What have I been up to lately? I have not yet started on a brand new story, but I’ve been busy, nonetheless.
As previously mentioned, I’m working on overhauling my earliest stories with an eye toward putting them up on Kindle Unlimited (then eventually all the distributors). The old versions have all been taken down. So far I’ve made progress on Snapshots, a collection of all ten of my early short stories. Some of them have needed significant updating.
It’s slow going, since I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate on other writing projects until edits for To Love and to Cherish are done. That story is determined to dominate my thoughts until it’s completely in the can. Speaking of To Love and to Cherish, I expect to be able to show the cover and advertise a release date (beyond “sometime in November”) sometime early this coming week.
But, as you can see, although I can’t seem to concentrate on words, I’ve been busy having fun making covers for the overhauled stories. The Dreams Do Come True series covers, below, are for the overhauled and renamed versions of A Dream Come True, Another Dream, and Dreaming of You. I feel like the extent of the updates justifies fresh names, although I’ll make sure it’s known in the listings that they are previously published stories so as not to mislead anyone.
I’ve purchased the rights for the royalty-free images, so those won’t change. Who knows, though…between now and when the stories are ready for release I may still fiddle with the effects and/or fonts. I’m pretty happy with them, though.
The images fit the stories well, I think. Wes is a doctor. Although it’s somewhat hidden behind the title, the model in the first cover has a stethoscope around his neck. Marty is a construction worker. Quinn is just a goofball.
How are these stories related? Why are they a series? Marty is Mike’s uncle, mentioned but not seen in the first book. The characters from the first story are revisited in the second. Trevor was Marty’s occasional boy-toy before he met Larry, but thought (or at least hoped) to be more. Needless to say, Trevor was a bit bitter when Marty ended up with Larry.
Since I’m reworking so many stories, I figured my website needed a little overhaul, too (restructuring under the “My Publications” tab in the menu, anyway). Hopefully you’ll find it logical and easy to navigate, since that was the goal.
What else? I’ve been thinking about ’Til Death Do Us Part lately, and how I’d love for it to be available as an audiobook. That option remains with the authors at my small publisher, so if it’s going to be done, it’s up to me. I don’t have the big bucks available to pay for producing it upfront, and–let’s face it–although the book was very well-received by most reviewers, it’s not popular enough sales-wise to attract a producer for a royalty split deal.
Therefore, it’s author narrated or bust! I’ve been playing around with Apple’s Garageband app, and have completed a draft of the prologue. A few people are going to give me their valued opinions on that before I proceed. My voice isn’t particularly girly so I think it’ll be acceptable for an M/M story. I’m actually pretty happy with my narration voice, but I’m pretty sure one critique will be for me to work on better differentiating voices for the dialogue. I was hoping to distinguish them by playing with the effects on the tracks separated out for each character, but I don’t think that’s going to cut it. I’ve gotten comfortable with the app, though, and it’ll be a breeze to tweak passages here and there without having to redo entire sections.