Cover Art by Jason Pedersen

First, a reminder that Legends of Windemere: Warlord of the Forgotten Age is live and available for $2.99.  It’s been doing okay considering the holidays are rather slow and most of my promos are set for after New Years Eve.  I’ve been on the Top 100 New Release lists, but nobody really looks at those.  In fact, I’m guessing people don’t care unless you’re tagged as #1 and even that might be a stretch.  Thank you to the scammers that made a mess of the Top 100 lists.

This week saw very little going on because my son was home and he started the week getting over the flu.  It was also really, really cold, so we didn’t go out much.  His martial arts class and food shopping were it.  The rest of our time was spent with Legos and video games.  He got a few new sets including a Spider-Man Bridge Battle set that came in at 1,092 pieces, which was fun.  I’ll be honest that I enjoy these and have one set on my wish list for myself.  It’s $350 and 4,000+ pieces, but it’s the original Ghostbusters Fire House and I’d make room to display it.  Not that I can ever afford that, but it’s fun to have such dreams.  Seriously, it’s that and a reverse blade sword, so you can tell how simple my desires are.

I’m torn as to what I’m going to do next week.  My son goes back to school on Tuesday, which might be a day where I get back in the swing of things.  We don’t know if he’ll go back to fearing the bus and giving us trouble, so I don’t want to plan much for that day.  I might contact a few cover artists that were suggested to me and see who falls into my price range.  The last two years have left me in a bad spot, especially since I fell victim to a few scammers that promised promo spots and then vanished on me.  It’s another reason I don’t stray very far from the tried and true sites these days.  There are two things that I could feasibly do this week:

1. War of Nytefall needs an editing run.  I’m still twitchy about it because I haven’t started a new series in a long time.  Being another Windemere core series, it feels like it has more weight than Bedlam and Ichabod.  So far, only my wife has read it, which might not be a great thing.  She kept questioning the jokes, getting annoyed about how mean Clyde was, and asking me about plot points before she got to the foreshadowing payoffs.  I’m thinking at least one more go over since I want to do a March/April release.  Don’t know how I can boost my confidence with this one.  I’m aiming to start doing excerpts in February and maybe begin character profiles and inspirations around that time too.  There’s a much bigger starting cast than Legends of Windemere with a hefty 13 main characters.  Again, I’m struggling to find a way to put my mind at ease here.
2. Maybe I’ll just take it easy, work on Ichabod Brooks outlines, and read Trigun Maximum volumes.  I ended up taking all 14 volumes out from the library, so I might need to focus on that a bit.  Then again, I’ll be the one taking my son to martial arts again now and that’s where I did a lot of manga reading.  Part of me doesn’t want to sit on my laurels too much.  I did that last January and it felt like I could never catch up to my schedule.  I have Quest of the Broken-Hearted, Dawn Addison finale, and at least three more War of Nytefall volumes to write this year.  That’s a hefty load, especially since I might not have any time over the summer.  Be nice if I could take things easier, but the constant pressure of proving that going author wasn’t a mistake hasn’t eased up even after 5 years.

Guess I’m ending the year just as confused as when I started it.  Tomorrow will have a venting letter to 2017 and then we’ll see what happens.  Right now, I’m leaning towards taking Tuesday off to make sure things aren’t about to explode.  Then, I’ll dive into the editing and get that done by the middle of the following week.  Rest for the remainder of that time and then take care of Quest of the Broken-Hearted.  Does the hyphen have to be there?  This will be a tough one since it involves closure for *insert character from Legends of Windemere here*.

Getting a new cover artist is definitely first on the list though.  Can’t release a new book without one isn’t an option.  This is becoming a nerve-wracking endeavor because I crank out 3-5 books a year.  It’s only 3 if you stick to the series.  So, I’d need a cover artist willing to work with me for a long haul like Jason.  Another issue is that a series needs consistency with the covers, which is a challenge in regards to Photoshop.  Doesn’t help that I have no idea what would work here either.  It’s vampires, but not the kind that people have become used to.  The Dawn Fangs exist in a fantasy world and are fairly violent, so the genre would be more of an epic fantasy vampire adventure.  Maybe I’m worrying for nothing since visual arts was never my area of expertise.  So, let’s get to the goals:

1. Possibly start editing War of Nytefall: Loyalty.
2. Contact cover artists.
3. Work on remaining Ichabod Brooks outlines.
4. Get back into biking since it’s been 2 weeks.
5. Read Trigun when I need a break.
6. Go over Quest of the Broken-Hearted and future War of Nytefall outlines to put mind at ease.  At the very least, go over Lost and Temptation because I’ve read ‘Quest’ so many times that I nearly have it memorized.  Maybe I should make a post on Thursday about that one and get some vague feedback?
7. Try not to let the pressure and stress get to me.  This one is getting harder by the week.