In Absentia

I don’t know what it is, but despite the fact that I’ve barely posted over the last couple of months (and let’s be honest, this year has been a bit of a write-off so far), but I’m still getting 20 hits a day. Who are you people who keep visiting? What do you want? WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE!? I wonder if WordPress is fudging the numbers to make me feel better. Or even feel guilty. “These people come to your blog day in and day out, and do you talk to them? No. Shame on you” Well, I am ashamed. But mainly because, as a self-proclaimed ‘writer’, I really ought to be spending more time here.

As I mentioned in my pre-holiday post, I’ve been rather bogged down with this data-entry job since I was let go in May. It’s soul-crushing work, and to be honest once I finish my quota I don’t really feel like doing anything else on a computer for the rest of the day. I don’t even play many games at the moment – I’ve got a regular Battlefield 3 squad that I play with. All friends of mine from the area… It’s amazing how BF3 still holds up as being a genuinely solid experience. The only thing that lets it down now is the server populations on the DLC maps. It’s rare that I get to play on a map that was added after release these days.

Still, I’m hearing some positive noises about Battlefield 4 now, and with Hardline on the way the price has dropped in the shops, so I’ve picked up a copy to try out slowly while I wait for the rest of my friends to make the leap as well. I’ve only played one match so far online, and the only thing I’ll say is that their pre-spawn menu UI is horrible. I’m sure I’ll get used to it but I didn’t have a clue how to alter my loadouts or anything like that, or even which class I was. Weird.

Project Ascension

Since I haven’t been posting much, there’s only been a couple of blog updates since I officially announced my book – Project Ascension. You’ll be pleased to know (unless you don’t care) that I’ve now officially begun work on the second draft. I’ve had as much feedback as I’m going to get – 3/4 people read the thing the whole way through, while another couple struggled to get out of the first part. I realised pretty quickly that the first part needed a lot of work – potentially I’m looking at a complete overhaul at this point. But I got some positive feedback overall on the important parts of the book, so that’s encouraging. I’ll let you know how I’ll get on.

Job Update

Won’t waste too much of your time talking about this – but I’m doing ok. It was scary for a few months, and that is part of the reason why I took that data-entry gig, but now interesting times are ahead. I can’t talk about it too much (and I don’t want to jinx anything) but I think I’m done with games writing now. Moving into PR/Marketing work more and more, especially with some of the part-time/project gigs I’ve managed to pick up for the coming months. I may still do some writing, but it’ll be more niche stuff and few and far between I reckon. I’m saving what’s left of my writing passion for my book

Boardgames

Can’t remember how much I’ve talked about this, but I’ve gotten more and more into boardgames over the past year, especially since I lost my job. I may start talking about them more on hear as I’m currently experience the same passion for them as I used to have for videogames back in the beginning. Plus I’m also doing a Megagame in March next year, which I’m very excited about. If you don’t know what that is, go Google it. It looks immense!

That’s all for now. I should really get back to work but I know how worried you’ve all been about me.

Until next time.

Introducing: Project Ascension

Well, this is rather exciting. Last year, I told you guys I was working on my first novel, codenamed ‘Project Author’ (I have a great imagination). Yesterday, I was proud to announce that I’d officially finished the First Draft of that book, and I’m here to share a few details with you now, and to lay-out the plan for the coming weeks. So, without further ado, please say hello to Project Ascension.

“Ascension” is the current working-title for my book, which is a series of four (for the moment anyway, that could change). I haven’t decided whether I’ll just call the series ‘Ascension’, and name the books something else, or maybe have a subtitle e.g. Ascension: Awesomeness or something like that, or simply keep it to Ascension: Book One etc…, those are questions for another time, but the meaning of the word, and the theme, are fairly important to the book’s over-all plot, so I’m keen to keep it in.

If you were to go into a book store, you’d find Ascension in the SF/Fantasy section. Online, it’d be labeled under ‘Science-Fiction’ and/or ‘(a)Historical Fiction’. My goal with this series was to create something that would surprise people, that they wouldn’t be able to see coming, and I hope I’ve done that here with the first book.

Test-Readers

Do you want to be a test reader? I’ve already got some people ‘on the books’ that I’ll be sending a copy out too, but I’m keen to get as much feedback as I can. Obviously I’ve mentioned genres above… my only advice is to take those with a pinch of salt. I can’t really explain why the genre of the book is a little more complicated than most books without giving the game away too much. If you really don’t think you’d be interested in reading it though, don’t worry.

If you’re interested in test-reading my book, you can hit me up on Twitter, or email me: joe@just-communication.co.uk

I’m going to be taking a break from Project Author now for a few weeks, concentrate on career a bit, and just let the feedback collect for a while. It’ll be difficult, as I’m already itching to start changing things and making it better, but I’ve got other stuff on my plate to worry about right now anyway.

Let me know if you have any questions, and let me know if you want a test copy of the book! It’s in .PDF format, so make sure you have something you can read it on.

 

Job Update

Hello!

This is just a quick update for anyone who’s interested on my job situation. It’s fairly straight forward, but I know my circumstances has seemed a little confusing in the past, especially considering my ‘official’ move to freelancing back in 2012. Anyway, here we go:

* As of this week, I’m no longer Marketing Manager for Strategy Informer. You could think of this as a ‘contractor’-like set-up, as even though I used that title (because it was simple), I wasn’t really ’employed’ by the company because it made dealing with the HMRC more straightforward. But role has run its course now. If you’ve ever dealt with me in a capacity related to ad-sales or marketing, I’m afraid I’m no longer your point of contact. Please email Kres@strategyinformer.com and he’ll sort you out.

* I’m also, unfortunately, not going to be doing any freelance writing work for Strategy Informer in the foreseeable future. If you’ve thought of me as the ‘strategy-guy’ for Strategy Informer, or as someone who you’d generally like to see do coverage of games for that outlet, I’m afraid I can’t help you any longer. Please contact Jamie@strategyinformer.com from now on.

Moving forward

So, from today, I’m officially ‘back’ on the Job market, in the sense that I’m more actively seeking more work. I know I’ve been freelancing officially for a couple years now, but that tailed off slightly over the last 6 months or so as I got more involved in a specific project for Strategy Informer. With that work complete, I’m now ready to move on to bigger and better things.

I’ll be contacting editors again over the next week or two, trying to be more active in my dialogue with you guys, but if you want to get in touch with me my contact details are below. I’m still going to try and keep freelancing, but I’d also happily consider a more stable job. I have a mortgage to look after now, after all.

Things I Can Do

You can see my full CV on the ‘Employment‘ Page, but here are some things I’m confident I can do for you:

* Write.
* Sell your webspace to people.
* Podcasting, Streaming and more of this new fangled stuff (I have a guy).
* Events – I’m close enough to London that I can attend events if you need someone. I can be your guy.
* Think – I’m actually very good at thinking. On a serious note, I have been asked to creatively consult before (Creative Consulting is a thing).

Contact Details

You can get in touch with me through various means:

Email: joe@just-communication.co.uk
Twitter: @DigitalXentric
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/joe-robinson/20/8ab/394

50K

I’m now at 50,000 words! Yay me!

After doing some calculations, I’d be surprised if I had more than 75K when the book is finished. At the moment I’ve got a structure of three parts, with six chapters per part and averaging at 4,000 words a chapter. I was hoping to hit 90,000, but I’ve already decided that I’ll just write the story as I envision it now, and see what happens. It’ll be as long as it ends up being – what’s more important is to start getting it into the hands of some ‘beta’ readers I already have lined up, start getting some genuine feedback. Maybe then I’ll be able to add, or expand, etc… 80,000 would be a good minimum to reach.

Anyway. To celebrate this milestone, I went ahead and bought a full-time use license of the software I’ve been using to write my book – Scrivener. Let me tell  you, as someone who started off writing his book in MS Word (What WAS I thinking?), this program was a revelation. It’s really easy to get into it, and it makes working with a multi-section document like a book so much easier to interact with. I wish I’d had this for my dissertation, I wouldn’t have had to go through so many headaches in the end.

The only thing I will say is that the compiling part – where you take your work and compress it into one, neat document – was a bit fiddly. It wasn’t 100% clear what all the options were and I had to compile several times just to figure out how to get the format I wanted. Other than that though – wonderful!

It costs $40 USD/£26 to buy, and it’s worth every penny if you need to write something big. It’s also got loads of built-in multi-media features as well that I don’t need to use, but that someone else might find extremely useful.

Just Skip to the Good Bit

So, I’m halfway through my book. Ish. I think. It’s hard to tell really – I’m told the average fiction novel is around 90,000 words, and I’m at 41/42k at the moment. So I’m halfway from that average, but in terms of what I’ve actually done, I’ve got a whole ‘third’ of the book nailed down (working with three parts at the moment), with the rest still very much WIP. Still I’m running into a bit of a problem when it comes to writing some of these other sections. It’s mostly writers block derived from the fact that I haven’t properly mapped these segments of the book, but the plainest way I can sum up problem is the fact that I’ve written all the ‘good’ bits.

When I first came up with the idea for my book, there were several key set-pieces and scenes I envisioned which summed up the main plot points. Granted, these scenes went over a lot of revision (I’ll have to talk about how the book looked at the beginning vs. how it looks now at some point), but I was still mainly working with the same handful of scenes to begin with. Now they are written, I’m basically filling in the blanks, and It’s kind of boring. Probably my fault for not thinking of something more interesting to put in these scenes – I can work on it I guess as there’s still a lot to do.

Another problem I have though is that If I think out a scene TOO much in my head, I know what’s going to happen already as I write it, and that saps me of my will to get it on the page.

It’ll all work out hopefully. The way I write means I’m often hopping forwards and backwards along an article or document, and then as the blanks get filled in I then re-write bits so they stitch together easily. Main thing though is to bash out that first draft, then I can relax a bit and get to the real work.

Scared to look over the Hill (Project Author Update)

As I mentioned in a previous post – I’m writing my first novel. Project Author is coming along alright, I think: I’m on 35,000 words, which while not even being close to half done yet (I hope), is still the longest single piece of work I’ve ever written. At the moment I’m working to three parts, with Part One being more or less finished. Working on Part Two now, which is proving a bit more difficult to write. When writing reviews etc…, if I get stuck I usually just go write another paragraph, like the conclusion or just a thought I had, and then jump around and slowly tie everything together, re-writing as needed. I’ve been doing that with my book as well, but the problem is everything is on such a larger scale that the tiniest change could mean I spend a couple of hours re-writing everything. It’s a bit of a drain on the enthusiasm tank, but I’m powering through.

The main thing I’m worried about at the moment though is what happens when I’ve finished. What happens when I reach the ‘summit’? Even before I started this, I’ve always followed one or two authors on twitter out of personal interest (John Scalzi, for one, is really interesting). From time to time these people will tweet, or re-tweet information and links about book publishing in all its forms. Sometimes friends of mine who happen to like reading as well will post some articles, like this post today about a fiction-author getting back at the people who fired her. Anyway – since starting Project Author for realz, I’ve been paying more attention to this kind of stuff, as obviously it’s going to be something I’ll have to deal with when I’ve finished my book. Honestly, I’m a little bit apprehensive about it all.

From what I can tell, self-publishing seems the way to go at the moment. For one, there’s a lower barrier for entry as there are many established platforms in existence now for selling your book online. Also, considering this is my first book, I’ll definitely appreciated the fact that A/ I’m in total control and B/ I get all the money. From what I’ve read, Publishing House Contracts haven’t gotten much better as the decline of print means these big behemoths have to fight harder to maintain their bottom line. I understand it, I can even appreciate it, but it doesn’t mean I like it. Also, it’s important I don’t get caught out by the fact that my favourite authors are also fairly successful, and they are barely a handful of people out of the multitude of authors – aspiring or not – out there right now. Not everyone makes it, so if I’m going to fail I’d rather fail on my own terms.

That’s not to say I’ll never go down the traditional publishing route – my book is only part one of a series that I can continue for an additional 3-4 books. The general plan, at the moment, is to start with EBooks, get a following, get some numbers and ‘PR’ behind me, and then at some point use that to go to a publishing house so that I can get a special paper edition made or something, and use my past success to leverage a better deal.

But then I don’t really know anything, so that probably won’t work. I’m trying not to waste too much time researching book publishing at the moment because, honestly, the more I read the more depressed I get about the industry. I want to write this book, and I want to get it out there. If I’m lucky, it’ll supplement or be a nice addition to my existing income. Whether I’ll write the rest of the series if it’s a financial flop is a bridge I’ll have to cross when I get to it. They always say get into book writing for the love of it, not the money, but my own personal circumstances mean I’m very much aware of how I spend my time, and how much money that brings in. Gots bills to pay, yo.

I’m already nervous because I don’t know the book is even going to be any good. Everyone I tell loves the idea, but having a great idea and then putting it to words are different things. But I plan to have some extensive ‘beta’ testing, so hopefully I’ll be able to work it into something majestic. I also plan to be smart about this – I’ll use my own money to hire proper copy-proofers, commission some nice cover art, and I may even approach an agent just to get their opinion on the book, possibly even sign up if they can help me with E-publishing.

Wish me luck.