It's been nearly two months now since I had my eye operation, and my eyesight is much improved. I don't rule out more laser surgery at the very least, however, at some point in the future.
At this moment, at least, with Doomsday Game having been out since the beginning of May, I think I can officially regard myself as a hybrid author. I'm still aiming for a traditional deal with a book called Echogenesis, but in the meantime, I'm working on other novel ideas and stories which will either be self-published or appear through various small presses.
I'm also exploring new publishing models, which does, I know, sound very vague, but it's all very up in the air. By "new publishing models", I'm referring to ways to get a book from me and into your hands, whether physically or electronically, via pathways that don't really exist yet.
These pathways, to coin a term, are coming into existence as a result of the wild fluctuations that publishing is undergoing and has been undergoing for some years as both e-books and now audiobooks have a greater and greater impact. And, of course, many authors are now struggling to maintain any kind of income in the face of these changes. Let's just say, then, that these publishing models I'm exploring are my attempts at surfing the wave of that change with the intention of arriving safely on the shore of new and unexplored territories.
At the moment, I'm managing to release a book of some kind at least once a year. I'd actually like to increase that frequency, but it's hard when quite a bit of my time is still taken up with self-employed editing work.
Even so, I'm expecting to have a new novel out early next year, probably at the start of March. It's a short novel, called Devil's Road, and is probably one of the best things I've yet written. I've seen the cover, and it's magnificent. Unfortunately, I can't show it to you until much closer to the time that it's released.
One way to increase my output I've been looking into is by using dictation software. For instance, I'm dictating this entire blog post using Dragon dictation, specifically Dragon Professional Individual Fifteen. I bought it a couple of weeks ago. Not just to increase my productivity, but also because I'm looking into ways to reduce the amount of time I spend per day looking at a screen. I know one writer in particular who's been using dictation software for nearly two decades. He narrates chapters into a voice recorder while taking a walk and then uploads the recording to Dragon to be automatically transcribed.
This works very well for him. You do, literally, have to train Dragon to understand you and it's still better at understanding American accents than Glaswegian accents, to say the least. Nonetheless, I'm dictating this post through microphone with maybe 95% accuracy. I've been informed I can get it up to 98% with time and effort.
Unfortunately, this level of accuracy does rather drop when I'm dictating fiction since fiction writing presents particular challenges in terms of the use of language and sentence structure — ones that Dragon isn't necessarily fully optimised towards.
Nonetheless, I'm finding that I can still write a good deal more using dictation software than I can typing, even though I regard myself as quite a fast typist. The other day, for instance, I managed to dictate about three thousand words with relatively minimal effort and came away feeling rather less tired than if I had typed all of them out.
Remember that if you want to read more about me and about the writing life, you can subscribe to my patreon (see the link at the top of the page). You can also see first drafts of chapters of unfinished books as they are written, and various other bits and pieces of fiction and non-fiction that I'm working on well in advance of their appearance anywhere else.
Meanwhile, I'd better get back to doing some writing and I'll let you know more about Devil's Road as and when I have the opportunity.
At this moment, at least, with Doomsday Game having been out since the beginning of May, I think I can officially regard myself as a hybrid author. I'm still aiming for a traditional deal with a book called Echogenesis, but in the meantime, I'm working on other novel ideas and stories which will either be self-published or appear through various small presses.
I'm also exploring new publishing models, which does, I know, sound very vague, but it's all very up in the air. By "new publishing models", I'm referring to ways to get a book from me and into your hands, whether physically or electronically, via pathways that don't really exist yet.
These pathways, to coin a term, are coming into existence as a result of the wild fluctuations that publishing is undergoing and has been undergoing for some years as both e-books and now audiobooks have a greater and greater impact. And, of course, many authors are now struggling to maintain any kind of income in the face of these changes. Let's just say, then, that these publishing models I'm exploring are my attempts at surfing the wave of that change with the intention of arriving safely on the shore of new and unexplored territories.
At the moment, I'm managing to release a book of some kind at least once a year. I'd actually like to increase that frequency, but it's hard when quite a bit of my time is still taken up with self-employed editing work.
Even so, I'm expecting to have a new novel out early next year, probably at the start of March. It's a short novel, called Devil's Road, and is probably one of the best things I've yet written. I've seen the cover, and it's magnificent. Unfortunately, I can't show it to you until much closer to the time that it's released.
One way to increase my output I've been looking into is by using dictation software. For instance, I'm dictating this entire blog post using Dragon dictation, specifically Dragon Professional Individual Fifteen. I bought it a couple of weeks ago. Not just to increase my productivity, but also because I'm looking into ways to reduce the amount of time I spend per day looking at a screen. I know one writer in particular who's been using dictation software for nearly two decades. He narrates chapters into a voice recorder while taking a walk and then uploads the recording to Dragon to be automatically transcribed.
This works very well for him. You do, literally, have to train Dragon to understand you and it's still better at understanding American accents than Glaswegian accents, to say the least. Nonetheless, I'm dictating this post through microphone with maybe 95% accuracy. I've been informed I can get it up to 98% with time and effort.
Unfortunately, this level of accuracy does rather drop when I'm dictating fiction since fiction writing presents particular challenges in terms of the use of language and sentence structure — ones that Dragon isn't necessarily fully optimised towards.
Nonetheless, I'm finding that I can still write a good deal more using dictation software than I can typing, even though I regard myself as quite a fast typist. The other day, for instance, I managed to dictate about three thousand words with relatively minimal effort and came away feeling rather less tired than if I had typed all of them out.
Remember that if you want to read more about me and about the writing life, you can subscribe to my patreon (see the link at the top of the page). You can also see first drafts of chapters of unfinished books as they are written, and various other bits and pieces of fiction and non-fiction that I'm working on well in advance of their appearance anywhere else.
Meanwhile, I'd better get back to doing some writing and I'll let you know more about Devil's Road as and when I have the opportunity.
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