Just another quick update, before I crash.
Went to the Book Academy Conference at UVU today. It was fun, with several excellent panels by some local authors. More about that in a later post.
My new mp3 player arrived today: a refurbished iRiver T10. An ancient, nearly obsolete machine, but it’s got a good quality microphone, which all the other brands lack. Besides, if it’s anything like my old iRiver ifp-890, it’s built to last. With 1 GB of storage instead of 128 MB, it’s a step up in the world.
The revision of Mercenary Savior goes well, though it also goes slowly. Only 1.2k words today, when I was hoping to finish this last chapter. I’m right between part II and part III, with the twist ending that…well, I won’t give it away. So far, I’ve managed to add a scene and rearrange several chapters without adding more words than I’ve cut. That’s good–I need this draft to be tight.
I also dropped the money for plane tickets to World Fantasy 2010. They came to about $300, which was cheaper than I was expecting. I’ll be sharing a room in the next hotel over with Eric James Stone for about $50 per night, but there’s room for others if you’re willing to sleep on the floor. Just let me know.
I think I’m going to experiment with my schedule next week and try waking up early to write instead of staying up late. Maybe if I get the writing in first thing, it will help things flow later, and I won’t always feel like I’m playing catch up. We’ll see.
One final thing: I’ll post more about this later, but I have a great idea for a direct sequel to Mercenary Savior kicking around in my head. It would involve James leading the people of the Colony on an exodus into the heart of the Good Hope Nebula, where they would be completely cut off from the outside world–kind of like the pioneers. It would also involve letting James grow up and giving him a romantic interest or two, something that I didn’t really do in the first book.
And before you say it, yes, I know the advice is to not waste time writing a sequel to a book you haven’t sold yet. I think I could make this work, though. Mercenary Savior, while far from perfect, has a lot of potential–perhaps the most potential of anything I’ve written. I’d be surprised if I didn’t eventually find a home for it, and when I do, having a sequel already written can only be a good thing.
More on that later, though. For now, sleeeep.
