My boots are huge

I started the first step in my marketing plan, yesterday. It seems crazy, my book isn't even out yet.


On that, I'm 100 pages into my hard copy edit. That's where I mark all the changes on a print out, as in the previous post. My entire m/s currently sits at 127 pages, double-space, 12-point TNR. This edit has some pretty big changes in it. I realised that some scenes which were conversational should really have been confrontational. This is sword and sorcery I'm writing after all it's supposed to be about marching from battle to battle.


After I'm finished, I have to put all my changes into the PC. Then I pop the book to an editor and to my cover artist. I'm confident with my story, I like it, I don't want to change it. Unless there is a gaping plot hole I won't be changing the structure. My artist plans to read my book for inspiration.


And then I do my marketing. Which I started yesterday. It's hard to market fiction, which is why I have decided to do non-fiction to put my name about a bit. So I started working on a non-fiction yesterday, which I aim to have finished by Xmas.


Which is roughly when I'll start the first Guns prequel. I don't have a title yet, but I do know it will be set in 1860, in London. Winter. There will be zombies. And Church knights. And really cool steampunk technology. The plot will involve an old book, somehow.


And Matilda will be evil, which will be fun to write. Embrace the demonic badness.


I have plans for work in other genres too, but I'm just going to keep going for now and see how far I can get. From Sept/Oct next year there's a film I really want to start filming, so I'll need to script it this year, and try and make enough money from the writing to have a float with which to start fundraising for my film.


But this non fiction is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Other companies make these books, and put together teams of 30 staff to pull it off. I have me, and a tea-brewing dwarf, and a quarter of that sentence was a lie.