Final edits of Native Moments are finished. Besides promoting the book, there is nothing else I can do with it. Now I turn my attention to my next project. I have a novella already finished and maybe twenty short stories. Was thinking of trying to get a collection of short stories published, but I don’t know how well short stories sell. I still think, if my … Continue reading What Next?
My publisher asked for us to send any press mentions we’ve had regarding our upcoming releases and I didn’t have anything to send her. I did a Google search to see if anyone by chance had mentioned my book and sure enough something came up. The Lumberjack, a student paper of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ wrote an article about anticipated books for 2016 … Continue reading Native Moments First Mention in the Press
I’m reading the entire manuscript aloud in my garage. This is my last chance to get it right before I send it back to my publisher on Sunday to leave it forever unchanged. Here is a little excerpt, a couple sentences, that I would like to share. This is the first night that Sanch is sleeping in his tent in Costa Rica, only two months … Continue reading An Excerpt from Native Moments
Native Moments is with the final editor. This is the stage I’ve been dreading. This means it is over. All the hard work I’ve put into this leads up to this moment. No more changes. My worst fear is opening the book for the first time and seeing a mistake. Or if I ever decide to read it again, thinking I should’ve had a different ending. … Continue reading Final Edits
I finished the 150 pages of edit suggestions from editor #1. I agreed with about 99% of them. Amazing what I missed. I thought I knew every word of that manuscript. I left out words, misspelled words, misused words and had some jumbled sentences that she helped me clarify. On top of her suggestions, I had some really great and brutally honest feedback from a respected … Continue reading First Round of Edits are Finished.
Printed out over 100 pages of suggestions sent to me from my editor. Amazed by how many simple errors I had. An omitted word here or there, a single quotation mark instead of double, a few misspellings, etc. Having those extra set of eyes comb over your manuscript is imperative. If I were to ever self publish, I would definitely invest in an editor. Working … Continue reading Editing Native Moments
I’ve been doing a lot of starting and stopping when it comes to reading lately. Can’t seem to get fully invested into a book the last few weeks. A buddy of mine has been telling for a while now that I must read Stoner (New York Review Books Classics) by John Williams. It arrived in the mail yesterday. I skipped the introduction because I felt it … Continue reading Stoner, Preorder Contest and The End
At some point, the satisfaction I felt from reading a well written story crossed over to wanting to be able to write a well written story. I wanted to learn the craft of storytelling to see if I could tell a compelling story, one that stuck with the readers after they finished it. I wrote a story that I thought would be fun to read. … Continue reading Overcoming self doubt and criticism
After Philip Roth’s My Life as a Man, a heart breaking tale of a writer’s marriage, I quickly began Alex Garland’s The Tesseract. I was excited about The Tesseract because years ago I thouroughly enjoyed Garland’s debut novel The Beach. However, two weeks later I was still only 60 pages in. It was a struggle to get that far. I’m one of those readers that … Continue reading Currently Reading
It’s a good feeling to see Native Moments rise in the ranks with the presale orders. Yesterday it climbed to #17 in the surfing category. Today is back down to #61. But it is staying at #2 so far on the Hottest New Releases list. Thank you to all who have already placed orders. Can’t wait until you actually get to read it. Eight months … Continue reading Amazon Rankings, BEA and Writing a Synopsis
Nic Schuck 