Tag: progress

Update on the State of ‘Jake and the Dynamo’

I have all but finally decided to self-publish Jake and the Dynamo, which was my original intention with the series anyway. This is admittedly a self-own, but I’m having a hard time getting a publisher to acknowledge my existence—and I don’t mean accept my manuscript; I really mean acknowledge my existence. I think something serious has happened to the industry in the last decade because I used to be able to collect polite, pre-formatted rejection slips. Now I can’t even get a “you suck so don’t write to us again.”

I’m currently swimming in a bewildering array of advice, much of it obviously bad or exploitative, about how to move forward with this. I will certainly have to commission cover art, for which I have some leads, and also format the manuscript. I’m assuming the latter task will require learning some new software, though I’m unsure of that as of yet. My former publisher used Vellum, I think, but that’s only available on Mac, and I don’t have one. At the very least, I know something about web and document accessibility, which will probably help.

So that’s what I’m up to right now, which is part of why the content here is so slim. I really want to get the first two volumes of Jake and the Dynamo available in the near future; the first needs republished, and the second needs to be published for the first time. I am in the midst of the draft of the third. I don’t want to be too hasty and have a bad roll-out when a little more legwork could produce a better product (and more sales, of course).

Rag & Muffin is currently on an editor’s desk, and the requested wait period has not closed, but considering how things are going, I expect that it will (about three months now) without my existence having been acknowledged. At that point, I will consider self-publishing it as well, though I might attempt more submissions first.

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Progress Update

I have finished incorporating all of my editor’s recommended edits, so the next phase on the novel is intensive proofreading. I’m going through now and hunting down common writing mistakes. After that, I’ll print the whole thing out and read it through with a red pen. Once I’m done with that, it is ready to go to the publisher.

I’m expecting to be done by around Easter.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Proofing
50%

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Returns from My Editor

Time to write again.

That was surprisingly fast. I wasn’t expecting to hear from L. Jagi Lamplighter about the second volume of Jake and the Dynamo until late next month at the earliest, but she got right on that thing and burned through it. She said she usually moves much slower through a manuscript, but read 250 pages of Dead to Rites in one sitting because she was enjoying it. That’s certainly encouraging. She also says she thinks it is much more polished than the previous manuscript was, which is to me a complete surprise, since drafting the last few chapters involved about four weeks of torture.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Proofing
2%

So I’m once again tabling Son of Hel until I can get Dead to Rites out the door for good. I don’t know if I’ll manage to have Son of Hel out by this Christmas, especially since I’m beginning to realize how much research it will demand if I’m really to do the topic justice. I know a lot of other writers who crank out four or more books a year, but I have no idea how they do it. I’m simply not that prolific.

Heck, I have a hard time just keeping up with this blog. While I’ve been pounding away at this novel, I have felt the magical girl genre slipping away from me. It’s sure exploded in the last few years with tons of works out of Japan and imitators from elsewhere, and I simply can’t keep up. I actually haven’t been watching much anime at all lately.

Anyway, I’m going to go look at the comments on my manuscript, but before I go, I’ll leave you with the Dead to Rites unofficial theme song. For the first volume, you may recall I chose the power love ballad “You’re Mine” from Disturbed, but for this second volume, I think this old classic is more fitting:

Update on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites

I just made progress on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites! So far I’m 15% complete on the Editing phase.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
14.9%

I don’t talk in specifics about my day job on my blog, but I’ll go so far as to say that I work at a university, and that the university was closed today on account of an ice storm. Thus, I am spending the day sipping bourbon and working on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. I am now in the editing phase, making the first pass in preparation to send it to my illustrator.

I’ve mentioned before that my drafts expand as I edit, even though the convention is that a final should be considerably shorter than a rough. There are, however, good reasons for this. First, I tend to write dialogue in staccato fashion, often without attribution. As I make my second pass, I notice when a reader might not know who’s talking, and then I add in attribution along with description of what characters are doing.

Also, in action scenes, my first draft is usually technical description. Only in later drafts do I add things like what characters are thinking and feeling and so forth. My perceptive editor rightly noted, on receiving my submission draft of The Wattage of Justice, that Jake disappeared during action sequences, so I added in a lot more detail about his thoughts and behaviors, which naturally upped the word count. The most dramatic example of this is in Pretty Dynamo’s climactic battle with the demoniac: Originally, this was told as a single paragraph outlining her spear technique, but in the final version, the paragraph was broken into single-sentence paragraphs interspersed with Jake’s reactions, consisting mostly of his indignant ruminations on how little girls have to be humanity’s defenders.

So that’s why my word counts increase in later drafts. I do of course cut out rabbit trails and needless discursions, but those are usually smaller than the added material. Thus, the working draft currently stands at 140,016 words, and will probably be much larger when I’m done (I previously said it was 140,000, but that was rounded up).

Changing subjects—on the review side of things, I’m currently indulging in yet another free month of Netflix (a service I refuse to pay for), which is why I reviewed the second season of Miraculous Ladybug. For my next trick, I will most likely review Little Witch Academia, which I’ve been eager to see for some time. Then I will probably (finally!) get around to the two series of Glitter Force, the execrable localication/butchering of Pretty Cure. Aside from those, Netflix contains little or nothing I give a fig about—which is why I don’t pay for it.

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Progress Update

Featured image: “The Magical Girls!” by Smeoow.

According to my arbitrarily set goal, I am not “finished” with the writing phase of Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Writes, which is to say that the draft stands at 90,000 words. The story is not finished, however, so I think the final draft will be considerably longer.

I hope to have a review post up by tomorrow night. I was thinking of working on it today, but ended up working on my novel instead, which isn’t exactly a bad thing.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Writing
Due:5 years ago
100%

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Progress Update

I just made progress on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites! So far, I’m 98% complete on the Writing phase, based on a projected 90,000 words. I’m at 88,393 words and I can easily see that the book will actually extend well past 90,000, which means this volume will be considerably longer than the first one.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Writing
Due:5 years ago
98.2%

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites Progress Update

I just made progress on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites! So far I’m 92% complete on the Writing phase. 8 Weeks remain until the deadline.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Writing
Due:5 years ago
91.9%

Kind of a “small” update, because this was a second pass on a 65-page section for a writer’s group. Took me longer than it should have to craft this, largely because both an action sequence and a deliberately awkward love scene were giving me difficulties.

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Progress Update

I just made progress on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites! So far I’m 87% complete on the Writing phase. 11 Weeks remain until the deadline.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Writing
Due:5 years ago
87.4%

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Progress Update

I have this new book progress widget in the sidebar, and it allows me to generate progress posts automatically.

I have arbitrarily set the novel’s “goal” length at 90,000 words, with a deadline in three months. There’s actually no hard deadline from my publisher, and I have freedom on the book’s length.

But in any case, the novel now stands at 77,385 words, which is where I’m stopping for the day, because I have other things to get done. I managed, at last, to unite together some chapters I had written separately, so everything currently in the draft is continuous from one end to the next. I’ve little doubt that everything I wrote today requires substantial editing, but such is life.

I just made progress on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites! So far I’m 84% complete on the Writing phase. 11 Weeks remain until the deadline.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Writing
Due:5 years ago
84.1%

Writing Update

I’m 75,000 words into Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites, the sequel to The Wattage of Justice. It looks as if the second book is going to be considerably longer than the first one, as there’s still a lot of story to deal with.

Both books are similar in that, at least from the author’s perspective, it’s all about trying to get the characters to a certain place. The writing of the first novel was driven entirely by my desire to get Jake and Dana to a restaurant. The second is driven by my desire to get them to a rock concert.