Summer Projects
I may be burying the lead on this particular post. The big news, of course, is that Parley has been released to iTunes and Audible. Once again, I asked Mikael Naramore to narrate given his spectacular performance of Rookie Privateer. There are a few things that go into selecting a narrator. The first being – do I enjoy listening to the actor. The next question for me is can they change character voices in a way that in my mind’s eye (ear?) I recognize the changes but don’t get pushed out of the story. Thirdly, I want a sense of drama added to obvious sections, comedy where appropriate, etc. Finally, there are the business decisions and questions of professionalism. Is the actor so busy they can’t give you the time of day? Do they deliver work on time? When they deliver the work, can they accept criticism professionally? I belong to a couple of online groups and have heard horror stories of authors working with narrators who are excellent actors and completely fail to deliver on the business end. Not so with Mikael Naramore. Mikael sets a high standard by responding quickly to queries, receives criticism without taking it personally, and quickly resolves issues. In the end you always have to consider cost. For me, this is an easy decision – pay for quality. If I can’t afford the best, then I shouldn’t start the project.
Turns out, there’s a lot more going on around here. My goal at the start of 2016 was to deliver four novels. At the time, I had no idea that Wizard in a Witchy World would receive the response that it did. My experience with Rookie Privateer was that a new series takes a while to get going. Wizard – not so much and for that I’m grateful to my readers for trusting me and checking out something new. Due to that extremely positive response, I couldn’t help myself and decided to write a second in the series. If everything goes as planned, I’ll release my third novel for the year and second in the Witchy World series – Wicked Folk on September 5th.
And the list of projects continue. One of the things I’ve always wanted to do is to learn how to use Photoshop so I can manipulate images and make some of my own marketing material. Believe it or not, the picture on this post was my own creation. No, I didn’t draw the woman, or take a picture of my kindle, but what I did do was to combine several elements and transform them in something that I’m happy with. I’ve also dipped my toe into creating book trailers (videos that announce a book release). I just finished a trailer for Wicked Folk and will be releasing it within the next week or so. I can’t wait to see what you think of it. It’s not productive writing time when I do these things, but it sure is fun.
Finally, it’s time to move on to fall projects. I’m very happy to say that I have exactly two things planned for this fall. First is to finish up Blockade, Privateer Tales #11. As of this blog post, I’m at 19,000 of 85,000 words and I’m absolutely loving where the story is headed. The Kroerak are making big trouble and Liam and crew are faced with hard decisions. I don’t want to give any spoilers and that’s hard for me because it’s so darn much fun. The only other project I have for the fall is a writer’s conference in Florida. Something you might not be aware of is that I share time between my writing career and a high-tech position as a software developer. I’m extremely fortunate to work for a company that allows me to work four days a week and as a result I’ve been able to give writing a lot of attention. The down side, of course, is that I’m juggling two jobs worth of work and vacations seem to be the first casualty. To that end, I’m hoping to treat the writer’s conference as mostly a vacation. We won’t be dieting and there will be alcohol consumed.
So that’s it for now. I hope all is well in your life and I thank you being a part of my life.
Happy Reading –
Jamie
