Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Making money from my writing

A whole $11.55 from Kindle sales of "Bobby Carapisi, the Complete Novel." Actually, I haven't been paid that, yet; I'm getting a bank transfer on the last day of the month. Still, that's more than I've received from any of the publishers of my other works, and it's just for November and December.

Wait, I shouldn't say that. STARbooks Press, who put out "The Lyons' Den", paid me $50 for "Perfection", my novella. Of course, that was nearly five years ago. And I once won $300 from a screenplay competition for "Bugzters" and got prizes that were worth a bit from others for "Blood Angel" and "Find Ray Tarkovsky". It's just, this is the first money from any of my novels, and it feels special.

I worked more on "The Alice '65", digging into my restructuring...well, not so much a restructuring as a rewrite. The spine of the story's good; it's the flesh and bones that need realignment. I printed out a copy and am red-penning that to figure out what goes where and how much the story can do without. I want it to be so tight, no one can even think of a reason to do a rewrite...except to please their own vanity. Of which there is a lot in Hollywood.

The thing I'm finding is, a lot of the information I squeeze into A65 is more suited to a novelization. So once I have POS done, at least in first draft, I'm going to shift it into a book.

Of course, if I win the lottery, I'm making the movie, myself. I've still got arrogance enough to think I can.

But...I also want to make "The Cowboy King of Texas". So I may work on that, too; try and make it funnier. And "Wide New World" is in line, too.

Damn,one of the things they don't tell you about growing old is how much extra baggage there is for anyone who's trying to be a writer. Not just yours, but all your characters', too. I'd need to work on it full time for the next 15 years just to catch up to today.

And that's without anything new coming up.

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