Posts Tagged ‘YA’

Mar

The Secret is (finally) Out

I’ve been hinting at a secret project for several weeks/months that I finally announced during Episode 53 of Get Published. For those of you who either don’t listen to the show or haven’t yet heard, spoiler alert. You may want to avoid reading further until after you have listened to the show. For the rest of you, read on.

The secret project is actually my first collaborative writing project. I am working with author, podcaster and social media personality, JR Murdock who currently has two books up on Podiobooks.com. We are writing a Steampunk, YA, Superhero mashup.

What is making it fun for both of us is the way we are writing the story. JR is writing the part of the hero and I am writing the part of the villain.

When we first started tossing story ideas around I knew that the part of the villain would be a blast to write. Naturally, I figured I would have to fight JR to the death to get the part. As it turned out, he felt exactly the same way about the hero so we had an accord right out of the gate.

So how did we go about getting ready to write as a team? Well, the first thing we did was come up with a high level outline. We decided how we wanted the story flow to go and went from there. We had most of the plotting completed prior to NaNoWriMo and started writing during November.

Weekly meetings to compare notes really helped and gave us the opportunity to bounce ideas off each other. We are now about 70 – 80% finished the first draft and then we will get down to revisions. The story has been a LOT of fun to work on and I can’t wait to share it with you all.

Tags: Get Published, jr murdock, Michell Plested, secret project, steampunk, superhero, YA

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Feb

Decisions

Posted by: Michell in Irreverent Muse

As you may know, I have a book under contract with Five Rivers Publishing. That particular book is scheduled for release next year. I also have several other books written that I haven’t quite decided what to do with yet.

For example, my very first novel, a traditional sword and sorcery fantasy hasn’t had a great deal of success finding a publisher. The people who have read it liked it, but it hasn’t found a home yet. I’m considering a few options. The first is to podcast it as is. The second is to rewrite it and podcast it. The third is to self-publish as is and the forth… well, that’s the thing. I could keep going. The reason for the previous thought process is that I really like the characters. I want to write more with those people but I can’t really justify it unless the book is out there, somewhere/somehow.

I’ve also got a YA Mystery/Adventure story that has been passed over several times. My target age group audience seems to like it. Again, I used a test group to read it and they all gave it a thumbs up. This one is on my radar to self-publish. I’d love to do that if for no other reason than to test the eBook and self-pub waters.

Then there is GalaxyBillies. I know I can find a home for it. It needs some revision but is in pretty decent shape. Do I use it for an agent search? How about a publishing search? Maybe it should be self-published too? So many considerations and all entirely valid.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a great problem to have. I just need to figure out how I’m going to go is all.

Personal Update

Need to make some decisions. I do believe my YA Mystery/Adventure will be self-published this year. The rest is up in the air.

Tags: adventure, agent search, fantasy, five rivers publishing, Galaxybillies, Michell Plested, mike plested, Mystery, self publishing, YA

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Oct