Non-voting news

I can’t say I’m pleased with the results of yesterday’s voting, but… well, that’s sometimes what happens when people vote. I wonder, though, if everyone had gotten to vote if we wouldn’t haven’t gotten slightly different results. But I digress… Voting still good, writing still better!

In all of the political stuff over the last week, I forgot to make a major announcement! Aron finished the first draft of the new book. It’s still tentatively called Hangman’s Cross, though we’re not sure what the naming convention will be since we’re splitting this monster into two volumes. I’m about two-thirds done with the first round of coauthoring and the manuscript is a little shy of 120,000 words. I’m expecting it to end up around 150,000 words. The second book should be about the same length.

This has been a nerve-wracking one for us. Hangman’s Cross is a story we both feel strongly about, both in content and storytelling. I have a pretty clear vision of how I want the book to read and it’s… just not there yet. But then, that’s what I’ve said about every single first draft. We’ve got at least two more major revisions to get through before Hangman’s Cross even goes out to beta readers, to say nothing of the general public.

With this major landmark reached, we really need to think about how to publish Hangman’s Cross. We’re assuming that we’ll go self-published again, but we really want to create the best possible book. That means professional cover artists, editors, etc. And that takes a lot more money than the other books are bringing in right now.

So we’ve been considering an Kickstarter campaign to raise the necessary funds. Not sure how that would go, though, considering about five people read this blog. Most of the other people I know on Twitter are other struggling authors who are trying to get their own books off the ground… But nothing ventured, nothing gained. We’ll see what we can do to get Hangman’s Cross out there, flapping in the breeze.

…That came out wrong.