Joseph Rhea's Journal

Is it weird to have my second book finished and have absolutely no desire to promote it? I mean like not even submit it to any review sites or give copies away on Amazon Select? I love my new story, and I'm very happy with the quality of the manuscript, the Kindle and paperback covers look great, and I like the book descriptions, both long and short versions. I even have the website created and uploaded, ready for visitors. Everything is in place and ready to start promoting. However, all I want to do now is write another book (actually the sequel to Novum), and then the one after that, and the one after that... What's wrong with me? At first I assumed that I was just burned out from years of promoting my first book, but today I'm wondering if I'm actually becoming...dare I say it...a writer? More specifically, a writer who cares about quality and finishing books but doesn't care one lick about sales...a writer who just wants to write. Anyone else...

It's kind of depressing to realize that the "publisher" half of my novelist sideline might end up taking longer than the "writer" half. I completed the manuscript to my new scifi novella in under 3 months (a record for me.) It has now taking over 2 full months to work it through beta readers, then have it edited, and finally polished by me. I also went through numerous variations of the blurb (which is quite important for online sales.) Now I am having second thoughts about the cover I had planned, so I am experimenting with something very different. My artist brother, Dave, will be rendering the new cover soon (hopefully) and it will be perfect and all will be well in the world (again, hopefully.) On the positive side, I am very happy with the 26,000-word story as it now stands and will feel no trepidation when I release it to the world. Hopefully, that will be in a month or so . Stay tuned...

I passed 21,000 words in the first book of my new science fiction series yesterday, officially making it a "novella" (novellas are traditionally 20-40,000 words long). I am just about to write the "climactic" final scenes, so the final length should be just under 23,000 words. As I go through my first real edit next, I might add a few bits of dialogue here and there, or even a new scene if it appears the story needs it, but in the end, the story will top out at no more that 25,000 words, so a novella it is. While comparing this story to my first full-length (95,000-word) novel, Cyberdrome, I have to say I really prefer shorter works. It's not that I'm lazy; it's just that I really prefer to read medium-length stories, especially if there are more stories to come in that universe (I have outlined 4 stories in this series.) Novellas tend to be more concise and to the point (i.e. there is no room for rambling dialogue or "filler" ch...

I completed 5 chapters of the first book in my new series last night - passing 16,000 words. Only one chapter to go! As soon as I finish that, I am going to start writing a short story (10-15k words) that I outlined 10 years ago. After that, I'll go back to book #2 in the new series. I'm on a writing roll!

To answer a question from a fellow writer on Google+, I thought I would go ahead and mention how I go about outlining a new story and what I do to keep track of all the many details involved in world-building. For Cyberdrome, which was my first full-length science fiction novel, I knew I would be taking several months to write it (actually turned out to be several years) so I knew I would need a very detailed outline to keep the story coherent over many writing sessions, sometimes separated by weeks, or even months. Since I decided to plot Cyberdrome as a scene-based thriller, I created a very complicated excel file that contained dozens of little details, like character profiles, scene descriptions, which characters were in any given scene, location descriptions for each scene, tension level of each scene, character arcs for each major character, etc. I also plotted words per scene, words written per week, and tension level scene-by-scene (important for a thriller). In hindsig...

I passed 7,500 words in my new story last night, and I haven't even reached the halfway point in my outline yet. I was originally hoping for at least 20,000 words for this first story (of three) to put it firmly in a "novella" category (typically 17,000 to 40,000 words) and I should reach and then pass that mark quite easily. When I eventually finish all three novellas, I plan to combine them into a final "Omnibus edition" novel, which should be 60-80,000 words long. Still enjoying the experience of writing again!

Passed 5,000 words in my new story today. I love this story!