New Year, New Goals

It has been forever since I wrote anything on this site.  This post will be a quick one, but hopefully informative.

First of all, I have many irons in the fire.  Novels and short stories alike.  I participated in (and won!) NaNoWriMo for the first time this year.  The story I wrote for that is called Handbasket and my goal is to have the first draft completed by the end of January.  Then it will be revision and editing time.  Hopefully that process will be finished by the end of February, then it will be time to push the story out to my beta readers and hopefully by the end of March I will have some good feedback.  Then, the next round of edits will be in full swing and hopefully the next draft will be pushed out to the beta readers again by the end of April. If everything comes back good, I'm looking at releasing the story in either May or June. Handbasket is a post-apocalyptic novel following a colony of survivors in Marquette, Michigan as they struggle to survive and begin to uncover the secrets about who and what caused 'The End' over 22 years prior.  It's a bit of sci-fi, a bit of horror, a bit of thriller.

The other novel is titled Among the Shoulders of the World and is not as far along as Handbasket, though I've been working on it for quite awhile.  I plan on working on that while I'm waiting for the feedback from my beta readers on Handbasket.  It's a fantasy story that I've detailed a little bit in earlier blog posts.  It will be a series eventually, but I'm going to try and wrap up each storyline within 1-2 books if possible.  The world I'm creating is very big and as I'm writing and generating notes I'm seeing all different kinds of stories that could be spawned in the Shoulders universe.  For now, Lucas Vega will be taking us on our journey through that world, but in the future, a number of other characters will be our guides.

Also in the works: a childrens book written with the help of my two daughters, a series of sci-fi short stories entitled The Milky Chronicles and a couple of other projects that I'm sure haven't revealed themselves to me yet.  I want to write more short stories this year, so perhaps there will be a short story collection of mine released at the end of 2013 if I'm prolific enough this year.  My wife and I bought a camp in Wisconsin this fall and it's a nice relaxing place to get some writing done where I won't be bothered. Of course, there's also lots of other things to do at the camp too, so the distractions aren't entirely gone.  Oh well.

Anyway, I'm hoping this year is the year I finally put out a few books as I have a couple nearing completion. I could have put out some by now, but I didn't feel like the quality is there yet.  No point in rushing out the stories just for the sake of having them out there.  I want them to be as good as I can get them (which is hopefully good enough!) before I expect strangers to read and enjoy the material.

Speaking of beta readers, if any of you out there would be interested in being one for me, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section.  All I ask is that you read the story and give me some constructive feedback.  When the story is finished, you'll get a free ecopy as well as a hard copy of the book for free as a token of gratitude.

Happy New Year!
-D

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