The Hope of Memory [Update 18] Wilders Cover

Wanted to quickly post the Wilders cover after putting it together this weekend.  What does the symbol stand for?  Well, if you've read The Distant, you'll know.

Wilders will be out in 2014 for sure, but I don't have any date set it stone.  It depends on how much of Rom Tar (Book 3) I need write before feeling comfortable finalizing Wilders.

Rom Tar is coming along, at around 40K words now, 9 chapters done.  Definitely a bit harder to write than the first two...

Cut Stories - Version 1.1

My first update for Béatrice Coron's Cut Stories went live today.  I updated it to Version 1.1.  The update process is just as simple as the submission process... Apple makes it fairly painless.

The update made it compatible with iOS 7.0, as well as changing the minimum required OS to 6.0.  Most people are on 6 or 7 at this point... no need to really support 5 anymore.

Also made a few tweaks to the logic, menu button updates and minor bug fixes. There's still a slight problem with stuttering for Retina iPads, and I have an update for landscape mode in the works.  It's been slow going since I've been so busy lately.  Hopefully I'll have it done soon.

The Hope of Memory [Update 17] Rom Tar Progress

Behind on my blogging as usual... super busy with work and real life.  But I still make time to work on my various projects, one of which is the first draft of Rom Tar, Book 3 of The Hope of Memory.

It's coming along - I'm at about 30K words right now - but I'm finding this one fairly hard to write, because of the first half of the book.  Without spoiling anything, I have to essentially come up with another "civilization" and a whole new set of characters, and this book has more hard science in it than the other two, so I have to spend time researching and making sure I get the details right (as much as I can without letting it ruining the story).

So it's been a challenge but I'm working through it.  The first draft is all about getting it down on paper - it doesn't have to be the best writing, as long as I get the ideas and major plot points down.

I'm typing portions of it up as I go along, which has actually helped quite a bit as I can fill in details that I didn't think of the first time, but which pertain to the section I'm currently writing.

I've also been very aware of "show don't tell" for this one... as I write a first draft I tend to do a lot of "telling" to get the details down, then convert to "showing" as I type it up.  This book has a lot of telling up front - which I'll need to convert and deliver to the reader in a different way.  No one likes to read a lot of info dumps.  I try to avoid them, but occasionally I'll go with one if I feel it's the best way to tell the story.

Anyway, I don't believe The Distant has sold much, but that's because I haven't been advertising it much.  Hopefully that will ramp up once I get the rest of the trilogy out.  Wilders will be out next year for sure.

In the next update I'll post the cover for Wilders.  I also need to continue my David Eddings retrospective... thanks for reminding me.