Welcome to my blog

Hello visitors. On my blog I'm talking about my books, but also about what I'm currently working on and, maybe, some other stuff. Browse through my posts and don't forget to check out my older posts in the archives. If you are interested in my books, please, visit my website Fictitious Tales for more information and a few excerpts. Also, take a look at my second blog Herbert Grosshans, where I talk about fun-stuff and things that concern me.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Finished (sort of)

Wow. I finally finished my novel ‘The Mindgod’. 122,000 + words. Now the real work begins: Editing. I’m already at page 83 with that. There are 214 pages single spaced.
After that comes the spellcheck, but you can’t really trust that program. It doesn’t catch every misspelled word. The word might be spelled correctly, but it is the wrong word for its meaning. The title will definitely change. I’m still playing around with that. It is not easy to find a catchy title, one that fits to the contents of the novel.
I may have to make two volumes out of this novel because of its length. That means two titles.
Checked my sales at Fictionwise. The Xandra series was in number 7, 8 and 9 position for the last 20 days at August 20th. That has already changed. Now it is the digest Men of Eros, which contains my story ‘A taste of Paradise’, that is at number 4 position and number 5 in sales for the last 20 days as of today. That may change tomorrow again.
Once I'm done with Mindgod I will continue with 'Epsilon'. Of course, I'll have to read what I've written (60,000 words) so I get into the story again. I'm looking forward to visiting again the planet where dinosaurs roam and intelligent Spiders and Ants challenge humans for the right to Epsilon.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Mindgod

I'm at 103,000 words with my novel 'Mindgod' and still so much to go. It is becoming too long for one book. An ideal ebook is around 70,000 words maybe even less. So now I may have to make this into two volumes and that may be difficult. Where to make the break? Book one won't have an ending and Book Two won't have its own beginning. Well, I had to do it with the Xandra series. The second book turnd out too long so I made two books out of it, ending up with a three volume series. I had to do the same with Seeds of Chaos and The Stardogs. I find it difficult to write a short novella. It seems I can't get enough into the story if it is short. Once I'm done with 'Mindgod' I will continue with 'Epsilon'. I'm at 60,000 words with that one and no end in sight yet. But right now it is not on my mind.
The other book I started, 'Xandra Four' (no title yet), I've written around 20,000 words with that one. After I finish Epsilon Xandra Four will be my next project. I'm excited about it but it will have to wait. I'm trying not to think about it because I need to concentrate on finishing Mindgod and then Epsilon. With Summer and lots of stuff to do in the yard I don't have as much time to write as I would like. Things are slow and yet, I'm surprised how much I wrote. When I sit down with my laptop and start writing the story flows amazingly well, almost as if someone is dictating it to me. Strange. No writer's block here I'm happy to report.
Sales of my books at Fictionwise seemes to have picked up but I don't know how it translates into figures. The money I get from those sales is pitiful indeed. Nobody can claim I write for the money. If I didn't enjoy writing so much I would have quit a long time ago.

Monday, August 03, 2009

Star Trek, Dinosaurs and more

I’ve been busy and have neglected my blog a bit. There is not much news anyway. I crossed the 90,000 word mark with my novel ‘Mindgod’. The End is in sight, but I’m still throwing around things in my head how exactly I will end the novel. As I’m writing new ideas pop up. Sometimes that means going back into the story and adding or deleting paragraphs etc. At first I had in mind to write between 70,000 and 80,000 words but when I got there I realized I couldn’t end the story yet. There was just so much more to tell. Sometimes I’m amazed how the writing process works. I sit down and don’t know exactly what I’m going to write next, I might write down a word or sentence just to get me going, and then suddenly the story begins to flow again and takes me somewhere I had not foreseen. I enjoy writing my stories much more if I don’t know where I am heading as opposed to writing an outline and following that. Somehow it takes the fun out of writing and the surprises that sometimes appears. It must be boring to do ‘Formula Writing’, where everything is dictated how the story must progress and end and on what page a certain thing has to happen. Not for me. I need to go ‘Where no man has gone before’, in the words of the original Star Trek series. ‘Man’ in this case me.
Speaking of Star Trek, we saw the last movie and were disappointed. They made Kirk such an idiot. The scene where he is running around in the spaceship chased by a young Dr. MacCoy was absolutely stupid. An eight year old Kirk racing in an old Corvette and then bailing out at the last minute? Come on! And the old Mr. Spock appearing on the scene at the exact moment Kirk needs help? A little farfetched. How stupid are we as moviegoers? I’m not commenting on that, but I read other reviews and many people thought it was the best one yet. Wow! There were some good scenes I enjoyed. I’m easily pleased when it comes to Science Fiction movies. I wish there’d be more good ones around. Most of the movies these days are relying on special effects and are much to loud and furious for my taste. For instance I really loved the first ‘Matrix’ movie, but didn’t care for the following two. The second one was so loud I had to stuff Kleenex in my ears. Actually, my wife and I did that in the last Star Trek movie.
We went to see ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. What a wonderful show. Those dinosaurs are so lifelike they are scary, especially the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Hard to believe that creatures of that size once roamed the Earth. To see the narrator walking between them really demonstrated their immense size. Humans would have had no chance to survive in those days.
I’ve always loved dinosaurs. That’s why I wrote my novella ‘Cliffs of Time’ where humans go back to 100 million BC. Before I wrote that story I didn’t know that T-Rex didn’t appear until 75 million BC. I did some research to make the story authentic and learned quite a bit. Stuff I never learned in School.
In my novella ‘Outpost Epsilon’ I populated a planet with giant mushrooms and dinosaurs. In fact, I liked the story so much that I started a novel titled ‘Epsilon’ where I go into more detail about dinosaurs, intelligent giant ants and spiders, and the geography of the planet Epsilon. I’m at 60,000 words with that novel. I put it aside to write ‘Mindgod’ and I’m anxious to get back to it. My characters are waiting for me to finish telling their story.
By the way, ‘Orola, Warrior Priestess’ never did reach number one position at Fictionwise, only ''Outpost Epsilon' did, but I’m happy anyway.