Progress Report

Jezebel's Ladder is moving along nicely at 48.5K words. I'm about to write the climactic sex / gang war scene that's been building for 24 chapters. Weston should have the edits for Icarus Transformation done in a few weeks. Renee (the Cover Counts) sent me the draft for the cover, and it (to quote facebook comments) kicks arse.

pitch:

I got an email from my best friend, Nick, that said the sky was falling. He's an eccentric mathematician who works for the spooks in Washington. It was so big that the server crashed. When I got back from lunch, the FBI was hauling away evidence. Everyone and everything that touched this mail is getting disappeared except a senator's aide. I need to figure it out before they get me, too. It has something to do with Unified Field Theory, and a new equation he called the Icarus Transformation.

Facebook and turbospeed

http://www.facebook.com/ScottRhineBooks

Thanks to Eric Engel for helping me with my security settings (only friends could "like" my author page) and Renee for posting to Stephen Hise's page. He sent a blastogram that got me about 40 people. I'm offficial now. I was also invited to join two indie book groups. Networking, who knew?
I liked four authors as my author page just to tell people who my fives were on GoodReads.

CreateSpace said editing "Foundation for the Lost" should take under four weeks. I'm in the fast lane now.

Juggling

Juggling is the art of adding more balls till you almost drop one.

I sent out 152 free copies of Scarab to the troops with the first three chapters of Foundation for the Lost attached. The first taker happened in 30 seconds. After day two, new downloads stopped.

I started my Facebook author page: Scott Rhine, author. When I get 25 people to like it, facebook makes it official. I have about 38 friends so far.

To have a free sample on Smashwords and more to read on podcasts, I'm getting Renee to make up a cover for my 30K word Sci Fi novella "The Icarus Transformation."

Foundation for the Lost update: Thanks to Weston finishing the edits and recommendations for the extra chapters. He gave the new book five stars and laughed a lot. I sent my final draft to CreateSpace for their professional edit: $2000. My hope is that this will be tuition to take my writing to the next level. Everyone I've talked to is skeptical of the price tag. Either way, I'll have something to blog about.

I woke up and it was pouring

We were scheduled to wake up at 7:30 with the kids this morning, as my wife was driving them in. At 6:30, the weather woke us - window rattling thunder and buckets of rain. The kids grabbed chairs and watched our pond from the diningroom window.

It feels like that with writing today. Weston only has about 10 chapters left to edit  for Foundation for the Lost. I need to hurry up and finish the diagrams. Because when he's done, the whole thing goes to CreateSpace for them to do their magic.  The word count is back up to almost 125K. I'm hoping they teach me a thing or two for the price of "tuition".

I've reached the half-way point in "Jezebel's Ladder", completing the climax to part one.
I got my free copy of "Persistent Illusions" from Joseph Devon for finding a typo in "Probability Angels."

Meanwhile, the my welcome packet for Operation e-Book Drop arrived - 6 pages of email addresses, and more every few days. I need to get my new cover installed and add some sample chapters of Foundation to the end. I'll look at the complaint about the lawyer being too superman, but he's supposed to be the fairy godfather to Ethan's Cinderella.

The new Scarab cover looks professional (watermarked sample below). I wanted to go with the same symbolic jewelry look as before, with the beetle pushing the sun across the sky. Renee added a nice computer/predator invisibility touch to the whole thing.

More Reviewers + Next Steps

They're starting to post like popcorn now. All fours stars so far. I'm sure someone will find something to object to soon, but it's nice to hear people enjoy the book in spite of the flaws.
http://killie-booktalk.blogspot.com/2011/05/scarab-scott-rhine.html

I was going to try creating an episode of a podio book for Scarab. Since my wife and I read books to each other frequently, this shouldn't be a problem. We'll see how it works.

I just sent the Word doc for my next novel, Foundation for the Lost, to Weston for edit. It has three draft pictures, mostly diagrams. One of them, I may need to get permission for.

Second Favorable Review + Cover Progress

Chantale of Geeky Girl Reviews just gave Scarab 4 out of 5, and posted to some review sites for me.
Thanks!

http://www.geekygirlreviewsblog.com/2011/05/scarab-by-scott-rhine.html

I just looked at the first draft of the new Scarab cover yesterday! Tammy liked it (anything was better than my 15 minute Word drawing), but I wasn't fan of the orange bug. Blue-green bugs are pretty, orange-brown bugs need to be squished into lemon pudding. Does that make me weird? Renee said she understood.  I got a virus on my PC trying to find a public domain picture for her. It took 10 hours to repair and my explorer settings are still messed up.