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What book is everyone writing right now?

deadrose said:
As per my thread in Community, I've unexpectedly become a published author.

To explain, an underground music newspaper I used to write for has been collected and published as a dead-tree book. I'm still waiting for my copy, so that I can shudder at my terrible journalism 34 years back. I'm still pretty chuffed though, especially as I'm mentioned by name in the preface as a trendsetter at that time. I never, ever thought of myself as anything like that.

Maybe I'll have to dust off the proverbial typewriter, just to prove I can write better than that. I haven't really worked on anything since the 90s, and that was short fiction in a genre that's been completely run into the ground since then.
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This is pretty cool! I see a lot of suggestions that you should write in the genre you enjoy most reading, regardless if it is been run into the ground or not. What do you like to read?
 
I'm now a quarter of the way through my read-through for the second draft. I'm aiming to get it ready for beta reading by the end of August.

Interestingly, when I'd done the first draft I was over 101,000 words in. That figure is coming down, and is now just over 100,000 words. I reckon it will be about 95,000 words when it's done, which seems a reasonable figure.
 
That's a good word count - most publishers want novels to fall in the 75,000 - 100,000 word range, with some more specifically asking for 80,000 - 95,000 or some other range. 95,000 would be a safe bet. Over 100,000, you'll probably have to edit it down anyway, so you might as well do the choppin' now!
 
I'm not writing a book but here is a small story from a dream I had last night.
Dream 8-2-2015
I ordered a pizza for pickup but when we opened the box we saw a parody of a pizza which looked like a piece of sandpaper. I am on my way to show it to the manager but a ragged family hijacks me and the Honda. We are tooling away in heavy traffic and I begin working the guilt angle of how wrong it was to take the property of another and the bunch was in denial but after a heated exchange twixt me and the driver at a rest stop their little girl brought me a handful of small coins and said here you can have all my money so am I forgiven? I said sadly, your Dad has dragged you into this but the way out isn’t simple as paying me some money, I can forgive you as an innocent child but I can’t speak for God. From this point forward the little girl held my hand and walked with me. Of course this was heart breaking for the mother and so the whole bunch begged the thief to turn over my car to me etc and then I woke up.

Waking judgment: I was sort of wrong to use the little girl that way but sadly, many aspects of life works that way.
 
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Well... it has been a long time, but I haven't provided any updates because, to be honest, there haven't been any - not since January last year. I thought I had finished editing the first volume, but found some structural and dramatic weaknesses that required work, which put on hold any work on volume two.

I alluded to the problem all the way back in 2012 with this post:

Me said:
I have a related problem to that... my book is quite gritty and adult, but the first half follows the protagonists during their childhood and is naturally less adult. I'm worried it gives the impression the book is best suited to young people.
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But I think I have found a solution now, which I am working on.

Meanwhile last year became mental with work, and only stopped about a month ago.

In the middle of all this I moved to Australia, then moved back but am now flatting so I don't have my "office" set up with all of the maps and images that used to inspire me. I've barely thought about my book over that time, and it's now so far removed from my mind I not only struggled to get back into it, I've been despairing that maybe I'll never get back into it.

I did, however, a few weeks ago start re-reading my work to try inspire myself, and have managed to do a bit of editing work in the last couple of days, so hope isn't entirely lost.

One thing I haven't shared with everyone is that I love maps, and the maps that support my fantasy writing are pretty important to me, both as a reference tool and as inspiration. A couple of years ago I set out to create a final "best ever" reference map for the first volume of my book, and it's now finished.

These are low-res versions:

11850710_1007841069246767_4298366164683672794_o.jpg

Terrador: Physical

11040374_1007841172580090_4186892967829833857_o.jpg

Terrador: Political

You can see larger-resolution versions here: Physical and Political.
 
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My new novel The Bear is Born as Woods King is due to be published shortly.

Description: Literary Fiction

It is the summer of 1808 and the lives of Lena-Sofia Johansdottir and her family are about to change forever as war sweeps across Swedish-Finland after a Russian invasion. The 700 year marriage of jealous Sweden to Finland is threatened by the new suitors from the east, intent on stealing away the bride. Napoleon has defeated Russia at Austerlitz, Nelson has won the Battle of Trafalgar, the American War of Independence has impacted Europe and Wilberforce is leading the campaign for abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

Against this backdrop of world transformations, little Lena-Sofia, six, befriends a mysterious Swedish soldier, Dirk, and a veteran soldier, Ritva, in that whirlwind summer in sleepy south-western Finland. What is Dirk’s secret mission against the foe, which draws in mother, Caisa, and father Johan, culminating in an autumn of betrayal, loss, identity and new beginnings?

As when towards the eve, a summer whirlwind…
J L Runeberg 1835
 
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Finished two screenplays last month that have been a few years in the birthing, so I'm taking a break and might move back to my novel(s). Be nice to write some internal dialog for a change.

Just waiting for results from the screenplay competitions I've entered. Advanced to the PreFinal group in the Creative World Awards competition. Nothing as yet from the Austin Film Festival.

For grins, in my copious spare time I may take a razor blade to Atlas Shrugged and see if I can get it down to 120 pages.

Beanbag
 
Ian Osborne said:
Awesome, who's the publisher? Will it be out on the Kindle?
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Hi Ian, it's self-published via Create Space, an Amazon subsidiary. It was seven years in the writing, and I couldn't be bothered hawking it around the agents & publishers.

It's actually my third novel. The first two are more autobiographical and need a lot of editing so character s are not identifiable. My fourth is work in progress.

Editing is difficult, as over that period of time, people's names accidentally change, or in one part of the book they'll have a parent who has one profession, and then later on, you realise they have now not only got a different trade, but a different nationality. Even the dog changed breed.

But after final draft number 20 , I think it's ready to publish, hopefully in the next few days.

I recommend joining a writers group, so you stay motivated, get to read your piece out loud to an audience and get constructive feedback and support.
 
Just got my non-fiction book (a 19th century biography) back from peer review at a university press and have made the changes the reader suggested--not a whole lot; he/she generally liked it. For the previous book, the editor just wanted a formal response to the review, then he submitted the book to the committee, they accepted it pending revisions, I did the revisions, we all lived happily after.

Not sure what's going on this time since the editor asked for both a formal response and the revisions at the same time. Will he submit it to another peer reviewer? Will he submit it directly to the committee? Guess I could ask, but it really doesn't matter. Whatever happens happens.
 
Ian Osborne said:
Bought, cheers. I look forward to reading it. :-)
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Ian, thanks, I hope you enjoy it!

It's come straight in at #88 Kindle store Literary Fiction: Action & Adventure Amazon uk. :thumbsup:

#101 Literary Fiction: Action & Adventure: Romance. Hope it goes up, not down.

#657 Amazon.com Literary Fiction Action & Adventure. Oh well, such an enormous market in the USA. I'm happy.
 
Beanbag said:
Just waiting for results from the screenplay competitions I've entered. Advanced to the PreFinal group in the Creative World Awards competition.
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Latest email and a check of the site tells me I've made it to the quarter finals.

Hope springs eternal.

Beanbag
 
Well, that's the second draft of my novel completed. It's a shade under 100,000 words, and a few problems I hadn't spotted as I put it together have been solved. Now for the all-important beta read.
 
The beta reads are all finished, one of which was done by a professional author. He gave me some excellent tips on tightening the book's construction, so I'll be going through it all once more, before hassling publishers with it.
 
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