October 2023: What I've been up to

Hello Fearless readers!

Especially for those of you who have read my book and found yourself wondering about what I’m thinking regarding a sequel, you may have been asking: “Self, what the heck is Daniel up to?"

If you are, have no fear, that’s what this update is all about.

I figured that the time has come to give a mini overview of what I have been doing for the last couple of months, sprinkling some MAJOR news into the updates as I go. So, without further ado, here we go.

Marketing:

Even before launching Becoming Glitch, it became shockingly obvious to me that a common thread between my background in engineering, and this escapade into writing, is that I don’t know how to market either one. Slowly, sometimes a little too cautiously, I have started blundering my way into this strange new world, hoping that my ineptitude with all things marketing won’t keep my book from being found by readers who would enjoy it.

I think I am doing a slightly less terrible job than I did when I started. I have been growing my presence on Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads to name just a few areas. I was even a guest on Ali Cross’ Write4Joy podcast a few weeks ago (I was told that the recording will probably go live in December, so I’ll be sure to let you know once I have more on that).

Thank you to everyone who has followed me on any of these platforms, and if you would like to follow me on any others, please feel free to look me up! It helps me out a lot!

Award:

Did I mention that I got an award?
Did I mention I was excited about it?

Ever since getting the New Adult Fiction Finalist Award from Readers’ Favorite, I have been planning on updating my book cover. There are a couple of interrelated things that I am still figuring out about this.

The relevant parts are that a) the book cover should be gaining a fancy new award sticker (and possibly some other changes…) in the weeks ahead, and b) the “official” announcement of the award contest results just went out, and authors were reminded to ‘ask your friends and family to leave their comments and reviews using both the Comments and Facebook comments sections on the bottom of your Readers' Favorite Review Page to make it active and interesting for your visitors.’ If you’d like to leave a comment on my review page I’d appreciate it!

Audiobook:

I know several people who want an audiobook version of Becoming Glitch. I’m one of them.

It has taken me a while, but I found an audiobook narrator, the hugely talented and largely undiscovered Ken Cromack. Both of us are new to the world of audiobooks, but the plan is to try to have the audiobook done and available on Amazon between the end of November 2023 at the earliest, and the beginning of January 2024 at the latest. More details to follow. I’m excited to show you more on this!

Reading:

Prior to publishing, I didn’t know a ton of books that were similar to mine. Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners series is the closest that I knew of at the time, and there are some major differences there.

Since then, however, I have learned about and read around a half-dozen different superhero novels (and discovered a number of others), which have given me some fascinating context about the genre that I find myself writing in. I have ideas about posting a summary of these different books in the weeks ahead, but that’s its own update so… stay tuned.

Engineering:

I’m lucky enough to be able to do part-time engineering work in conjunction with writing. I’ve had a small variety of projects going on in the background, some of which I can talk about more than others. One fun, and somewhat random project that I have been able to work on is called the Cassette Hero Tape Applicator, a product that I helped design for a small audio equipment shop, called The LAST Factory, in Livermore, CA. Jeff, the owner of the company, and I worked together to create a 3D printable ‘stand’ that helps add a layer of automation for people who want to be able to clean old cassette tapes. It’s quirky, it was interesting to come up with, and the mechanical designer mentioned at the bottom of this page, yeah, that’s me!

I’ve also been working on a fun/ handy consumer/ promotional product. If you’re interested in details about it OR if you have any ideas or resources for how to license low-investment promotional products, feel free to email me, I’d love to hear from you!

Writing:

This is the one that I imagine we’ve all been waiting for. And yes, I do mean we.

Following the amazing feedback that I’ve had from book 1, I decided back in December to start toying around with concepts for book 2. I’d already had a number of ideas bouncing around in my head, but I had intentionally left book 1 open-ended so that I could write a sequel but, if it crashed and burned, then I wouldn’t be stuck with the unfulfilled promise of book 2 left forever hanging. With much thanks to you, my readers, I finally started on book 2! Not only that, but as of September 13, I finished a (very) rough first draft!!!

I’ve never written a sequel before, and balancing perfectionism with the need to ‘just do it’ and have something to show for it is a continuing battle. With that said, my extremely rough guess at this point is that I hope to have the sequel published somewhere around June 2024 (although I’d love for it to be earlier)!

That, to be brief, is what I have for right now.

~Daniel