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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

Lurking Musings

Category Archives: Productivity

Gods of the Deep

20 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Productivity, Publicity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#MAEG2016, EasterCon, Friday 13th, Gods of the Deep, gods of the sea, GRR Martin, JF Holland, Kindle, Lauren C Waterworth, Paperback book, Pirates, Steampunk fair, swashbucklers, writing


Well, it has been a long time coming. It seems like I have been talking about a sequel to Gods of the Sea ever since the Pirates and Swashbucklers anthology first came out all those years ago. In fact, it was quite ominously Friday 13th April 2012 when I reported to you all that I had got an email from the publisher of Pirates and Swashbucklers asking me to do a sequel.

And now, four years and approximately three months later… you can buy the completed book in both Kindle and paperback formats. gods of the deep postcard

Ok, I admit I was slow in getting this done but this project has gone further than I imagined it would. Plus I think I can still claim a faster turnaround than GRR Martin at the moment. What started as an idea for a  relatively  small novella turned into a much longer work and now includes two bonus short stories that explore the wider world in addition to a newly edited and tidied up version of Gods of the Sea which now serves as what I describe in the foreword as being similar to that scene in a Bond film just before the theme music plays.

And that is not the only thing that is special about this release. In addition to the wonderful cover produced by fellow Steampunk market trader and artist supreme, Lauren C Waterworth, you also have internal illustrations derived from the sketches that she made when creating the cover to coo over. If you like the cover, by the way, you should totally check out her facebook page and see if you can buy prints of her artwork. .

The official launch will be taking place at the Manchester Author event on the 13th August 2016. You can buy tickets for this event here. There I will be signing copies of both Gods of the Deep and Lurking Miscellany. I am also attending another signing event in Sandbach in November and Chester in April 2017. Finally I am also an attendee at Inominate, the Birmingham run Eastercon in April next year where I am hoping to be on some panels again. If you see me at any of these events feel free to pop over and say hi. Also, if you want to pre-order a signed copy of any of my books you can order them using this handy form and they can be delivered to you at the event of your choice.

You can also expect to see me sneaking into some other peoples’ blogs and messing around in there, getting mud on all the furnishings. I’ll post links to these as they go up. In fact there is one here for the Addicted to Reviews blog which went up earlier today. Go check it out and give the owner some love.

Finally, I am staging a stealth raid on the Manchester Author event Facebook page this Thursday (21st June). I will be taking control of the mic around 1030 GMT and holding onto it like grim death until it is wrested from my cold dead hands at 11pm by JF Holland. Come to the page to check out what nonsense I will spout. If it is anything like my last page takeover, expect some musical links to my books and some extracts… If you are lucky there may even be dog photos.

Don’t forget… buy your copies of Gods of the Deep as soon as you can!

[Vampire Month] A 90% eclipse of the heart

20 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Productivity, Vampire Month

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

eclipse vampires


So today there was an eclipse. A solar eclipse, in fact.

Luckily, the Vampires did not take the opportunity to rise up and eat us all. I’m choosing to take that as a success, since clearly the awareness campaign that is Vampire Month on this blog has them running scared. Score one for the good guys. Well, the slightly more good than some other guys…

Of course some might say this was only a 90% eclipse and Vamps wouldn’t get out of bed for less than 100% but to those doubters I say pah!

Anyway, I took a photo of the eclipse (safely, without looking) and here it is…

image

I might post a better (edited) one later…

Transitions release

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Productivity, Publicity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Amazon, BBW Romance writers, paranormal romance, Publication, very reasonable price, writing


As per my post earlier in the week, I am here to announce that Transitions, my paranormal romance novella, is now officially released in a number of ebook formats!

The link to purchase the novella from the publisher is here:

Buy Transitions now

So, anyone who wants to read this story may now do so for the very reasonable price of $2.99 (what is that in real money? I always get confused by exchange rates…) in kindle, nook and other formats.

 

Transitions – Release information

20 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Productivity, Publicity

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

BBW Anthology project, BBW Romance writers, books, Cover design, Cover reveal, ebook release, mundania press, Novella, release date, Transitions


Well, it is finally here…. all the hard work has come together and my novella, Transitions, is finally about to be released.

Tomorrow, in fact… but you wonderful readers of this blog get the heads up a day early and a quick sneak preview of the cover and blurb.

Click here to go to the webpage for the upcoming release

Some time soon (hopefully over the next 24 hours) this page will change to a current release and links will be added to allow you to purchase this novella as an ebook. When that happens I will do another post and give you all the links I know about for places where you may purchase it.

Note, this is an ebook release. If you want to read this novella in a more old fashioned, olde timey format such as paper you will have to wait until all the novellas in the series have been released and we put together the paperback collection of all of them. Until then, I hope you enjoy the pixelatted version…

 

Sequel Fear…

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Productivity

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Pirates and Swashbucklers, plagiarism, Sequels, swashbucklers, writing


I got a scary e-mail in my inbox this morning. Good mail with an intriguing possibility but scary nontheless…

The publisher of Pirates and Swashbucklers wants to do a sequel, another collection of pirate themed short stories. All the authors of the previous volume are being invited to submit proposals for stories they want to write for it. Sequels to the stories in the first volume are welcomed, as are new ideas.

Of course, my brain was immediately clamouring for my attention with several hundred ideas for what I could write for this. Some of them better than others. Some of them downright dire and some possibly a little too close to plagiarism to be comfortable (a version of the Usual Suspects set in a pirate milieu, for example…). The problem is: how can you decide which one? And how can you tell if what you are about to write is going to be great?

I suppose everyone has sequel fear. How can you follow that which has gone before? if you feel like commenting, why not talk about your favourite sequel or how you managed to overcome sequel fear…

As for me, I need to get back to deciding which of the hundreds of ideas I have floating around my head…

Secret Project and productivity update

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings, Productivity, Secret Project of Secretness

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

#amwriting, productivity, Secret Project, word counts, Writers' Block


This picture is here for no good reason. Nothing to do with the post at all, honest...

I just got an awesome bit of feedback about a piece I wrote for the secret project I am working on. Apparently they liked it 🙂 I suppose it is one of the advantages of a set up like Dropbox and shared folders. Everytime I update a file in the Dropbox folder, the person I am writing this for gets an instant notification that there is something there for him to read.

Of course, the disadvantage of this is that everytime I update a file, he gets a notification that there is something for him to read…

Anyway, the upshot of this is that the secret project is going wonderfully and at some point over the next month or so I may even be in a position to tell you all what exactly it is. Assuming I manage to make the deadlines, which is where the next bit of this post comes in. Productivity…

This photo is also here for no reason. Enjoy.

My productivity plan is going great with one exception. I have been useless at remembering to post the word counts to Twitter every day. I have been managing to write 200 words a day minimum, every day except weekends and ‘official holidays’ (defined as days where my wife has a day off or days that everyone else in the country considers a holiday such as Bank Holidays). On most days I have more than exceeded that target (today’s, for example, is well over a thousand and today is a Sunday so I was officially ‘off duty’). I am therefore still declaring this method as a success because it has got me writing every day, avoided the ‘no productivity doldrums’ and generally increased my output. Now, the flaw to this is that only doing 200 a day is not likely to see a novel completed in any short time scale but as I said, I only see this as a minimum target, not a maximum. On average I am between 200 and 1000 words a day with the 200s only really coming out on days I am working fulltime. This contrasts with previous efforts to improve productivity by setting a high target of 1000 – 2000 words a day when I soon gave up because there were days where this was not possible.

Therefore, in conclusion, I heartily recommend this method if you find the more traditional ones not to your taste.

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