Apple, Editing, and More Story Ideas

hero_waveBeen another busy week and while I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be I still feel good about it. Beta-readers got a full copy of A Painful Blessing sent to them this morning, so I expect to get feedback over the next couple of weeks. Planned to ship it out earlier but realized the first fight had to be rewritten to introduce some variety in the battles.

nav_icon_ibooksWatched the Apple WWDC keynote Monday night and think we have some good features coming in the next releases of OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 later this fall. Things have been sped up, always a good thing in my book, with a host of small changes that make using the Mac more efficient, productive, and interactive than ever before. Nothing really earth shattering, but good evolutionary improvements. Of course, I want a Mac Pro when it ships but will restrain myself this time to enjoying reading iBooks on my Macs.

nemesis_probe_smHad another story idea, that I am tentatively calling Nemesis Probe, a science fiction short story set 100+ years in the future when asteroids are being mined for resources critical to the survival of the Earth and what happens when the crew encounters a relic of our past. This came about because the fantasy genre was feeling a bit stale to me at the moment and since I always planned on writing in other genres this seemed like a good time to do it. I’d also like to do mysteries somewhere down the road, but those will really have to wait.

Spent Tuesday night at an class on editing where we discussed two versions of the same story published by the same author. It was of the literary genre and somewhat of a bone dry read to my taste, dealing with the present day (mid-70’s anyway) and a family disaster. Interesting to see how he got two stories out of it, but one can probably be blamed on his editor at the time, notorious for cutting verbiage. Already sent out a couple of scenes to A Painful Blessing for feedback from the editing group, and will discuss it and the others works at the second and final class. Am eagerly awaiting what the others have to offer.

Still no success on getting The Huntress in the iTunes store. Sent another message detailing the troubles I’ve had and plan to do nothing until I get a reply. In the meantime, A Lesson in Power needs one more pass through the spell checker and then its off to production for release next weekend to the wide world for public consumption.

Been listening hard to the Writing Excuses podcast on my daily walks and really getting motivated by the drum of advice and insight I get from every episode. I’ve become fanatical about recommending it to every writer I know as it charges me up to write and makes me want to get better every time I sit down at the keyboard.

About lfrank

Now suffering in the hinterlands of Michigan while trying to transform myself into a fiction author. Don't wait up.
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