“Unprofitable” in the literal sense: my writing cash flow is the lowest it’s been in a couple of years. One rejection today from a good-paying market. A possible client who said they’d be in touch has ghosted so I’m guessing they found a writer they liked better. But one of my rules is to keep writing even if the cash flow is low. I managed that.
I completed another chapter of Let No Man Put Asunder which puts it over the 10,000 words I wanted to finish this month. I do think I’ll have to go back and rewrite a couple of fight scenes — I was reading up on fight-scene construction today — but overall I’m very pleased.
Last week I mentioned I had problems with the mystery plot of Mage’s Masquerade and the villain’s motive for using a rather clumsy plan. Much to my surprise, when I sat down this week the solution came fairly quickly (I’ll blog about it soon). I think the story’s looking much better.
Plus I put in a lot of work on The History Arcane, including changing the title. I have enough 20th century works that I can make a slightly smaller anthology purely drawn from that era; I think that gives it a stronger feel so I’m going with it. The title is therefore changed to 19 ♾️, which one of my writing friends suggested (I forgot whom, alas). I also put in a lot of time with initial editing and straightening up the manuscript; some of the stories date back to when I’d use underlining to indicate italics rather than just italics (that’s how it used to be done). I’m also going to try for a bigger publicity push and see if I can sell more books. Though I did sell another digital copy of Questionable Minds this week — thank you, whoever you were!
That’s pretty much it, but it’s a satisfactory work week. Two months into 2023 and it seems I still have game.
#SFWApro. Cover by Samantha Collins, all rights remain with me.
Fraser Sherman's Blog 