Books I've read, Disappointments, and the Future

I've been reading books for the last two years with a different eye than ever before. Being a working author, I see and read them with a much more concentrated fervor. I look at the plot, characters, setting, phrasing, words, and many other aspects of a book in much more detail.

Also, I've chosen the books that I'm reading much more carefully. I've read more Stephen King, Tom Robbins, Ian Rankin, Suzanne Collins, Tana French, Hugh Howey, Sheri S. Tepper, Margaret Atwood, Patrick Rothfuss, George R. R. Martin, Lois Lowry, Mary Stewart, Brian Jacques, and I just finished The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings again by Tolkien as well as several others. They all do things much differently and have varying strengths that I can learn from.

I was particularly excited to read Tolkien again. It had been a long time, and I also read more about his thoughts behind the book, which were very enlightening.

A great disappointment recently was that Amazon decided to discontinue their Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. They didn't publicize that they were going to discontinue it, and I know that many thousands of writers, including myself, had spent a lot of time preparing only to find out very late that it would not happen.

However, Amazon has started something new that they call Amazon Scout. It looks like a promising venue for indy writers, and I'm going to look into it after I finish The Chosen.

Also, after I get The Chosen published, I will be looking at some other contests, contact more agents, and pursue some other promotional avenues for my works. I will need some time off from writing, as I've been working 6-10 hours, five days a week or more, since April of 2013.

The next project that I will work on will be a sequel to Beatrice. I already have a lot of it planned and ready, but the chance to do something else for a while will be good for me. I would also like to write some poetry again. It's been too long!

To all those who have been reading my blog, I again want to say thank you, and watch for The Chosen. It will be completed and published in March!

BEATRICE & ROOMS Version 2 & Editing and Reviewing THE CHOSEN for Publishing in February

ROOMS & BEATRICE: Version 2 Revisions

 

I've just created version 2 of Rooms and Beatrice. For Rooms, only the first chapter was revised. In Beatrice, the changes were more extensive. Also, the changes to Beatrice were to get it ready to enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, which is in February. There hasn't been a notice yet for the 2015 contest on Amazon's Createspace website, but it should be there soon. I'll let you know how that progresses as it gets closer. Last year, Rooms made it to the second round. We'll see how Beatrice fairs. 


THE CHOSEN

The first draft of The Chosen is finished. Now I can get back to work on doing all the editing so that I can publish it sometime in February. I'm very excited about this book and looking forward to completing it.

Once The Chosen is published, I will look for some other contests to enter and go back to work seeing if I can interest an agent in my work. Last time I worked on that, I received some good reviews from some of the agents, but still haven't found one that will take me as their client. I'll keep looking, and I'm going to look for some publishing companies and agents in Europe as well as America.

ROOMS Entry in Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

(Amazon)

I recently entered a novel competition with my unpublished novel, Rooms.  That contest was the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. I was very excited about it and worked extremely hard on all the entry requirements and sent it in to Amazon before the deadline was up. Today I found out that I made it into the second round of judging.  Rooms made it into the top 2023 entries out of about 10,000, and in my category there are 398 entrants left. There will be one winner chosen out of each of the five categories.

The five categories in the contest are Romance, General Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, and my category, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror.  If you click here, you'll go to a page about the contest with all of the categories.  By clicking on the icon of each category, you can see the list of authors and titles that have moved on to the second round.

I'm very pleased!  This morning I woke knowing that this was the day that I'd find out if I was going on or not.  I found the document with the names in my category, clicked on it and looked down the list.  My heart was pounding! Then I saw my name, Bob Stegner, and then Rooms!  It was an amazing experience!

As I'm writing this post, I'm remembering one of the things that I had to do to enter the contest. I had to write a Pitch.  It's somewhat like a summary of the book but much more.  Not only is it a summary, but you have to somehow hit the plot highlights, show your writing style and present the protagonist all within 300 words or less. I'll never forget all the time spent writing, re-writing, and struggling over that part of the entry. The work paid off, though, as I made it into the second round.

This has been quite an experience!  You never know what will happen, but no matter what, I'm extremely happy that I made it this far and am hopeful!  I'm so attached to the characters and the story that I feel like they have moved on with me to the next part of the competition.

The next date that is important will be April 14th. That's when the top 500 Quarterfinalists will be announced.


Learn more about Rooms and my published, forty page young adult novel, Wheatgrass: An Irish Fantasy, by clicking on the links below.

Rooms' Teaser

Rooms' Excerpt: Chapters 1-2

Rooms' Chapter Titles

Wheatgrass: An Irish Fantasy published and for sale on Amazon.com

Paperback - $3.23

Kindle version - $0.99 

Wheatgrass' Teaser

Wheatgrass' Excerpt

Amazon Contest Logo image from:
http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011