A Writer's Week #78: Busy, Busy, Busy

Oh my, where to start? This was the busiest Writer's Week I've had in a long time. I'm so excited, because everything is coming together at once! On Monday, I received the final versions of the cover and the interior of The Deliverers 2: Order of the Crystal Lion. They looked great. Ana Vogel and Daniel Vogel did a great job with the layout and the artwork, respectively. That's the cover to the left if you haven't had a chance to see it yet.

I immediately uploaded them to Createspace and ordered a couple of proof copies. Those arrived today. It was so cool to see the book in person for the first time. We were in the middle of a week-long power outage caused by a freak October snowstorm when I received the first copies of The Deliverers: Sharky and the Jewel, so my first glimpse of that book was by flashlight! Seeing this book for the first time in daylight was so much better.

Then yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed by author and blogger Karen Pokras Toz

Proof copies of The Deliverers 2

on her blog. It was great chatting with her about the new book, my computer preferences, and my cats!

Yesterday I had the day off and I spent some time bowling with the kids, which was fun and relaxing. Sandwiched around that, I put together the book trailer. That's always a challenge that I enjoy. Usually I have limited artwork, photos, etc. to use. Then, there's the challenge of finding just the right music. I use a site called Incomptech which run by musician and composer Kevin MacLeod. He's got a lot of royalty free pieces that he will let you use if you credit him. You can also make a donation if the spirit moves you. Check it out.

I usually find something that works with the video I'm making, but the process can be rather mind-numbing. You can search by mood and type of music, but I find that the piece that ends up working is not the one I would expect. This time it took a while to find the right piece, and I had to cut part and loop it so that it was the right length, but it wound up coming out pretty nicely. Here it is:

On top of all this, I managed to come up with an idea for The Deliverers 4! It involves a little bit of time travel back to the American Revolution. Eric will find out a little about his family and have to try to find out why someone is trying to change history!

While all this was going on, I was still able to get a decent amount of writing done on The Deliverers 3: The Golden Dragon of Ang. I wrote 3,100 words, bringing the total to 50,100 words, 51 chapters and 219 pages! I am shooting for a publication date sometime in January or February of 2014. So, what's in store for the coming week? I'll let you know next time!

A Writer's Week #29: Videos & Reunions

This week, while not as successful writing-wise, was still a good one. How can that be? Well, it's because I was makin' movies! No, Disney has not bought the rights to make The Deliverers: Sharky and the Jewel into a full length feature film, but I have made a new book trailer.

This video is called The Deliverers, Sharky's Vengeance. I took some footage from a couple old (ancient) movies that are in the public domain, combined it with some video footage I shot at Mystic Seaport last weekend, added another great piece of music by Kevin MacLeod, and voila! Video! Anyway, I've embedded the video below. Check it out and let me know what you think.


On the actual writing front, I did okay, I only wrote 1,000 words, well below my weekly goal of 2,000, and extremely short of my 3,000 word output of last week. However, I did manage to write a very tricky escape and a reunion--two very key points in The Deliverers 2, so I don't feel so bad about not making my weekly goal. Anyway, between last week and this, I'm still averaging 2,000 words a week, so I'll take it.


For those of you keeping track, that puts me at 36,000 words, 42 chapters, and 162 pages. We're getting closer every week, but after the writing will be the rewriting. I'll update you on my journey's progress again next week. Here's that video:

New Book Trailer Released

It's been a busy week. Work has been a scramble, with late nights and early mornings, but it's all turned out well, so I'm happy. On Tuesday, one of my coworkers showed me a video of one of our corporate events on his iPad. It was done in a movie trailer format, and looked really sharp.

My brain immediately began working, and I thought, wouldn't it be great to make my own book trailer. I don't have any fancy Mac equipment, but I thought maybe Windows had some software. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had Windows Movie Maker already on my computer! Just goes to show how much of a techie babe in the woods I am.

I spent Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning looking for decent, public domain royalty free video to use, and writing the script. On Wednesday, I talked Christian into acting like Eric peering into the drainpipe under our driveway, but it was partuially blocked with logs, and I didn't get a good shot. It didn't matter anyway, as I later found that I had been holding my iPod Nano the wrong way and the footage was upside down!

It was then that I decided to scrap the video and go with stills. But how could I make an exciting video without video? The program features a bunch of different efffects. I played around with a number of different ones for each shot until I was satisfied.

Once that was done, I had to add music. There's a very talented composer who has scads of short compositions of varying genres that you can use for free as long as you credit him. His name is Kevin MacLeod. Here's a link to his site. After a number of tries, I found the right piece and, voila! First class book trailer. CreateSpace can do a minute long trailer for you for $2000, so I'm that much ahead. Not a bad job if I do say so myself.

So, here's the trailer. Check it out, and let me know what you think!