After giving it much thought, I changed the name of the main character in the novel I'm presently working on. It is slow going because of other things I'm doing. This time of year is always busy with hunting season just behind me, Christmas coming, and other stuff that pops up. Perhaps I'm not as dedicated to my writing as I used to be. There are many reasons for it progressing so slowly, but I've been trying to write something every day, even it is just a few lines or paragraphs. I have an outline already worked out, now it's just a matter of fleshing it out and writing the story.
As usual, things change as I'm writing the story. New ideas pop up and I'm going with the flow. I changed the name of the detective from Mark Canon to Luus Canon and now to Lews Canon. It makes more sense. You'll see when you read the new posting, or perhaps it is not easily noticed from such a short excerpt. Maybe I'll post a bit more.
I'm at around 19,000 words right now. I have no idea how many words it will take to finish the novel, but as I write more ideas appear and that's how the story moves ahead...one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. Eventually I will be done with it.
As I wrote in a previous article, I'm not sure where my writing will take me. I'm going to try with this humorous detective novel to see what readers want. I am sort of enjoying writing this one, but I have to admit, I enjoyed writing Fantasy and Science Fiction more. Somehow I can immerse myself deeper in those stories and they seem to flow easier and better. The erotica adds a bit of spice to the writing.
There are no explicit sex scenes in Lews Canon. Sex is mentioned, there is bantering going on between the male and female characters, but everything happens behind closed doors. We don't enter.
I keep reading that most readers who buy ebooks are women. They like romance novels. And they do like erotica. Just look at the success of 50 Shades of Grey. Not many writers actually understand how such an apparently bad novel can achieve such success. It is an enigma, but I'm sure the writer doesn't care. She sold over 50 million copies and made over 90 million Dollars. Who cares if the novel is badly written with many mistakes. The readers didn't seem to mind or care.
It is doubly sad when I think how many hours I spend editing my novels, making certain there are no inconsistencies and no spelling errors (but they creep in no matter how often I read the novel!), just to find that none of that really seems to matter. The readers aren't there for the kind of novels I love to write. Much of the problem, of course, is marketing. I don't want to spend money on advertising and the sites where I talk about my new and old novels have a score of other writers doing the same thing. Competition is fierce and the members (readers and writers) who belong to these groups don't change much, even though sometimes new people join. They prefer to read certain genres and they will only buy from writers they've read before. If I'm one of those writers I am happy and consider myself lucky.
I know I don't spend enough time marketing my books. If my name doesn't pop up all the time, it will be forgotten. But I'd rather write my stories than spend my time commenting on sites (I do that anyway. Sometimes more often than not) or trying to peddle my books. I always hope somebody sees my name and book in the ocean of other writers and books and I hope this someone likes my stuff. That's all I can hope for. So I'll just keep on writing.
In fact, I should have been writing on my novel instead of writing this into my blog. That's just how it goes. Somehow I always get sidetracked, but I enjoy doing this, anyway.
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