Midweek Check-in: #ROW80 and Operation G.I.T.

So I was supposed to start back on Riven last week.  But I was conversing with Important Peeps about launch plans for Red, doing the final line edits to make sure all my commas were in the right place and my typos corrected, and then I was out of town over the weekend, so all in all Riven just kinda sat there other than figuring out a plot detail I have yet to commit to paper.  Or, you know, file.  C’est la vie.

Red is OUT. Yay.

It peaked here on opening day at Amazon:

You can currently purchase it from Smashwords, Amazon, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, Barnes and Noble, and All Romance EBooks.   For those who would like to purchase from Sony, Kobo, Diesel Ebooks, or the Apple iBookstore, it’s coming.  Those are expanded distribution channels from Smashwords, so it takes a little while to populate.

So then I was going to start Riven on Monday.  But I had to rewrite my synopsis for Red for the pitch, which was, as usual a pain in the patootie.  I cannot condense the awesome of 300 pages into 3.  Here’s my preferred synopsis: Girl meets boy.  Bad crap happens.  Good guys win.  Read the damn book.  Apparently that doesn’t count.  But multiple people have assured me that EVERYBODY’S synopsis is totally craptastic and is merely a formality.  Hope springs eternal.  It’s gone now.

So Tuesday, I finally open up Riven.  I write 65 words and stare for a while.  Because, um, I’ve forgotten my heroine’s voice for this story?  Third person very different from the first person sass of my little teenage werewolf.  :headdesk:

I keep harboring this notion of working on multiple projects at once, someday down the line when writing is all I’m doing as a job.  But I just don’t think my brain works that way.  At least not with projects at the same stage.  I can plot one and write another (as evidenced by all the new blueprints I began while I was working on Red).  I can edit one and write another.  But I can’t write two different things at once.  At least not two very different things.  Maybe two things in the same world with the same voice.  We shall see.

Right now I’m not quite sure when I’m gonna get back to Riven because I’ve got a crapton of promo stuff to do for Red.  Which is not what you would call a goal by my definition, now is it?  So here we go:

  • This week I will reread Riven.  Yes, again.  Because I’ve got too much of Red in my head.
  • I will do at least two things toward promo each day.
  • After my re-read, I will write 500 words a day on Riven, even if they suck.

On the G.I.T. front, despite having a nice 5 day streak last week, I undid it all over the weekend in Atlanta.  There was Brazilian steakhouse.  Cheesecake.  Cracker Barrel.  What can I say, I’m weak in the face of temptation.

But I’m back to it this week and I am re-incorporating weights.  Instead of jumping in whole hog, as I am wont to do, I’m easing back in with Jorge Cruise’s 8 Minutes in the Morning, which is a 28 day program of weight training that takes, as you would expect, 8 minutes in the morning.  There’s more to it than the weights, but I’ve got the rest covered via my own means with yoga, boxing, walking, and the exercise bike.  Once I’m done with the first 28 days, then I’ll re-evaluate to see whether I’ll do that again with heavier weights or jump over to Tom Venuto’s Body Fat Solution which takes closer to 20 minutes, but is only 3 days a week instead of 6.  We shall see.

7 thoughts on “Midweek Check-in: #ROW80 and Operation G.I.T.

  1. Congratulations on the sales of RED. I plan to buy it once payday has arrived. My sales have been a little slow, but hopefully they will pick up. Maybe I will see you at the top! If Red is anywhere near as good as your other books then the top is where it is heading.

  2. Belated congratulations on the release of Red!

    It must be really hard when you finish one project to go straight into another especially when the finished project still needs some of your time. I hope the next week goes really well for you.

  3. The first time someone told me “I read the blurb and it sounds really interesting,” I’m sure I gave them a sideways look and responded: “Really? That crappy thing?” I know, I know, blurbs are important and I tried really hard to make mine enticing (and apparently had some success), but gah I still feel like doing an auto-generated word cloud of the book on the back instead. (Incidentally, underscoring it with “Read the damn book” would fit right in).

    I’m not an ambi-writer either, Kait. One “main” project at a time. Something I’ve found that helps me when I jump from the 1st person project to the 3rd person is to make sure I’m reading a book in the appropriate POV. I have a list of to-read books with that in mind. I’ve found reading the POV drastically helps to get back in the flow of writing it.

    Best of luck on the next project!

  4. Oh yes, I can’t even blurb myself without sounding moronic. I’m gearing up for an Author bio to put our early next week after I get headshots done. OMG. It’s like pulling teeth. What an amazing (and high paying I bet!) job it’d be for someone to JUST write bios and synopsis.

    Good job on the fitness goals! I am hopefully getting some stuf soon to help me out in that area. I’m hoping it’ll help me not be so. darn. tired. all the time.

  5. Tom Venuto is awesome!! I bought his Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle years ago and slimmed like fury on it. Then I managed to lose the programme somewhere when changing from one laptop to another 🙁 You might like to try Turbulence Training at some point, by Craig Ballantyne. That works!! It’s about 40 minutes a day, 3 days a week. Took me 45 – 50 but did it ever work? I lost inches everywhere in three weeks.

  6. I worked my writing career system down to three P buckets. Production, Publication and Promotion. ironically filling the Promotion bucket is easier at the moment. Maybe because I am procrastinating on my editing. Good thing I don’t have a Procrastination bucket because that will be overflowing.
    Some say the best marketing for your current book is the next book you are writing so if you do two things AND write on Riven the you are in fact doing three things. Good for you!

  7. I can’t wait to read Red. When I downloaded it from Smashwords I read the first page, and I could hardly put it back down. Must finish another book first, and then I’ll read yours. 🙂

    I am considering two writing projects at once, because while working on one, the voices of characters from another world are getting louder. And I think I have a long way to go on the first project; it isn’t shaping up to be a quick write. I wonder if I could swing two at once if I wrote one in the evenings?

    You’re right the promo side of things can sure suck up time. Good luck with Red!

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