch about that!

I’m hoping to re-release Ashlyn in April this year, so my editor will be going over it as soon as she can (she has guaranteed that it will be ready before my deadline!). I’m excited to see how she helps me with it. Ashlyn will be re-released using Smashwords for a wider distribution, so hopefully this will help my sales a bit. If not, at least she’s out there in a better state than my hardly edited version that I released the first time.

I still need to outline and plan the rest of her series so I can get cracking on the second book, Ashlyn and the Sea Voyage. I did want to release one a year in February when I released the first one, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ll think of a new schedule when I’ve got a few more of the books written.

Last but not least, The Daisy. People would probably tell me to give this old story up as a bad joke, but I just can’t. After already going through a major rewrite to become ‘better’, The Daisy is still… well, crap, if I’m honest. I’ve put a lot of work into it though – more than any other novel I’ve written. The Daisy has maps, a royal family tree (30 generations worth of back stories!), and a sequel that’s actually 25,000 words long! It needs a lot of work, but I have the determination to get it done.

Having said that, I’m under no illusion that any agent will want it. At least, not in its current state. I’m still on the fence about whether I want to self-publish it or not, but I’m confident that it will one day reach publishable standards. I’m still many, many edits away from that though and right now it’s the last on my list to focus on, sadly.

So, I’ve rambled on about my works for long enough I think. There are, of course, many more stories on my back burner but these are the three that I’m focusing on at this particular moment.

When the time comes, I’ll be posting giveaways for free copies of Ashlyn, so keep an eye out for that.

Happy Tuesday!