Has it been a year yet? How about a year and four months!

How the time does fly. Many of you bloggers are probably stumbling across here because I have created some hoopla about my book coming out, and this being my release blog. Well, congrats, you found it! If you look over my past blogs, you will find that I wrote a blog each day of writing. Why I did this, I can't exactly remember. But I do think it helped my writing to keep a critical perspective of what I was doing.

But now the time is almost upon us. I have spent the last year or so editing my book, and when I got tired of that, developing a game based on the book. I have called it a book born of a game and a game born of a book. Sort of poetic, right? It all goes back to Moonbreaker, my first XBox Live Indie Game that I published. But now... it's so much more.

Any day now "Project Gert: Recon" will be published and live at the same time as "Project Gert" the novel. You'll find the novel on Amazon.com, and soon to be Kindle and whatever other place I can get it out there. It shall be priced reasonably, at 14.95. They set a minimum of 14.05, but this had a zero profit margin in some channels, so I had to up the base price a bit. Now the profit margin is at least acceptable, being at 33 cents at its lowest, but over 2 dollars in other places. My philosophy is this, if I sell over a million copies, I should be a millionaire, right?

So here we are... a few days away from Dec 7th. On that day history will be made, as a lowly programmer and writer will declare himself a master of both, and publish on each separate medium on the same day.

And to top it off, two things on the same day is twice the stress, isn't it? So I've included for you this slightly artistic picture, depicting stressed out dudes.

photo by boskizzi	via PhotoRee

Will O'Reagan - Publishes Game

Will O'Reagan - Publishes Book

It all sounds... kind of... poetic?

Behind locked doors -- from draft five to draft six.

Do not get me wrong. I have gone through this book more than five or six times. But when I finished what I now call my first draft, I decided to create a full pdf, and have the whole thing shipped to me. From that date forward, each consecutive draft has been shipped to me, and I have a personal collection of five draft book copies. I'm now working on the sixth one. Thank you, printtopress.com for the fantastic and speedy services.

photo by Myxi	via PhotoRee

These draft copies are clean and unseen by anyone but me still! They are books themselves, each consective edition is a little more polished and unique in it's own way. This whole writing is re-writing thing? It's true, it is. But let's talk specifics. What the hell have I been doing?

"He had a heart as big as one of Mae West's hips." -- Raymond Chanlder

Draft six! Or maybe not so much. I decided on this draft that my shorter sentences, though very prolific and beautiful throughout the entire book, ala my inspiration from Raymond Chandler,

photo by dumbeast	via PhotoRee

were slightly unnecessary and overused. Indeed, it was almost stumbling me up some, so I have decided to go with a strategy a little more anti-modern and mixed. After all, this is sci-fi, not detective fiction.

That's the long and short of it.

The other thing I did was managed the adverbs in a way which makes the book sing rather than put you to sleep, hopefully. Instead of explaining how this is done, I'll show you the video I made. This was my first attempt at a Hitler parody video, so I hope you enjoy it.

75k and book is done! How about some editing?

All finished with the book! It was 75,000 words and 25 chapters in the end. Now the editing has started and it has been insane. I've had a lot of interesting moments. Lot's of grammar rules I did not know. I am learning to edit and it's like learning to write again. Anyways, if anyone wants me to talk about my editing more, please leave messages in the comment section. Otherwise, I may not know anyone is interested.

Possible topics might be...

Biggest grammar mistake propagated over 75,000 words.
Most difficult part about rewording sentences.
Sources for help and resources.
How much time and effort does editing take.

Any of those topics I can see writing 700 words or so on. So just leave some comments. Or talk about whatever you want.

If not, maybe I'll be back next Friday for another semi-annoying purposeful blog.

Just read a great Stephen King quote--

"If you finish editing and barely have any marks on your page, you aren't working hard enough"
-Stephan King

Chapter 25 - The End

Books finished! I'm at nearly 75k and I am proud to say, I'm done.

photo by Cremo	via PhotoRee

I'll be writing in some prologues and possibly some character, and scene descriptions which I failed on first pass. But the book seems done now. Now for the editing. There really isn't any point in prolonging the climactic scene any further. It was very epic and satisfying.

I may continue a weekly blog to talk about editing.

How does Friday sound?

Chapter 24 - Avoiding the Shaft

Well, we are nearing the finale of the book. It's been fun. There are now less than 7.5k words remaining. It was my intention to have a long and fantastic ending, but of course a random and possibly interesting thought occurred to me. Once again the book feels like it just wants to swing right back in the favor of our heros. I need to choreograph this ending so that it ends at 80k, but at the same time I don't know what to do. I don't want them to get stuck in an elevator shaft, and have to traverse the cables. That always happens. I want something unique, fun and interesting.

photo by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL)	via PhotoRee

So once again the white board is in effect. It's a beautiful thing when ideas come together. And I am already seeing some crazy ideas for the finale. In the world of copyrighted metaphors-- the white board is the Lightsaber, the Deathly Hallow Wand, or the Arrow of Apollo. It is the one thing that will take an idea of a magnitude of 1 and turn it into a magnitude of 10. So I've drawn something, and I will draw a bit more to see how this goes throughout the day.

Chapter 24 or 25 tomorrow good friends!

Chapter 24 - Writing groups

I went to another writing group last night. This is a group where we read our work out loud. Interesting. I find it odd to be reading what I wrote out loud. The entire purpose of me writing it is so that others will read it. Reading it myself seems to almost spoil the point. And I do not always favor the sound of my own voice. Luckily I know better than to attempt the voice of my characters. I'm not a talented actor and could easily embarrass myself that way. One of the many traps I must avoid.

photo by Stuck in Customs	via PhotoRee

But the reading went well. My first chapter has seen so many revisions. Being the first thing I wrote has its disadvantages. Mainly being it was probably written to be felt and understood, rather than read. In other words, I've improved a great deal and it's actually quite difficult to transfer what I have learned retroactively to the first chapters I wrote. Luckily I have been learning by leaps and bounds since I started this adventure, so I think what I have now is at least much more readable. Can't wait for you all to experience this. Or throw it back in my face if that's the order of the day. We shall see.

Chapter 24 continues tomorrow.
Four or Five days of writing left. Then my Twitter will no longer be slave to these whims,
this fun and whimsical journey which is a baron wasteland for comments.

Chapter 23 - Who's driving this flying umbrella?

So as I was writing the end of chapter 23, I noticed a pattern. Though I told myself the story would slowly be coming to a close, the end was quickly getting blown wide open. Stakes were rising. Tension continued to build. People were in greater, and even greater danger than I had ever expected. And as I finished chapter 23, in the exactly place I wanted to be, I noticed that my characters were also in the exact opposite place that they wanted to be. It ended in a cliffhanger. Hell, if it ended now, this book would be a tragedy. Alas there are 10k more words to write. It is not over till it's over.

So in the words of Little John from that famous Robin Hood cartoon Disney movie long ago, I dare ask, "Who's driving this flying umbrella?"

photo by naturalturn	via PhotoRee

Chapter 24 continues tomorrow.