State of the Author January ’22

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Off-kilter. Day job has resumed, but the schedule is a bit odd, for various reasons.

The rough draft of Familiar Paths is done. It needs to sit and simmer before I go through and smooth some things.

I’m roughly 3/5 done with City, Priest, and Empire. This will make it the longest book in the series thus far. Alas, a possible next book idea has bubbled up, alas for me. I’m not sure I want to tangle with it for a while, though. It will require on-the-ground research that’s just not possible until sanity returns to the world of trans-continental travel.

I have the plot of Overly Familiar sketched out.

Keep in mind, this is my very busy semester, so I anticipate my writing time and energy fading at the end of this month. I will also try to get the next two Familiar books out in print in the near future. I’ve gone through the electronic editions and flagged some things for correction. My thanks to people who have sent me post-publishing “catches.” I have them, I know I need to get them fixed, it’s just energy levels and time.

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16 thoughts on “State of the Author January ’22”

  2. I wouldn’t hold your breath for sanity to return to international travel.
    Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Assume a square chicken.

    • No, they don’t. I’m not sure if that is a service I would have to pay for, or if it applies mostly to books from Amazon’s own imprints and traditionally published titles.

      • You can see it! But! It’s hidden away in a very tiny link that is inside the flowchart only after you start setting up KDP for publishing a new version. When next I see you, I shall explain. And you can shake your head, and understand why it took me over two years from learning of its existence to actually finding it, almost by accident.

        The help pages are no help!

        • After various encounters with *counts* five different computer systems this week, I am almost persuaded that help pages were designed by people who never, ever actually either use the system, or need help.

          • Yes. Part of the problem is that the author of the HELP! Page can only hope to guess at what you don’t know, cannot see, don’t understand, or have been denied access to. Or what you’ve been lied to about in some other “documentation”.

          • Most help pages are written by people who know the system inside and out. It’s sort of necessary. The problem is that for most people, by the time you get to the “knows the system inside and out” level, you’ve lost the ability to visualize what the system looks like for someone without that level of knowledge.

            I’ve generally had good luck writing user guides and other such documents by remembering how I approach my own occasional efforts at teaching: as a chance to tell readers/listeners/watchers what I wish someone had told me when I was a newbie at that particular subject.

  7. Hang in there! We’re all in the same boat… now where the hell is the bucket to bail with??? I ‘know’ it was right here a minute ago…

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