Audiobooks and Updates

I thought I would just check-in this week. Unfortunately, I have not thought out a coherent post for the end of this week, but I’m thinking that early next week there will be a post about being inspired by authors and how what inspires you as a reader inspires you as a writer.

So, the major highlight of my week is that The Earl of Brass is now available in audiobook! My narrator was fabulous to work with, and he will be narrating The Winter Garden and hopefully every Ingenious Mechanical Devices book after this. If you’d like to check it out, click here.

Half the reason I’m not writing much on my blog is that I am in the thick of writing book 3, The Earl and the Artificer, and hope to get as much done as possible before the semester begins. Currently, I am about 39,600 words into it, and I hope to complete it by the end of the year but hopefully sooner. According to my word count tracking spreadsheet, I’m 31% done with my word count goal of the month (15k), which is shocking to me considering it’s only August 7th (and I haven’t written yet today). The last scene I worked on hit a little too close to home and gave me a literal headache after working on. It still amazes me how much emotion is tied to creation, especially when a scene is so personal and fraught with emotional tension. I just hope I did it justice and that it will come through on the page. Luckily, the next scene involves a lot of action, so that should raise my moral a little.

I’m also nearly done with my companion short story “An Oxford Holiday”. All I need is the final scene and my cover for the ebook. Next week I should be able to post the blurb for it. It has been the magically expanding short story, going from 5k words to 6k to 7k as the target word count. It’s been a lot of fun to write, and it gives you a taste of what Adam and Immanuel will be getting into in the yet untitled book four.

As a final bit of news that isn’t very informative, I picked up these beauties on Amazon as a way to reward myself for going above and beyond my word count goal for July.I have been trying to get my hands on fantasy books that involve diversity not only in race but sexuality and gender. These two came highly recommended but were rather hard to get my hands on since the author is currently in the process of switching publishers. I cannot wait to read them.

If you would like daily updates about the progress of my third book, I will be live-tweeting my word counts and progress daily on Twitter with the hashtag #Augwritingchallenge and you can find me at @AuthorKaraJ.

So what writing or reading plans do you have for August?