I didn't reveal the cover for This Year's Love over here because I wanted to keep the Meghan Miles' Mother's Day Giveaway as the top post on my blog for the duration of its run. That ended last night, winners have been notified, so I decided now was the time to post the cover over here. Without further ado, here's the cover for This Year's Love, Book 4 in the Ward Sisters Series.
So, there you have it! Josh and Annie's story will be coming soon - if I can get it out to beta readers in the next week or so, we might actually be able to push it ahead of my current planned release date of June 20th. Soon enough, I'll reveal my cover for Buying the Cow. Yep, I'm sticking with that title. I've yet to find another that I think tells the story in a few short words (which is what I like my titles to do). But I found a great image today of a girl I think speaks to who I see as Reggie Reynolds, and given how much of a challenge the cover concept was for the story - with two main characters who are NOT going to be found in a photo together that isn't staged for that purpose - I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Be on the lookout!
So, I was thinking I'd dump my blog and switch over to Google+ instead, but I'm not really ready for that yet. I'd have to move all the existing blog entries, and I don't want to take the time at the moment. I'll explore other options later. For now, the blog stays as is. However, I've officially joined the Google+ circles, so if you're on Google+ or gmail, you can probably find me - same name as Facebook, Patti Korbet.
Pinterest was a fun, new addition. Check out my new Pinterest page when you have a chance. I've set up 8 boards thus far, one for each of the full-length novels planned for the Ward Sisters Series and one for the first novella, Buying the Cow. Lots of yummy pics (for the guys, too; there are female leads in all my stories, after all!) and hopefully, it'll provide some visuals for all of you. If you'd rather imagine on your own, go for it. If not, and you want to see what I see in my head (or a close approximation thereof), the images are available for your enjoyment. All the boards are public, so you don't need a Pinterest account, or to follow me on Pinterest, to see them.
As for progress on Right Here Waiting, I'm getting there! I've tried, really hard this time, to send along work to Laurie that is a lot closer to the 3rd or 4th draft version - in other words, a lot more like a finished product - than I've ever sent before. Until I sent along the first 150 pages last night, she'd only seen it in bits and pieces, and even that was occasionally. But we're getting there! And I'm loving where it's going, so I hope you all do, too.
Between Pinterest and life stuff, today was a bit of a bust in the normal working hours segment, so we'll see what I get done tonight for edits. Wish me luck!
With Only One complete and out there for the world to judge, what's next on the horizon? It's that time of year, so let's get to the goals/plans. I like putting them out there - it holds me accountable.
One of the things I had to do for my marketing class this fall was create an action items list for the first year. I went a step further and looked at the first two years. It made me think about my writing goals, my publishing goals AND my marketing plans. I won't throw it all out here right now, but I have some upcoming goals I wanted to share.
First of all, Book #3 of the Ward Sisters Series is nearly done its first draft. My plan is to publish that on St. Patrick's Day. There are a few reasons for that - for one, lead male, Neil Murphy, is Irish. For another, that's just after the Oscars telecast and I'm planning a pre-publication promotion/giveaway to coincide with the Oscars. Anyone who has read Back to December and/or Only One will know that the Oscars play a little role in the series, at least this part of it. Oscar night is a big night for several people and my giveaway will capitalize on that. The winner of the giveaway will receive, among other things, a copy of book #3, Right Here Waiting. Lastly, St. Patrick's Day is about 4 months after the publication of Only One, and I'm aiming for about 4 months between book publications. I think it's a reasonable goal; we were about 4 months between books 1 and 2.
Further ahead, I'm anticipating that the next book will be published around the end of June, to celebrate my 40th birthday. Right now, I'm expecting Reggie and Eddie's story to be book #3.5, but if, as I complete the first draft on that or on This Year's Love it looks better as book #4.5, then so be it. In which case, Josh and Annie's story, This Year's Love, will be published at the end of June, with Buying the Cow (Reggie and Eddie) coming in the fall.
I have a second series in the works. Book 1 of that series, The Piece I Don't Need, is planned for November 2014. The series will be called Warwick, Maine, and is set in a fictional town. It has a stronger social bent and I'm hoping will be well-received. I'll start promoting that this summer.
So, those are some of the upcoming things from me. I also have a Pinterest board and a Google+ profile that will be launched in January. And you'll see more contests/giveaways as the year progresses. I'm happy you're taking this journey with me!
Today, I'm gearing up for NaNo, which starts tomorrow. I decided that I'm going to focus on completing Book #4 of the Ward Sisters Series, Annie and Josh's story, This Year's Love. It's about halfway to where I like to be for word count. Yes, I know I'm verbose. I like to write and then cut, so with This Year's Love at ~60k, I've still got at least 50k left. The purpose of NaNo is to just get it all out there, so my goal is to have this story 100% drafted by the end of November.
Strangely enough, though this is Book #4, I realized that I need to write it before I write Book #3.5, Buying the Cow, which is a novella about Josh's best friend, Eddie Besson. The timeline actually overlaps This Year's Love, and I know where it starts and where it ends, but I have to fill in the middle. Well, the middle will be impacted by what happens in This Year's Love, so it just makes more sense to write that now. And Book #3, Right Here Waiting, is too close to completion for NaNo.
I've been reading Kristen Lamb's Blog entries about getting ready for NaNo, and one of the things she talks about is feeding your muse. With this book, I've already written part of it, so I've done a fair bit of research. It's also part of a series, so there is connection to the other stories. And then there is my writing method, which, when I'm in the zone and writing 8-10k words each day (yes, I can do that, I really can! I type faster than I write and talk), I work best if I've got a soundtrack playing. Not in my head, literally in my ears. So, one thing I'll do today is beef up the This Year's Love playlist on Spotify. One of the things I love about using Spotify is that I can go from my desktop to my laptop and I don't have to do anything special to access the playlist. Love it. Anyway, this book hasn't been a priority, so its playlist is pretty shallow. That'll have to change.
As I said in yesterday's post, NaNo sets the writer up to average about 1,700 words/day to meet the goal. Since I have this marketing class and I'm editing Only One and I need to polish something for Pitch Wars and oh, yeah, I have kids and a husband and a job as caregiver/housekeeper/cook/CFO, I probably can't devote all my time to banging out This Year's Love in just a few short days, thus, completing NaNo in a week. Which is fine; I'm not doing this because I haven't disciplined myself to write every day. I write. Every day. Not always on any one thing, but I do it every.single.day. I have to write. It drives me nuts if I don't and the days we went camping this summer and I had to be unplugged, I wanted to tear my hair out because I couldn't sit with a cup of coffee and write first thing. I won't have trouble meeting the goal. But I'll need to be more rigid about my non-writing activities. Priorities, people.
Thus, I might be a little less present on Facebook and Twitter (I know, you're all so sad). And I'm thinking I need to examine what's on my DVR and decide what can be ditched or watched online instead. Writing, class and my family will have to take precedence over reading, TV and social networking this month. It's all good; I'm sure I won't be 100% absent from any one thing, but you have to do what it takes!
I just officially signed up to do NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. You can do it independently (I basically did last year), but if you go to their site and sign up, you're tasked to write 50k words between November 1-30. To give you an idea of what that is, it's ~1,667 words/day. Final word count for Back to December was around 138k words, so it's actually a small volume for me. In the last year, I think I counted and just in my novels/fanfic, I wrote over 1 Million words. That doesn't include emails, blog entries, or the stuff I wrote for my class so far this semester. What can I say? I'm verbose. Or prolific. Take your pick.
During NaNo (as it's called for shorthand), there are people who can give you feedback and encouragement at their website. I'd wanted to do it before, but I guess I was afraid. Now that I have a novel out there for public consumption, it's a little late for the fear stuff. At least in my mind, it is. I'm really looking forward to interacting with other authors.
If anyone else out there is doing NaNo and wants to come along for the ride with me, let me know! My handle over there is PKorbetAuthor (same as my Twitter handle). I'm not sure if I'm going to task myself to complete one of the works I already have started or if I'm going to start something new. The only stipulation is that you have to write 50k words. I've got Book #4 in the Ward Sisters Series, This Year's Love, that still has a long, long way to go before it's done. I could probably write 50k on that. Same with Book 3.5, Buying the Cow - 50k might actually complete that book (it's at about 12k now), since it's a novella. I've got a couple days to decide. I think I'll let my muse speak to me and see what she says.
Regardless, I'm really excited about this project and another one I'm planning to undertake, Pitch Wars. My marketing class has me creating a Marketing Plan, as I've said. One of the things I had to do for the Plan was set objectives for my first two years. Then I need to come up with strategies to meet those goals. I set my goals in my most recent Plan assignment and one of them was to network with other authors. It just so happens that the timing for some of these things is perfect. What better way to do that than a writing contest or two? Pitch Wars involves submitting a manuscript to mentors - authors who have agents and who are often published or about to be. The mentor chooses an author to work with them, critiques their work and readies it for submission to agents. If I get nothing out of it other than exposure to other authors and get someone else to check out my work (and even better, encourage others to do the same), then I'll have won, even if I don't 'win'.
So, that's what I'm doing over the course of the next month. I'll be participating in NaNo and hopefully completing an official first draft of something. I'll be readying a manuscript for Pitch Wars (has to be submitted by 12/2) and then, of course, I'll be completing my final draft for Only One. Oh, and working on my marketing class, but that almost feels like part of my job as a writer, so it's all good. I'll keep you all posted!!
I'm still writing like a fiend. I've pretty much been doing that since last fall. No joke. I said to a fellow writer on Twitter earlier today that I think my word count since last fall is probably around 1,000,000. I'm not kidding. I wrote about 280k just with my Hunger Games fanfic. Then the original, first, complete draft of Back to December was 237k (or something) - the final version was 137k, I think, and that included some bits I wrote later that didn't appear in the first draft. Then there are some of the other side projects I've written here and there. Plus, the other stories in the Ward Sisters Series. I guess this is where I'll update you on those.
I've been editing Only One (Book 2), which has included some new additions as well as some restructuring and some tweaking/cleanup stuff. It's getting there. Even without editing the story to within an inch of its life, we're still close to the same word count as the final version of Back to December, which makes me happy. I'm sure it will get cut back, but at least it doesn't have nearly so far to go as Book 1 did.
For Book 3, Right Here Waiting, I've been writing some significant sections and also have restructured the story, based on what I found with Only One (and also what I learned from editing Back to December). We're at 82k with some big chunks to go. I've been picking the brain of an amazing source (who I happen to also call family) and I've got high hopes for this particular story. Honestly, I firmly expect that Only One will be a polarizing story for several reasons. But I would be shocked if people don't adore Neil and root for a HEA with Meg, across the board.
Book 3.5 is a novella and I hadn't written too much on it before this week. It's called Why Buy The Cow? Or maybe Buying the Cow, I haven't decided yet. It's funny that the metaphor has layers I hadn't realized until I delved into the meat of the story. A scene in Only One had me asking a question in my mind and I answered it by writing a huge chunk of this story, which is always very cool. And things just go from there. In some ways, I'll write a better story for Only One because I'll have thought about some things later in the series already. That one is barely started at 16k
Book 4 is Annie and Josh's story, This Year's Love. I've been ignoring that one lately for other parts of the series, but I need to get back to it soon. I know the direction it will take, but there is a lot left to write there. That one is further along than I thought, at 61k.
Book 5, Just Realized, has been mostly done for a while. I've got a few scenes left and then I think it's done. Although, I think I may end up adding some things that will set up a later story better, things I hadn't even contemplated until that other story was significantly written. We're at 82k there.
Book 6, Think of Me, is in my head but has a long, long way to go on paper. Once book 2 is published, this story will become one of my central foci. That's around 54k right now.
Book 6.5, Tell Me What It Takes, is another novella. I haven't done much with that lately. Like book 6, it will become more prominent as the next two books are published. That's also at 16k
Book 7, Better Be Home Soon, which was barely a thought when I started this blog 3 months ago, is now nearly 96k words. I wrote some big scenes for that today. It's not done, but I'm really astonished at how quickly it came together.
For the next 13 weeks, I'm taking a marketing class and that, of course, will cut into my writing time. Or probably it will cut into my domestic engineering duties. Yeah, that's more likely. Once I have a more firm idea when Only One will be ready for publication, I'll post it here, on Twitter and on Facebook. Have a great night everyone!
It's official! The print version of Back to December is available on Amazon. Now, just so you know, I don't make the big bucks on the list price. Really, that's mostly the printing costs. I'm just offering it because, well, it's cool to think I might be in print somewhere (and you know I'm buying one, right? Because I want to see ME on my bookshelf!) and there are still people out there who want to feel a book in their hands. Me, if I can save $ and a tree by purchasing the Kindle version of a book, then that's what I'll do.
Anyway, to celebrate the excitement of the print release, I'm offering the Kindle version for $0.99, a price that's now good through the end of Tuesday, September 3. I wasn't sure exactly when the print edition would be live, but since it made its debut sooner than I expected, you all benefit by getting an extension of the Labor Day weekend sale. Act now! The offer only lasts through tomorrow.
In related news, I'm working on several other parts of the series at once. I'm in-progress with edits for book 2, Only One. I've made a few changes that I think make the story flow better and that should improve other, less tangible things. I had an early reader indicate that they didn't much like Jenna, the heroine. Well, we can't have that. I'm not going to change her, just show a little more of her true character, which may not have been as evident before.
I'm also making some edits to book 3, Right Here Waiting. Some of what I'm doing is structural alterations that don't really affect the plot itself but transform how the plot unfolds for the reader. I can't wait for you to finally get a chance to read those stories! In due time.
As for writing, I've been a slave to the muse of Charlie Ward's story, Better Be Home Soon. For those of you who haven't already read Back to December (who are you people? Get on it! Just kidding. Sort of), Charlie is Emily's youngest sister. She gets married at the end of that story - not a spoiler, since, well it's not Charlie's journey. What, pray tell, could we have to learn about Charlie? She's married, right? She already had her epic romance off stage, already got her happy ending! I knew when I wrote Back to December that things would never be what they seemed. They aren't in real life, are they? But until I started writing her story, I had absolutely no clue what would really happen with Charlie and her husband Dan.
This story is the end of the series arc - if you're familiar with episodic TV, you know the concept. Each show has its own plot line and with serial programs, that story somehow fits inside a bigger concept for the season, then the season fits into the bigger story arc of the show itself. The Ward Sisters Series starts with Charlie's engagement, the moment that changed everything in Emily's life. Once I realized I had a series here, I knew that it would end with Charlie. Where it took me on the journey was an interesting surprise.
And I'm still learning new, unexpected things. I've said this before, I had an 'aha' moment when I read Stephen King's On Writing and he compared authoring a work of fiction to the role of an archaeologist. The writer chips away at the story, brushing the dust from their find, until eventually, the whole thing is exposed. Sometimes, you get what you expected. Other times, you make discoveries that you couldn't have imagined in a million years. Emily's story was pretty much exactly what I had expected it to be, aside from the fact that it spawned an entire series of stories in my mind. But so far, there have been some crazy (okay, maybe not crazy - unanticipated) plot threads exposed for the other characters. And when that happens, I'm often amazed and exceedingly pleased.
We've got a while before you'll get to hear Charlie's story. After all, there are currently 6 full-length novels and two novellas in progress (often nearly complete) in this series, plus Back to December. And Charlie's story is, as I said, the final chapter. I hope when all of this is said and done, you're all just as pleased with how it turns out as I am.
For now, here's an updated list of the stories, their order and the main characters in each:
Book 1, Back to December, Emily Ward and Rob Deacon (out now!)
Book 2, Only One, Liam Neely and Jenna Ackerman (coming this fall)
Book 3, Right Here Waiting, Meghan Miles and Neil Murphy (coming late 2013/early 2014)
Book 3.5 Why Buy the Cow? (or Buying the Cow), Eddie Besson, Reggie Reynolds and Jill Daigle
Book 4, This Year's Love, Annie Ward and Josh Ricker
Book 5, Just Realized, Nina Jacobs, Owen Nichols and Noah Adams
Book 6, Think of Me, Noah Adams and Catie Neely
Book 6.5, Tell Me What It Takes, Aaron Wallace and Ally Carmichael
Book 7, Better Be Home Soon, Charlie Ward, Dan Williams and Jack Armstrong
