So, here I am saying the book is done, but it's not finished. By that, I mean that the book is written. I have all the chapters written, and they are in order. What they don't have is flowability...not yet. I'm about to go back through the book a dozen times to make sure the spelling errors are corrected, the grammar issues that I see are corrected, and then I'll add dozens of more adjectives, even a few more nouns here and there. I'm fluffing it, and I'm stuffing it. It's not done done, it's just written. I'd say it's 95% done.
The book didn't turn out the way I thought it would, and that's OK. Most if not all of my books end up being different in the end than they were in the beginning. I start with basic broad ideas and when they take off in a million different directions I find myself listening to the voices of the characters. They have a right to shine, and to make decisions so that's what happens.
I don't only listen to the main characters either; if one or the other smaller characters has an idea, something to ping, or make the chapter stand out, I go with that. If I can make the chapter interesting and have it support the ones before and after it, that's the goal. Nothing usually stands on its own, but there are two chapters I think in this book that do actually have stand-alone status. You'll figure it out when you read the book.
Do I like it? I do. I'm not going to dwell on it too much, but I got out of the horse world for some of the same reasons (more, in fact) that my main character Jule Armstrong has to deal with. She was a racer, a rider, and a good sport for years before buying her own ranch. In just over a year after buying it and sinking so much of herself and her money into it, she's ready to get out from under it. It's not the money; the money is really never the issue. The people are the real problem. Horse people. They suck...for the most part, even the good ones suck to a degree.
I say it all the time, "The best thing about horse people are their dogs!" and I mean that. Horse people lie, cheat, steal, rob, bury things, burn things, hide things, use people, abuse people, use animals, abuse animals, and they can also be good, loyal friends, but even those people tend to skate the Golden Rule over and over again. It just became too much for me to remain in the mix. I can admit also that the expense was just too much, but that too deals with the barn and the barn owners. They charge too much. That simple.
You can't make money owning a horse barn unless you overcharge people, and even then you're only making a little something. The best thing to do if you're a barn owner is to board a few and have a regular job somewhere else. That way you don't have 100 people vying for the stalls, the wash stalls, the feed, the arenas, and God help them if the English riders forget to pick up their jumps, or the Western riders forget to take down their poles and/or barrels. It's just too stupid to try and have schedules because most participating barns also give lessons to 4-9-year-olds who can rake $$$ out of their parents and drag them along for years and years. Adults figure out pretty quickly that the 169 lessons required could be cut down to 10.
The book is done. I'm fluffing it now, and then waiting a full week to fluff it again and go back over it. Since I don't have the Canva and/or Adobe accounts yet, I can't do the book cover anyway until the 22nd. I'll end up publishing the book on 12/22 and or 12/23. It'll happen. I've at least picked out the photos for the front and back cover. That's good. I'll have to manipulate them of course, and a description of the book on the back. I'll add the "About Author" page on the back of the book along with links to where folks can buy the books online.
So there we go...another book done! That makes 5 novels written in 2023, and I released Faith's bio again, as well as my poetry book. I gathered the blogs from my computer and formed (formatted) "Jude's Almost Daily Blog Book 2", so if you are counting, that's 8 books published on Ingram Spark from January 2023 to December 2023. Quite a busy busy year to be sure. I took "Of Kilted Pleasure", "Faith Walks", and "Periwinkle" from the original publishers, and republished them through Ingram Spark.
From this point forward all the books will be written, edited, formatted, and uploaded for free; this is good news. I can't produce the Ebooks for free, they will be around $240 per book. I'll end up doing that in January and February of 2024. By this time next year, I hope to have 4 more books written. Three will be in the Nick Posh thriller series, and another in the Kilted romance series. Good stuff.
THANK YOU for all you do, and for all you buy and read. I truly do appreciate it. All of my books are on Amazon. (If you find mistakes let me know, I've edited them, but I think Amazon is still selling some of the older ones. Which isn't fun, but I can't do anything about it.)
Photo Credit: Blood-Horse.com
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