First, I’ve fallen behind on the daily short stories. I will write at least one today, and perhaps get a couple of extra’s done to make up for lost time. There is a reason though. I finished the first draft of the novel! Next week I will do an editing read-through. I hope it only takes a few dedicated hours. I guess the amount of story re-write I have to do will play into that. As part of that I will contact various people and ask them to beta read it for me. What that means is they’ll get an electronic copy of a minimally edited version. I can do word files for people who can’t help but edit as they read (Though that isn’t the type of feedback I’m really striving for). I can also do e-pub and mobi for those who can resist the copy-editing. I cannot do Apple Book formats as I have no Mac. I will ask these readers to provide feedback on the books flow, story, continuity (of characters, setting, story), reading level, and anything else they can think of. I would like to know what they think and why. Suggestions for improvement are welcome also. The book is a general fiction book. It is set in a small midwest town at about this time period. The target audience is juvenile/middle grade. (3-5th, the same reading level as Hatchet by Gary Paulsen for instance.) I would love to get a couple of kids from that age group to read it and do a sort of book report as well. If you are interested or have kids that fit the bill please contact me and we can discuss details.
In a bit of family news Cecilia is done with Soccer and Gideon is starting baseball, with Heather coaching. As we head into the last week of school what our summer will look like is still a little up in the air, but “on the bright side” we only need to figure out 2 months due to the strangely modified schedule our kids school has.
Over the last few years our Amazon Affiliate account shut down due to tax laws and moving. I looked into it this year as I started to investigate setting up an author account and discovered that due to newer laws the affiliate program is available in this state now. As such, links will start appearing in the posts. (I tend to limit to in-line text links with occasional relevant image links.) If you click through we get a small percentage of purchases made, even if it’s not what you clicked. If you update your Amazon bookmark to http://amzn.to/1RhStn6 then we’ll be defaulted to get the affiliate benefit for any time you visit. This doesn’t hurt you at all and it helps us out so please consider it. Let me know if you have any questions on how it would work.
The job search is hitting a bit of a summer slump. Fewer positions available and not many new ones popping up. To compensate next week, though it’s busy, I hope to step up the classes on freelancing I’m in progress on. If things there go extraordinarily well I’ll have multiple freelance clients in June and be making enough that we can seriously consider me building that instead of continuing to pursue other employment. Realistically, if I’m not working in June I hope to at least be bringing in something from freelancing to relieve financial pressure.
That’s all for today. I look forward to getting this early 1st draft of a 1st story out to some people and hearing feedback on how to improve it before seriously looking at publishing it.