Keith's July Newsletter

Hi All

July is here, and with it finally a bit of sun. Of course now it’s too hot and I can’t sleep. In typical British fashion I’m never satisfied, lol.

Things have been going well work-wise this month, and by work I mean writing. My actual work, the one I do for money, that’s been a little annoying.

Going Nowhere Fast

We got news this week that the move from Leeds to Manchetser has been delayed again until Q1 (that’s business speak for the start of next year). No actual date has been given, just a 3 month window in which anything can happen. It is, to put it mildly, not what I wanted to hear. It’s hard to plan your life when a large part of it remains in flux.

It did mean however that rather than hang on to my holiday days in case I need them to make a swift exit I could use them up instead, so I’ve booked two weeks off at the start of September. I’m going to Stockholm for 3 nights, so I can cross that off my bucket list, then I’m going to Austria for another 3 nights, to see a friend of mine. We plan on going to a spa and doing nothing. It’ll be glorious. Austria has some of the best spas. Some of them are like hotels. You stay there and just wander around in your bathrobe and everything. It’s great.

News From The Steam Factory

Since the release of The Hammersmyth Tales I’ve had 378 downloads. 334 on Amazon, and 44 via Smashwords (ie. all other places you can get ebooks). That’s pretty good for me, resulting in the longest non-stop run on a book I’ve ever had.

Of course the book is free which might explain it. People love free stuff, even if it’s not their kind of thing. They’ll download it just to have it. Not that I’m complaining mind. That was the point of releasing the book, to get my stories into the hands of new readers. Maybe it’ll convert some of them into fans of steampunk, but who knows. We can but try.

It would be nice of all these downloads had resulted in a few more reviews though. I’m sitting at 6 so far, with an aggregate score of 4.3 stars, and only one of those has text with it. If you get a chance to pop over to Amazon and leave a review it would help me out a lot.

Now that The Hammersmyth Tales is out in the world it’s meant I can get back to some of my other writing. I needed to work on my third steampunk novel, ATTACK MARS!!, but I wanted to work on the next Glunda book, Glunda And The Drupe Mages, so, not being able to decide between the two I chose to work on both at the same time.

I’ve been alternating between each manuscript daily, doing 400+ words on each, and it’s been going great. Not nearly as complicated as you’d imagine. I have a detailed outline for Attack Mars, whereas Glunda 2 I’m just making up as I go along like I did the first one. It’s a lot of fun, and I’m at 33k and 3.4k words respectively on each (Attack Mars was already at 29k when I put it aside to work on In The Valley Of The Wind and The Hammersmyth Tales).

At this rate I should have them both done by the end of the year. Of course life gets in the way sometimes, but I’m making hay while the sun shines so for now optimism is high.

When I’m Not Writing

Finished The Bromeliad Trilogy this month, but since then I haven’t been able to get into another book (my reading goes in fits and spurts) so instead I’ve been playing the video game Stray.

You play a cat in an underground city filled with robots. You have a tiny robot helper who lives in your backpack, and you got on missions to try and help the Outsiders reach the top of the city and go outside.

Beautifully made with fantastic design and excellent storytelling, I can recommend giving it a go. It took me about 9 hours total playtime to finish, but there’s an achievemnt for doing it in under 2 hours if you’re so inclined. I’m not. I like to wander and have a good look around, and this is the perfect chill game for that kind of thing.

I really enjoyed this game and will probably play it again. It came out a while ago so it’s not that expensive to get your hands on, and at under £20 it’s well worth having a go at.

And there you have it. A fairly productive month for me, if not one filled with great variety. Next month will be even worse, with more writing interspersed with loads of money work. But I’ve got my long holiday to look forward to it so it’s not that bad.

I think in August I’d like to get submissions out for In The Valley Of The Wind. It’s been marinating for a while now and I really need to get on with it. It’ll just take a day or two to sit down and research agents, it’s finding those two days back-to-back that’s the hard part.

Have a good one, enjoy the sun, and I’ll see you all again at the end of the month.

Toodle-pip for now.

Keith