August 2020 - Update

Late July and August produced a wealth of mushrooms in western Missouri.

August’s update offers several highlights!

• The Tower of Dread, my upcoming novella, is nearly finished. Advanced readers are already offering their comments, and the cover art is reaching completion. The novella’s release is scheduled for early October.
• The Blighter’s Shadow is back at the forefront of my focus. At this stage, the novel’s first draft is approximately half-complete.
• The Alterator’s Light audiobook is in the production stage. In late July I was able to listen to the entire first chapter, and I am excited. The audiobook team—Susanne and Buck—are doing a great job thus far.
  • An early fall release is likely not possible due to scheduling conflicts, but a late 2020/early 2021 is certainly possible. Audiobook productions are much more complex than listeners (including myself) understand. Now that I have helped with the process of creating an audiobook, I appreciate even more the novels I’ve listened to over the last twenty years.
• NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up in November. I will be participating, and the goal is 50,000 words written toward a first draft of a novel by the end of the month.
  • You may be thinking: why 50,000 words?
  • The answer is simple: because the average novel is 50,000 words.

Relatively speaking, The Tower of Dread is around 16,500 words, which is longer than a short story but much shorter than a novel. So I could write three novellas throughout the month, or I could write many short stories to reach the 50,000 word goal. Regardless, NANOWRIMO offers authors a chance to focus on their novels. Just getting that first draft down is sometimes the hardest part.

I used to write a few pages and then try to edit those pages to perfection. I finally realized through the NANOWRIMO process that I needed to just get the story down first, then focus on editing later. The craft/art of writing is like any skill—evaluation of yourself and the skill is constant and necessary to get better.

Please be sure to check out my website for continuous updates on my progress. In case you didn’t know, I also have resources for authors which may be helpful to you.

If you have questions for future newsletters/updates, please be sure to send them to dan@danbrigman.com. I have numerous media links for your convenience: on Twitter at @brigmanauthor, on Facebook at Dan Brigman, Author, or on my website, www.danbrigman.com.

Thanks again for your support! Besides taking the time to read my updates, please visit the following links to create a review of The Alterator’s Light or The Point of Woes, if you’ve read those stories.

A review is quick to create! They offer potential readers insight into what you thought about the book. They also help get the word out about the stories and author.

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