After a busy month, it’s time for the November Review.
November was dominated by the release of Outbreak London, with the book going live on Amazon one day earlier than expected, just scraping in at the end of the month. I’m really excited about Outbreak London, as it’s the first new book for several years, it’s got a great new cover by an excellent artist, and it’s twice the length of the other Royal Zombie Corps books.
November Review – word counts
After the slow writing of October, I really needed to up the pace during November. This was successfully achieved with 10,248 new words added to various projects, an average of 342 words a day. This is slightly better than my plan of 300 words a day at the start of the year. My total word count for this year now exceeds 120,000.
As October was heavily dominated by editing, I kept track of the numbers of words I edited over November. Each piece of work gets multiple edits, some faster than others, but I was surprised the totals added up to just over 32,000 words.
November Review – works in progress
- ‘On discovering a zombie’, a short story set in the Royal Zombie Corps series, was finally delivered to the mailing list and can be downloaded only by signing up on the homepage of this blog
- ‘Outbreak London‘, book 5 of the Royal Zombie Corps series, is now published on Amazon
- ‘Dead Handler’, Book 6 of the Royal Zombie Corps series, is still awaiting my attention. It needs completion of the editing and proof-reading. I am going to hold on this book a little as I want to relaunch the cover of Blood, Mud and Corpses
- Book 2 of the Butcher’s Funeral series is on hold while I finish other things
- Book 7 of the Royal Zombie Corps series, is still the current writing project. I’m planning to finish the first draft in early January
- Tigers on the Western Front is currently being re-edited and is now on the second sweep through.
November Review – other projects
I’m reaching the end of a major campaign to add to the Readers’ Club, which has been running on Facebook. I’ll begin another campaign at the start of next year.
As part of the launch of Outbreak London, I’ve also begun my first Amazon marketing campaign.
The short story, On Discovering A Zombie, has been released to the Readers’ Club. This free story cannot be purchased and is only downloadable to subscribers.
Publishing schedule
Outbreak London launched slightly early, at the very end of November. This was due to Amazon checks taking less time than expected.
- December 2019/January 2020 – I’m squeezing in a new cover for Blood, Mud and Corpses as the old cover needs replacing as I’m promoting the series. This was the first book in the Royal Zombie Corps series and things have moved along greatly since then
- January 2020 – ‘Dead Handler’, book 6 of the Royal Zombie Corps series. I’ve dropped this title back as I’m wanting to relaunch Blood, Mud and Corpses first with a new cover
- February 2020 – Butcher’s Funeral book two, probably going to be titled ‘Butcher’s Fire’. This has been dropped back
- March 2020 – book 7 of the Royal Zombie Corps series. This has been dropped back
Plans for December
- Continue to maintain the daily writing average of at least 300 words.
- Begin the cover process for the replacement cover for Blood, Mud and Corpses
- Continue to learn about publishing and writing, specifically working through one of the Mark Dawson SPF courses
- Continue to develop the AMS marketing campaign