Friends,

I hope this blog finds you well and in good working spirits! I am ready to get back to work after an eventful weekend. I traveled to my hometown to play in my high school’s alumni soccer game (which the alumni won 5-2, one of the goals contributed by yours truly). Afterward, my wife and I went out to lunch with some of my very good, longtime friends and their significant others. If I can say one thing, it would be this: I encourage you to never forget your roots and to always cherish your friends.

 

I am on the right

Back to the Grind

Today, I am revisiting Part I of my second book, Unguarded, to add about 2,000 words to what I had already typed. Here is why…

For my first book, Resistant, the final word count totaled just shy of 38K. For the story I was telling, that word count seemed appropriate. As an author, you don’t want to throw words on the page just to reach a certain word count and risk sacrificing the story’s quality. However, many reviews of that book called for a longer story. 

So, I am planning ahead for subsequent books in the “Faces of the War” collection to be in the upper 40K range for word count. Because of this, I want to go back and expand the story in Part I of Unguarded so all of the parts in the book are relatively similar in size to the first book (at least proportionately speaking). I think you’ll understand better when you pick up the book. 

I am getting really excited to see how Unguarded will develop. It started out as a skeleton structure when I began writing a few weeks ago, and it is really beginning to take shape. And the best part is that I’m actually ahead of the original schedule that I laid out when I started this project. That is something really satisfying, and it makes me want to do more!

Mailing List & Newsletter

I wanted to include a little tidbit in today’s blog about KaleMail, the newsletter I send out two times per month to my mailing list subscribers. The list is growing, and the first issue of the newsletter was sent out last week. I surprisingly didn’t have any subscribers throughout the whole process of production for Resistant, but now it’s finally starting to pick up. The idea behind KaleMail is that subscribers in essence become VIP members of the Eli Kale community, receiving details and information on me, my projects, and my currently published books before the rest of the community hears about it. So if you want to get that kind of information as soon as possible, please subscribe. The process is really simple!

New Blog Posts

I also wanted to reiterate my idea about adding another scheduled blog post to the week, probably on Thursdays, that will feature information and tips from me on writing and publishing. But if I were to do this, I’d really like to hear from YOU, my readers, with regards to questions or issues you may have related to these topics. That will give me some material to work with, thus making the posts more interesting and relatable. Please consider commenting or emailing me feedback so we can get this started together!

Until next time,

-Eli