This week, I started setting up the second book in my series, Fury. I know, I haven’t published the first book yet, but it’s about ready to come out within the next month or so. Might as well get working on the rest of them while I wait.
I didn’t realize just how hard it is sometimes to be an author. All I want to do is talk about my book, but if I do, I spoil it for potential readers. It’s kind of a bummer.
Plus, I kind of suck at not giving away too much, especially during the Monday night live streams when I’ve had a bit to drink.
Setting Up Goals in Reedsy and NaNoWriMo
Today, I set up the goals in Reedsy to write the next book. I was hoping to try out another writing app when I started Fury, but I haven’t been able to buy the ones I want to try, and I wanted to get started writing.
It’s all good, though. I like the Reedsy book editor anyway. Besides, it’s not like I don’t have a ton of ideas to write when I do finally buy Atticus.
The plan is to have the first draft of Fury done before Halloween. That gives me 20 weeks, which equates to about 4,250 words per week. As long as I stick to my daily schedule, I shouldn’t have a problem handling that many words, to be honest.
Keep in mind that I’m also working on several blogs, clients, and even YouTube videos during that time. So, my time is a bit at a premium nowadays.
I was able to spend quite a bit of time working on the outline over the past few days. And I’m incredibly excited to start working on the book. Though, I am going to dedicate some of my book-writing time to polishing up Kingmaker so I can get it on Amazon before my birthday.
In any case, I’m going all-in on these goals and am confident I can have the book done well before Halloween.
If you’d like to follow along in my progress, I also added the book to my NaNoWriMo profile.
Created the Temp Cover
So, the cover I created for Fury today isn’t necessarily the one that will be published. Essentially, I needed a cover that I liked to promote the project. And this one was from Pixabay…well, after I added a few bits of text and stylized the “Fury” part.
I kind of like the appearance of this temp cover, and it fits the story quite nicely, I think. Still, I don’t want to use stock photos and images for the book covers.
I like to be unique as humanly possible, and that means no AI-generated garbage, either.
Regardless, I quite enjoy this cover. It came out a lot better than I had imagined. Earlier, I was just thinking of something similar to what I have for Despair on Wattpad. But I came across the flaming heart and knew I had to use the image.
Looking Forward to Diving Into the Book
Although I am completely in love with Kingmaker, I have a feeling that Fury is going to be the better of the series. Well, I think it’s going to be more of a toss-up with the final book.
For one thing, it’s the closing of the series. And I have a lot of awesome things planned for the finale.
Yes, I’ve been technically working on all four books this whole time. It’s more of just making notes of what I want and what the characters have developed.
I can do all the outlining I want for a book, but it rarely goes according to plan. That’s because the characters often take the story and make it their own. I’m just along for the ride as the narrator.
I can tell you this, though, the characters made sweeping changes to the original idea of Kingmaker. It was all for the better as I believe the story now is far better in comparison.
What About VII?
I did a few calculations regarding my new blocks of time for the week. Theoretically, I should be able to work on Fury and VII almost equally for the time being.
As long as the writing flows as well as it did for Kingmaker, it should only take me two days to hit my writing goals for Fury. Then, I can spend the other two days working on VII.
Once VII is done on Wattpad, I’ll probably move on to finish Skeletal on Inkitt.
The idea is to wrap up all of these loose threads I have scattered all over the Internet. Besides, I would like to explore a bit more of what Inkitt offers and if it’s a viable platform for new authors to use.
I can’t do that until I finish Skeletal.
Afterward, I’m probably going to try out Kindle Vella. That is as long as the platform still exists by the time I am done with VII and Skeletal. Who knows what Amazon will shit-can before then?
Let’s Not Take Two Years to Finish Fury
By the time Kingmaker comes out, it will have been nearly two years since I started writing the book. I would love to have Fury done in far less time.
With any luck, I can have Fury published by next April. But that will depend greatly on the motivation to write as well as how much editing it’ll need before publishing.
Sure, I’m an indie, self-published author and can technically slap it up any time I want. But I want to put out the best story I possibly can with as few mistakes as possible.
Until I can afford the $4,000+ editors, I gotta make do with what I have. And frankly, what I have is pretty great.