| It’s done! The first draft of the Game War, Players of the Game Book 5, is done. It clocked in at 816 pages with 231,840 words. It is in dire need of extensive revision and editing. Dire. Need. But not right away. It needs to set for a bit. Air out. I’ve been working on the thing since the last week of December 2021. I have been holding off on a lot of other initiatives with my primary focus being on getting the bones of this epic constructed. Another bunch of revisions will flesh it out into something grand. So, what’s next? Revisions, re-releases, and collections. I’m currently working on new ProWritingAid revisions of my earlier books using the cool new “rephrase” tool that identifies clunky sentences in need of reinterpreting. From there, I’ll re-release the single volumes with better formatting using another tool called Atticus. And I’ll also try my hand at releasing hardcover collections through Ingram Spark and an ebook collection bundle of Repenter, Hidden Chapters, Brigands, and the Favor. And if time permits, take a hard look at Book 4, the Breakers, to see if it’s ready for prime time. Then. Then I’ll suck it up and get to slicing and dicing on the Game War’s next draft. Trust the process. Right? Right. |
| Finish Line Thumbs Up |
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| Instead of the usual character profile and works in progress update, this month gets the photo I shared with my wife and some close friends and family members. Some pictures are worth 1000 words. This one is worth 231,840. If it were not for my hand covering its word count. |
| Recommendation Corner |
| Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 Oh, man. This is a really good movie, but dear goodness, it was rough in spots. If someone would have told me ten years ago that Rocket Raccoon had a more hardcore origin than the Punisher, I would have had a hard time believing them. Really great send off for this iteration of the team. The High Evolutionary was a great villain. Really intense and flawed in all the good ways. Adam Warlock was the only demerit for it. Flawed in the bad ways. He was basically pointless aside from his role in the inciting incident. Warlock is supposed to be this cosmic David Bowie-type of character. He lacked gravitas. That minor quibble aside, I liked it as much as Quantumania, which I enjoyed far more than others. This time, everyone else agrees with me. I’m not always a contrarian. War Master’s Gate by Adrian Tchaikovsky The meat grinder keeps grinding in the penultimate entry in the Shadows of the Apt series. The Beetles now control the sky, but the Wasps have so many resources and horrible secret weapons that they lay to bare. And that’s not even considering that Cheerwell’s seeming side quest into a haunted forest is anything but. There’s more than one War Master (not counting Trevor Ebon in my series), and more than one gate. It’s all about to go sideways for the protagonists and antagonists alike. Really compelling stuff. |
| That’s all for this time. Stay smart. Stay safe. Jim |
