New Project: Wicked Little Things

I’ve decided to put Sins of a Father on hold a bit longer in favor of a new project I’ve started working on. I don’t know when I’ll go back to Sins, but it won’t be until I’m loving the story again. Right now I’m just not feeling it so I’m not going to force myself to work on it.

The new project is a followup to 100 Tiny Tales of Terror. For the time being I’m calling it Wicked Little Things. Like its predecessor it will be packed with 100 tales of 100 words each for you reading pleasure. This time only a small handful (five at most) will have appeared on my blog at one point or another. Unlike its predecessor it will be divided into 10 sections, each containing its own variety of stories centered around a common theme, rather than 100 stories ordered randomly.

I don’t have a release date yet, but I’m thinking it’ll likely be sometime in the first quarter of 2015.

Here is a preview of the cover, which–like the title–may or may not change.

If you haven’t read 100 Tiny Tales of Terror yet, you better get moving before you have twice as much terror to keep you up at night!

Advertisement

I’ve been thinking… Scary, I know.

Over the last few months I have found I’ve been questioning my future in the writing world. That’s why my posts have slacked off and I’ve backed away from Friday Fictioneers and my writing challenges.

I like writing. I really do. That isn’t the problem.

It’s the editing and marketing that get me down. I hate both of them (with a fiery passion one might say). I always have and I always will.

Editing in small chunks isn’t too bad, but over the course of a novella or novel I find it to be mind numbing and painful–a headache inducing clusterfuck if you will. I don’t like doing it, but I can’t afford to hire a professional so I’m stuck doing it myself. Last time I checked, the point of life wasn’t to spend countless hours doing things you hate. It’s been awhile since I’ve checked though so that could have changed.

Marketing is a beast of a different color. I hate it because I’m not a people person. I’m shy and awkward and don’t enjoy putting myself out there or shoving my writing down the throats of people. That’s not who I am and I won’t do it. If my books don’t sell because of that then so be it. That’s the way it is. But that also begs the question of whether or not I should even put my writing out there in the world if I’m not going to promote it full force. Currently I don’t know the answer to that so I’m going to keep putting some stuff out there in the ether for all six of you to read. Someday I could change my mind. I really don’t know if or when that will happen, but it might. That’s a warning that someday I might just up and disappear. I’m not saying it will happen, but it’s a possibility.

All of this thinking has led me to a decision, for now anyway.

I’m going to finish the final run through of the Sins of a Father novella, which I’m pushing back to a new tentative release date of October 15^th. It was supposed to be Sept 15^th, but it isn’t ready yet.  I really like the story, but it has been an unbearable bitch to edit. Every time I think I’ve got things in order more problems pop up that require tweaking. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve run through it or how many hours I’ve invested in those 25,000-ish words. I hope the time and effort I put into it shows, but I’m nervous about it. What if it’s not enough? What if you guys don’t feel the same as I do? What if I put all this time into it and no one even bothers to read it (which would technically be my fault because I don’t like marketing, but it’s still a concern)? Also, just so you’re aware. It’s not horror in the traditional sense, but I don’t know what else to call it. Nothing else seems to fit any better. There are no monsters, just a man whose world is unraveling as he travels down a rabbit hole he can’t escape.

After that my primary focus will be on shorter stories. I’m done with novels/novellas for awhile. I’ll be working on a new project similar to 100 Tiny Tales of Terror. It doesn’t have a name yet, but it’ll be either 300 or 500 word stories, the number of which is also as yet undefined, probably somewhere between 30 and 50. After that I’m thinking 15 or 20 1000 worders, but that’s getting ahead of myself. I plan on finding a few anthologies to hopefully get some stories into as well.

After I finish those things I might revisit a longer project, but I’m not making any promises. In fact, I wouldn’t count on it if I were you. I am a man of few words, both in life and in writing. I feel more at home in the world of short stories than I ever felt with the longer ones. They’re almost always better (not to mention way, way, way easier to edit) than anything longer that I’ve written to date.

Changes

I’ve made some changes that you may or may not have noticed. Ok, let’s be serious. You didn’t notice unless you’ve been watching me like a hawk, and you haven’t. Shame on you for not stalking me. Get your head in the game, minion!

First: I finally got around to registering my domain. This site is now officially AdamIckes.com. With that change came a few other corresponding changes. I created a static landing page with links to all of my releases and a brief bio. It still needs some tweaking (adding social media links for example), but I like it. That being said I added a separate “Blog” page that handles displaying all new posts. You can access it from the menu at the top of the page or by visiting adamickes.com/blog. If any of you wants to do something similar but aren’t sure how, just ask. I’d be more than happy to guide you through it.

Second: Zombie Tree, Socks, and 100 tiny tales of terror are all on Smashwords now. Zombie Tree and Socks were there before, but I took them down to try out KDP Select. It wasn’t really worth it so they’re back on Smashwords now. 100 tiny tales of terror is a new addition to the Smashwords catalog.

Third: They will all be on Barnes & Noble as well for you folks with a Nook who don’t like going through Smashwords. Zombie Tree and Socks already are. They were in the same boat as Smashwords. They were taken down to try KDP Select. 100 tiny tales of terror is still processing. It’s supposed to be finished within 72 hours, but who knows when it’ll actually be done. Here’s hoping sooner rather than later.

What do you minions think of the changes? Am I taking things in the right direction? Any suggestions for additional changes?

The anticipation is killing me

The waiting truly is the hardest part. I’m nearly 3 months into a 4 to 6 month wait. That wait is to see if my novella Sins of a Father will be accepted for publication by Nouvella. I haven’t received a rejection yet, so there is still hope. Even if they end up rejecting it, I’ll end up self publishing so it will eventually see the light of day. Waiting is not an easy thing to do when it comes to hearing back from a publisher. In comparison, writing the novella was easy. Only another 1 to 3 months to wait before I have an answer one way or the other. However it comes into existence, I’d love for you all to pick up a copy and love it as much as I do. Currently, it’s probably my favorite in terms of things I’ve written. I hope it can be yours as well.

In other news, the first draft of Witchwood (the first book in the Winger Chronicles) is finished and it holds true to the saying that “the first draft of anything is shit”. It needs a lot of work, but that’ll come later. I’ve got to distance myself from it for awhile before I look at it again. The first draft was just to get the general idea down. The second draft starts the process of polishing the turd.

Now, I’m going back to working on the Cherokee Johnson novella for the foreseeable future. And by foreseeable I mean the next couple weeks. I’ve only got about 9000 words or so remaining to be written to finish the first draft so it may not even take a couple weeks depending on how much time I can scrounge up this weekend. After that it’s anyone’s guess where my overactive imagination will take me, but it’ll likely be back to the Dark Wilderness novella to start in on the second draft. Although, I’ve got a couple short story compilations I have in mind that I’d like to get working on (one a collection of twisted takes on fairy tales, the other a collection of tales of the traveler. You may remember him from my FF story The Ogre) so maybe those will jump ahead of Dark Wilderness in the queue.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it!

---

Have you liked my facebook page (Adam Ickes – Author) yet? Go on, be a good little minion and give it a like. Don’t worry, I won’t bite. I can’t promise the same kindness from the characters in my stories though.

While you’re at it, you should follow me on the Twitter machine as well, immediately and henceforth: @AdamIckes

Somebody stop me…

In writing news:

Crazy person that I am, I went and started two new stories (I have no idea how long they’ll end up being. Might be shorts, might be novellas, might be novels- hard to say until I get further into them), but I’ve got so many stories in various stages of completion that starting more just seems like a bad it. I just can’t help myself. When an idea hits me sometimes I just have to write it.

The first one I started is called Sometimes the shadow wins, about a kid and his shadow.

The second I’ve been calling The world according to Jimmy Smitts. It’s about a boy and his highly unusual neighbor.

I really need to start finishing projects before jumping into new ones. Shame on me.

Speaking of completing projects, I’ve only got about 25 pages of Sins of a Father remaining that need edited for the 3rd draft to be complete. Bad part is they are some of the pages that require the most work. Should be finished by the middle of next week if all goes according to plan so I’m still on schedule to finish the final draft by the end of the year.

Sadly, I’ve only added about 2500 words to Dark Wilderness in the last week and a half, but I’m still hoping I can pull the rest out of my head onto the pages by the end of the month. I may end up a bit off schedule on that one as most of my writing efforts have been focused on Sins of a Father.

In sculptural news:

I started a Jack Skellington full body sculpt that stands about 16 inches tall. I don’t have any photos of it yet and don’t feel like taking any at the moment. Perhaps in a future post.

I also half molded the Luka head. Being the first time I’ve ever attempted to make a mold I definitely hit some setbacks, which hopefully I can overcome. I won’t know for sure until I attempt the second half of the mold. I certainly learned a few things about molding for my next attempt and hopefully I can make this one work. If I can’t it means scrapping the mold and the sculpt with nothing to show for it, but sometimes it takes that experience to learn the correct way of doing things.