Steve Chiarelli’s Blog

June 3, 2009

It’s been awhile…

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , , , — steve @ 11:10 am

I’ve been spending well over a month ignoring this blog, but not without good reason. Life has been hectic, house, health and work all taking up more shares of the time available to do the lesser priority parts which are tossed to the wayside and put in the ‘I’ll get to that sometime soon’ pile. And then I decided to try the Twitter thing and that has proven to be so much easier, writing 140 characters instead of paragraphs like this one. But I have been writing pretty steadily and right now I’m probably two thirds through the first draft of my next book, currently titled Muckydum (but that can still change). If you have the time check me out on Twitter :

http://twitter.com/stevechiarelli

—-I’m also trying a little experiment with twitter. I have made accounts for two of my characters from The Connected and have done posts for them starting from the beginning of the book. Currently I plan to take the posts right through to the end of the book, unless of course my time again gets squeezed or if at some point I determine that the experiment is an exercise in futility.

You can find them here:

http://twitter/com/RichardKerrBook

—-and

http://twitter/com/GaryFranksBook

—-I have begun to revamp my website - it’s been neglected more than this blog. I figure that’s probably going to be a one or two month project.

Until next time I look at my blog and realize it’s been awhile…

P.S. : This Wordpress is not an easy blog to use. No matter how I set up the paragraphs when I’m writing it they just don’t stay the same when they uploaded. I may have to switch to something else eventually. I can’t afford to fiddle around with this for an hour. - Just needed to get that off my chest:)

March 30, 2009

Plugging away in Tough Times

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , , , , — steve @ 8:19 am

I have been pretty lackadaisical about updating this blog. Between working full-time, obligations and responsibilities at home and trying to make some headway on my new novel, both my web page and this blog have suffered.
The present economic state is not a good situation for a new author trying to break into the publishing market. Without a major publisher behind you it is very hard to get noticed unless you can pour hours upon hours of your time into blogging (on your own and others sites) and participate in discussions on popular writing or book sites (or Amazon). But if you spend your time doing that, then you fail to put out anything new to keep readers interested. It is a catch-22. And trying to get a publisher to take a chance on a new author in tough economic times is also verging on the impossible – profits is the key to success for them and they thereby rely heavily on their established authors to provide that guarantee of sales in times like these.
Having said all that, if you don’t keep plugging away, if only for your own enjoyment, a little bit of recognition and that slight possibility of ‘making it’, then you didn’t have what it takes to begin with.
I have been plugging away at my second novel, tentatively titled Muckydum, and I’m really enjoying the process. The story has taken shape and I’m quite excited by the prospects of how it could end up. Currently I have about four different ways to see it through to the end. I’m just waiting to see what happens along the way until I decide which path I’m going to take.
Hopefully in the future I will be able to spend more time to see what else is going on in the community. And I will try to keep this blog going.
Take care,
Steve

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