Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Friday, July 5, 2019
Launch Week
Wow, what a crazy week this has been. Less than a month ago, my novel Programmed Cell Death was still not finished. But people kept asking me when it would be on sale. So, in order to create some artificial pressure to put on myself to get the damn thing finished once and for all, I decided on a release date, and I started telling everyone: the book will go on sale on July 5, 2019.
Well, today is that day.
And I’m very happy to say that I finished writing the last missing chapter last week, on June 30th. Cutting it close, I know. So the main text of the novel has been finished for a few days now, but this week I had to learn much more about formatting than I ever knew before. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I was starting from scratch. But there are a lot of variables here, a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous. I upgraded my writing software recently and had to learn a few new tricks to get the compiler working the way I want it to. Now I can produce Kindle ebooks with relative ease, and soon I’ll be putting together the paperback version.
But there was a lot more going on this week besides formatting the actual book. I had to come up with a lot of promotional material (which I hate doing), and on top of that I had to do a bunch of tedious fiddling with behind-the-scenes website stuff in preparation for my first-ever book launch.
I could go into so much more detail on all of these things but I don’t have time right now because I’m still not finished with everything (of course) and THE BOOK GOES ON SALE TONIGHT.
Most of all I just want to say THANK YOU SOOO MUCH to my incredibly patient and loving wife Sara, who has believed in me from day one, six years ago.
-Jon
Well, today is that day.
And I’m very happy to say that I finished writing the last missing chapter last week, on June 30th. Cutting it close, I know. So the main text of the novel has been finished for a few days now, but this week I had to learn much more about formatting than I ever knew before. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not like I was starting from scratch. But there are a lot of variables here, a lot of ins, outs, and what-have-yous. I upgraded my writing software recently and had to learn a few new tricks to get the compiler working the way I want it to. Now I can produce Kindle ebooks with relative ease, and soon I’ll be putting together the paperback version.
But there was a lot more going on this week besides formatting the actual book. I had to come up with a lot of promotional material (which I hate doing), and on top of that I had to do a bunch of tedious fiddling with behind-the-scenes website stuff in preparation for my first-ever book launch.
I could go into so much more detail on all of these things but I don’t have time right now because I’m still not finished with everything (of course) and THE BOOK GOES ON SALE TONIGHT.
Most of all I just want to say THANK YOU SOOO MUCH to my incredibly patient and loving wife Sara, who has believed in me from day one, six years ago.
-Jon
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Camp Nano July 2019
Camp Nano is here again. In case you didn't know, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's an online writing competition that happens every year in November. It's how I got started. (Well, it's how I got re-started... It's a long story.)
And Camp Nano happens every year in April and July. The major differences are that in Camp Nano you join a virtual cabin with other writer pals, and you can set your own goals, whereas in November everyone is trying to reach 50,000 words.
I joined the April session but I failed miserably because I was too busy at my new job. But now the July session is here and I'm ready for action.
Okay so I'm one day behind already, because today is July 2nd, and I only realized it was time for Camp when I opened my email this morning. I'm not really worried about that though, because I decided to set an extremely modest goal for myself of only 200 words per day. Just enough to keep me writing every day without too much strain on my other responsibilities. Also I just finished writing my first novel, which took SIX YEARS to write, so I want to take a short break before getting back to serious work on my next book. During this break I plan to catch up on a lot of video games. So that's why I set an easy goal.
Anyway, I'm only trying to generate some content to put up on my author website as a blog. Here are my possible topic areas:
Dinosaurs, time travel, robots, space, ghosts, diseases, murder, graveyard poetry, gothic fiction, cancer medicine, writing craft, publishing, the horror stories of HP Lovecraft.
I definitely feel like I ought to write something about all the cancer research I did for Programmed Cell Death, but I feel like it would have been better to write those blog posts as I was doing the research, not now a year later, when I already poured all of it into the book. Plus, now that I think about it, I'm not so sure that would make for interesting reading on my blog. So scratch that, after all.
But one thing I can do pretty quickly is to finally start revising and publishing all the essays I wrote on Graveyard Poetry, American Gothic Literature, Creative Non-fiction, and fiction craft. But I just decided I don’t want to count those toward my July Camp Nano goal, because that would be cheating. I want to new content. I also want freedom from the constraints of reality, and from what I did in the past. So new content it is. Starting tomorrow.
And Camp Nano happens every year in April and July. The major differences are that in Camp Nano you join a virtual cabin with other writer pals, and you can set your own goals, whereas in November everyone is trying to reach 50,000 words.
I joined the April session but I failed miserably because I was too busy at my new job. But now the July session is here and I'm ready for action.
Okay so I'm one day behind already, because today is July 2nd, and I only realized it was time for Camp when I opened my email this morning. I'm not really worried about that though, because I decided to set an extremely modest goal for myself of only 200 words per day. Just enough to keep me writing every day without too much strain on my other responsibilities. Also I just finished writing my first novel, which took SIX YEARS to write, so I want to take a short break before getting back to serious work on my next book. During this break I plan to catch up on a lot of video games. So that's why I set an easy goal.
Anyway, I'm only trying to generate some content to put up on my author website as a blog. Here are my possible topic areas:
Dinosaurs, time travel, robots, space, ghosts, diseases, murder, graveyard poetry, gothic fiction, cancer medicine, writing craft, publishing, the horror stories of HP Lovecraft.
I definitely feel like I ought to write something about all the cancer research I did for Programmed Cell Death, but I feel like it would have been better to write those blog posts as I was doing the research, not now a year later, when I already poured all of it into the book. Plus, now that I think about it, I'm not so sure that would make for interesting reading on my blog. So scratch that, after all.
But one thing I can do pretty quickly is to finally start revising and publishing all the essays I wrote on Graveyard Poetry, American Gothic Literature, Creative Non-fiction, and fiction craft. But I just decided I don’t want to count those toward my July Camp Nano goal, because that would be cheating. I want to new content. I also want freedom from the constraints of reality, and from what I did in the past. So new content it is. Starting tomorrow.
-Jon
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Monday, April 1, 2019
Begin Trial:
Transmortification Process 3.0
Project Lead: Dr. Aleksei Brandt
Patient A / Experimental Subject: Baker, Adam
D.O.B.: 10-31-82. 11:29 P.M.
Weight: 2671 g / 5 lbs 14 oz APGAR: 07
Mother: Baker (Nelson), Helen
Father: Baker, John T.
Patient B / Control Subject: Garcia, Arturo
D.O.B.: 10-31-82. 11:16 P.M.
Weight: 3855 g / 8 lbs 8 oz APGAR: 10
Mother: Garcia (Cuevas), Gloria
Father: Garcia, Juan Manuel
11:31 P.M.: Trial explained. Both mothers opposed.
11:34 P.M.: Parents of A shown familial TP53 mutation.
11:48 P.M.: Father of B accepts sum of $8000.
11:53 P.M.: All forms signed.
11:57 P.M.: Subjects’ DNA obtained.
Friday, March 8, 2019
Upcoming Release
Coming Soon to a Reading Device Near You:
Programmed
Cell Death.
A sci-fi revenge thriller
by debut author Jonathan Hendricks.
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