The rough draft of Shadows in the Bloodline still has about 6 or 7 scenes to be completed. Once that is completed, I have a lot of fixes I need to incorporate. I’m the kind of author who writes the messy first draft until it’s done before doing any editing. I have a habit of putting TODOs into my notes on the sidebar of Scrivener. So far, I have about 45 TODOs I have to address before I can start the task of re-reading the story and editing the big problems. Then I have to do a final edit before my wife and I do the Read-Out-Loud. Once we complete the ROL, I’ll fix anything we find together and hit the publish button. That still feels like it’s a long way down the road, but sometimes the stars align and I get a book out early. Right now I’m planning for the end of July, beginning of August for publishing.

I’ve been bouncing ideas off my wife about what to write next. The Q-Mystery series books are starting to sell. They are not a hot commodity at the moment, but the Facebook Ads are still getting warmed up. There’s always a period where books start to sell and KU reads ramp up. By the second week after the first activity, I usually get a good reading of how profitable the book series will be. Without solid data, I can’t make a decision on what to do with that series. The series has a lot of things going against it right now. One problem is that it appears the author (my pen name: Elliot Droit) has only written one 5-book set.

At least it’s a complete set, and there are five books (not 1 or 2). A 10-book set would probably attract more readers, but I’m not sure if I’m going to go all-in on 10 books if it looks like these might not sell. I’m only mentioning this on the Galactic Core blog because the sales data on this series is driving my decision of what to write next.

So, there are a couple of scenarios that could solidify my decision of what will be the next book to write after Shadows. If the above series takes off like wildfire next week, then I’ll write book 6 of that series next. If it really gets hot, then I’ll do another 5 books and turn it into a 10-book series. My gut tells me that such a scenario is unlikely.

Let’s say that next week the sales don’t break even with the Ad spend (which is tiny at the moment). In that case, since the Daphne books are pulling in readers for the Daphne series and other books in my Sci-Fi category, I’ll write another Sci-Fi book. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m toying with different types of series. Now, I think I’m leaning more toward the Robot Whisperer series, and I may use one of the two story prompts I listed, or I might pull out another one. I have a bunch of ideas for that story, because, you know, I’m an author and the one thing authors have is an endless list of ideas.

The reason I’m looking at starting a new series is so I can build up another series while I add a Daphne book every once in a while. I had previously toyed with the idea of rewriting Dangerous Cargo to improve the read-through of the Daphne series, but I’m hesitant to do any other book rewrites. Rewriting Novis Terminal was a good decision. That book is accompanied by a great elevator pitch and a good Ad hook, which brings in a lot of KU readers to book one. Read-through is great, but if you can’t get enough readers to read the first book, the series will fail.

Anyway, before I make a final decision on my next book, I have to get the rough draft of Shadows done. At least you know where my thoughts are headed and have an idea of what to expect in the future.