Good news, I decided to put Hopper House up for pre-order on Amazon. It’ll be officially on sale on August 15. It’s also available for pre-order on Apple.
Tag Archives: the jenkins cycle
Two posts in one: Book 3 is done, and I need Facebook likes
I only like posting once a day here, if possible, because I know folks get emailed every time. So for the first time ever on this blog, I’m harnessing the Power of Cyberspace and merging two posts into one. Maybe five years from now, when people are merging four and even five posts together, we’ll all look back and laugh. But for now, this is cutting edge stuff!
Post 1: Facebook likes
I’m doing a little paid Facebook advertising ($$), and my reach is based on the number of likes on my page. So I could really use more likes. Am I asking for likes? You bet! If you follow the link and then click “Like” I’ll be your best friend forever.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/John-L-Monk/438937726219898
Post 2: Book 3 is done
Ugh, finally — FINALLY — I finished all the parts and pieces and rewrites of Book 3 of The Jenkins Cycle (title to be released later, hehe). Wow, it took a while. I thought when I finished the first draft in January it’d go quick. Boy was I wrong. Lots of rewriting and agonizing and complaining and whining and profanity and conjunction after conjunction. What’s their function? Beats me, I just type stuff. Anyway, it’s done. I have to read it again, weeding out as many typos as I can, as many inconsistencies as possible, and then I need to get it to beta readers. After that, I hope to hire 2 proofreaders — back to back — to find the last problems. Then I publish. I sincerely hope this is in July, and wish it were sooner. Still lots to do, but the hard part is over. Nothing bad can happen now.
Filed under Writing Experience, Writing in general
Enough with the Apple stuff, where’s book 3??
I imagine millions of you, perhaps trillions, are wondering, “Where-oh-where is book 3 of the Jenkins Cycle?!”
Short Answer: it should be out this summer, hopefully by July.
Long Answer (see below):
Though I finished the draft in January, it was a banged-up mess. I’d followed a different tactic in writing this one than I had for book 1, and which I’d started to implement in book 2: I plotted as best I could (loosely) and wrote without revising as I went along.
I’ve always plotted loosely, but one thing I did in book 1 was write a thousand or so words, then went back and tweaked it to pieces (then farther back tweaking anything that needed to match up (and so on (and so on))) and after that, started writing new chapters. I did that a little in book 2 as well, and that helped keep it sort of solid for when I finished the draft. Revisions weren’t that hard (though I’d re-read the book like 10 times, which was mind-numbing). But in book 3, I did NO revisions as I shot forward. I followed a bunch of advice from top-selling folks who said, “Just keep writing, knock it out, leave the mistakes in, fix it later.” It seemed like brilliant advice.
But when I finished the draft, as I said: it was a banged-up mess. It was about 65k words, the reason being I’d left out portions of the story that would slow me down. “Read about organized crime law later” my internal timekeeper/drill sergeant yelled, and so I left notes in brackets: [ put the legal stuff here ] or [ big fight scene on top of a jetliner here ] or [ put words here ] or whatever.
So that’s what I’ve been doing since January: going through and adding the things I missed, revising lots of plot holes, making sure people’s names don’t change from chapter to chapter, eradicating unneeded sections, and doing all the thinking I would have done in book 1 as I crept along. All those missing sections, incidentally, have the book sitting at 84k words (without any “fluffing,” in case you’re wondering).
Dean Wesley Smith says the way I did book 1, more or less, is called “Writing into the dark.” He even wrote a book about it titled: “Writing into the dark.” It’s a method of writing where you venture forward with no outline, and you finish the book after you write the last word. Even with “Kick” I wasn’t that efficient, but I did basically do this. I did it a little with Fool’s Ride (various chapters would get this treatment). And not at all with Book Three.
This wasn’t supposed to be a book endorsement, but it sort of is. Highly recommend picking up Smith’s book and seeing if maybe it’s something that would appeal to you. He makes a lot of great arguments.
Filed under Word Counts, Writing in general
John L. Monk 