Wrapping Up the First Draft Today
My next book is inching closer to hitting the shelves.
As of this morning, I am 1,387 words from hitting my goal of 75,000 for the first draft of Shadows of Atlantic City. I am relatively confident that I’ll finish writing it during the YouTube sprints today. Then comes the fun part of polishing up a bit of the story before sending it off to beta readers. At that point, I’ll take a four-week break before editing Shadows while looking for cover art.
It’s quite exciting, actually. This is the first time that I really dove into writing a “Western,” despite the fact that it takes place in Atlantic City. Still, I tried to capture the ambiance and know that I need to tweak it here and there to provide a proper backdrop of 1874 on the East Coast.
Sure, I wrote The Crate for Vocal a couple of years ago. But that was merely a 3,000-word short story for a contest. Shadows of Atlantic City is a much different animal, altogether.
What’s Next on the Agenda?
Once the first draft is written, I plan on spending a couple of days polishing it up. There are quite a few sections that could use a bit of detail and cleaning. I’ll go through the notes that Tom Bromley provided during the Reedsy masterclass and try to put into practice everything I learned through those classes.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I plan on writing Fury, the sequel to Kingmaker, during the four-week pause. I’m also setting up a series of videos of everything I do to self-publish and market Shadows of Atlantic City. I uploaded something similar when I published A Freelancer’s Tale, but I don’t think I went into as much detail as I could.
I’m also debating on making playlists for each of my books to show the differences in approach depending on genre, style, and various tools. For instance, I plan on using AutoCrit to check for errors after polishing up the first draft. I’m curious to see what AI thinks versus what beta readers find. It’ll be an interesting case study to show the difference between bots and humans.
Anyway, everything is still on pace to publish three books this year. It helped that I was already more than halfway through them before the year even began. Not to mention how pivotal the live writing sprints have been on YouTube.
There’s something to be said when you have accountability from the public.
Also, keep in mind that the third book I plan on “publishing” this year is the free eBook on Wattpad - VII. It’s a story I started back in 2016 but desperately needs to be rewritten.
I’ve learned a lot over the past eight years.
I plan on doing a lot more with Wattpad and Inkitt once I start getting the loose ends tied up with everything I’m writing. Sure, I’d love to sell a few copies of my books and make a couple of bucks. But I also like the idea that anyone can read my stories for free on those platforms. Plus, it has the added bonus of potentially growing an audience for future works.
When Will Shadows Be Published?
That’s a hard question to answer, actually. It really depends on how much reworking I have to do to improve the overall quality of the book. I don’t just publish everything I write, as I want every book to be the best quality I can muster.
Seriously, Kingmaker took a couple of months longer to publish than I wanted, mostly because I rewrote the main character and vastly improved the flow of the story. It was more work and an extra 12,000 words. However, I feel Kingmaker turned out for the better because of the effort.
Ideally, I would love to see Shadows on my bookshelf by my birthday in July. But that is coming up rather quickly, so I don’t know if that’s going to be a possibility. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how people feel about the story itself.
Based on the progress I’ve made on my books over the past few weeks, though, I am confident that Shadows should be out by mid to late August. Fury might be close behind simply because I’m already 34,000 words into it. I still think that I might be done writing Fury before the 4-week break is up for Shadows.
Possibility of a Giveaway in the Future
I love doing giveaways of my books. A lot of people do them for the sheer market value, as doing a giveaway correctly can vastly grow your audience. However, I like doing them because they are fun and I love the interaction. Plus, authors love the idea that somewhere in the world, their book with their name on the spine is sitting on someone’s bookshelf.
I didn’t do a giveaway for Kingmaker, but most of that is because of the sheer chaos and stress I’ve had to endure over the past couple of years. I’m still trying to get back into my stride.
In any case, I am toying with the idea of doing another giveaway for subscribers on Substack, MichaelBrockbank.com, and YouTube. That’s because not everyone follows me on all of the accounts. Although I have a few fans who follow everything I do, I know for a fact that some people who read the blog don’t watch the YouTube videos. And some people on YouTube don’t even realize I have a Substack account.
But, if I do set up a giveaway, I’ll make sure that those who do follow me on everything only win once. So, don’t think you’re going to get four signed books - C. :)
Keep in mind that this is in addition to the signed copies I already send out to my members on Buy Me a Coffee.
Looking Forward to Feedback
I am truly excited to see what people think of the new book. It’s a new genre, point-of-view, and layout than what I am used to writing. A lot of research went into this one and I am quite proud of the work I’ve put into it thus far.
Now, let’s hope everyone else loves the book as much as I do.