A Little Tale About Fire

There is a light,

It shines brightly.

It is noticeable in the dark,

It is a point many people make towards.

It stands for hope,

It stands for peace,

It stands for all who love,

And it is always there with open arms.

It waits for those that need it,

It will always be there for those that don't,

It is caring,

It is honourable.

It only wants to help,

It will shine as brightly as it needs to,

It will always show support.

It gives the appearance that it will never go out.

But, as strong as the flame is,

As powerful is it's might in the dark,

When it has stood for everything a person needs,

When the door is closed behind it, the flames goes out.

I lowered the prices on my Kindle books.

So it only just occurred to me, like 2 minutes before I began writing this that I should actually tell you all about what I did yesterday.

Yesterday I was perusing my published Kindle books, Of Lights and Shadows and The Story of Silence and checking out other kindle novels just to try to see the difference between them. Just tidying up the way my books are presented and such. My books haven't been selling, which is alright with me as I never expected them too. I have to advertise them and I haven't been doing that. So that's okay. But I was still looking, and I noticed that my books were slightly more expensive than a lot of the other books in the Kindle store. And so, I thought to myself, maybe that's why. So I changed the prices on my two books. Both The Story of Silence and Of Lights and Shadows are now $1.50 USD. I can't remember what that is in Australian $, maybe 50 cents more? Either way, it's now a bargain. For $3 USD, or $4 AUD, you can buy over 200,000 words to read. Who wouldn't want that? And with all the deals that Amazon Kindle offers, if you can follow them all through and work out how they works, you have the chance to buy it for free. And with every paperback edition of the books you also get a free download of the Kindle edition.

So if you enjoy mystery/crime fiction that's not too dark or complex for the brain, with great characters and good plots set in the wonderful city of New York, The Story of Silence and Of Lights and Shadows is for you. Remember, Story of Silence comes first, but it is not absolutely necessary to read first.

The Story of Silence: http://www.amazon.com.au/Story-Silence-Peter-Van-Werkhoven-ebook/dp/B00F3QO1SI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1431133217&sr=1-1 *

Of Lights and Shadows: http://www.amazon.com.au/Lights-Shadows-Peter-Van-Werkhoven-ebook/dp/B00MLNJXHA/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1431133217&sr=1-2 *

*Links are for Amazon.com.au

My first Assignment is complete.

Just like that, I am done. Yesterday I smashed through the final two chapters of 'The Assignment', the first draft edit is complete. This was a long one, it took me something like 10(?) months to convert the book from 1st person to 3rd person, and coming in at 85,000 words it is roughly 10k words longer than the original 1st person draft. And remind me never to convert a book from 1st to 3rd, or back the other way.

I think I can learn from this lesson that given a deadline to push out an edited book I would fail to get it out on time... Or not. While I wanted the first draft finished, I was writing two other books and editing three  at the same time so of course it took me a while to finish this draft, and there was no need for me to really rush it. Now I'm trying not to think of the fact that the book is far from finished and that there are something like a further 5 edits ahead. I'll think about that later.

What's up next now that I have finished this mile course? For now I am going to relax from this achievement. Then, come Camp NaNoWriMo in, I think it's July, July, I will either start the sequel to 'The Assignment' which was my whole reason for editing the first book so I could remember what happened and how to write the characters, or begin my Dastardious Hollow prequel. I really like the ideas I have for that book and can't wait to begin it, I just have to decide whether I want to write it in November when I have more of a plot and ideas, or write it in July. It's a really hard decisions to make.

But even though I am making all these plans for what to write next, I really don't know whether I will have any time for it. This saddens me because at the moment I am in the big mood to just write every idea I have. However, this online course in Professional Writing and Publishing is taking up more of my time than I thought it would. So that takes up four days of my week, my acting theatre course takes up one day, and I work the weekend. So where in all of that do I expect to find time to write? I'll stop complaining because I know that the key to being able to write is to find those moments in the week when I could be doing something but I'm really doing nothing and use them.

For all those reading this blog, thank you very much and I hope you are enjoying learning about the hardships of being a teen writer. I think I may appear slightly negative and unhappy when talking about everything I have to do and all the time I don't have to do things. This isn't true, it just looks that way. I am very grateful for the opportunities that I have to study and write, and I am very thankful that I have the abilities to do so. I may appear negative about my overwhelming workload, but I was exactly the same when I was unemployed and wasn't studying (I complained about not having anything to do). And because I want people to actually read my blog and take something away from it, I'm going to work on an idea that just came to me. If people read this to know about my life as a writer, then maybe I could help out by actually writing some blog posts about tips for writing that I find useful.

Keep an eye out on this blog, I don't know when I will next upload but I'll try to make it soon and have it involve interesting content about writing.