Unattainable Targets - Pushing On

 I've always felt that i work better when i have a target or goal to work towards. I'm pretty sure this is the case for many people. We need some form of motivation to get anything meaningful done. This is definitely the case when it comes to my writing. However much I might have a desire to tell another story, I most-often simply don't have any motivation to just get on with it.

So, when I reached that point, in 2023, where I was getting tired of writing my books about my journeys to Africa and the whole premise of writing non-fiction purely for my own pleasure, I took an early decision to set a target for myself. I'd no idea at the time whether it was a reasonable target or not, but it was something that seemed like a good idea.

So, that target was to write 1,000 words a day. Not exactly 1,000 words every day, not even some words every day, but a target that I could keep in mind and check as I went along. Let's think of it more as a goal of 360,000 words a year - a third of a million in round numbers.

Well, as you can see from this spreadsheet, I'm not exactly smashing it. Still, for a couple of years it has kept me in that 300,000 word per year zone that I'm really pleased with.

As for 2025? Not so much.

This year has been difficult. Losing Dad was harder than it appeared. There's been the total upheaval of moving house and a bit more stress about it than I may have hitherto admitted.  Then there was our Trip to India. It was worth the effort to get those tiger photos that I have wanted for so many years, but I found it very difficult and exhausting. I did write most of 51 Frames during the trip, but didn't find the time or the inclination to write much of anything else, causing me to fall behind on my novels at the time.

Even so, Star of the North and Another Star were both finally completed this year and I'm working on that next one with a reasonable amount of commitment. Having concentrated on two sequels, it is nice to be writing a completely stand-alone story that allows a change of focus.

With just a month to go until the end of the year, I know that I'm not going to make it to anywhere near 300,000 words. - I'll do well to get above 250,000 I think. Still, I can use that total figure at the bottom to push on and try and make it to 1,000,000 words in total, can't I?

All the titles shown above are available online in one form or several. Most are available in serialised formats on tapas.io and most in hardback, paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon.

New Novels

With all the upheaval of moving house for the first time in almost forty years, my writing has slowed down a little this year. Added to this is my seeming lack of motivation to update this blog or my personal one.

These are all things that can be fixed, however and I'm now writing steadily again and working on new things all the time. Indeed, my global total for all my work is fast approaching a million words.

Today, however, I have to belated announcements of new novels. Both have been added to the appropriate page, with links to either Amazon and/or Tapas as appropriate. You always have the choice. Buy it for Kindle or in paperback or hardback if you want a real book. Get it for free on Tapas if you're prepared to have an episode every week.

The link to the Novels list is HERE

First 2025 Publication

 I'm pleased to announce that I've completed my Indian Trip Report publishing. It is now available on amazon in paperback form, with the hardback option hopefully coming very soon.

The title refers to my very first tiger sighting and the realization that getting a picture of a tiger is much harder than any mammal I've tried to photograph before.

If you'd like to look at getting a copy, follow this link AMAZON

2024 - A Busy Year

One look at the posts on this blog - and apologies for their infrequent nature - will tell the casual observer that I've had a busy year from a writing and publishing perspective.

What began as a paperback, publishable version of my tenth travel book - Victoria Africa's Great Lake - turned into a project that served two very different but related purposes. I'm finally able to make all ten of my travel books available on Amazon in paperback form and I learned a great deal about using Affinity Publisher to good effect by using it to make the conversions and do all the publishing.

Always one for genre-busting, my novels this year are an eclectic mix of travel-romance, sci-fi and fantasy-adventure. I seem to finally have broken out of the 50K-word rut that I had initially been stuck in, finding last year's Another Horizon quite liberating. While The Lion Sleeps remains around that mark, both Another World and Flame of the West are over 100K-words in length.

All three have been published on Amazon, both in real and Kindle format, but in many ways this is a secondary outlet for my work. I'm now happy to see all of my novels being read and enjoyed in their episodic form on Tapas.io. Getting a few hundred chapter-reads per week is quite gratifying.

So, a big year with lots of writing. If we count the next novel - that I've been working on for about a month now, then I'm at around 330,000 words for the year, 320,000 of them being fiction. It's not quite 1000 words a day, so that's something to aim for for the coming year.

Design and Print

I'd been asked to keep this one secret for a bit - giving the author time to get it out there and also get copies to friends and families. Now that a month has passed, it's time to let everyone see what we managed to create and publish.

It's not a complex project, by any means, but it has taken more than a year to get it finished. That's been a combination of many different delays, changes, proofing issues and simply a lack of time. I'm actually very happy with the way that it has finally turned out. The printers have done an excellent job of reproducing the images in very high quality and it really is stunning in person.

Here are a couple of spreads from inside, to give a brief glimpse into the finished product.

With such a relatively small page count, it might seem like this should be a quick process, but there are many things to consider when working on a photo book and the artist had very particular requirements regarding the layout, the numbering and the overall feel of the final product.

Latest Novel - Flame of the West

 

It's time for another Novel publishing announcement. Flame of the west is a heroic action/fantasy novel full of fighting, magic and sex. My novels are generally getting longer and more narrative, this one being around 100K words. I'm actually quite proud of this one, even if I still struggle to get enough drama into the story.

As always, it is available from Amazon in hardback, paperback and Kindle editions. I've also started this one as a bi-weekly serial on TAPAS.IO.

Find out more on the NOVELS page

New Novels Publishing Now

 

There can be big gaps between books being published, but sometimes, the way I work brings two at once.

So, The Lion Sleeps and Another World are now becoming available on Amazon, Kindle versions first, followed by the other versions in the next few days. The Lion Sleeps will also appear on Lulu from Wednesday August 7th.

See the Novels page for details and links.