Yup. What the title says. Well, maybe not what you infer from the title, but I don't care what you infer. If you're right, good for you, and if you're wrong, that's your problem.
Monday, August 20, marks two years since I finished the first draft of my first published book, Sci-FU. To celebrate, I am making the Kindle version free for that day, and possibly more. I did the same thing six weeks prior on July 9, which was two years since I started writing that same first draft. That first day I had, if not 200 sales, really close to 200 sales, so I extended the free period for another day, which netted me just over 300 sales. Sure, I didn't make any money from that, but still, getting 300 sales in just two days is pretty cool for one's first published work that has had little advertising (I'm better at writing than marketing). Still, those sales with those before pushed my book to #19 in the Free Kindle Store for the "Science Fiction" genre and #3 for "Technothrillers." Wouldn't exactly call my book a technothriller, but hey, reaching #3 on a list at Amazon is pretty cool!
I'm also dropping the price of the ebook to $3, so if you miss this promotional period, you won't have to spend too much to rectify that problem.
Now that I've shared that, why not share a little more? After all, this is the second anniversary of my completion of the first draft of my first book; there's got to be a story to go with that, right? Of course there is! It just probably isn't as interesting as the story itself. (I have a low opinion of of interesting I am to people.)
As I said above, somewhere, I wrote the first draft of Sci-FU in exactly six weeks. During those weeks I worked fairly regularly on it, either on my desktop at home or on my laptop when it was boring at work. Despite it being the first draft though, I was very, very happy with it, so the published form is actually just an edited and slightly rewritten version of the first draft. (Version 1.2.1 was the original published item, and the current version is 1.2.2.) That first draft was 63,735 words while the current version is 88,020, including the front matter, appendix, and epilogue, but 77,279 words without those. That means that from the first to final draft, I added 13,544 words. Not sure how many corrections that amounts to, since some of those corrections are to corrections I made in previous versions (1.1, for example). That is a lot of words though, and I can immediately think of one part that is a decent chunk of that. Then ending of Chapter 10, where Amy is on the phone (and Jim listens in as best he can) was actually a very late addition.
During one of the last read-thrus, I realized that Chapter 10 ended kind of abruptly and really, I should have not only some more stuff between Jim and Amy, but also I should have the mother's involved more. After all, I would expect the new mother-in-laws to be quite present, in one way or another, during the early part of a marriage between two people who met just days before the ceremony. Phone calls, dinner, whatever, I would expect that to be the case, so it made sense to add something. Of course, I then just had fun with making it silly. Jim listening in and making his own responses to half the conversation, then trying to sabotage the call, only to have his mother-in-law shock Amy by knowing what happened perhaps too well. Eh, maybe it doesn't come off as silly to my readers, but I like it, and in the grand scheme of writing, that's what matters. Authors should only write for themselves, because we only know how to please ourselves.
Of course, that's not to say an author should not respond to a reader's criticism. I got one piece of actionable criticism before I published and one after (and one unactionable piece after as well). Before publishing I was actually told, by a female friend of mine, that there was too much love in it. Yes, a woman who would normally be interested in that in a story, told me there was too much. Now, if you were to read that first draft, you'd agree with her. It really did come off as too much. It may still be too much, but it's better. She also told me the science stuff in it was too dense, which was definitely true in some specific sections.
After publishing I was told the ending was too abrupt. This prompted me to write the Epilogue which, as I state in the amended author's note, is only written in response to the criticism, not created. What is in the Epilogue is what I wanted to take place after Sci-FU ended, I just, at the time, did not choose to commit it to paper. It now is.
The unactionable criticism was that the relationship between Amy and Jim seemed like they were just dating, not newlyweds. Well, in my defense, Miss (yes, another woman criticizing romance in my book), they met two days before getting married, so what do you expect? That they behave like they have been life long friends? Still, I could have changed it if I had that criticism before publishing, but my friend read it too late for that to happen. Ah well. I like it how it is though and I even hope to keep some of that flavor of romance throughout any future stories involving Jim and Amy because that is how they love each other. They love each other completely, so characteristics that come out that they may not like in a friend, they love in that person because they are in love with that person. I don't know if that's how it actually works, but I hope that's how it works.
Can't give any updates for my other stories at the moment. Been too busy with other things to get enough done to make a post worth my time writing, or your time reading. If you're interested in that though, sorry, but we both have to wait.
I hope you haven't forgotten the purpose of this post, if you've made it this far down the page (I do have a tendency to write on and on, don't I?). If you have though, it is to let you know that on Monday, my first published book, Sci-FU, will be available for the Kindle for free. After that promotional period, it will be just $3 (currently it is $5). There are multiple links to the Amazon page on this page, so if you want a copy, just click on stuff. You'll probably find it. (Seriously though, don't just click randomly on webpages. Viruses and other pieces of malware can actually infect your computer that way. There are two links in this post, at the beginning and end, at the title of the book: Sci-FU. Also, it is under the "My Books" section on the right of the blog.)
