Tag: Andrew Q. Gordon

Upcoming release: Love, Loss, Laughter & Lust; A Wayward Ink Anthology

LLLL Bookmark

Wayward Ink is publishing it’s second anthology, Love, Loss, Laugher and Lust. This time I have a short story in included. Interestingly enough, this will be my first time appearing in an anthology.  My story, A Closed Door, will appear in the Loss part of the anthology.  If you’d like to get your copy a bit early, we’re releasing the eBook  on June 20, 2014 at 12:01 a.m. Australian time, which to us American’s would be 10:00 a.m. on June 19, 2014 – East Coast time.  You can pre-order it now and have it almost a day early.

Pre-Order Link – Wayward Ink Publishing:

We’re also having a release party starting at 7:00 p.m. Newcastle Australia time.  The party will run for 24 hours to allow all the authors in the anthology a chance to spend time chatting with readers and fans.  There will be giveaways throughout the day, so stop by and join in the festivities.

Love, Loss, Laughter & Lust Release Party June 20, 2014 – click here for details.

Last – we have a book trailer, created by Lily G. Blunt.  Check it out:

Ashes of Life – My DRitC Entry – With Cover Reveal and Sneak Peek

Every year, the Goodreads MM Romance group does an event that gets authors to write stories based on the suggestions of readers.  [If you’re not a member of the group, here’s the link to sign up – it’s free.  Goodreads MM Romance Group]  The event is call Don’t Read in the Closet (DRitC).  For those not familiar with it, the reader writes a ‘Dear Author’ letter. They provide a picture and what they see in the picture.  Based on those two things, the author that claims the prompt writes ‘that story.’  The MM Group then compiles these stories, and posts them over a three month period. [There were 200 prompts this year so do NOT ask me how they manage to collect, format, and post these, but they do.]  They also group the stories into anthologies after all the stories are posted. The stories are free to read on their website: M/M Romance Group. You can also downland them for free in ePub, Mobi or PDF formats. Continue reading Ashes of Life – My DRitC Entry – With Cover Reveal and Sneak Peek

New Visuals

As I grow as an author, I feel I’m learning more about how to be ‘marketer’ (not that I’m not learning more every day about how to be a better author, but my ‘marketing skills’ were/are so woeful that I have sooo much to learn).  But thanks to the web and some very smart – and generous -people, I’ve learned a few important things.

Perhaps one of the most important is that visuals are really helpful. It’s easier to catch someone’s eye with a picture, video, drawing, graphic, etc, than it is with just text. I’d kinda known that – hence the pictures everywhere, –  but then someone took it a step further and said, I – not me per se, but people in general – needed an avatar that I could/would use on all platforms that would be recognizable as mine.  I think I found such an image.

AQGLogo Full Size

Lily Velden helped me come up with it and the graphic artist is Laird Geoffrey Mead.  Pretty cool, no?

In addition, since I started a new Wednesday Brief Story, I asked my friend Alicia Nordwell to create a cover and banner for the posts.  Here’s what she came up with:

MGAIACBbanner1 copy

Again, I rather like it and it does fit the story.  So thank you to Cia – who by the way, does freelance covers and banners. If you’re in the market for some, her prices are reasonable and she is super easy to work with.

Book Two Of – ‘Champion of the The Gods- – Is Done

Kinda. Sorta. Maybe. Hopefully?

So After many months of start and stop, of rewriting while trying to keep the story intact, I’ve finished the rough draft of Book 2 – The Eye And The Arm. Those who’ve followed my blog know I struggled with this. Not because I didn’t have the story set, but because I had to make the story fit within a word limit. I’m having second thoughts now.  Overall, I feel the Champions series is good – dare I say very good, though I know the hubris of saying that.  My issue is I wanted it to be a bit more epic.

Nendor has three main continents – Ardus, Laudria & Erd.  My goal was to make each book a journey that took the reader to each continent and back and than in Book 4 I’d wrap things up.  The 100-120K word limit left me two choices: abandon the 4 book model in favor of more books or abandon the original series and try to create a new, scaled down story that would fit in the 4 book model.

Originally I decided to go with the former – preserve the overall story by breaking things into more, but shorter books.  That sound great in theory, but the issue has been conflict, tension and keeping the readers attention. My original book 2 would have been about four times longer than the current book. With revisions and eliminating things that aren’t essential, The Eye And The Arm would probably be about three times longer  – give or take 20-30 words.  The first third set up the rest. Cutting it down to the first third didn’t make sense because it was all set up and no conflict/tension – or not enough to justify a book.

Re-writing the story required a major rewrite, I might as well have written a whole new book. That has been the labor of the last ten months.  (Of course I also published Purpose, finished NaNoWriMo, wrote a couple other things when I needed a break, joined the Wednesday Brief Flashers group – oh yeah, and I got married and helped raise our daughter.)

The next step is to do a quick self-edit and send it to a few people who’ve agreed to read it and give me their honest opinion.  Once I get that back, I’ll know where to go next.

In the meantime, I plan to work on another of the many projects I’ve been wanting to write. Stay tuned – details to follow. 🙂

-AQG

November Update

NaNoWriMo has been interesting. Much like a lot of things, November started with a surge – the first 12 days I averaged almost 2000 words a day.  The last five I’ve done less than 800 a day.  That said, I’m hoping to get to that 50K mark by the end of the month.  Not sure it will be done at 50k – doubtful really – but at least I can say I made the 50K threshold.  If I do make it, I’ll have written almost  double the number of words in one month that I managed in the six prior, so no matter what the result, it will have been a good exercise.  I’ve got an updater on the right side of this page so check it out for my current progress.

The hard part of course will be to keep the ball rolling. With the holidays that will be impossible.  Maybe NaNoWriMo can move to Feb or March so that once you get in the grove, you don’t let the holiday’s break the habit.  I think it’s safe to say that once I get the rough draft of Harp Strings done, I’ll need to go back and do some major work on it, but I’ll still be glad to getter done.

As some know, I’m part of the Wednesday Briefs Flash Fiction group. We’re trying something new – our own website to help better cross promote each other’s work.  For those interested, here’s the site.:

http://wedbriefsfic.com

As part of the group effort we’re planning to post new releases from the authors involves so if you get a chance, click over and follow the site to get updates as they happen.

 

-AQG

 

Brunch With Friends

wu-003Today was the monthly DC Area MM Romance Group lunch meet up that Joyfully Jay helps organize. The meet up which brings together readers and writers in the DC Metro area. [Though I’m sure anyone from somewhere else who wanted to come would be welcome.]  Today the venue was Freddie’s Beach Bar in Arlington VA. Since I used to be neighbors with Freddie, who owns his name sake, today was a do not miss for me and ‘lil q.

Aside from ‘lil q being a bit fussy at times – not really her fault, we had swim class right before, so she was tired – the day was outstanding.  ‘lil q had competition/company in the baby department as Bella Leone brought her adorable son – Little Lion Man [for safety reason , neither Bella nor I use our child’s first name] I wish I’d had a chance to take a picture of the two of them, but ‘li q wasn’t being the most cooperative by the end of lunch.

IMG_1807However, if around 12:45 eastern standard time, you felt what you thought was a solar flare, that was me. One of the people at the lunch – whom I adore, by the way so I’ll not name her – handed me a lollipop pacifier for ‘lil q without really looking at it in the semi dark room. Turns out I had better light. It was a pacifier lollipop in the shape of a penis.  I think half the room got sunburnt when I turned red, but fortunately ‘lil q was blissfully unaware.

Couple side notes – yeah yeah I know, get to the pictures and shut up. But it’s my blog so I can say what I want.  I really like these events. If you are local ask how you can come, if you’re not, you might want to have them in your area. I’ve met some really nice people at these lunches. It’s been one of the things I’ve found most rewarding about writing and publishing – meeting people. I’d list some of them, but if I did I’d leave someone out and I don’t want to do that.

The other thing is Wade Kelly is awesome. When ‘lil q was fussin’ me and I was trying to tweet something to Kim Fielding, Wade popped up and calmed the savage beast. . . eh. . . ‘lil q. So a great big thank you and an around the world and back snap to Wade.

Okay, here are some pictures:

WIP Updates

It’s been a while since I’ve done any kind of update and since I’ve had a few questions recently about the sequel to The Last Grand Master, I figured I’d post something. My goal is to try to do these once a month, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out.

The Eye and the Arm – Champion Of The Gods Book 2:

This one has bedeviled me some.  When I originally wrote COTG it was going to be a 4 books series.  The original Books 2-4 were about 550K words unedited so they would roughly end up between 300-350 words.  But those are not the appropriate numbers in the publishing world I’ve learned. 120K is about the max a publisher will accept – a bit more if  necessary and justified.  The problem was I had about 40K left over from the original Book 1 when I submitted The Last Grand Master. There was no way I could condense 600K into 120.

No problem, you say. Just break it into smaller books, right?  Wrong.

Every book, even sequels in a series, needs a beginning, middle and an end.  There still needs to be conflict, tension and a resolution. Think Harry Potter. Each book had it’s own adventure and dilemma to resolve, while the overarching Voldemort plot line continued for the series.  The original COTG Book 2 had all those elements, but the resolution came toward the end. So that required a MAJOR rewrite.  Major. Trying to create an enjoyable Book 2, with all the needed elements, AND not mucking with the story line too much in 120K words has proven incredibly difficult.  Much harder than writing a new book from scratch.

The good news is I think I’ve finally managed to clear the creative hurled that has held this up. I’d say I’m about 80% through with the rewrite and that just leaves the serious editing of the rest of the rough draft. And, the rest of the books should prove easier to break up into smaller chunks without a major rewrite. Which is a long way of saying the major blockage – the rewrite of the middle of Book 2 – is almost cleared away. I’m hopeful that by the next WIP- Update in September, I’ll have more definitive information to share.

Purpose:

Sorry to all who have asked but there is no sequel planned.  The reasons are many, but the two main ones are: lack of a good story and lack of sales. At present I have an outline of an idea for a sequel, but it’s not fully formed. More to the point it is much more of an action/adventure plot than the requisite romance that seems to be required in the genre.  But the bigger issue is sales or more properly, a general lack of them. I’m not sure at this point if a publisher would take a sequel given the limited sales Purpose saw.  Yes, those who read it seemed to enjoy it quite a lot, but it never took off and sales were sluggish at best.  So for now, no sequel. Maybe I’ll dabble with a novella or short story. Perhaps that would generate some more interest in the book and it would than be worthy of a sequel.

Other Stuff:

Right now I have a paranormal and two contemporary stories in partial stages of doneness.  I hate giving out plot specifics on a story, so I won’t, but for the two contemporary stories, I’m about 5 chapters into each and the paranormal, I’ve written about 7 chapters.  All need some work, but when I get stuck on The Eye And The Arm, I generally turn to work on one of these.  My goal is to finish The Eye And The Arm before I focus on anything else too seriously.

Two other things:

1) Wednesday briefs. I’m planning to continue them for the time being. Not sure it will be every week, but I’ll try to do it most weeks.

2) The other thing I’m toying with is to rework Second Shot and turn into two smaller books. If I do this, I’m not sure what to do with them – either give them away for free or perhaps list them on Amazon for .99 cents as a way to generate more name recognition. I’ve no firm plans yet on whether I’ll do it, but it is something I’ve been considering. Maybe I’ll keep that in my back pocket for those days when I can’t seem to write anything new.

Questions, comments or even criticism is welcome.

-AQG

I’m July’s Author of the Month on Mrs. Condit and Friends

Thanks to Purpose, I was voted Author of the Month on Mrs Condit and Friends. Having never been Anything of the Month before this was pretty cool.  That I won it for Purpose is that much sweeter. So thank you to Lucky for the awesome review of the book, to Mrs. Condit for having the contest, and to everyone who voted for me.

And if you haven’t read Purpose, maybe this will be convince you it is worth the read.

-AQG

title pic And the winner is… Our July Author of the Month is Andrew Q Gordon for “Purpose”

Posted by Becky Condit on August 7, 2013

photo AuthoroftheMonthBadge.jpg

Congratulations to Andrew Q Gordon,
winner of our July, 2013, Author of the Month poll!