DEMETER-9 AUDIOBOOK IS NOW ON AMAZON AUDIBLE AND BOOK 4 FIRST DRAFT IS DONE!

The second big thing is I have finished the first draft of book 4 in the Humanity Shattered Series. I have found for me that first drafts come pretty quickly compared to when I first started writing. I know the world and the characters, and I have an overall arching story arc that I am following. The plan is to write 10 books in this series.

I have to edit this book, and that is the hardest part of the process. It will take me a bit to do that. I start by working through some bad writing habits I have that have to be fixed before it's ready for human consumption. I can’t seem to write without using adverbs and filler words. I have gotten much better at it, but it was hard-fought. Most people don’t even think about it, but it's considered a no-no when it comes to writing fiction. The standard is Show versus Tell. When you write with adverbs and filler words, you are telling the reader something that you should be showing through action. I am working on it, but man, it’s hard.

I use a tool called Autocrit that a lot of authors use. It provides reports on things like adverbs, passive phrasing, repetitive words, filler words, and much more. I use the report to find these words, and then I rewrite the problem children out of the text. It takes a minute or two.

After I get those issues fixed, I start looking at the story structure and plot to see if I have any plot holes that need to be fixed. That also takes a minute.

Next comes an overall look and edit of any last-minute things that need to be addressed before I send it off to Advanced Readers for feedback. The feedback drives changes I make before it goes out to the public.

I can say the first draft was a very large book for me. It came in at 99,801 words. That is a lot. The story is getting more complex and deeper and requires more. It’s really fun to write. In the last few days of editing, I have already removed over 1500 words. Sometimes I feel like I am killing my babies. Those words were hard-fought; it's hard to just dump them. I have no clue what size the story will be when it has finished editing, but I imagine it will be bigger than earlier books in the series.

There will inevitably be scenes that don’t make the final cut and other scenes are adjusted to fit better, but so far I am pretty happy with what I have created. I am excited to share it with you. I don’t have a title yet, but I am kind of leaning toward Cold Harbor. That has been the working title so far, and it may stick. It’s the name of the ship a large part of the story focuses on.

When I have a title and a cover, and I feel like I can commit to a release date, I will put it up on Amazon as a pre-order. I will let you know when that happens.

I do have a question for you, and you can just reply to this email and let me know your thoughts.

I have been considering hardback copies of the books in the series, but I am not sure if there is interest in that kind of thing. If I did hardback copies, the font would probably be a bit bigger for us older folks. I guess I am showing my age. The problem is hardbacks are expensive to produce, and I just don’t know if there is a market for that in this kind of fiction. Let me know your thoughts.

Anyway, I hope to be dropping the Audible release of DEMETER-9 any day now, and I hope your summer is the best ever.

Shamon

P.S. The image is a picture of myself along with one of my goldendoodles, Hobbes. Hobbes passed away last week after getting sick. It was all pretty sudden and a bit shocking. He was the most loving and gentle creature I have ever met. A normal weekend often included him lying around my office while I wrote. I will surely miss the hell out of him.

Well, hello there,

I don’t know about you, but it's been a busy summer, so let me catch you up...

I will start with an update on DEMETER-9’s audio version. The audio version of DEMETER-9 is now available on Amazon Audible! You can get it here! Tony and Lori did a great job on it. I can’t wait for you to check it out.