Where are you in your book?

Where are you in your book?

I have a terrible habit of falling in love with the wrong characters. I can't decide who to pair together in my next book. I want everyone to be together. I'm weak.

There's a sleazy gay comedian, a former con man, a friendly hitman, and a depressed police detective. I know this sounds fucking crazy, but I'm seriously considering the idea I might make it a four-way poly relationship where each "pair" gets their own book.

But that's crazy. Nobody writes romance novels like that. Nobody buys romance novels like that. Right? I need to settle down.

Anyway-- where are you in your book?

 

In current WIP, theoretically I'm 3/4 of the way through. I say theoretically because I know some things have to change, so in reality I'm probably 2/3 of the way through. (ETA: current word count 57, 355.) I'm resolving the biggest plot point, and the villain is so skeevy, I have to take a lot of breaks while writing it because she makes me nauseous.

For the next novel (unrelated project), I'm daydreaming the characters who surround my fully formed MC, a female rock star. She's a character who's been living in my notebook for 15 years and her story is part of a rock and roll trilogy. Unfortunately, what I've workshopped so far isn't going well. ETA: It needs a lot of work, but also hard choices will have to be made, because what I'm really wanting to do isn't commercial at all. As a reader I have quirky preferences, and if I write the kind of book I would like, it ain't gonna sell.

 

I’m 85% on a major rewrite, hope to let people read it in a couple weeks.

@Shenanigator, good luck! Hopefully you can find something in there that works on all the levels you want it to.

 

That is not true. I have proof that somebody bought my first book.
(Though sales overall are kinda abysmal) At least I know about a
dozen or so people have bought it. Only one rev. though, but its
a good one.

So don't think that it won't sell. It takes time when you are just starting
out and learning the whole marketing thing, and building a reader base.

 

Coyote, I have a feeling poly romance is a thing. It just has to be.

My question is how do you get to a HEA in that setup?

 

Just go for it and I bet some twosomes that work especially well will naturally emerge. (Or not? Crow/Jonathan/Regis was so obviously superior to any of the couple combinations...)

My answer to the title question is: the part where I whine and refuse to write any further because I'm too afraid I'm screwing it all up.

 

They are... it's just that poly romance novels typically don't work the way I'm describing. Usually if you write a poly romance novel, it's sort of... upfront. Like, all three (or more) characters "get together" in the first book. If that makes sense. Readers like to know what they're buying.

I'm probably going to do it anyway, just because I have zero common sense and write for fun. But deviating from the formula makes it harder to publish.

That is a really good question. I have no idea. They'll all a bunch of degenerate criminals. Maybe after a few books I'd have them retire to Colorado and buy a farm. Start a legal weed business, raise some dogs. Kidnap adopt some kids.

 

I am stuck again. Need to remind myself that I must just plow through instead of rereading things I like about it so far. It is a love hate thing really, but it is mine and like a kid, you got to deal with the bastard, can't send them back.

OK, I'm off to slumber where the dreams are weird and the world around me is filtered through my being.

God bless our ship of fools, for we are the scribes.

 

lol awesome

 

Currently about 60% through my WIP, I have it all outlined to the end, I just have to get it down on "paper". Once that's done, it's going to sit for a while so I can revise my past project and get it ready to go out.

 

Let’s see, in the project I’m currently working on, on all of 5,705 words into the book. Not sure where that is percent wise until I get further along, but it’s a novel. The main character has a concussion, his coworker and her teenage sister are about to come over with dinner, and I just finished up with an emotional scene between said main character and the nine year-old girl he’s trying to protect. (Which is working out great for him, hence the concussion) I’m probably going to rewrite that scene because I’m not really happy with it, but for now I’m just going to keep going and come back to that scene once I get some distance from it and a better feel for the characters.

Now if I can actually focus on one story instead of jumping around to something else next week.

 

Nowhere. I do not make an appearance in the book. I suppose it depends what you mean by the question. I suppose you could say the words themselves are a part of me, and so in a metaphorical sense, I am in the whole book. But as far as the characters go? I am not any of the characters.

 

Thanks, JC. Good luck with yours too! It sounds like you're off to the races on that rewrite!

Thanks, CT. I appreciate it.

 

I'm really intrigued as to how this would play out. How the public would see it, I mean. I probably wouldn't read it, 'cause I'm old-fashioned, but I'd really like to know that something like that's out there. Like, I didn't know polyamory was in the mainstream, I kind of assumed that harem and reverse harem had only just gotten recognition. Am I just out of the loop or something?

Oh, yeah, the question. I'm currently trying to figure out how I want the second book to go, despite not having written the first one.

 

Take it one book at a time, and it will happen.

 

I'd read the heck out of that.

I've just got to the first sex scene in my second-chance m/f romance. I'm procrastinating because I'm so bored of writing sex - I just had to write a whole bunch for an editor's revisions and man, just give me a cup of tea and an early night.

In my short-story-slash-novella anthology thing, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through.

 

I'm about 85% finished with a rewrite. Afterwards, I'm confident enough to say that it will only need one more draft before being sent to agents.

The problem with mine though, is that I'm a very strange person who likes very strange things so my story has this Bible-type style. It is a fictional story formatted how fictional stories should be formed but it's very strange. I love prologues and epilogues so I want mine to be traditional in that sense. Also, I love omniscient narrative. Those are two things lots of people dislike but I actually enjoy so we'll see how it goes.

 

I hear you. I like reading books that open with dialogue and go into a flashback as the person tells their story, because that's how memories work, but most people don't like that structure at all so it's quirky and noncommercial. To me, it's the most natural form of storytelling and is how the story flows out of my brain the best, but to the book selling world, it's a "gimmick". So hard choices will be made, and, if I'm to be honest, my writing is going to read a lot more stilted if I change to accommodate it because what the public wants is just not how my fiction flows best.

edit for typo

 

I am in Part III of the book, which is the pivotal part and the most boring part of the book. LOL.

Let's see.... I believe I have at least three more parts left, maybe four if I include an epilogue which will lead to some important lore for MyWorld.

 

Me too! I totally would read that!

LOL--I felt that way over the summer after writing and editing my first sex scene ever. I got really tired of watching those two characters go at it.

 

On hiatus.

From lots of things, actually. I'm purposefully putting my story aside for now because it's been stalled for longer than I care to admit. I'm writing some very fun fanfiction and reveling in the ability to have thousands of words and countless scenes fly from my fingertips as if by magic. It's like learning to be friends again with a lover when the friendship side of the relationship has faded or been injured. I've also cut back my forum time quite a bit. That's been needful for some time.

 

Currently polishing so have taken my book off the sales shelf. Also arguing with page breaks and formatting, and tearing my hair out at the prospect of damn page numbers.

And then I want to return to my next adventure which is based around a nightclub owner ...

 

I have two WIPs.

The non-fiction, True Believers, the Founding Fathers of TACAMO, is complete at 75,000 words, pictures being added, properly formatted in non-fiction manuscript layout. (I did not know there was such a format until a few weeks ago. I need to list the book of layouts and queries here as a resource, it is invaluable.) That is a collaborative effort, essentially an anthology of autobiographies, ten of us explaining why we came back to that Naval aviation program when it was considered professional suicide to do so. One person is offering minor additions, waiting for that. I am then going to send it off for a DoD security imprimatur which should take around 30 days. After that, our most senior alumna, VADM Nora Tyson, will write the foreword. Then I start the publication push, first with the US Naval Institute. Interestingly, they take direct submissions, but I want to talk to them first, and maybe with someone who has published through them.

The second is the sequel to E & D, The Long Road Back to Rome. This story is about the ten characters from E&D, scattered from Kazakhstan to China, Rome to northern Italy, being sucked into the maelstrom of the Roman invasion of Mesopotamia in 115AD. Also will explain how two Chinese skeletons from that era wound up getting unearthed from a Roman grave in London in September 2016 (two of my characters). Currently at 50,000 words, formatted in novel fiction layout, and expect it to be as long as E&D, so about 20% done. Trying to maintain 5000 words per week, so first draft six months to a year away?

 

I'm 98K into a 100K novel and I'm about eighty percent of the way through the first draft.

Draft...3, I'm thinking, will involve a lot of cutting. I suspect that it will actually grow in the second draft.