Reason For Vengeance

After a couple of days off to spend with my daughter and see my brand new niece (who is gorgeous) I was back to work yesterday.  No actual writing done but I edited the new prologue again.  I'll do another run at it after I've written this and print off a couple of copies for my proof readers who are coming round today anyway.

Once that was done I spent some time working out how to create EPUB, MOBI and PDF files from a Word DOCX.  After a bit of digging I found a program called Calibre that made it very easy to do.  The good news is that I can convert the file without a large amount of changes and that will save me a lot of time once it is ready for publication.  I also came across a UK start up publisher called Huffier who wants to take on Amazon.  Pretty ambitious but if I get on the ground floor it could help a lot to have my book in there where there is little competition. 

The ITIN number to stop me having to pay the US 30% of my gross is not easy.  I've now contacted two firms and neither even know which department I need to speak to.  I have left messages but no one has come back to me yet.  Oh well I'll keep trying.

Return to Vengeance

Yep I am back on Return and it has been a full day.

I started with an edit of Reason's prologue before reading through the 18,000 words I had already completed for Return to make sure I was up to speed and in the right frame of mind.  That took me to lunch so I set myself a 3,000 word target for the day.  It was a little stretching but I felt in the right frame of mood.

Well I can confirm that I hit that target and Return now sits at 21,000 words.

This evening I'm rewarding myself by going to see Guardians of the Galaxy with a bag of minstrels.  I do like them, they are perfect for the cinema - chocolate that doesn't melt!

Tomorrow I have my daughter all day which is always fun and then I am heading home to Essex as I have a brand new niece to see who was born just today.

All in all, you can't get better than this.  Hmm.  I just wrote this in one hit with no spelling or typo errors.  I can really feel my writing improving with practice.

Reason For Vengeance

A good day.  I completed everything that I wanted to do.

Prologue is re-written and I started the ball rolling on obtaining a ITIN code from the IRS.  I phoned Pricewaterhousecooper (stupid name) and left a message after being passed around several departments.  Unsurprisingly they did not phone back.  I'll try another one on the list tomorrow.  This one is a bit better as their office is right next to Euston Station and that will be easier to get to when I go to London in a few weeks time.

Finally I re-wrote my notes from my 'jot everything down' book to a new 'these are the hard and fast rules of the Dark Vengeance world book.'  It'll make it a lot easier to find things later on.

Reason For Vengeance

Well I did it.  All the amendments are complete, including all the inconsistantcies that I've found.  It will be interesting to see what Richard and Graham come back with next Saturday.

Tomorrow I can get down to re-writing the Prologue.  Hopefully I can do that in a day as it won't be more than five thousnad words and I can do that easily enough.

Now for a well earned sit in the sunshine with Stella Gemmell's The City.  Also the BTCC are racing today so I'll watch those as well.

Reason For Vengeance

Yep made up for lost time this afternoon.  My daughter slept for over an hour and a half.  Bless her, she would have kept going if I hadn't woken her up.  It wouldn't be fair to her mother if I handed her back out of sync so that she wouldn't go to bed until late.

I managed fifty pages while she slept and a further seventy after I dropped her off.  I also sorted out four inconsistancies.  I think these can be the most important errors possible for an author.  In three cases it only took a sentance or two to sort them out.  The last just meant me re-writing a hundred words.

Tomorrow I'm going to finish the amendments and get the last two inconsistancies sorted as well.  That will make up for my lazy week.  I can then get the re-write of the Prologue done for the guys to have a read through on Saturday.

Reason For Vengeance

Not such a great day yesterday.  I spent a couple of hours on my web profile which was longer than I wanted before getting to work on the amendments.  Only 20 pages in I got caught on a consistancy issue and spent the rest of the day working out how to over come it realistically.

I could have easily bypassed it and continued but I wanted to make sure I didn't miss it.  I've got my daughter today and she is down for a nap right now so I'm going to see how much I can get done to try and make up for it.

Reason For Vengeance

Finished the edit yesterday and got started on the amendments, 70 pages down and 210 to go.

I received my first rejection letter as well yesterday.  I had only sent it out to one agent and that was before the book was ready.  They had a limited window for submissions so I thought that I had nothing to lose.

Despite being a rejection it has actually given me a bit of a boost, they said:

Dear Adrian, 

Thank you so much for sending through the first chapters and synopsis of Reason for Vengeance. 

I enjoyed what I read and thought it had some obvious strengths. Unfortunately, however, we have decided that it's not quite what we're looking for at the moment. 

Given the large number of submissions we have received, we are unable to give feedback, but I'd like to thank you again for thinking of us. 

I wish you all the very best in your search for representation. I'm sorry not to be of more help in this instance.

Kind regards, 

This means I'm on the right track.  I can do this.