Friday, August 17, 2012

Writing Full Time!


This is a post that has been a long time coming.  I’m happy to announce that I’ll be pursuing writing full time.  Quitting the day job is a bit of a scary step, when you come right down to it; but ultimately no matter what you do, there is an element of risk.  The best part about writing is that while I’m not necessarily in more control of things, I’m betting on myself, and I’m betting on all of you.  That is a bet I’m willing to take.  Hopefully time will prove it out as being a smart bet, but barring some kind of major emergency Katie and I have agreed that I’ll be focused on writing for at least the next year and a half.  If things continue to improve at the same rate they have been, the odds are decent that I’ll be able to continue to do this full time long past that deadline.

For all of you, that is important because it means that I should be cranking out books at around four times the rate I would have done otherwise.  I’ve largely been getting up ‘backlist’ titles for the last year and a half, and as we’ve gotten closer and closer to getting all of the backlist up, it’s been weighing on my mind that you’d all have to wait longer and longer in order to get each new installment.  This change should help address that issue and hopefully means that I’ll be able to get new books out every few months.  It may take a while to get the pipeline filled back up (I’m still working on print and audio right now), but that is the pace that I’m hoping to hit.

I continue to be really grateful to all of you that help spread the word about my stories.  Contrary to what some would have you believe, it’s always been word of mouth that has moved books.  I’ll continue to write the best stories I can.  Hopefully with more practice I’ll get even better, but it’s all of you that help bring new fans onboard.  Please know that it is greatly appreciated!

Other miscellaneous updates:
The audio book for Torn is done and is undergoing final quality checks by the nice people at ACX.  It should start showing up on Audible, Amazon and iTunes sometime in the next week or two.

Katie and I have submitted the various files to get Frozen Prospects out as a print edition.  I expect we’re still weeks out from having the final product just the way we want it (it’s our first go at this).  Still, I think most of the work is done at this point and the rest of the novels should go much more quickly.

I’ll continue to check in here every week or two as various projects wrap up and go live.  The next Dark Reflections short story is really, really close to going live.  We’ve got a cover done, and now it’s just a matter of getting feedback from various beta readers.  So there’s still a little while before it will go live, but most of the effort has been invested now.  It’s feeling like definite progress.

As always-thanks.

-Dean

2 comments:

  1. It was nice to mean you yesterday. When you mentioned you were going full time on the author role, I didn't realize it was happening right away. You have a great family. I'll be buying some of your books via kindle soon. Excited to see what work you do!

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    1. Thanks, John. It was likewise nice to meet you! You know us Murrays, w don't tend to do things halfway, so yep we've made the jump already.

      I'll be excited to hear what you think of whichever book you start with.

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