Final Read Through and Beyong

        I've finally finished my final read through and have sent it over to Ed my editor for his final approval for the first book of "Prey For Vengeance."  Steve has started work on the front cover and things are looking really good.  It's been a year since I started this project and I am eager to get this first book off the ground and start posting sample chapters for the reading public.  It's really gratifying to finally get a life goal ticked off the list and I have found that I have a ravenous need to write even more.  I've been going over everything that I have written thus far on the second book in the series and I am close to half way done.  I have been sending things along to poor Ed so I don't overwhelm him with one big book when I finish the draft.  Unfortunately Ed is mired in school so i just ended up dumping chapter after chapter in his lap without him having the time to go over them.  Once I finish the second book and am left sitting stwittling my thumbs I'll probably take a stab at my side project again ("Digital Divine Intervention") and see how I can tighten up the story.  I got a little ambitious with the scope of the book much in the same way I did with PFV.  In PFV however I got caught up in the multiple prospective style which cause havoc with continuity and being forced to give the same information in a condensed form with a different prospective and make it still seem fresh.
       My new book I went a little crazy with grandiose events and had to try and seat them in a believable reality.  I also tackled some religious questions and avoided others a bit too pointedly.  Hopefully I can keep a little of the philosophy and not lose the humor.  It's a tightrope I am walking with this book and one wrong move would be a great slip of responsibility to my reader.  I've already written around 60,000 words in this story and it will take a two book approach.  It's pretty simple cause and effect.  Watching the utopia form and then watch come crashing down around the main characters ears in a blaze of glory.  I'm hoping the blending of complex themes with basic primal response will lend some weight to the "savage civilian approach to my writing style. 
         I'm finding in my writing that I want to explore the primal nature and show how it doesn't work in a civilized world.  I surround my characters in complicated events and try to show that underneath it all it's our basic needs that drive us and nothing quite as honorable as we like to believe.  We like to couch our behavior into some exagerated ideal but mostly it always seems to biol down to some sort of selfishness and some how I feel it defines humanity and the addition to consciousness makes it somehow a little more profain.
        Well that's about enough of the ramblings of a sleep deprived author.  Hopefully next time I will be able to announce a release date and show Steve's artwork.  I'm almost looking more forward to his growth in creativity more than my own.

The Edit is Done!

        I have received my book back from my editor and now am doing a final readthrough.  Some of the edits I did left double commas and other punctuation errors and I'm reading it through again to make sure everything is clear and can be understood by my readers. 
        I'm really excited about releasing my first book and I only have a few hurdles left to overcome.  I have my artist friend doing a mock up of the cover art so we can brainstorm the look and colors.  I need to tweak my acknowledments and make sure I have all my footers in the right place.  The final document has gone through multiple incarnations of file extension giving a format a hairy ride so I have been double checking to make sure everything is in the right place.  Once I get everything just so I will be dropping the book in ePub and hope the formatting doesn't go wonky again.  Once I have the final product done I will post the first five chapters on this site so I can give everyone a chance to read the start of the book and I hope that it will give you readers a reason to purchase it.
          This process has left me tired and I have been getting chronic headaches but it hasn't detered me.  I am about a third of the way through the first draft of the second book in this series and have a few scenes written in the third book.  I have a couple side projects going that have also kept me busy while I waited for the edit to come back.  Hopefully I will have more on those soon.

Chris Dodson

Moving at a snail's pace

          So things are starting to move forward again.  My editor has sent me back chapters five through seven and we have completed the final revisions of all but chapter seven.  In a few weeks I will probably release the first five chapters as a sample before the release of the book.  This quite an exciting time for me and I hope people enjoy the story I plan to tell. 

          I also have a new project in the works.  It's completely different from the series I will be releasing unter the title of "Prey for Vengeance."  The new book is quite a bit more personal since the main character will be closely mirroring my own life in many ways.  That's where my personal experience diverges from the characters enviroment.  The main character is working on a device to provide much faster internet speed.  There is only one problem.  He accidentally hacked into God's internet.  The fallout with this causes him to stuck between God and country and his own desire to provide a ecological and cheap way to access information at the speed of light.  Ideals die quickly as reality set in however and our plucky protagonist is getting grief on all sides which challenge his sense of practicality.  I'm roughly 70 pages in now and it has been a real treat writing this story.  It probably has something to do with it being one of my teenaged power fantasies made tangible.  If I had a genre, I think this might be it.  In a world full of bitter disappointment. sometimes you just want to win out on something important.  It's all just a story about how I trumph against a world that's out to get me, but making it tangible somehow gives it a reality all its own.  Come along with me on our journey to change the world without all the variables that could screw it all up.

Chris Dodson

Off to get opinions.

I've finally finished the edit!  I have sent out a few copies to friends, and one off to my poor editor to pour red ink all over the pages.  I hope to get it back in a few days with some notes.  So far it's looking like I will be posting the book on the Amazon Kindle store and on the B&N nook.  I hope to have it out soon.  The series will be titled "Prey for Vengeance".  The working title for the first book is "The Price of Young Love".  I'll post here when it is officially out.  When the book is ready for release I will post a sample chapter here on the blog so you can get a sneak peak.

Still editing

So I am about half way through final revisions of the book.  I have been quite dogged in this experience.  I have found it strange how my usual procrastinated nature has been subdued in the face of this project.  Most of the time I tend to get side tracked on new projects, but even with me doing the 2 Lazy 2 B Otaku podcast, I have been able to keep up with the shows I need to watch to review and still keep pounding out the edit. 
        I think I have found the process of editing, irritating as it is, is far more preferable to the marketing that I will have to plunge through to get the book e-published.  I don't relish the time I will need to start trying to alert people to the book.  I haven't firmly embraced the social media sites yet, and I fear that I am going to have to wade into it, doing my best not to get swarmed by spammers.
        If nothing else, I can finally cross writing a book off my bucket list.  The pride I feel of bringing something into the world of my own creation gives me a feeling that is unmatched by any other experience.  I can't wait to bring this work to the masses and hope that I can reach people with the story I am still crafting.

Chris Dodson

Editing my first book.

First post no presure,

      I am about halfway through editing my first book.  It's been a long time coming.  The working title is "The Price of Young Love."  I'd like to keep the "Price" theme going as the series continues.  Prey for my Vengence is the name of the series that the book starts.  This series started out as one novel, but soon just kept blossoming into a juggernaut.  This first book started as a five page forward if that gives you any kind of idea how much effort this undertaking has worn on me.  I started somewhere around November, 2010.  The problem I kept running into while going back over my first draft, was the gross vagueness I employed, and knew that I was throwing away good stories in throw away exposition. 
       How did I get started you might ask.  A friend of mine requested that I help him take a couple of his characters created for a pen and paper game and work them into a web comic.  Sadly I have never been much of a comic reader.  We reached a compromise with me writing a novel, and he could adapt it into a web comic.  This started the war of words that were rattling around in my head.
      I hope to release "The Price of Young Love" by the end of summer, but as this is my first time writing a book, I wish to send it out to several people whose opinions I trust before I finish the final draft.  I will do my best to release the book in iTunes, Amazon Kindle, and any other market I can find for ebooks.  The price hasn't be set, but I am looking at a lower scale for first time self published authors.  I will have a English Major who will graduate the end of this year, to edit the book, and I trust his judment and expect him to dump red ink all over it.  I hope you take a chance on a first time author and I will publish more about the story in future posts.
Thank you in advance for your patronage.
Chris Dodson