Happy (official) start to summer, everyone!
In keeping with the season (and esp. given the heat and air quality of late in my neck of the woods), I’m starting my latest round of writing at an easygoing pace. Right now, the focus is on a post-beta read-through of and minor edits on my AH work Cross & Flag: Revelations, the third book in that series; the first of both should be done by tomorrow, and I’ll likely seek out a formatter/final beta-reader shortly after, to have this novel publish-ready by early July, as planned. While that’s underway, I’ll be focusing on the fourth and final C&F book, Reckonings, which is, best guess, between halfway and two-thirds done at this point; current plan is to have it in beta-ready form by the end of August. The past six months have taught me, yet again, the importance of keeping deadlines elastic, particularly self-imposed ones, yet I’m hopeful that giving myself such a long time on a project of this size will mean less need to stretch this one out.
Apart from this, it’s relatively quiet writing news-wise. One noteworthy bit, however, is that, after long procrastination, distraction and simple absent-mindedness, I’ve been the process of trying to get my scifi novel Discarded sold in paperback form at B&N and other bookstores in my hometown. Like my other, self-published works, this one’s been available in B&N’s online store for a while, but the hard copy, being printed by the UK outfit Unbound, hasn’t yet graced this chain’s shelves–including a “Local Author” table I’m embarrassed to have missed for so long. No idea yet if and when this will happen, but it’s become another writing-related effort for this summer. Should any of you not be willing to wait for a B&N appearance, or want to prep for when C&F: Revelations is released, head to Amazon Kindle and pick up the first two books in the Cross & Flag series, which will be on sale from June 23 to 30 at the links below!
Stay cool and safe, and catch you all again in July!
Mark Anthony Ciccone 