Friends,

I hope this post finds you well and striving to achieve the goals you’ve set down for yourself! Let’s get down to this week’s content…

The Short Story Collection

It’s been over a week since I released my second volume of short stories. It was an exciting release because it sort of happened off the cuff. I’d planned to release it sometime before my birthday in February, but I ended up pulling some strings to make it happen sooner. If you haven’t yet checked it out, you can find it on Amazon here.

Looking ahead in this collection, I can tell you that I already have ideas in development for Volume 3! Granted, these ideas are at their most basic state of being, and have been sitting on the back burner for months. Nevertheless, it’s exciting to know that I already have a footing for the next installment of this collection, and that it’s ready to be worked on in the coming months.

The Faces of the War Collection

I am on the cusp of finalizing the first half of Imminent‘s manuscript, which should end up being around 21K words. The tentative release date of December 11 still stands, and I am working very hard to see that the book is released at the time. As I said before, once I get the edited manuscript back from my editor, I’ll reveal the cover and book details.

Looking ahead in this collection, I am preparing the material for my next book. I plan on beginning work on this the day I submit Imminent to Amazon. This is because once that’s done, the story is out of my hands and I can’t change it for this release. This next story will be different from its predecessors in its own way, which is something I’ve tried to do with each new release. At this point, it may be a little trickier to write, but that’s the fun of writing – to test yourself!

Indie Writing Advice

I’ve picked up on something of a habit of mine while editing Imminent: I tend to resort to certain words to express the thoughts in my head while initially writing the story. And it definitely shows. So for some advice, I’ll direct my wording to you:

When you go back through your manuscript (whether before or after having another person look at it), look up all the instances where you use certain words a lot. For example, I tend to use “then” when describing a sequence of events or telling what a character does next. It might be hard to envision it right now, but trust me – something like that shows. Another one is the word “just” being used a lot to modify short distances between objects or the relative time before or after something happens. Leaving words like these out can make a world of difference in your writing!

That’ll be it for this week’s post. I hope you are accomplishing your own work and are getting along well with developing your craft. If you’re not a writer, I encourage you to keep reading! Thank you for reading my post, and if you haven’t yet joined my mailing list or follow this blog, I encourage you to do that as well.

Until next time,

-Eli