I finished reading A Man Called Ove last week and found myself completely torn up—in a good way. That book might have moved to the top of my list of examples that characters mean everything in a story. I don’t even like the slice-of-life genre, and I’ll definitely read A Man Called Ove a few more times before I die, simply because I love Ove (and several other characters) so much.

I’ve finally had the opportunity to start reading The Lost Metal. A lot of reviewers seemed disappointed with the book, but I’ve enjoyed everything Wax and Wayne so far—so we’ll see how it goes.

The Failed Technomancer

Still waiting on my audio man to let me know how the audiobook is going. The last time I spoke to him he told me that progress had been slowed by his equipment acting up, so I’m hoping he got that figured out and got a good chunk of the way through finishing the audiobook.

As for the ebooks/PDfs, I was sent the mockups last week… and they are pretty! I was given two samples, told to take some time to think about them and decide on what, if anything, I would want changed, and I sent them back on Saturday with some comments. The font is very readable, the formatting is sleek, the organization is good—I almost felt like I was holding the final product in my hands, and it rose me to the clouds for an hour after.

We’re so close to the finish line! And then progress shifts more fully to Inner Demon. Speaking of which…

Inner Demon

I began editing in earnest for Inner Demon last week, making some pretty big alterations to parts of the story based on the feedback I received. Progress is going pretty well, too—Wednesday to Friday I edited 90-ish pages of a roughly 400-page manuscript, and Saturday I edited a further 6-ish. So it’s entirely possible that this stage of revisions will be finished in a week and a half to two weeks, assuming no schedule irregularities come up. After that I’ll go through again, to smooth out anything unwanted that may have crept into the manuscript as a result of making edits big and small, and then send it back to my editor as soon as she has an opening in her schedule.

Some of you might have noted that I usually refer to this book by the name of Inner Demons—well, I officially dropped the “s”, mostly because it fits the story better, but also because I think it improves the title, makes it stand out a little more.

I don’t think I’ve described Inner Demon yet—it will be my first published fantasy novel. The book follows Gnyphe (pronounced KNIFE), a street urchin who woke up in an alley with no memories of her past and the ability to use shadows as portals. I’ll share more details down the line.

I also want to note that Inner Demon (and the Third Realm universe in general) is an interconnected universe along the lines of Discworld—I plan on writing multiple stories with different characters, some of which will make appearances in other books, some of which won’t. Some characters will get multiple stories, others will get one. Unlike Sanderson’s Cosmere, I’m not going for a giant, interconnected, eventually Avengers Assemble–style background plot, which is why I think the Discworld comparison is more apt.

E-Classes

I begin my online classes on self-publishing today! I’m really excited to dig in to the parts of the craft that I thoroughly don’t get—like marketing and advertising. Before I discovered this class, I was dreading figuring those out on my own. Hopefully, as I take the course over the next six weeks, this leads to some great changes!

Conclusion

Time to get back to some good work! My goal this week is to edit about 30 pages a day with Inner Demon, which will put me at roughly 250 pages (out of just under 400) by Friday. And I might spend some time on Saturday editing as well, if it works out. In addition to spending about two hours a day on the class. That’s going to be fun.

I’m sure I’ll fit some more reading in there somewhere.

Have a great week!