Russell-Scott-Emery

Keeping myself busy while he test readers and editor do their bit by almost getting through a short book to be given free as an ebook on Amazon Books.  I now know that I probably won't be doing the picture book version, but I still like doing the drawings and illustrations, so will use these for the website gallery and for this short compendium I am writing. I'm finding this process rewarding, as it's taking all the research and world building I did and placing it in a reference format.  Little lines about characters mentioned in the novel are fleshed out here.  Already the mythology base is serving useful for the sequel novel percolating away in my grey matter. With each novel, I am now planning to expand on this current short tome.

I have the paperback's ISBN number and next week will have the Hardback's one.  So much to do before the target April 23rd publishing date.  I'm still waiting for the edited version to come back to me so I can make the final tweaks. On Friday of last week, I gave ten copies of the unedited version of Quest for Truth to ten test readers.  8 Children and 2 adults.  The children (Aged between 10 and 14 seem to be loving it, the adults have made no comment yet.) I'm also pushing ahead full throttle on tow short books to tie in and give away for free through Amazon Books.  One is a compendium of all the characters and places, giving a different view of the world of Figmentasia.  The second not started yet will be a short story about Queen Denmilate and her rise to power.

Very busy this end with design and pre promotions.  Good news just in though... ...A friend's 13-year-old daughter is test reading Figmentasia and she's loving it. So stoked. That's my target audience right there. Thank you Talia-Mae

It is with great excitement I can announce that the book is almost ready to go to the editor.  Oh, and my first adverts are now going out online.

With only five chapters left to rework for the second draft before it goes to the editor Samme Kehinde, my brain is starting to have to think through the process of marketing the book.  A number of ebook authors on youtube seem to encourage publishing short stories or excerpts of the book for free.  Taking the advice into account, I am thinking of putting the first three chapters of Figmentasia on Amazon for three.  I also have a handbook which I have used as a reference for myself whilst writing, which I think could be of use to teachers and parents, as well as eager minds who want to learn more about the world of Figmentasia. So this will be the second freebie. Through the website and facebook page, I will promote these freebies and try and drive traffic from these to the sales fo the actual book. I've had the costs of printing flyers and posters done to distribute to schools and libraries. I'm also starting to put feelers out to friends who speak o...

So every writer seems to be saying the same thing.  Draft two is where you actual writing gets done.  Having gone through what I have written and now starting to reshape what I have done, I can see exactly what they mean.  I complained that there were stretches of the writing I didn't like, and the main cause of that is now apparent.  Draft one has so much head swapping in each scene. What do I mean by head swapping?  A scene I wrote about bullying utilised the four people in it sharing their thoughts on the page.  It was confusing.  I have now rewritten it so it's all from the Thelba's  (the lead character) perspective.  Her character is experiencing the situation and is the character I need to go through the biggest learning ark.  Teban Thelba needs to go from wanting to be a boy, to wanting and yearning to be a girl.  The fight is able for me to internalise the inception of her changing her perspective, something that...

So draft one is complete, and the sculpting of draft two is underway.  Having shocked myself that I have actually managed to get this far, the learning curve is still steep. There are huge swathes of passages where I actually don't like the style of writing, so the correction of that feels a bit like psychological sculpting of my words. Some elements of my abandoned first opening three chapters still haunt part of the text, so that has required editing.  Adding subjectivity to describing paragraphs seems to have taken up a lot of the last couple of days. I've also realised that where I am dealing with three orphans as the main leads, I have no inner dialogue about abandonment, being adopted or any of the other usual "family" hang-ups one would associate with an orphan.  So this is being addressed where it is appropriate to do so. I keep getting ideas for book two, so I am having to reign myself in and focus on the book in hand.  It's rewarding to...