Two major complications waylaid my writing progress in the past six months. The first involved a reprint of The World of Warcraft Diary and its crowdfunding campaign. My new distribution partner, Nolan Nasser of Source Point Press, is handling the production, but it still took a chunk of time.
The reprint campaign involved four new promotional articles and a rewrite of the book and supplemental booklet. I removed freshman writing mistakes like excessive passive voice, typos, and style inconsistencies. The content hasn’t changed. If you bought the first edition, you’re not missing one whit of difference. Writing The Book of Dungeons has ranked up my grammar and composition skills, and I couldn’t bear not giving it another polish pass. Of course, this involved two more rounds of editing, so we’re not talking a small amount of effort.
The second diversion came from my cat, Kiki. She was a rescued stray, who never acclimated to humans, so I had a difficult time getting her to play. Kiki disengaged after realizing I controlled the laser pointer and that the fuzzy thing at the end of the wand wasn’t alive. She was an outdoor cat. But cats who don’t play accrue extra energy, and neither meds nor rehabilitation soothed her aggression. After unprovoked attacks and stalking behavior, the animal shelter and I placed her on a farm. Her family named her Waffles. Today, she is pounding the pellets out of the regional mice and sleeping in a brand new barn. I miss her terribly, but I’m glad she’s happy.
Smaller Distractions
My hard drive’s death cost me weeks of work reinstalling software, fonts, and reconfiguring my new PC. I lost a little data, but we play the hands providence deals.
I’m traveling to Indianapolis in August for Gen Con, where I’ll hopefully pick up juicy writing and publishing tips. After a week at the con, I’ll return home and adopt my new agents of chaos.
My board game is shaping into a streamlined two-hour dungeon crawl. I’m so happy with it that my next step requires diving back into ZBrush and Blender, making art for 114 cards and three dozen minis. That’s no small leap!
I’m halfway through my sixth book and having terrific results with “discovery writing.” There’s nothing so rewarding as writing your way out of a corner, and nothing so disappointing when it doesn’t work. At 2,000 words a day, it’ll only take a couple months to write the first draft.
After book six, I’ll go straight into seven—which is already outlined, so I’m not expecting problems. When the series is done, I’ll kick off a Patreon page for The Book of Dungeons web novels. I’m excited to hear what my beta readers will think and looking forward to supporting my backers with regular articles about the writing process. I hope to launch my board game’s Kickstarter by the time the series ends.