Hello, everyone. How was your July?
In my newsletter, I said I'd do a monthly progress post. In this post, I'll go through all the little things I've been working on in my author life. I have a lot of writing that isn't Moon Girl and admittedly most for it may never make it to a book, it's not easy developing an idea that far but I'll tell you about them anyway. If people really want to read them I can put them into my extras section for you.
So, without further ado, here is where I am up to by the end of July 2017.
(Also a warning, as this is the first post I've done of this I'm going to go through everything so it's going to get quite long)
Moon Girl 1: Moon Rise Stage: Marketing I know Moon Girl 1 is written and out there but that in no way means it's done. Marketing is now the battle I face with it. I've been trying to contact bloggers to review it and blog about it with sadly little luck, these people are either swamped with other books or don't take self-published ones. It's hard for me to muster the courage to contact them so I'll admit I probably haven't sent out as many e-mails as I could.
Also, all advice says I should try 'build a relationship' with the bloggers first but honestly I don't know how to do that, so I just email them about my book and hope. (If you are a blogger reading this and interested message me! I'm happy to send out review copies.)
Other than that I've been stumbling around in the dark when it comes to marketing. I've read blog posts and information on it but I just so hard to find where to start. I mean, Moon Girl's been out half a year now, would it be weird to try a blog tour for a book that's not new or do a giveaway for it? I feel like I've missed a few opportunities with Moon Girl by not planning enough in the beginning but I guess that's just something I can learn from.
In other news, I've been toying with the idea of merch. Here are some of the potential pieces I came up with. Forgive the bad photo quality.
I might not be doing anything with these for a while but I'd been fun to experiment. And I have the mug now, it looks good.
Moon Girl 2: Bell Toll Stage: Beta Reading Moon Girl 2 is well underway. At the moment, it is with a beta reader who should be able to catch any mistakes me and two other readers missed. Admittedly, I've pushed back my expectations on release date due to me taking far, far too long to contact the artist about the cover. Completely my fault, I procrastinated it too long and it's been con season so she's is obviously busy. I probably won't get a final cover until the end of August maybe.
And that's all for Moon Girl 2 at the moment. Just waiting.
Moon Girl 3 Stage: Draft 3 I'm not going to reveal the name of Moon Girl 3 just yet. The whole thing has been written and I've been through it once, though many more to go. I've sent it so far to a friend who has sanity checked it for me and had both reassured me that it will be an excellent addition to the Moon Girl series and pointed out some areas to improve. My next mission will be improving the things they pointed out and getting it through Grammarly.
Moon Girl 4 Stage: Draft 1 I have actually started Moon Girl 4. I've not written much and I'm not sure I like how I've started but it's a start. I'm not pushing to finish it anytime soon.
Moon Girl Extra: Charity Month Stage: Draft 1 Admittedly the Extra's won't go through the same rigorous checking as the rest of my work but Charity Month part 2 is going well. It kind of slipped it to the sidelines while I was pushing to finish Moon 3 so that's why its taken so long, but don't worry I haven't forgotten about it!
Wielders Stage: A very slow Draft 1 Wielders was my final project in uni. I made it a Visual Novel with a small turn based battle system. I tried to carry it on after Uni but between the coding, the writing and the drawing the project was ultimately too big and I had to drop it. Ever since releasing Moon Girl I've realized I can actually write books, it's a skill I have so I've been trying to take the story that was Wielders and write it. It's not easy. Obviously, as a visual novel, I had a lot of branching paths so choosing the best one for the book is tricky. Not to mention I've had this story for years. I mean like 4-5 years now I think, so because it's not so fresh it means it's not as fun to write which means progress is slow.
I won't mention it on here again unless it makes actual progress, at the moment it's basically dead but I love the characters and really want to get back to it at some point.
World crystal Stage: Tentative Draft 1 The idea for this world came from none other than the Pokemon mystery dungeon.
A steampunk world where adventurers go into dungeons in search of world crystals, pieces of energy condensed by the unstable, overlapping space that makes the dungeon.
Lios, who still need a last name, has become somewhat of a fascination for adventures, each and everyone thinks she adorable and she has no idea why. She works for the company that buys these crystals off the adventures and distributes them throughout the world. She's only ever in the actual shop front once a week but hands down it's the post popular day for adventures to come sell their loot. She's soon become the unintentional poster girl for the company in the capital with the nickname of Crystal Cutie.
This gets her in a bit of trouble though. A group against using these crystals for power kidnaps her and throws her in the dungeon in protest. She's alone, she's unarmed and she's so so dead.
Progress on this one it going alright. I'm a good 60 or so pages in but I've gotten to a point where I need to introduce a lot of characters very fast so I have to take a break in order to plan them and name them etc, which has completely broken my flow with it sadly. Hopefully, I'll get back to it at some point.
Champions Stage: Concept I had a cool idea for this story but it's slowly ebbing away. Once upon a time, there were too many gods but in this universe, gods can't kill. They can create things to kill, they can lead people to their deaths but they cannot be the one to pull the trigger.
So in order to cleanse the heavens, one of the gods proposes a tournament. Each god selects a champion to fight on their behalf when the champion dies the god's life is forfeit, those who don't participate are banished.
Most of the gods hear this through rumour, no one seems to have the whole story but too afraid of banishment they all start to gather their champions.
That's the main idea. I've been back for forthing about other details and tried to write a few bits but nothing is really sticking right now. We'll see what happens.
Police work is Hell Stage: Experimental Draft 1 This newest piece I've been working on and I'm having a lot of fun with it.
Leone Jackson is an overworked, sci-fi world, Police Chief who had been doing a bit of everything just to try cover for her lack of staff. Then out of nowhere a boy with no identification, white hair and red eyes is brought in. He's amazed by everything, doesn't have a last name and has 12 older brothers and sisters. Not to mention Leone was pretty cure traits like white hair and red eyes were taken out of the gene pool via gene therapy years ago...
Because everyone is busy it's her job to try to get this boy a temporary identification then pass him onto social services but she's pulled away onto a murder case where strange things start to happen. The boy in her office seems to have an explanation. It's strange but she had no other explanation. She quickly realises she can't just let this boy get lost in the system. I mean if he thinks he's a demon there was no telling what he would do.
And I'm really not sure how to finish that off, to be honest. I've got a decent little plan for this story but again I'll have to see how it goes.
That's everything I've been working on or thinking about writing wise. See you next month.