Author: jspeet

In case some of you have wondering if I’ve dropped off the edge of the Earth, well, I have. Besides an incredibly busy spring, I’m now on the road – literally. I’m walking all 791 kilometers (that’s about 500 miles for you luddites) of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Temperatures are hovering about 40C during the day (104F) as I walk The Way between St. Jean Pied de Port, France and Santiago de Compastela, Spain.

Why the hell am I doing this? Part of it’s private, but part of it I’ll share. I walk to remember those law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, specifically, some I know and some that officers I’ve worked with know. Personally, there are four names on the small thin blue line I carry strapped to my pack whom I knew and either were killed in the line of duty or died due to wounds sustained in the line of duty.

These are their names:

• Charley Hill, Alexandria Police Department, End of Watch 3/22/89
• Andy Chelchowski, Alexandria Police Department, End of Watch 7/29/93
• Morty Ford, Alexandria Police Department, End of Watch 6/18/11
• Robin Daniels, National Park Service, End of Watch 2/28/89

 

 

Yep, still here. Busy, as is usual. While I’ve been working mostly on Explorer, I took a few days off to write a cookbook. Yes, you read that right, a cookbook! Having walked the Camino de Santiago in the Spring of 2018 in support of my wife, I decided to do the entire thing on my own this upcoming summer. Being mostly sugar-free vegan (I call myself a reluctant vegan – I do eat fish on occasion, but only cold-water varieties) I had enough difficulties last trip, so I decided to come up with a cook-book that I could make meals using locally obtained food. Just wrapped up the first draft this morning, and hope to have it out in the next couple of weeks.  As Curtis asked in Santa Clause 2, “Did you eat your vegetables?”

If interested in a free e-copy, let me know and I’ll send you one when it’s ready. I’ll be putting it on Amazon in both print and e-book version for as cheap as I possibly can (just because).

Finally, after a couple of hectic months fighting fraud, I’m back in the writing saddle (which is actually quite funny, considering the scene I just wrote about in Openings was about saddles).

I got kind of stuck on Explorer, so decided to vent my writings on Openings. I’ve actually got that plot more developed in my mind, so I figured I might as well get it out. Over 12K words so far (put in about 3500 yesterday, but had to backtrack and delete a bunch – that whole continuity issue, so only advanced about 2800 words). For those that don’t know, putting in 1000 words in a day is what most professional authors do (Steven King apparently does about 2000 words a day, while Hemingway only wrote 500-1000). So, yeah, pumpin’ it!

I know I should be working on Explorer, particularly for those of you interested in the future adventures of Lewis and Clark, but, for some reason, I got a bee under my bonnet and decided to work a bit on Openings tonight. Either way, writing got done 🙂

So, along with Explorer, I’m working on two other books right now. The first is the backstory, which I’m calling Openings. It’s about when Dr. Bowman opens up the gate for the first time (the prologue in Surveyor was actually the first draft of Openings). Great plot line and really sets up for Surveyor and the YA novel I’m writing.

I’ve never written a YA (Young Adult) novel, but I’ve read enough. Those of you whom have read Heinlein’s stuff, like Tunnel in the Sky, Have Space Suit, Will Travel or other similar works, or Harry Turtledove’s Crosstime series will have read some YA novels. They’re enjoyable, and I wanted to try and spread the whole multiverse concept to young readers, especially those in the 13-17 age range (although I’m sure many adult readers will enjoy it). One little tidbit – Meri is 13!

My goal is to write books that are at least 80,000 words (for frame of reference, Surveyor was 102K and Trekker was almost 83K. Today, Explorer passed the 28K mark. I hope to have over 30K written before the weekend is up (but, first, Christmas lights!).

Today I received an email from IngramSpark, with the subject being “Happy Book Birthday!” This means Trekker is now available to all book resellers. So, if you want a copy of Trekker and you would prefer not to send money to Amazon, you can trek down to your local bookstore (avoid all Smilodons) and ask them to order it for you.

For those of you who are local, please visit Mike and Sue of The Sequel on Enumclaw’s Cole Street, or Evelyn of A Good Book on Sumner’s Main Street. Both stores are great, the owners are amazing, and it helps support a local business.  If you’re really lucky, and you visit A Good Book, you might meet local author and publisher Mark Teppo (I’ll probably do a blog post on him in the near future).

In case those of you who actually read my books are interested, my third book is about 1/4 of the way done. I’ve decided to up my game and put books out at a faster pace, so don’t expect to wait another year for Explorer to hit the market (I’m already discussing covers with my cover artist).

Of course, since writing is mostly limited to evenings and weekends, that means little to no TV*.

 

 

 

 

 

*That’s a joke – we don’t have television reception of any sort, and limited bandwidth on our satellite internet

I just checked. Trekker is available on Amazon now.

Of course, if you haven’t read Surveyor, you might want to do so before delving into Trekker (but it’s not necessary).

The intent was to release Trekker  in ebook and the paperback formats simultaneously, but I think I’ll mix things up. After spending an hour (or more) trying to format Trekker into a Mobi file (that’s the file format that Kindle reads), I’ve finally gotten Trekker ready to publish on Amazon.

There are some issues with it, though, that I haven’t resolved. First, is the whole Chapter thing. Scrivener, which is the software I use to write with, doesn’t seem to let me put my chapter titles in without having a Chapter number inserted before it.  You know, that whole “Chapter 1” thing. I don’t want the chapter numbers in it, though!  Grrr. So, special for Kindle, I eliminate the chapter headings and just put in the chapter numbers (until I can find out how to do that – the manual – yes, I RTFM – doesn’t give a clue on how to do that).

So, those of you getting Trekker in Kindle format will miss out on chapter headings. Those of you who wait for the paperback will not.

My expectation is that I’ll have Trekker published on Amazon this weekend, sometime (partly due to how Amazon handles these types of things). I’ll make an announcement when that happens.