Read about this week’s progress by P. H. Solomon with The Unseen Hand and other projects.
Hello and Happy Monday to everyone! PH here with a weekly progress report. This weekly post is meant to keep me honest about how much I’m doing as well as keep readers informed. As such, the post format may change as some projects progress or roll off the active list due to completion. Regardless, my intention is to keep everyone informed of progress on various items, especially new books up to release. Let’s get started!
Last week was better in terms of amount of work done on projects. One aspect of my revision and editing was going back to a tried and true process I use with spreadsheets in order to better track what I want to change and how in manuscripts. It seem like a lot of extra work, but it allows me to go through a survey and then put the plans into action quickly. One of my main problems remains my odd symptoms, especially fatigue and brain fog. Sometimes, I have insomnia so I just work which helps me get tired and push toward my goals. I’m working with my issues as best I can.
The Unseen Hand
The Unseen Hand continues to more forward. I made substantial progress editing newer content for the epilogue adventure/case. There were some newer ideas about presentation that came to me and I worked a long time to implement them. This portion of the book is taking solid shape and I expect to complete it later this week.
The remaining content from the manuscript has been edited previously and only needs to be fully revised for consistency with the new epilogue and other series arch developments. I expect to start working thoroughly through these portions of the book next week and make solid advances toward the self-imposed mid-June deadline.
A Charm in the Hand
I’ve made significant progress through the end of the manuscript this week. I’m not quite to the end, but expect to finish this phase of the draft tonight or tomorrow. Using my editing technique as well as working in Word helped me review the draft much better than I had been. Separating the remaining content gave me more focus. I look forward to sending this one off to my editor soon and letting the book begin to take shape.
Update: I’m rather exhausted so I won’t complete this tonight. Tomorrow is better, then moving on to work on All Things Forgotten.
Added Project: All Things Forgotten
Some progress was made on this project during last week. However, I made a decision to make a major push with on during this week. I’ll rely heavily on my editing process to make as fast a survey of the draft as possible and then make changes. If I don’t see that I can complete it, I’ll try to make as many changes as I can and look to having the best consistency possible throughout the book while touching up main issues.
The primary goal for this book is getting it in the best possible shape for the promo submission, then completing the work over the summer for an October release. If the book is not accepted in the promo, then it will be just that much further along and I’ll probably slide the release day to a later time so I can work on the other books and The Cursed Mage Case Files.
Miscellaneous Projects
The same projects remain on my radar:
- Upgrading Archer’s Aim (this site) to a newer theme. My intention is upgrading this site using a service depending on funding. I’m still in flux about scheduling the work, but this is in the works as I progress with the various details of the business and the imprint development.
The imprint is well underway at this time:
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- ISBNs should be purchased this week.
- The website may be built by a third party, it just depends on my funding (see below).
I’ve taken steps over the last week to taking myself more serious from the business side of things. Doing this will allow me more flexibility with marketing, business funding, and actually being an imprint. I feel this is important so I’m working on the imprint from a different angle and will making more specific announcements when the time comes. However, the intention is to soon have print editions available for marketing to bookstores during the summer.
Still no word from Podium and I’m not surprised. However, I will probably contact someone directly to gauge interest as some point during June when I have more concrete details about the release of the next two books.
Here’s the past post about the subject for those who are interested:
The Unseen Hand submitted to my audio publisher, Podium Audio
That’s all for the week that was. I hope readers get an idea of what it’s like for a self-publishing author, let alone any author. It’s always busy since this post doesn’t cover the rest of what needs my attention, as well as my health concerns.
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In addition to the world-building, I’m working to split my initial book for RM into three books. Yes, it was that long and required I make the move after consulting with my editor who has been a big help. In conjunction with the world-building, I’m creating consistency throughout the books and include all the various points that occur in the books so that they don’t jar a reader with mistakes. Likewise, and I don’t want to share too much at this point, the book is organized in a different story-arc so I must create a balance of understandable progression that avoids confusion. It’s a challenging book in many ways with the depth of characterization, world-building and story details that it seems like a very tangled mess at times. Organizing the content and the details is a frustratingly slow process at times because I’m dedicated to making the book as fun and excellent as possible. Developing a user guide and writing some blog posts to use in the future help ground my thinking about the entirety of the series and the first book afford me clarity about it all. I am dedicated to completing and releasing the first book this year, maybe a second or third since I have the basic content available. Once I have the first book developed and edited enough, the next two books should be much easier to complete. But I’ll have to get there to know for sure.
Additionally, working with my artist regarding a thematic set of series covers is on the to-do list. Likewise, I’m going to print upon launch so I’ll be working with a formatter as editing on the first book progresses. Interestingly, I’ll also approach my audio publisher with the books in hopes they will pick the series up in time for launch or soon thereafter. My feeling on audio is that this will depend on possible pre-launch sales so it may well arrive several month later than the first book. But, if the series is accepted, the next two books may will be in audio when those are launched. The production of the series is it’s own job but I’ve done it previously and know what I want to do with this series more than my first one.