It is decided.

I mentioned in my last post that I was finalizing the title for the novel.  I’m happy to say that the decision is indeed final, and I have indeed settled on a title.  Bear in mind that this is just the title for my book, not the series as a whole.  Myself and the two other authors are still trying to come up with a title for the series of books.  I’ll get back to this in a moment.

In addition to working on the book, I’m also still working on getting the Aftermath series properly formatted for downloadable release.  I really want to at least include some cover artwork for each part, and I might even take a crack at it myself if I can’t find a talented artist willing to contribute.  We’ll see what happens.

Reviews keep trickling in occasionally on fanfiction.net, and I still get a huge kick out of reading everyone’s reactions to the series.  The things people say are seriously too nice.  It’s humbling and encouraging and often makes me laugh/cry/emote at how it affects the readers in such profound ways.  It’s really quite touching, and I mean that with every shred of sincerity that I have.

Okay, I’ve kept you waiting.  I’m going to reveal the name of the book.  Are you ready?  Here it is:

“We Left As Dust”

This title manages to capture the theme and tone of the story.  It also, as I realized after settling on it (I swear,) kind of rhymes with The Last of Us.  I promise, PROMISE, that is completely coincidental.

So, keep your eyes out for that title when it hits shelves (digital or physical, TBD)… sometime in the future…

–J.

Ugh.

And here I was going to try to be better at regularly updating this thing.  But alas.

I still haven’t come up with a name for the book series as a whole, but I think I might have settled on a title for my book.  I’m not going to reveal it until I decide for certain, but I at least have something in mind, finally.  Once I get things solidified, as far as book title and series title, I’ll probably be launching a dedicated webpage for the series.  I’m thinking of doing some kind of viral marketing on it to drum up interest.  Have a few ideas.  We’ll see what happens.

I’m still planning on putting the Aftermath series into PDF format to download for free, and I’ll make a promise: it’ll happen before TLOU:R comes out on July 29th.  There, I’ve promised it.  Now I have to follow through.  I want to go back through the whole series with a fine-toothed comb and make sure I didn’t miss any typos or grammatical errors before putting it in a “permanent” format.  So keep an eye out for that, I’ll be posting it here.

Well, that’s my entire update for now.  The book is still going.  My original timetable when I started it of having it finished this summer is just a joke now.  Not a chance.  MAYBE next summer.  I hope.

Til next time.

–J.

Epiphany

I’m not going to lie.  I’ve been struggling lately with the issue of writer’s block/lack of inspiration on the novel.  The first 27,000 or so words came very quickly and easily, but the last 3,000 I’ve had to slog through, taking much more time than they should.  I guess I kind of just lost sight of “where am I going with this?”  I know how Part I of the book ends, but getting there appropriately and in such a way as to give the conclusion of Part I the proper weight and impact has been proving a real challenge.

Earlier this week, an idea struck me about my main character, Declan, that I think will radically change the book for the better.  It involves fundamentally changing a detail about him/his past that gives me a lot more to work with and makes him a much more relatable character.  I’m not giving any more detail than that because it’d ruin the surprise.

Given this change, I think I’ll be able to overcome the troubles I’ve been having and get to racking up the word count once again.  I sort of expect my writing pace to slow a bit given that it’s summer time and there’s more things to do outside and the like.

Oh, also, for those interested, I’m planning on releasing the entire Aftermath series in .pdf format in the coming weeks.  I’m going to get it nicely formatted and put some fancy chapter headings in it and whatnot, but yeah, that’s the plan.  I’ll post it up here to download, free of course.

Well, this was a short update, but that’s all it was: an update.  Until next time.

–J.