April Progress Round-Up Report Thingie

I present to you: HYPER PRODUCTIVE JAGUAR. Powered by things suggested on Discord.  DETERMINATION, UV REACTIVE PAINT, POP ROCKS, DECAF ESPRESSO, DARK CHOCOLATE, POP ROCKS, and FRUIT SALAD. (I started by drawing my determined stare and kept adding things as people kept suggesting them, lol).

Anyway, April is gone! Long live April. (Actually, at this point May is half-gone, but I’m pretending that’s not so.) Let’s talk about what happened last month, and get a feel for what’s coming in today’s news post!

In writing, I spent most of April finishing Kherishdar’s Exception which is the longest book I’ve written this year. Or in many years. (It may be my longest book, period, other than the unpublished behemoth, Zafiil.) I’m amused that my serial readers occasionally complain about repeated motifs, because I don’t think they realize they’ve already consumed something like 420+ pages of fiction, with another 100+ to go; time dilates weirdly when you’re reading something in bits and pieces.

I also spent a lot of time in April editing KH4, and I’m still editing it (though I’m getting to the bottom of that barrel finally). This is one of the few books I’ve written that benefited from a lot of polishing, so while I resent spending so much time on it compared to other projects, I’m proud of the results. Those of you waiting to read it until it’s released at retailers… it’s gonna be worth it.

Anyway, in addition to writing and editing KH4 in April, I also added a little bit to Coracle 2, and I finalized the e- and print editions of Faith in the Service so it would be ready for primetime. It was a busy month, writing-wise.

It was also a busy month, art-wise! I did another painting, of Kelu, for the launch of the Blood Ladders audiobooks, plus one of the five conlang bookmarks I promised for that Kickstarter. I also overhauled the Kherishdar covers for Books 1-3 and put together the cover for Book 4, an exercise that required painting and calligraphy. I drew in lots of books for both Etsy buyers and Kickstarter backers.

I’m also sketching a lot. Most of those sketches get photographed into Discord as I’m working on them. I tend to pick out the best one or two when I post here.

My new thing is conlang notebooks. I’ve always kept two separate sets of sketchbooks, one for drawings and one for notes and doodles, and I differentiate them by size (“large” and “small”, more or less). I decided to add a third set, only for language work, and true to form decided it needed its own size (“medium”, in this case, 7x10). I filled an entire one while writing/editing Kherishdar’s Exception, and am on the second, and this exercise has necessitated (read: ‘created an excuse for’) more art supplies… in this case, calligraphy stuff. Ink, dip pens, sparkly watercolors, etc. I haven’t worked with any of these tools seriously since… well, junior high/high school. It’s wonderful to get back to them. I love the mess, even when it's inconvenient or dangerous. (Spills, y'all. Not good.) Having my fingers stained multiple colors is weirdly joyful. 

Despite my pleasure in the work, I’m aware that in general language creation does not generate income. That’s probably why the second conlang notebook is also filled with doodles, because I think a small book of sketches and notes about language and culture would be something people might enjoy seeing/owning. We’ll see how that goes. (And whether I continue developing Ai-Naidari only, or if I move on to the Jokka's language, or Chatcaavan, or whatever relates to what I’m writing at the time.)

In audio/video, I put together the audio for the Vow “author’s cut” edition on Bandcamp, but I didn’t do much streaming. (I’ve streamed more in the first half of May than I have in the entire month of April!). 

The remaining free time in April was taken up by the Kickstarter. While they’re running, my checklists overflow with Kickstarter tasks, everything from ‘upload ebooks to bookfunnel’ and ‘buy download codes from bandcamp’ to ‘post updates—M,T,W,R,F’ and ‘mail all the things.’ The propensity for Kickstarters to take over your life is one of the many reasons I so tightly constrain mine. I am occasionally tempted by the higher dollar amounts I could probably swing if I ran longer campaigns with broader advertising… and then I think of the work involved and lie down until the idea goes away. 😆

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So that was April! Let’s look forward, because for once, the future is hazy! What’s definitive is July’s release, Kherishdar’s Exception. I’m going to begin the rebranding of the series, a process that should last into June, at which point I need to decide whether I want to run a mini-Kickstarter to pay for the audio edition of the book. Not sure… I think a Kherishdar KS could be fun, and brainstormed a structure for it with the Discord folks a while back (basically, all the stretch goals are things like meta-conversations and cultural info). But deciding when to run it (if I do) is going to require me to game out the possible outcomes. Running it beforehand would allow me to recover the expenses from the audio edition at the time I’m actually paying it, but I can’t decide if it would amp up excitement for the new release, or suck away excitement and money from it. I might bat that around with the people on Discord as a focus group exercise.

But anyway! I should be done editing KH4 this month, which leaves me three or four months to write the next book, and I honestly don’t know what I’m going to pick at this point. I’m down on my revenue targets for the year and I’d like to prop them up, but at this point I’m not sure where the intersection of ‘most money’, ‘most desire’ and ‘most ready to be written’ is.

As always, I value your input! You’d be surprised how many projects got greenlighted or prioritized because some number of you started campaigning for them.

So that was April! We’re halfway through May so… we’ll see what happens next! As always, your comments, suggestions, and observations are welcome. 💖