15 October 2022 – the Q4 Challenge
11:41pm
Since I’m starting this with just nineteen minutes before midnight, this will probably end up being posted at 11:59:59, which is code for “I’m a wordy little cuss and wrote way too long and had to edit the post date and time afterwards.”
🤣
Right, then… moving on!
This is the first weekly update for 2025. My intent is to share my writing progress with anyone who cares to read these and do a better job than I have in the past of giving interested readers an idea as to what I will publish next.
As I believe I wrote in earlier posts, I am attempting to devote each month to a specific book, and unlike my original plan (back when I erroneously thought I could bring Cole & Srexx back from the dead), this month’s book is Tribunal, Sorcerous Pursuits #3.
I want to go ahead and be upfront with you. Sorcerous Pursuits will probably be trilogy… and only a trilogy. I wanted the series (at least the first three books) to set Hyperion up as a one-ton gorilla for cameos in other series of the Draco-Verse shared world, and I feel Tribunal will achieve that. Accordingly, I see no reason to extend the series beyond that.
There… reader expectations managed.
I have never made any secret of the fact that I have struggled to establish a consistent, daily writing habit for a handful of years now. Many writers achieve this, including my professional role models, so I see no reason that I can’t do the same.
I thought my dissatisfaction with Cole & Srexx was subconsciously holding me back, which was why I decided I would bring the series back from the dead. All that achieved was zero new fiction words for all of November and December, 2024.
Hopefully, it goes without saying that such result was unacceptable.
So! I sat down and looked over my Writing Log for 2024 and 2023, and I decided that 3,500 words per day was a nice, comfortable pace. I have coasted along too much in my life, so I opted for a daily word count goal of 3,850 words.
And, folks… I am four for four!
I will confess I was struggling with Tribunal today, and to make achieving my word goal easier on myself, I hopped over to write on Lynxeen, the next story in Shepherd Security Services. I’ve been thinking about how I want that story to unfold, so it was fairly easily to round out my writing day by finishing Chapter 2.
I will spend some time between now and tomorrow’s writing thinking about how I’m going to arrive at where I want Tribunal to go, so that I’m refreshed and ready to put all of tomorrow’s writing towards it.
As long as we’ve brought up Shepherd Security Services, let’s talk about February, March, April, and possibly May.
My original plan for 2025 was to alternate months between Fantasy and Science Fiction. However, that presupposed that bringing Cole & Srexx back from the dead would actually succeed. As it did not, I find myself needing a new flagship Sci-Fi series for my promotional efforts.
And damned if I don’t have a new Sci-Fi series at hand!
So, for at least February through April, I will aim to write one Shepherd Security Services novel each month. I might extend that to May for reasons that would spoil future stories, but the reasons are admittedly almost laughable, very minor, and 115% personal.
This four-day streak I have going on feels really good, and I’m going to do everything in my power to maintain it. By the end of tomorrow (assuming I keep the streak alive), I will have over ten percent of my monthly estimated words for January.
I hope the new year is treating you and yours as well as possible. I offer you my best wishes.
Stay safe out there.
May good fortune be your personal aid in this task/wish. I look forward to reading many of them as age and purse allow!
Hi, Tracy,
Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment, and thank you for your well wishes.
Regarding your purse, it is my goal that no one will never pay more than $4.99 USD for one of my stories… unless the purchaser prefers print, audio, or the omnibus editions I’ll be eventually releasing (what used to be boxsets in the mass market paperback era).
To my mind, eBooks are the modern mass market paperback that I loved in my childhood. I still remember saving my allowance until I had $60 or $70 and spending it all on mass market paperbacks in WaldenBooks. At the time, I didn’t understand what ‘mass market paperback’ meant; I just thought they were books. And this was before the internet (yes… I am that old 😜).
I myself refuse to pay over $9.99 for an eBook unless it’s someone I really, really want to read. I will pay more than that for The Choice, which will be Nora Roberts’s latest story. It’s the final installment in the trilogy started with The Becoming, and she tells a damn-good story. I know she’s known as a Romance writer, but this trilogy–along with several others of hers–strike me more as Fantasy with Romance elements.
But I digress…
Thanks again for your well wishes, and I hope the days treat you and yours well.
Regards,
Rob
You really tugged on the heart strings with mentioning David Eddings, I grew up reading the first Belgariad book as a sophomore, then the rest of his books. Waldenbooks… I spent many hours and dollars in Waldenbooks, B. Dalton, Borders Books and Crown Books.
I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit more, $6.99 or so for your books when they’re new then see you drop the price after a few months, I WANT to support you, not necessarily make you a millionaire but to keep you comfortable and writing full time so you put out more books. So if a couple dollars more for a new book is needed then so be it.
Mark
Hi, Mark,
I resisted switching to eBooks for a long time. What finally tipped me over the edge was wanting to re-read a series but I could only find two or three books out of five or six. Can’t remember now the precise details, but with eBooks, I don’t have that problem.
A couple years ago, a data analyst (and shade-tree economist) did a price analysis for eBooks. The person reached a number of conclusions, the first being that eBooks are very price-inelastic. Which means that the price people will pay for them doesn’t fluctuate as much according to the supply/demand cycle. Another conclusion was a pricing scheme based on word count:
> 70,000+ words: $5.99
> 50,000 – 70,000 words: $4.99
> 30,000 – 50,000 words: $3.99
> 30,000 words or less: $2.99
When I saw that post in an indie author group, I decided to use the following pricing scheme for my stories.
> 50,000+ words: $4.99
> 30,000 – 50,000 words: $3.99
> Under 30,000 words: $2.99
Basically, I like the idea of an eBook being $5 (US).
But there’s another issue when discussing pricing and the idea of setting a slightly elevated price at release and then lowering it two or three months later.
I’d forget to lower it. Whoops…
It’s a lot easier for me to set the price based on the word count right at publication and go on my merry way than worry about adjusting the price every two, three, or six months.
Beyond that, and not to sound preachy, I try to treat people like I want to be treated. It would tick me off if I paid X dollars for a book on Day 1 and realized I could’ve waited a couple months and bought it for a dollar or two less. So, there’s that aspect as well.
Anywho…
I hope the days treat you and yours well.
Regards,
Rob