It’s that time of year again, taking stock on how well I’ve achieved my goals in the last couple of months for “A Round of Words in 80 Days.” For those who are unfamiliar with ROW80, you can check it out here.
First off, to get it out of the way, here are the goals I didn’t achieve:
– I did NOT manage to get 50,000 words written on A Wasted Land
– I did NOT do much more experimenting with posting to Wattpad and similar sites
– I only managed to do a few experimental fast writing sessions, not enough to significantly increase my average word count
So what did I achieve?
– A Wasted Land is now at 19,000 words, which is almost 18,000 more than the beginning of the round.
– I had a wonderful vacation to Iceland and to visit family, during which I got next to no writing done. 🙂
– I got Chameleon in a Mirror off to some more beta readers, and I’m still hopeful I will be able to publish before Christmas.
– I’ve started brainstorming the sequels to Island of Glass, Facets of Glass and Shards of Glass. I’ve also been in touch with the cover artist for the first book and will hopefully soon be able to book slots for the second two.
– I started a new, long-term translation job (one of the reasons the writing progress has been slower than I hoped).
– I did Konrath’s 8 Hour Ebook Challenge, writing and publishing The Destruction of Ys in 8 hours. I got such great feedback on my little short short, that I unpublished this week. And no, that’s not a contradiction. It appears Ys might be worth a bit more work than 8 hours, so I intend to expand it and republish once I’m happy with it. 🙂
– I’m almost done with the stand-alone version of Gawain and Ragnell (taken from an episode in Shadow of Stone). I’ve also been working with my daughter on a cover for it:
So what do you guys think?
Anyway, even if I’m behind on my goals, I’m still happy with what I did manage to get done. Hope everyone else had a successful quarter as well!
Ruth Nestvold - Indie Adventures 
Loved the Iceland adventure picture series!
Cover art – very evocative, except … for that large dark empty space in the middle. I see a shadowy dragon.
We’ve already had the suggestion to make the horse and rider bigger — that might help. 🙂
You may not have achieved all you hoped (although it was a tall order in my humble opinion), but lady, you achieved a LOT! I do love the cover because it matches the others, but I agree with Widdershins in that it is somehow out of balance. The middle looks stretched, empty. I ‘d bring the top down (or make the title larger) and/or the bottom up. Or make the horse image larger, perhaps? Or make the moon more dominate in the middle? Just a thought 😀
X
Thanks, Shah! And great suggestions on the cover. *hugs*
I too really loved the cover — except could the font color for the title be more vivid? That dull gold seems to fade out a bit. I also thought the horse/rider could be moved up a bit to even out that black hole that appears in the middle BUT I still really like the evocative mood of the cover overall. Really lovely work. Re the beta reads, I’m experimenting with these as well and still holding my breath for the first round to come back to me. But it’s a good experience, a step I wouldn’t have taken without ROW80 and the actions of others. May Round 4 go well for you!
Thanks, Beth! I’ve spent so much time on the font color, and I can’t seem to get it right, sigh. 🙂
Still working on reading your novel, about a fourth of the way through now!
Congratulations on all that you did get done! Sounds impressive to me.
I think that part of why people think it feels unbalanced is because there’s a big glob of white in the lower left and a big glob of white (moon) in the upper left, and the eye wants to go to those first, which is contrary to how the eye should travel, which is up along the slope from the rider to the castle. Is there a way to put the moon behind the castle? Or anyway some way to better distribute the eye-drawing whites.
Thanks, Ellen! And nice to see you here. 🙂
Good point about the globs of white. I’ll have to fiddle with it and see what I can do.