Category: Official

Posted on

Status Report – May 2016

It’s the first Monday second Tuesday of the month, and that makes it update time.

A month into quarter two and things are coming along nicely. No new Patreon members and nothing to sell yet, but the biggest project pushing forward. Last month I wrote 34,077 words, mostly in part to the spreadsheet created as part of The Roundtable Podcast. Shout out to Nobilis Reed for maintaining the doc. While the total word count was 16k shy of the 50k I wanted for April it was still a larger word count than I managed in the first quarter. I’ve set my sights on 60k for May, and I’m sitting at 11,753 as of this morning. A touch behind but far more productive than I’ve been. The novel now sits around 44K after some cuts, and if everything goes the way I’d like it to today we should be finished with Part 1 tonight. Quite happy about that. Current grade for novel writing: B

The mega-focus on the novel has slowed our production of flash fiction. By slow I mean a dead stop. I’m not super happy about that but in the grand scheme of things I think the major project writing is more important. Patreon supporters, I’ll make it up to you as soon as the first draft is done. Current grade for Patreon support: D

We have a new initiative started this month. I posted a teaser about the Quest Giver concept last week. The concept is to help me stay on task with projects but to also have a little fun with creating a gimmick. I love role-playing, gaming, and all those aspects of entertainment and I love the idea of using those to help me be more productive in my creative world. The Quest Giver concept has me working towards goals, earning experience for certain classes, and earning tokens for overall quests completed. The system is designed to earn me a level every four quests, and I’ll also be working on an achievement system which will earn me 10% of the experience needed for my next level. Quests are tasks like completing an outline for a book, reaching a milestone in a book, getting up a theme for the podcast, creating more quest tokens, etc. These earn experience for each of the three current classes which are Dungeon Master, Word Wrangler, and Audiogineer. I have another fourth class in development but that’s for another time when I can focus on such projects. As we generate the theme for the two blogs, we’ll create a place to see what quests are coming up and what quests are completed. A large part of the Dungeon Master class centers around creating those tools. Current grade for potentially useful but weird projects: A

Speaking Audiogineer, I failed last month to get back to podcasting. Just let that one slid too long I guess. With the creation of the new system to keep me on track I should have a more active reminder that I need to stay on top of the posting. I don’t think a daily podcast will be the best bet for me. Rather going towards a weekly format will allow me the best method of staying honest, keeping topics in mind to talk about, and just in general keep me from burning out. Current grade for Podcasting: F

So our May goals:

  • 60k for the novel.
  • Get back to weekly podcasting.
  • Gain a level in all of my classes.

Oh, and one more thing:

WW-001-04

Yeah, that’s about right.

Posted on

The Missing Short Fiction

There’s a certain lack of flash fiction going up the last few days. I think we’re at the start of week two of the problem, and it’s not ending any time soon.

Where is the flash fiction?

Why have you forsaken us the slivers of fiction delivered thrice weekly?

I want to know what is happening in that serial piece!

Where is my ham?

Okay, I can’t help you with that last bit but I can explain what’s going on with the rest of the questions. So where is the flash fiction? Well currently all of those words are being poured into the novel project. I’ve been behind on this since January, and frankly since the sale of Novels is meant to be my primary source of income I need to double down on production. The 1,000 words going into flash each day are now going into the novel. That basically means I’m getting the bonus writing time equivalent to an extra day and a half of writing each week. That’s a lot. That means the novel is likely to be done a week or two earlier, and that translates to the book getting published earlier. You see where I’m going with this?

I haven’t forsaken the flash fiction, but in all honesty it’s had to take a back seat. I promise it will return in full once the first draft of the novel is done. I also intend to not let this happen again by developing enough of a backlog that when I have to take a month away from the flash fiction I have enough to throw into the pot. This also includes the serial fiction piece. That one is important anyway since it’s a bit of a prequel to events of the novel.

Regarding the Patreon campaign:

With the changes to flash fiction, current fulfillment on the requested fiction is temporary halted. I can’t post what isn’t written yet. I will, however post chapter 1 of the novel. This is a pre-editing, pre-second draft review version of the chapter so take it with a grain of salt. If you’re not a patreon, sign up now and you’ll get to see this right away. If you stay signed up, you’ll also get yourself a full copy of the book once it’s done.

Okay, back to work on the novel. The faster that’s done, the fast we’re back to full production of that flash fiction.

Posted on

Status Report – April 2016

It’s the first Monday of the month, and that makes it update time.

The first quarter has now come to a close. Three months of self-publishing goals and deadlines have passed and where do we stand? March was the start of a weekly serial fiction. In addition to the Monday/Friday serial fiction we’ve been putting out we’ve kept up this project to par. I say to par because we didn’t get the overflow I wanted for the short fiction. Instead we’re still writing week to week and in some cases missing the Patreon week-a-head-of-time goal. That’s passing but it’s not great. Since we’ve talked grading scale here in the past I think that earns at best a B. Yes, it’s good we’re writing but we’re not taking that extra step we need to accomplish our end goals.

The Novel is somewhere around 15k. It’s nowhere near complete and that’s really my fault. I got distracted, pure and simple and for two weeks now I’ve set a Friday deadline of 20k words. Well, now it’s time to up the ante. I know I can do 3k a day. I did it several times over the last few weeks, days when I wrote both flash fiction and a short story. Those are great things but they’re not my goal. The novel is. So That’s the gauntlet, 3k a day this week. 30k total by the end of Friday. That’s with flash fiction as well out there. It means I need to have between 3.5-5k writing days every day this week to meet my deadline, but this is necessary. I’ve been saying the novel will be done by December, January, February, and March so far. April is the final deadline, and with the current word count and my goals of 70-80k words for the story, I’m going to need 15k a week to get there. Current grade for novel writing: D

So that’s our April goals:

  • 15k for the novel each week.
  • Complete all of April Flash fiction by April 15.
  • Get back to weekly podcasting.
Posted on

Status Report – March 2016

It’s the first weekday of the month, and that makes it update time.

We’re about to begin our third and final month of the first quarter in this self-publishing, writing at home, creating business. So where are we in terms of our February goals? The flash fiction has been a success. We missed one day because I thought something was scheduled for the 26th and turns out I was wrong. Really should have checked the spreadsheet on that one because it did show a blank slate for the day. I digress. We didn’t work on nor complete the novel. That needs major adjusting this coming month. We didn’t get out as many podcast episodes as we planned. That’s not cool. So, in general I think the month gets a C, for completing one objective near perfectly, for failing another completely, and partially completing the last one. Let’s hope for an A for March.

Major milestones in February included the official launch of the Patreon. It went up on February 8th, and has garnered 2 supporters in its first 21 days up. It doesn’t help I haven’t been plugging it much but that’s because I wanted to hit the first real goal of why the Patreon is up in the first place: the flash fiction. Supporters get early access to these works and I wanted to make sure I could keep up that project a clean month in the making. I did, and so now I feel more confident about talking about the Patreon more often. Expect to see a few more bumps for that on my social media feeds but not too many.

It’s time for goals for March:

First, continue the flash fiction and keep it going strong. We’ll be introducing the first serial series to the flash fiction (which will run weekly on Wednesdays), premiering tomorrow with the first installment of Hands. You can read this right now on the Patreon supporter feed. Working on a serial series Is heavily inspired by the likes of awesome authors like Christiana Ellis and Andrew Eckhart, and I highly recommend checking out their serial series currently in production and archived on their respective sites. I’ll be linking them tomorrow in the official launch of Hands.

Second, we’re still setting goals for the novel. I’m going to aim for an end of March deadline. Assuming nothing comes up (no family trips planned, no weird schedules, no sickness, etc), I should have nearly five clear weeks to write the story. It’s already outlined so there’s nothing holding me back. This will be the make or break grade for the upcoming month, so I better make it count.

Third, the podcast still needs more activity. I’d like to get into a habit of putting out a recorded piece of flash fiction each week, so expect to hear my complaining about audio editing over the coming weeks as I try my hand at the project. There’s another project related to this I’m working on too, but until that officially launches I want to hold off screaming about that just yet. That should officially launch sometime in June if all goes according to plan.

That’s it, our official Mach update. Let’s see if we can’t make this coming month the strongest of the year to date.

Posted on

That New Widget

I don’t always get to talk about milestones on here. At least, not as often as I wish I could. The cause lies somewhere between my production cycle and what I actually consider a milestone. So when I say I have a milestone to celebrate it really is something important. Today we have a milestone to celebrate: The Patreon is live.

Okay. I know. I’m celebrating the ability for people to give me money, but hear me out. It’s a milestone because a few important factors have sprung up from this going live. It’s the first time (aside from a poorly advertised short story) that I can actually make money as a creator. That’s pretty cool. I’ve also already lined up two supporters and that’s mind blowing to me. Between the two of them I’ve hit my first Patreon goal: supporting the website’s hosting. Granted that is an every two-year expense but knowing that it’s taken care of is a burden I’m really relieved to have off my shoulders. I’m still reliant on my biggest patron for support, my wife, but we’re on our way to being able to sustain this business model.

This does create a certain level of accountability now. First, I’ve made a promise of 3 days a week flash fiction. We’re a week into that already but now we have the expectation that these stories will continue. Yay accountability. This also applies to 3 days a week of podcast episodes. That’s rolling well into the new week with today’s episode where I talk about the Patreon, what I’m watching, and what I’m working on. Now I just need to take care of some short stories for the future and get to work on the novel.

Until then I want to say thanks to anyone who is just taking the time to support me by sharing the word about the podcast or my fiction. I know not everyone can toss into a Patreon but liking the Facebook page, sharing a post, a story, or an episode helps a ton. It’s a long road I’m traveling and every helping hand is appreciated.

Posted on

Status Report – February 2016

It’s the first weekday of the month, and that’s makes it update time!

*steps back as a field of fireworks, excitement, and loud music plays for a moment, until I’m left holding a single unlit sparkler*

Yay, imagination.

It’s been a month since we started this new adventure and I wanted to share with you the highs and lows of that time. Our goal at the end of January was to have a finished book project ready to bake and print. We’re not there. We’re actually quite far from it. I’ve completed the outline and worked heavily on the first chapter but things hit a snag throughout the time we laid out for the project. There’s a myriad of excuses but the biggest falls under health and work performance.

So what did we accomplish writing wise instead? Flash fiction. Today marks the first installment of a three times a week flash fiction project I’m pushing. The stories are meant to serve as writing practice and as a general draw to people new to me. They’re also fun to write and fairly quick on the immediate satisfaction scale. They’re also the lynch pin to the upcoming Patreon, as donors get access to upcoming stories a week earlier than everyone else. I also have plans to include serial fiction as part of this project, but I’m holding off pushing that out until the novel is further along.

I’ve also been really lax with the podcast. It’s meant to be a daily thing but getting sick rather early into its production halted it. We’ll be fixing that this week. Tonight, actually, since I’ve no reason to put off putting out an episode.

That’s really it for now. We’re very early in the process for what I’m creating, and until I’m out there more with production, projects, and connecting with people, these will remain brief. Our goal for February are the completion of the Novel, having the flash fiction out there Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of every week from now until I’m not writing anymore because the bore worms have taken over my brain, have an episode of the podcast out at least 5 days a week and make sure to post when and why episodes aren’t coming so people aren’t in the dark, and finally having the Patreon up and running with something people can dig. Those are reasonable goals.