I’m up by over 2,000 words on The Encounter, book 4 of The Abyss series. I know there are some holidays in the mix that I didn’t account for, so I’m trying to build up a cache of extra words completed. Every time I complete my daily amount of words, I do a couple hundred extras. Sometimes I get a lucky break and can put in the extra hours to do a few thousand extras. That’s how I managed to get 10k words ahead on the last story. Which was lucky, because I had a few dead days where I didn’t have time to write.

I’m also running some Ads for the Daphne Chronicles. That’s sort of an experiment to learn the nitty-gritty details of running Facebook Ads. I discovered there were a few grammatical problems with two of the books (Novis Terminal and The Nav Computer). The issues were in the first few chapters which appear in the preview. So, I read through Novis Terminal and fixed the problems until I got to about 30% into the book. The errors dropped off by then so I’ll chip away at the rest of the book night by night. I only did a light touch. Just fix a word or two here and there, nothing major. Oh, it’s so hard to not dig in and rewrite, but I don’t have time for that.

The stories are not terribly deep. Let’s face it, they’re similar to Nancy Drew (and yes, I have a set of 10 Nancy Drew mysteries). Novis Terminal is probably the weakest story only because it was first and my writing improved as I wrote each novel. I also took a few classes after I published Supercomputer, which was the last of the set. Writing is a continuous learning experience and it’s more than just taking a bunch of classes and applying the knowledge. No, it takes a lot of practice to go with. Which is why I write almost every day and I have no plans to stop. I have two large projects in progress (The Abyss series and The Traveler series) and I want to write a lot more stuff. I have stories that I don’t have the skills to write, yet. But you can be sure I’ll learn those skills and I’m going to apply them to the books I want to write.

Once I’m satisfied with the results from my current Facebook campaign, I’m planning to put the Abyss series into an Ad. There are currently only three books completed, with book 4 at 15% completed. The series is happening, sales or no sales. At my current production rate for that series, it looks like I’ll be completing 4 books a year. I’ll also produce one book from The Traveler near the end of the year (to be released in January or February). Don’t be afraid to read the first books of these two series. They’re well worth it.

If you’re trying to figure out which book to start with and what each series is about, go to the Books page.