{"id":681,"date":"2014-08-25T09:20:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/?p=681"},"modified":"2014-08-25T09:22:15","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T14:22:15","slug":"bloods-force-the-quest-on-the-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/bloods-force-the-quest-on-the-horizon\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood&#8217;s Force: The Quest On The Horizon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/bloodsforcecover.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-687\" src=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/bloodsforcecover.jpg\" alt=\"bloodsforcecover\" width=\"391\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/bloodsforcecover.jpg 391w, https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/bloodsforcecover-195x300.jpg 195w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 391px) 100vw, 391px\" \/><\/a><small><em>(Cover art by <a href=\"http:\/\/saltwaterwitch.com\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Howard<\/a>)<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<p>I can hardly believe it! I&#8217;ve balled up the manuscript for <em>Blood&#8217;s Force<\/em>, the first of the <a href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/sword-and-starship\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Sword and Starship<\/strong><\/a> books, to hand to my editor, <a href=\"http:\/\/rjblain.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">RJ Blain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been performing my own editing and rewriting pass, with significant feedback from my spouse, since <a href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/the-manuscript-that-didnt-kill-me\/\" target=\"_blank\">February<\/a>. In that time, Dame Jessamine&#8217;s quest has undergone drastic improvement. The manuscript lost a few thousand words, gained them back, and lost them again: 88,000 words across 22 chapters at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>September marks the beginning of the second major editing pass! After I&#8217;ve acted on RJ&#8217;s feedback, I&#8217;ll perform an additional &#8220;sanity&#8221; pass or two- actually printing out the whole darn thing at least once- before declaring the manuscript ready for publishing. Given this is my first novel, and I&#8217;ve yet to experience the full spectrum of quirks regarding ebook generation and uploading to vendors, I don&#8217;t want to commit to a solid release date. I still hope to publish the ebook by late 2014, or early 2015. A paperback version may take longer, but is also something I intend to do via Amazon&#8217;s CreateSpace service.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Join the quest- read this book for FREE! <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/K7D1L\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a><\/strong> and provide your email address. I&#8217;ll give you an advance review copy of the ebook once it&#8217;s ready!<\/p>\n<p>In the sliver of time between now and September, I&#8217;ve been tackling a few side projects:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A short story (I&#8217;m targeting 6-8,000 words) to introduce the <strong>Sword and Starship<\/strong> universe. <em>Blood&#8217;s Force<\/em> editing takes precedence, so there&#8217;s no ETA for this story. Whenever it&#8217;s ready, I&#8217;ll make it available for free.<\/li>\n<li>Retooling the CSS and HTML for my <a href=\"http:\/\/ellismorning.com\" target=\"_blank\">main website<\/a>. It looks prettier, and uses HTML5! That may not mean much to you, but I can&#8217;t describe how awesome it is to start over with files that aren&#8217;t cluttered with seventeen custom DIV classes. My next order of business is to make the site friendlier for small screens- although early feedback indicates the site looks good as-is on some mobile devices.<\/li>\n<li>Studying up on the kind of front- and backmatter an ebook novel should have, and where. For instance, a table of contents at the front seems obvious, right? Well, many ebook makers throw the TOC at the <em>end<\/em>, so that the book sample Amazon, B&amp;N, etc. shows the customer has more actual story in it.<\/li>\n<li>Learning how to write good marketing copy and blurbs. This is <em>so<\/em> outside my skillset, but critical to get right! I&#8217;ll be working at it for years to come, I&#8217;m sure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s where I stand currently. I hope you&#8217;re as glad to hear about this milestone as I am to reach it!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Any words of advice or encouragement? Feel free to drop me a line in the comments!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><!-- Place this tag in your head or just before your close body tag. --><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/apis.google.com\/js\/plusone.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><!-- Place this tag where you want the widget to render. --><\/p>\n<div class=\"g-post\" data-href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/106756336697302613382\/posts\/UzxB1k3TYxJ\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Cover art by Chris Howard) I can hardly believe it! I&#8217;ve balled up the manuscript for Blood&#8217;s Force, the first of the Sword and Starship books, to hand to my editor, RJ Blain. I&#8217;ve been performing my own editing and rewriting pass, with significant feedback from my spouse, since February. In that time, Dame Jessamine&#8217;s quest has undergone drastic improvement. The manuscript lost a few thousand words, gained them back, and lost them again: 88,000 words across 22 chapters at&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/bloods-force-the-quest-on-the-horizon\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-releases","category-sword-and-starship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ellismorning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}