Just a quick note, I just finished roughing out the 6th short story of the week... the final one for 13 Degrees of Separation!
Yup, I started Monday by passing Jethro 2 off to Gord, then went on to work on the cover art for the book. I roughed out the Skyhawk/Warhawk in Inspire 3D, worked on Pirates Bane a bit, but then I got sidetracked by taking dad and the family out to a steakhouse for dad's 63rd birthday, and then a short story got stuck in my head and just wouldn't go away.
One thing led to another and I ended up first roughing it out... and then writing it out. It is in the Founding of the Federation timeline. (The First Steps series I have yet to get back to) When I had it roughed out I picked up on another story in that time period I had half finished and finished it. Then I jumped to the Gottenburg timeline and finished 2 stories there! Finally today, I finished the last 2 remaining stories in the Wandering Engineer timeline, (despite having to listen to dad snore through 9 hours of Barrette Jackson) thus finishing 13 Degrees of Separation! I even got all the stories in the manuscript, the front matter, and most of the back matter! It's all ready to go to Gord!
Wow! Cool! I am so on a roll! lol WOOT WOOT!
So, I am so psyched! And no, not because it is my 13th book. (Yes I know, I have 8 published and now 4 in the pipeline. There is another....GRRR Go away Yoda!)
Any who, I really am pretty jazzed. I'm going to go hit the Ice cream and kick back. Tomorrow is another day. Dad's actual Birthday. :)
EDIT: I forgot to mention, Mechmaster is down to 80 pages of Princess Rescue Inc. Since he's off for the next 10 days he (and I) are hoping he'll get the rest done... and get more of his climactic battle to his Dalek comic done. (I know, ambitious) Well, anyway, here's hoping!
Gord just told me he's half done Jethro 2! Cool!
Hopefully next post I'll have more to show regarding the cover of Jethro 2!
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Sorry for the delay! I goofed on the spelling of 'Separation' (separation) on Amazon, I'll correct it shortly. The manuscript...
Chris;
ReplyDeleteI have really enjoyed your Wandering Engineer stories to this point. Good plot and the stories move along well. There is however one over-riding issue that you have still not overcome: The proofreading and editing of your work is abysmal. You really need to find someone proficient with the English language to proof these works. See the following link for all the reasons why.
http://mattgemmell.com/2013/08/15/language-skills/
I also would be pleased to help if you want. I have been writing technical training materials for over 20 years, and have some small experitse with the language. I can be reached at imagestealer@gmail.com if you are interested.
Any update on Jethro2?
ReplyDeleteMR. Thomson:
ReplyDeleteWow. Okay, I thought things were improving, with the volunteers. Sorry to hear that.
Really, wow. Okay...
Jethro 2 has been passed on to Jim. The first 3 people said it was remarkably clean, with less than half the normal errors.
I am also working on the cover art, I have Jethro and a ship to finish before that is done. I'll post some WIP shots later in the week or on the weekend.
13 Degrees of Separation is in the hands of 2 of the volunteers. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully better since over half the stories have already been edited by the volunteers. :)
Ok, I am not a native English speaking person, but the word abysmal is way to harsh in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI have read so many other books that I struggle with due to the english leaving me so many hickups (not easy to read).
The Wandering Engineer have none of that in my humble opinion. For sure, yes there are some issues here and there (I admit I find very few though) but not significant enough to bother me at all.
The last book was a major improvement in terms of editing with only a few errors that I noticed. Not sure why this is such a sticking point for people. I don't exactly go into Scifi books for writing lessons, it's about the story people! Sure the first few books were rougher then I'm used too, but in context with the 600+ page story most of these books contain it's a minor problem. This has been steadily improving per book so constantly complaining to the author about this isn't helping.
ReplyDeleteThe only suggestion I can give is to have the older books edited now that you have several volunteers and release a revised version. As long as it's not a huge drain of your time from future works it might stop some of the criticism. More books are the priority though, need to find out what happens!
agreed with the above comment, editing has definitely improved and I really see no issues there. If you wanted to help with the proofreading, say so. More books should be the priority, with the current editing process in place. Looking forward to Jethro 2
ReplyDeleteThank you folks.
ReplyDeleteJacob and Thomas have taken a hand with editing some of the first books after I went back and cleaned them up. (I applied a lot of the lessons I learned there) I think the only 2 books that haven't gotten edited by someone other than me is First Steps and Bootstrap Colony. (though Mechmaster did try with Bootstrap)
Currently in the pipeline:
PRI being edited by Mechmaster after being edited by 5 other people. Hopefully he will be finished by the end of the month or sometime next month. (fingers crossed) Once I get it back I'll tidy up any loose ends he reports, fix the TOC and then publish it.
Afraid of the Dark: Edited by 2 people other than me and half edited by Mechmaster. I am currently sitting on it shopping it around.
Jethro 2 is in the hands of a third volunteer editor, he just reported he is 20 pages into it (out of 384) and has only found 2 errors.
13 Degrees of Separation is in Gord hands. Thomas has it as well but is only reading it. Half the stories have already be edited by 3 or more individuals.
Book 6, Alive, and Jethro 3, Book 7, Book 8-10 and another 3 short story books are in various stages of development.
Oh, and I'm slowly coming along with the cover art as well. You should be seeing Firefly soon. Right now I am focused on that, despite getting annoying thoughts on scenes for book 6! :)
Just finished Bootstrap a few days ago, seemed decent on editing. Just was a little light on the into sequences so it took a few chapters to figure out what was going on. Kept waiting to hear more about Bob (I love those marines, lol) and how he helped set things up. Working my way through First Steps but it's slow going. The inserting of familiar character names really bothers me for some reason, same thing for Plague Planet. I thought it was too much. A couple of names for favorite references per book is fine, lots of people do that. Just in my opinion it was too much to name main characters that, even though I liked the few jokes and references about it. And in PP too many familiar character names threw me out of the Wandering Engineer universe I love and made me feel like I was reading a book again. Just some feedback, not criticism.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThanks.
I tend to get lost with names, I have a hard time remembering the names of my own family. Anything beyond the immediate and I'm totally lost. So sometimes I 'borrow' a name because it comes with an associated mental picture, but more often it is parody. I wanted a corrupt commissioner, so who came immediately to mind? And by extension? Most of it was in fun. And there are a bit more than people caught and complained about in the reviews. lol
There is 1 big one in PB, but not that many in PRI, AD, or Jethro 2 that I know of. A few in 13Degrees I think. Mostly in 1 or 2 stories, most notably Eternia. :)
Bootstrap had horrible (nonexistent) editing when I first published in 2008. I'm serious, just wow. I've gone back and applied what I've learned to clean it up a lot. I try to do a clean up on all my published books at least once a year. I figure, eventually I'll get it right. :)