Final revision phase

So The Novel Formerly Titled Mindfire is now in its final revision phase. My lovely and brilliant wife read through it over the last couple of days and provided many insightful comments about things that dropped her out of the story, didn't make sense, or just plain didn't work. I've got some time off from my day job coming up, so I'll be rampaging through the novel fixing up all those things that need to be improved. Then it's one more quick pass to check for any obvious last-minute mistakes (typos, etc.) and I'm done.

I still need to get cover art made, and maps; figure out whether I want to go through Smashwords to publish it to all the various platforms or just start with doing it myself on Amazon; start marketing it (conveniently, Google just sent me one of their periodic "Here's $100 in free Adwords placements" cards. Honestly, I'll feel lucky if that results in one or two sales); send out free copies to a few deserving folks; promote it here; yadda yadda.

This is the culmination of almost a year's work. I've learned a huge amount along the way, and the most terrifying thing is that this is just the first time I'm going to go through it. I plan to keep doing this for the rest of my life. Godzilla willing, it'll get easier down the road.

Avengers, Dissemble

So The Avengers was amazingly entertaining, and now I am extremely pessimistic about my own skills. Joss Whedon probably sneezes, and the droplets form hilarious snarky one-liners on whatever nearby glass surfaces there are, which he probably has a lot of in his fancy Hollywood Hills home because he's a famous talented millionaire.

So I'm not bitter or anything; really, I'm not, because why would I be? Joss was writing much earlier in his life than I started, and he came from a long line of screenwriters. It's just a whole big-ass family of creative professionals. I keep reminding myself that I just have to keep doing it, and eventually I'll succeed. Or I won't. I can't succeed if I don't try; I don't want to be on my deathbed regretting that I never tried, even if I don't succeed.

I just finished the third draft. I need to rewrite the epilogue, and then there's still work to do; I've identified a number of things about the novel that need to be fixed. Mostly it's cosmetic clean-up; some characters need to be more sharply defined, some backstory needs to be elaborated upon (only slightly, I promise), certain things need to be amped up to make them more fantastical.

I'm also changing the title of the novel, back to the original title, which I alas am not going to share yet. Mindfire is neat and all but there's been a couple of fantasy novels released on Amazon lately using it, and I don't want to cause confusion. I already searched; virtually nothing is using the new (old) title. Mindfire will be the subtitle, or rather, the series name. The novel is book 1 of Mindfire.

Okay, here's a hint: the title is The _____ of ______. Can you guess? If so, please send me stock picks and lottery numbers.