Almost done with the vampire story

I'm through 58K words of my "Teenage Vampire Love Story from a Boys Point of Veiw". Total word count is almost 71K, though I will probably cut a scene that doesn't move the story forward at all. I think a total word count of 70K is good enough for a first attempt at paper publishers.

Chad and Amy have much larger cameos now. I hope their appearances aren't too confusing to those who haven't read, listened to my other stories.

I'm Afraid I Don't Know.

I've worked as an orthotist since 1985. I make and fit orthopedic braces.
I'm not the most  secure guy in the world and I think a lot of my failure to advance results for a single fear.
I'm afraid I won't know. When I get a hospital call, I go to the hospital afraid I won't be able to figure out what they want or won't know how to do it. When I go to meet a new physical therapist I'm afraid I won't know how to do the things they are used to having for their patients. When I see a new patient with a prescription from an unfamiliar doctor, I'm afraid I won't be able to provide them with what they want, or need.
The most absurd thing about this, is that I am good at what I do, I've had a lot more experience than most of my competition and know more about bracing than 99% of the doctors in town. Add to that, I'm creative and successfully adapt, fabricate and fit virtually every patient in a successful manner.
But I lack confidence in myself and my abilities.

I realized this morning as I was editing my current project that the same fear which has limited me in my professional life as an orthotist is the same fear which is limiting me as a writer.
I've written sever novel length manuscripts. If you're reading this, you must know I published one, "The Price of Friendship", about a year ago. Granted, it's not the next Great American Novel. it has its share of plot holes, contradictions and weak writing. It took me two years to finally write it, then another year to edit it for recording.
As I got that one out to podiobooks.com I felt I needed to get another book up at that site to maintain some sort of momentum. So I turned to my first Nanowrimo novel and thought I would just edit that and get it recorded.
Frankly, it sucked. I could barely read it, let alone edit it.
My fear is that I won't be able to see my poor prose and be able to edit it into quality literature.

As my fear about the quality of my orthotic work, my insecurity about my writing skill is likely the same. While editing my project this morning I came up with great ideas to clarify my verbiage, shorten my verbosity, and add life to my characters.
This novel is good and it's getting better.

Philip 'Norvaljoe' Carroll

Summer Surprise is live.

So, it took me an extra two months to get it done, and I hate to admit it, it was editing the audio. When I finally got down to it, it only took me about four hours to get that done and another four to divide up the episodes and do the tagging and stuff to get it ready for podiobooks.com.

I want to thank everyone who is downloading this novella. 24 hours after it went live I've had over 250 episodes downloaded and another 150 of 'The Price of Friendship'.

What is coming?

Here I go changing my mind again. My most recent plan was to finish writing my Nanowrimo. I hit 50k words in plenty of time, but because of other commitments during the holidays, I'm still working on finishing. I'm close. I'm at 65k and have, maybe, 5k to go. But there is a novella that runs concurrently with it, which I had started in September. It also has 5k to go. I'm thinking of combining them and making it one story to introduce the world to the Galactic Battle Base. I have a lot of short stories which take place there.

However, I think I may need to shift attention to the third and final book of The Price of Friendship. I got some good ideas for it as I've but this novella together.

I'll not mention my Teenage Vampire Love Story for The Guys. I thought I was ready to submit it to 'Paper Publishers' but after I had the first three chapters reviewed at Baycon, I see it needs more work. On top of that, the things that have happened in 'Summer Surprise' I need to alter some of the events in the Vampire story, and how Chad and Amy act in their short appearances in that novel.

Please let me know what you think of these stories. And, especially if you like them, please give me a short review on Podiobooks.com or iTunes.

Thanks a bunch.

Novaljoe.

What's going on....

As I've said in the past, what I need to do as a writer to further establish myself is to get more work published and available to the readers. I thought I was going to do that be rewriting "The King's Shoemaker". In retrospect, I'm finding it wasn't a simple rewrite. I've bogged down at 70k words and finding it boring. If it bores me, I'm sure you'll stop reading/listening, so when I get back to it, and finish it, there will be at least one big edit before recording.

While that was going on I switched back to finishing "Summer Surprise" and getting it recorded. The story is done and I really want to get it posted. But by the time the kids are in bed and it's quite enough to record, I'm pooped.

I wrote a story for the Masters of Macabre contest at www.HorrorAddicts.net and won that competition. Yup. I'm the master.

I wrote a Thanksgiving murder mystery for a competition which was rejected within a day of submission. I've been debating submitting that to other magazines or putting it up at Smashwords.

When I last ground to a halt on "Shoemaker" I started another Galactic Battle Base story, that I really love. I'm within 5K words of finishing that one (at about 28K words) but had to start a story for the Editor's Issue of Flagship Magazine at www.FlyingIslandPress.com. It's coming along ok, but I really have to think about it because it's in a shared universe with the other editors.

On top of that, Nanowrimo is coming up. I'm outlining heavily for that. My story will be about the parents of the boy in my GBB novella. They go out on a top secret mission to an uncharted star system and don't know if there son will suffer another seizure, which will have the potential to kill him.

So, in the next twenty days I need to 1) Finish recording and editing "Summer Surprise", 2) Finish "Human Magnetism" - the Battle Base Novella, 3) Finish my Flagship short story, and 4) Finalize my outline for Nanowrimo.

Wish me luck. If you do Nano and I'm not already on your buddy list, and you on mine, buddy me and I'll buddy you back.