Brandon Spacey's Blog
October 13, 2022
New Giveaway
Hello friends! I am in the process of shopping my latest novel around in hopes of it being published by a big publisher. I would like to generate some buzz about the project by making an offer: I will send you a copy (in ebook or paperback) if you will read it as quickly as you are able, and leave me a fair review on it. If you are willing to participate in this, just send me an email and we'll make it happen!
Here's the synopsis:
When Shawn Stedwin takes a new job in a new city, she believes she's found a great fit in a great company. But after a six-month monitoring period by her boss, Sameer Singh, she is invited to join him on a secret project in the hidden half of the building's fourth floor. His mission is to find a way to bring someone back from the dead.
Using a mixture of nanotechnology and biology, Singh thinks they can reawaken a cadaver's personality. If he’s right, the subject will be able to open his eyes, observe his surroundings and even speak to them about it. But in dealing with the dead, there are many unknowns.
This is the story of a woman's journey through fear and coming to terms with her own past. She must lean on the shoulders of her new boyfriend and her new friend to get through the turmoil. But good things don’t always last. And these two separate parts of her life - friendships and working with the dead - might just end up converging.
Here's the synopsis:
When Shawn Stedwin takes a new job in a new city, she believes she's found a great fit in a great company. But after a six-month monitoring period by her boss, Sameer Singh, she is invited to join him on a secret project in the hidden half of the building's fourth floor. His mission is to find a way to bring someone back from the dead.
Using a mixture of nanotechnology and biology, Singh thinks they can reawaken a cadaver's personality. If he’s right, the subject will be able to open his eyes, observe his surroundings and even speak to them about it. But in dealing with the dead, there are many unknowns.
This is the story of a woman's journey through fear and coming to terms with her own past. She must lean on the shoulders of her new boyfriend and her new friend to get through the turmoil. But good things don’t always last. And these two separate parts of her life - friendships and working with the dead - might just end up converging.
August 3, 2022
3 New Books!
Hello friends. I have been in a good season of writing this year. Since April, I have finished three novels. The first, Red Bell, was started in 2019. The second of these, Chasing Comets, I started in 2016. Wow!
The third, called A Flutter in the Window, I began on May 31 and wrote in 42 days. A marked improvement in my historically lackluster ability to stay on task.
Red Bell is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats now, and on B & N as paperback with the hardcover on the way. Any day now.
Chasing Comets will be released this December, and Flutter in April of 2023. Thank you to everyone for your patience and support. I'm already hard at work on novel # 8!
The third, called A Flutter in the Window, I began on May 31 and wrote in 42 days. A marked improvement in my historically lackluster ability to stay on task.
Red Bell is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats now, and on B & N as paperback with the hardcover on the way. Any day now.
Chasing Comets will be released this December, and Flutter in April of 2023. Thank you to everyone for your patience and support. I'm already hard at work on novel # 8!
January 12, 2016
Into the Darkness Comes to Light
Hello friends. I come bearing good news and free beer. Or at least one of those things. I have finished my fourth novel! After a whole lot of talk about it, I finally got off my butt and got to it. You see, that’s the biggest problem with being HADD. That’s Hobby-Attention Deficit Disorder. When you have HADD like I do, you can’t stick with one of your hobbies for more than a few months at a time. And what this amounts to, when you have like nineteen favorite hobbies, is that each of them cycles around every couple of years. Or more.
So I get into and out of hobbies like the wind. It’s ridiculous. I get so into one of them that I neglect all the rest. Well, writing, for me, is a hobby. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s one of my top three favorites. I am very, very passionate about it. But that doesn’t amount to anything. It still comes and goes with cyclical irregularity, like a fat guy through a turnstile. This is why back in October of 2014, I was telling friends and family that I hoped to have my fourth book completed by Christmas. Well, that was the last I touched it. October 6th of 2014. And, sadly, that was a weak day. I wrote 1762 words on that day.
Well, I finally got a fire under my feet last month, and decided I was going to get back to work on this, thinking this is probably my best work yet. My best novel so far. It just needed some TLC. (Tentative Literary Control). So on December 10th, I set about to rereading the entire work so far, to get back in touch with it. To catch back up to where everyone was, where they were going, what had happened, and what needed to happen. I finished that in two consecutive nights. And then with a notebook full of ideas, changes and additions, I set about to writing again.
Well that first night, December 11, I wrote 2293 words. Clearly not much more than that last time I had written. But hey, I had just spent the last couple of hours – hours I could have been writing – reading it. So at that point, I goaled myself with finishing the book in a month. I was going to write the balance of the book in one month. That was about half, as far as I could tell. I don’t aim for a certain page count, or word count for that matter. But I generally know going in about how many words it’s going to take to tell the story. This one looked to me from the beginning to be worth somewhere between 130 and 150 thousand words. Clearly, a big project. And up until October 6 of 2014, I had only written 70 thousand.
I had a big undertaking in front of me. But averaging around 3500-5000 words per day, I stayed in my office for lots of long hours, blasting Kings of Leon and drinking cheap scotch. I don’t like to get drunk while I write, but I sure like to drink my scotch. And a little buzz doesn’t do much to upset me. Here I must throw in a massive thank-you to my lovely red-haired wife, who allows me to write. This is a support a lot of people don’t know. This means she takes care of the kids, the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, the house… Wait. She does all that anyway.
Well, during the times when I’m writing, I close the office door and turn the music way up. It’s a whole bunch of absence. I’m committed. But I’m proud to say I got it done. From December 11th to January 10th, one exact and complete month, I wrote 81,000 words. My biggest weekend in there was just over twenty thousand. My biggest day was 9556. Oh wait. That was in the first two weeks of that month. On the last day, the evening I finished it, I wrote… are you ready for it? Okay. Here goes: I wrote 14,778 words. That’s the most I’ve ever written in one day. Huge, huge accomplishment. I was in the office for about eight hours that day. And that brought me to the end. January 10th, I wrote the last chapter.
The next evening I wrote the epilogue. I don’t count that when talking about completion of the book, mostly because it’s not completely necessary for the book to exist. I wanted it, and love it, and I’m glad I wrote it. But the book could totally have survived without it. That only took me about an hour to write, anyway.
So, with all that said, I’m happy to announce that it will be ready for publishing within the next few months. I’m looking at April of 2016. It’s time to get excited, friends! If you liked my other books, you will love this one. This is my best work yet. Callie and Walter at their finest. And they go through a lot in this book. They learn and discover a lot about themselves. They encounter and address questions you have had for many years. They answer questions you always ask me. “Are they ever gonna get together, Space?” Uh… I don’t know. I really don’t. Or didn’t. When I’m not putting on paper what they are currently doing, I don’t keep up with them. I couldn’t tell you what will happen to them any more than I could a real person. I’m not really in control of their destiny. I am just the conduit through which their actions are funneled to you, the reader. And believe me when I say I am sometimes as surprised as you are to see what happens to them.
It’s exciting to me to say this. But after my first 3441 words were written, on February 12, 2008 – almost eight years ago – I have finally brought to close my dream of going under the sea. I have been tossing this idea around in my head for over a decade. It’s crazy. I can now say I’ve been to Mars, back in time to the late 19th century, down missile silos and now, finally, to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. And I have to tell you, there’s a pretty good little hanger at the end – one that leaves open the possibility of another Callie Simmons book. Another mission, another journey. I’m excited to get back to it.
For now, I begin my fifth book – a standalone novel about the rise of a relationship between a dunce and a dancer. It’s not a romance. It’s a heart-breaker. But I’m already seeing signs that it will be the best thing I’ve ever written. I don’t dare ever compare myself to other writers. I’m not that arrogant. But I can tell you that I’m getting better. And this is the best stuff I’ve ever written. Stick around, friends. I promise this one won’t take eight years. And then you’ll get your fill of Callie, solving the world’s problems one monster at a time.
I'll let you know when it's out.
Into the Darkness
So I get into and out of hobbies like the wind. It’s ridiculous. I get so into one of them that I neglect all the rest. Well, writing, for me, is a hobby. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s one of my top three favorites. I am very, very passionate about it. But that doesn’t amount to anything. It still comes and goes with cyclical irregularity, like a fat guy through a turnstile. This is why back in October of 2014, I was telling friends and family that I hoped to have my fourth book completed by Christmas. Well, that was the last I touched it. October 6th of 2014. And, sadly, that was a weak day. I wrote 1762 words on that day.
Well, I finally got a fire under my feet last month, and decided I was going to get back to work on this, thinking this is probably my best work yet. My best novel so far. It just needed some TLC. (Tentative Literary Control). So on December 10th, I set about to rereading the entire work so far, to get back in touch with it. To catch back up to where everyone was, where they were going, what had happened, and what needed to happen. I finished that in two consecutive nights. And then with a notebook full of ideas, changes and additions, I set about to writing again.
Well that first night, December 11, I wrote 2293 words. Clearly not much more than that last time I had written. But hey, I had just spent the last couple of hours – hours I could have been writing – reading it. So at that point, I goaled myself with finishing the book in a month. I was going to write the balance of the book in one month. That was about half, as far as I could tell. I don’t aim for a certain page count, or word count for that matter. But I generally know going in about how many words it’s going to take to tell the story. This one looked to me from the beginning to be worth somewhere between 130 and 150 thousand words. Clearly, a big project. And up until October 6 of 2014, I had only written 70 thousand.
I had a big undertaking in front of me. But averaging around 3500-5000 words per day, I stayed in my office for lots of long hours, blasting Kings of Leon and drinking cheap scotch. I don’t like to get drunk while I write, but I sure like to drink my scotch. And a little buzz doesn’t do much to upset me. Here I must throw in a massive thank-you to my lovely red-haired wife, who allows me to write. This is a support a lot of people don’t know. This means she takes care of the kids, the laundry, the dishes, the cooking, the house… Wait. She does all that anyway.
Well, during the times when I’m writing, I close the office door and turn the music way up. It’s a whole bunch of absence. I’m committed. But I’m proud to say I got it done. From December 11th to January 10th, one exact and complete month, I wrote 81,000 words. My biggest weekend in there was just over twenty thousand. My biggest day was 9556. Oh wait. That was in the first two weeks of that month. On the last day, the evening I finished it, I wrote… are you ready for it? Okay. Here goes: I wrote 14,778 words. That’s the most I’ve ever written in one day. Huge, huge accomplishment. I was in the office for about eight hours that day. And that brought me to the end. January 10th, I wrote the last chapter.
The next evening I wrote the epilogue. I don’t count that when talking about completion of the book, mostly because it’s not completely necessary for the book to exist. I wanted it, and love it, and I’m glad I wrote it. But the book could totally have survived without it. That only took me about an hour to write, anyway.
So, with all that said, I’m happy to announce that it will be ready for publishing within the next few months. I’m looking at April of 2016. It’s time to get excited, friends! If you liked my other books, you will love this one. This is my best work yet. Callie and Walter at their finest. And they go through a lot in this book. They learn and discover a lot about themselves. They encounter and address questions you have had for many years. They answer questions you always ask me. “Are they ever gonna get together, Space?” Uh… I don’t know. I really don’t. Or didn’t. When I’m not putting on paper what they are currently doing, I don’t keep up with them. I couldn’t tell you what will happen to them any more than I could a real person. I’m not really in control of their destiny. I am just the conduit through which their actions are funneled to you, the reader. And believe me when I say I am sometimes as surprised as you are to see what happens to them.
It’s exciting to me to say this. But after my first 3441 words were written, on February 12, 2008 – almost eight years ago – I have finally brought to close my dream of going under the sea. I have been tossing this idea around in my head for over a decade. It’s crazy. I can now say I’ve been to Mars, back in time to the late 19th century, down missile silos and now, finally, to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean. And I have to tell you, there’s a pretty good little hanger at the end – one that leaves open the possibility of another Callie Simmons book. Another mission, another journey. I’m excited to get back to it.
For now, I begin my fifth book – a standalone novel about the rise of a relationship between a dunce and a dancer. It’s not a romance. It’s a heart-breaker. But I’m already seeing signs that it will be the best thing I’ve ever written. I don’t dare ever compare myself to other writers. I’m not that arrogant. But I can tell you that I’m getting better. And this is the best stuff I’ve ever written. Stick around, friends. I promise this one won’t take eight years. And then you’ll get your fill of Callie, solving the world’s problems one monster at a time.
I'll let you know when it's out.
Into the Darkness
November 27, 2013
The Legacy of an Antique
Cross-posted from SpaceBrew
I'm not very big into antiques. In fact, I think I don't much care for them at all. I've stopped at antique stores before, and browsed through the old roll-top desks and the antique china cabinets. I've seen the old grandfather clocks and the coffee tables that were built back in the early nineteenth century. And I do a whole lot of yawning, but not much else. That stuff just doesn't do it for me. But I got a phone call yesterday that changed everything.
Well, not everything. That's just a cool way to close the opening paragraph of a column. It changed something though. My grandmother called, you see. And she's the last living grandparent I have. She happens to be my dad's mother. Happens to be. I mean, I guess she happened to be the one to marry my dad's dad and thus, happened to end up becoming my dad's mother. Funny how that happens. She actually didn't even call me. She called my dad. And she had something she wanted to pass down.
I'm a writer, you see. I like to write words and sentences and sometimes even paragraphs. And I love to sit at my desk and drink coffee or scotch while I'm writing these words. My desk is one of my favorite places in the house. Think about it. When you're reading a good book, you tend to get sucked up into the story, and taken away to another place and time. Well, the same is true for writing. When I have my Beats on (those are really expensive writers' headphones) and I'm in the groove, I find myself taken away to that other place. That place within the very story I'm writing. I become a part of it, interacting with the characters and making history. And the future. Well, the present too, if you want to get technical. So you can see how a desk - when used as an implement to facilitate your writing craft - can be a very important piece of furniture. One might say it has 'teleportationalistical' properties.
So back to that call. My grandmother called my father and told him she was finally ready to get rid of William's Desk. William was my grandfather. My dad's dad. Spacey Senior. The Ole Gunslinger. And since my grandmother is beginning to lose her sight now, she no longer needs The Desk like she once did. Now she can use any old desk. These are her words, not mine. She's ninety-five now, and beginning to find ways to start getting rid of the things she doesn't need. She's on the back nine, one might say. She only has a few more decades in her at best. She's a smart woman. But this Desk is a family heirloom. It's a piece of Spacey history, one might say. One might say I've been saying "one might say" a whole lot in this here column.
Well, my father doesn't need it. And he knows I'm a writer. I think I told him one time that I write a book occasionally. So he immediately called me and told me The Desk was finally coming home. To our home. Well, my home. I don't live with my father. He knows that I know how special and sacred this piece of furniture is. Because you see, my grandfather owned it for a long, long time. Some sixty-plus years. And his father before him. And you know what? His grandfather hand-crafted it way back in the middle of the nineteenth century! Yes! Can you believe that? He handcrafted this Desk around the time Lincoln was running for president.
So we ran down to south Texas yesterday and picked up the antique Desk. My dad and I actually went all out to protect the Desk to the best of our ability - from the elements and travel alike. We rented a bunch of packing blankets and foam and strapped it down in the bed of his pickup, then covered the whole thing with a water-proof tarpaulin to be sure no rain would reach it. And I'm happy to say, friends, The Desk is now standing proudly in my master bedroom.
My wife and I spent several hours waxing it down with the finest wood oils and protectants. We polished it up and buffed it with an electric buffer we rented from Lowe's, then let it stand by a space heater overnight to acclimate the wood to its new environment. And now I'm really proud to say, I'm writing this column while sitting at my new Desk. The Desk. The Desk that is over one hundred sixty years old. It's the most beautiful piece of furniture I've ever seen. I actually get teary-eyed when I look at it. I'm so proud to have it. Now I will show you pictures so you can gaze upon its beauty and magnificence.
The first image is the full Desk. The second is a closeup so you can see the sheen and beauty of the 160-year-old wood. My wife and I did an amazing job shining it up, if I might say so myself. Behold, my friends, The Desk.
I'm not very big into antiques. In fact, I think I don't much care for them at all. I've stopped at antique stores before, and browsed through the old roll-top desks and the antique china cabinets. I've seen the old grandfather clocks and the coffee tables that were built back in the early nineteenth century. And I do a whole lot of yawning, but not much else. That stuff just doesn't do it for me. But I got a phone call yesterday that changed everything.
Well, not everything. That's just a cool way to close the opening paragraph of a column. It changed something though. My grandmother called, you see. And she's the last living grandparent I have. She happens to be my dad's mother. Happens to be. I mean, I guess she happened to be the one to marry my dad's dad and thus, happened to end up becoming my dad's mother. Funny how that happens. She actually didn't even call me. She called my dad. And she had something she wanted to pass down.
I'm a writer, you see. I like to write words and sentences and sometimes even paragraphs. And I love to sit at my desk and drink coffee or scotch while I'm writing these words. My desk is one of my favorite places in the house. Think about it. When you're reading a good book, you tend to get sucked up into the story, and taken away to another place and time. Well, the same is true for writing. When I have my Beats on (those are really expensive writers' headphones) and I'm in the groove, I find myself taken away to that other place. That place within the very story I'm writing. I become a part of it, interacting with the characters and making history. And the future. Well, the present too, if you want to get technical. So you can see how a desk - when used as an implement to facilitate your writing craft - can be a very important piece of furniture. One might say it has 'teleportationalistical' properties.
So back to that call. My grandmother called my father and told him she was finally ready to get rid of William's Desk. William was my grandfather. My dad's dad. Spacey Senior. The Ole Gunslinger. And since my grandmother is beginning to lose her sight now, she no longer needs The Desk like she once did. Now she can use any old desk. These are her words, not mine. She's ninety-five now, and beginning to find ways to start getting rid of the things she doesn't need. She's on the back nine, one might say. She only has a few more decades in her at best. She's a smart woman. But this Desk is a family heirloom. It's a piece of Spacey history, one might say. One might say I've been saying "one might say" a whole lot in this here column.
Well, my father doesn't need it. And he knows I'm a writer. I think I told him one time that I write a book occasionally. So he immediately called me and told me The Desk was finally coming home. To our home. Well, my home. I don't live with my father. He knows that I know how special and sacred this piece of furniture is. Because you see, my grandfather owned it for a long, long time. Some sixty-plus years. And his father before him. And you know what? His grandfather hand-crafted it way back in the middle of the nineteenth century! Yes! Can you believe that? He handcrafted this Desk around the time Lincoln was running for president.
So we ran down to south Texas yesterday and picked up the antique Desk. My dad and I actually went all out to protect the Desk to the best of our ability - from the elements and travel alike. We rented a bunch of packing blankets and foam and strapped it down in the bed of his pickup, then covered the whole thing with a water-proof tarpaulin to be sure no rain would reach it. And I'm happy to say, friends, The Desk is now standing proudly in my master bedroom.
My wife and I spent several hours waxing it down with the finest wood oils and protectants. We polished it up and buffed it with an electric buffer we rented from Lowe's, then let it stand by a space heater overnight to acclimate the wood to its new environment. And now I'm really proud to say, I'm writing this column while sitting at my new Desk. The Desk. The Desk that is over one hundred sixty years old. It's the most beautiful piece of furniture I've ever seen. I actually get teary-eyed when I look at it. I'm so proud to have it. Now I will show you pictures so you can gaze upon its beauty and magnificence.
The first image is the full Desk. The second is a closeup so you can see the sheen and beauty of the 160-year-old wood. My wife and I did an amazing job shining it up, if I might say so myself. Behold, my friends, The Desk.
November 7, 2013
Meet the Author
cross-posted from spacebrew.com
If you read this site and you're here right now, this message is for you. I write some books sometimes. I write real good, to. And people are starting to take notice. No seriously though. My buddy Spencer is the director of the public library where I live. And he thinks I write good to. So the library is going to host a Meet the Author night at the library, and I'm the author you get to meet! I know, I know, most of you have already met me. But it would still be fun for you to show up and pretend we haven't met. You could walk up and shake my hand and act all star-struck and whatnot, and I could introduce myself, and people who don't know you will think I have a ton of followers who have never met me. Followers who read authors who write real good.
Exciting times though, these are. Spencer will be ordering a large stack of each of my three novels to give away at the signing. Apparently the night will start with my lecturing for a bit about the perils of living in 3D, followed by some advice on being a writer in this here Metropolis and not in LA or New York. You don't have to live there to write, you see. Following that will be a question answering session. I will be asking the audience a series of questions and seeing how good their answers are, in other words. At least this is my perception of the definition. And then I'll sign some books. And that will pretty much be it. Well, aside from the after party at the Broken Anchor Pirate's Pub.
So please mark your calendars for November 25. That's this month. That's also a Monday. That's also the week we give thanks for stuff we don't need. However, I'm going to ask you to consider the fact that it is a Monday night, and Mondays usually suck. This one- or two-hour session will make your Monday perhaps a little brighter. Plus, too, in addition to that, it's me, your faithful friend, Space. And I could use the support. It sure would be silly my standing up there lecturing to a crowd of two. "Okay, hi mom and dad. Thanks for coming. I uh... I know you don't really care anything about writing, but uh... Let me tell you how it's done."
I don't know exactly what time that will be - probably around 6 or 7 PM in the evening that night. But I will keep you posted through twitter (@SpaceToGo) and on my website here. Sorry, I don't do facebook. And I'm not going to Anyvite this. I don't want to be too pushy.
Anyway, people keep asking how I'm doing on my fourth novel, which is tentatively called "Group of People Go Way Down Deep In The Ocean Somewhere Near the Mariana Trench Off the Coast of Japan in Search of Something That Made a Noise a Few Years Ago", so I figured I'd give you an update. In the next few weeks, I'll do a cover reveal here, and start accepting suggestions. The title is already decided and set. It's gonna be good, folks. I'm writing it real good.
Well, over the last week or so, I've written about thirty pages, or about ten thousand words. That's somewhere right around ten or eight percent of a total book. I think this one will probably be somewhere around 450 pages or so when it's done. I'm therefore, about 20 percent done with it now. It's coming along nicely. The characters are good. You'll see familiar faces - Walter Watson and Callie Simmons, plus Thevi Jackson, who made a brief appearance in Midnight's Park. Plus there are some new characters I'm really happy with. Rebecca Judas is a powerful, bright, witty and fun character. She's quickly becoming one of my favorites to write. I think you'll grow to like her too.
It is progressing nicely, and I expect to have it finished by the holidays. I have a couple of alpha readers lined up to tear through it as fast and in as few sittings as possible, whereupon I will edit it heavily, then drop it in a drawer for a few months while I begin writing book five. After a few months, I will pull it out of the drawer, blow the dust off and ask into the empty room, "What the hell is this?" as I will have forgotten everything about it. And then I'll start nodding my head as I read the words on the manuscript - it's all coming back to me! and gosh I love this! I will read through it myself, cover to cover, in one sitting and then make any final edits I think are necessary. At that point, it will be ready for beta readers. Once they finish, I publish it. Then you read it. See how simple that is?
Let me know if you're interested in beta-reading my project when it's done. I have plenty of alphas. A Beta Reader's job is to read through it at a leisurely pace with no agenda in mind. You're just reading a book by one of your favorite authors. You don't even know what it's about. You're not looking for mistakes. There shouldn't be any. You're not expecting anything. You're just reading. Then at the end, if you find something out of place in your mind, or something the story doesn't reconcile, you talk to me about it. Interested? Let me know. Pre-press readers get free books!
See you soon, friends. Save the date! Annnnnd here it is. Click here for information on the event. They also have a facebook if you're into that kind of thing.
If you read this site and you're here right now, this message is for you. I write some books sometimes. I write real good, to. And people are starting to take notice. No seriously though. My buddy Spencer is the director of the public library where I live. And he thinks I write good to. So the library is going to host a Meet the Author night at the library, and I'm the author you get to meet! I know, I know, most of you have already met me. But it would still be fun for you to show up and pretend we haven't met. You could walk up and shake my hand and act all star-struck and whatnot, and I could introduce myself, and people who don't know you will think I have a ton of followers who have never met me. Followers who read authors who write real good.
Exciting times though, these are. Spencer will be ordering a large stack of each of my three novels to give away at the signing. Apparently the night will start with my lecturing for a bit about the perils of living in 3D, followed by some advice on being a writer in this here Metropolis and not in LA or New York. You don't have to live there to write, you see. Following that will be a question answering session. I will be asking the audience a series of questions and seeing how good their answers are, in other words. At least this is my perception of the definition. And then I'll sign some books. And that will pretty much be it. Well, aside from the after party at the Broken Anchor Pirate's Pub.
So please mark your calendars for November 25. That's this month. That's also a Monday. That's also the week we give thanks for stuff we don't need. However, I'm going to ask you to consider the fact that it is a Monday night, and Mondays usually suck. This one- or two-hour session will make your Monday perhaps a little brighter. Plus, too, in addition to that, it's me, your faithful friend, Space. And I could use the support. It sure would be silly my standing up there lecturing to a crowd of two. "Okay, hi mom and dad. Thanks for coming. I uh... I know you don't really care anything about writing, but uh... Let me tell you how it's done."
I don't know exactly what time that will be - probably around 6 or 7 PM in the evening that night. But I will keep you posted through twitter (@SpaceToGo) and on my website here. Sorry, I don't do facebook. And I'm not going to Anyvite this. I don't want to be too pushy.
Anyway, people keep asking how I'm doing on my fourth novel, which is tentatively called "Group of People Go Way Down Deep In The Ocean Somewhere Near the Mariana Trench Off the Coast of Japan in Search of Something That Made a Noise a Few Years Ago", so I figured I'd give you an update. In the next few weeks, I'll do a cover reveal here, and start accepting suggestions. The title is already decided and set. It's gonna be good, folks. I'm writing it real good.
Well, over the last week or so, I've written about thirty pages, or about ten thousand words. That's somewhere right around ten or eight percent of a total book. I think this one will probably be somewhere around 450 pages or so when it's done. I'm therefore, about 20 percent done with it now. It's coming along nicely. The characters are good. You'll see familiar faces - Walter Watson and Callie Simmons, plus Thevi Jackson, who made a brief appearance in Midnight's Park. Plus there are some new characters I'm really happy with. Rebecca Judas is a powerful, bright, witty and fun character. She's quickly becoming one of my favorites to write. I think you'll grow to like her too.
It is progressing nicely, and I expect to have it finished by the holidays. I have a couple of alpha readers lined up to tear through it as fast and in as few sittings as possible, whereupon I will edit it heavily, then drop it in a drawer for a few months while I begin writing book five. After a few months, I will pull it out of the drawer, blow the dust off and ask into the empty room, "What the hell is this?" as I will have forgotten everything about it. And then I'll start nodding my head as I read the words on the manuscript - it's all coming back to me! and gosh I love this! I will read through it myself, cover to cover, in one sitting and then make any final edits I think are necessary. At that point, it will be ready for beta readers. Once they finish, I publish it. Then you read it. See how simple that is?
Let me know if you're interested in beta-reading my project when it's done. I have plenty of alphas. A Beta Reader's job is to read through it at a leisurely pace with no agenda in mind. You're just reading a book by one of your favorite authors. You don't even know what it's about. You're not looking for mistakes. There shouldn't be any. You're not expecting anything. You're just reading. Then at the end, if you find something out of place in your mind, or something the story doesn't reconcile, you talk to me about it. Interested? Let me know. Pre-press readers get free books!
See you soon, friends. Save the date! Annnnnd here it is. Click here for information on the event. They also have a facebook if you're into that kind of thing.
