HollowLands | A Writers Blog

Time 2020-12-09 07:02:32

Web Name: HollowLands | A Writers Blog

WebSite: http://hollowlands.com

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HollowLands,Writers,Blog,

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It's time to look back on 2018 and take stock what worked, what didn't, and where I spent my time.Feels like it all passed in a blur The first five months were consumed in followup activities following all the marketing work I did in 2017. That included:* ONIX development. StreetLib had some technical woes, and altogether the process needed to be solidified before I could consider it reliable.* Standardized deliverables. As part of the ONIX finalization, I tightened up the formalization of all my final output folders, with their various text, image, and marketing component content so that the loose assemblage of files for works-in-process had a clean transition point to rigid folders with standardized deliverable content. This has proved a great time-saver whenever I need to deal with ONIX data or distributors or marketing requirements, including my websites. With almost 30 titles now, order is a fundamental virtue.* New covers for the Chained Adept series. Having lost that cover artist, I took a long look at the covers and decided I not only needed a new cover artist for the Affinities of Magic series, just starting, but might as well have him redo the Chained Adept series as well. I like the new Affinities of Magic series that he's been developing, and the Chained Adept got a visible boost from better covers. I even asked him to create an advertising image I could use for advertising for the Hounds of Annwn series.* German translation. While I was in an investment mood, I decided to make my initial experiment with translation by finding someone to do the first book of the Chained Adept Series for the German market, where the SFF genre does well. I'm very happy with my translator she has delivered the full manuscript, and I still have to go through it with my minor German and automated translation to make sure there's nothing odd about any of the results, before releasing it into the German market to see how it does. By then, I hope to have my Facebook Ads beyond the USA processes in decent shape.* Publishing contracts/royalty reporting. A little after the fact, I completed the final version of a standardized publishing contract to use and got everything cleaned up for my first outside author. At the same time, I created the processes for tracking and reporting on royalties and payments for outside authors.* Google Analytics. After several stumbles, I finally commissioned a decent tool for looking at the fate of my various UTM statistics for articles and other things.2018 33,1722017 30,7772016 43,4292015 30,6192014 34,2142013 28,7142012 18,3472018 87,5192017 94,8912016 346,2582015 119,5932014 64,3902013 – 210,4702012 – 270,600 Posted in A Writer s Desk My taigan puppy (now somewhere north of 90 lbs) has recently passed his one year birthday, with no diminution of his playfulness.Last night, he progressed from stealing things off my desk when I'm not in my office (and tearing them apart) to deciding to see what my laptop tasted like.Apparently he decided it made a pretty good chew toy.The laptop is still functional, but since I can see the bare electronics and the cover frame snaps won't stay closed I'm clearly going to have to replace the entire top section.What a relief, thought I through my rising blood pressure, that I plumped for the Service Warranty when I bought this machine two years ago. I live in the middle of nowhere and having a technician come out to my home office was a great help with my last PC.This morning I settled down with what patience I could muster and wasted a couple of hours with Lenovo lining up support, only to discover that, no, my warranty does not cover accidental damage; I could upgrade to add that, but only in the first 90 days; and that they would send me a box so I could ship it to a depot center for price estimate and repair.So, not only will I get to pay full cost for whatever this will be (expensive), but I will have to do without my primary business machine for at least a week. And to add insult to injury, I'm an hour's drive from the nearest FedEx drop off.He tested both corners, of course agents of chaos being thorough. Bears, orchards, taigans part 2 Posted in A Writer s Desk Yesterday afternoon, the mama bear put in an appearance and our taigan leaped into defend and insult mode again.Alas, this is not my own picture I never seem to have a camera handy when wrangling dogs and bears but it's close. Instead of woods, picture the edge of the mowed ground around the buildings. She was so full of stolen apples and pears that she didn't want to move and was calmly sitting below the first row of the overgrown orchard, admiring the view down to our cabin.And ignoring the dog, restrained (miraculously) by the underground dog fence not 25 yards away. And the human, who added her own Get out of here, bear! to the ruckus.Finally, slowly, she shoved herself up and walked upslope to the tall grass, and out of sight. I've had overindulgent dinners like that myself.I don't mind their depredations in the orchard we're not using those apples and the critters might as well eat their fill but I'd be happier if her family kept a bit more distance as they ravaged the apples. What happens in the tall grass stays in the tall grass.Maybe I should give her something to read inbetween meals. A quick look at the news writing and publishing Posted in Artwork, and Publishing I haven't been able to produce much in the way of blogging for the last couple of months because I've been buried in writing and publishing work (and that's the way it should be).WritingOn the writing front, I'm just about done with the Fragments of Lightning, the second book of The Affinities of Magic. The webpages will be updated when the final scene is written and I have time to do the book description, images, and so forth. I plan on writing the third book, and starting the fourth before I begin releasing them in quick succession, starting circa December/January.PublishingAs I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm also beginning to publish the works of some colleagues of mine and tooling up as a small publisher. This means, in several cases, the creation of new imprints, since the works aren't necessarily appropriate for Perkunas Press, not being fantasy or science fiction. Last fall saw the first release for Bent Twig Books, a memoir My Bipolar Life.Right now, I'm working simultaneously on publishing two works. One is a bit of Christian visionary fiction for Sound the Trumpet Press, called Comes a Redeemer, by Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell. And the other is a work by the great naturalist writer, Steve Bodio for Behind the Ranges Press his first novel, Tiger Country.In each case, these three works are the first for their imprints, so there's very little information for the imprints and, in the latter two cases, the book pages are under construction pending release. But you can take a look at the draft covers (mockups), and there will be more to tell you as each book is published this year. Bears, orchards, taigans Posted in A Writer s Desk We have bears, and we have old orchards. Naturally, we also have bears in orchards. And among the distractions for writing and publishing, we have fierce Central Asian sighthounds seeking employment.Normally the nocturnal set and the diurnal set don't meet, though the dogs are very interested in the scent trails they can reach, within the several acres around the cabin enclosed by the underground dog fence. The main dog field out front is also the main traffic area for all the critters, as one of the highways to the stream that waters the farm where they have a good view for predators. Most of them are smart enough to check to see if the dogs are out first before dropping by. And on those occasions where we let the dogs out without checking first ourselves, they're all quite capable of running, flying, or going to ground, according to their kind.We get a regular daytime show of deer, turkey, and groundhog. At night who knows what they all get up to? Certainly we have raccoons, possums, and porcupines (just to cite the larger mammals), along with the occasional coyote passing through. And we have black bears out back, like most of the wooded and mountainous areas in Pennsylvania.This year, we've been seeing a sow and two cubs. They're regulars our bird feeders are trashed annually, and the garbage cans are a challenge. Seeing them by daylight, though, isn't so common.But it's August and all the trees in the old orchard that still bear fruit (apples and a few pears) are heavily laden.Read moreBears, orchards, taigans

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