I am pleased to announce that I have just published my first two books. They are now availabe on Scribd and LuLu.
Please check them out at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17092236/Astrology-Series-Book-I
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17138771/Jedi-Manual-Basic
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=4381381
Happy 4th of July!
–Matt
Cover Art by Helen Wells
It will have some slight modifications, but Helen has captured the essence of Lastra in this beautiful piece called, “The Sweetness.” This will be the cover art for my novel.
More of Helen’s work can be found at: http://www.helenwells.com.au/
Dreamz-Work is my new company. Check out my latest page to the right entitled, “New from Matt Vossler and Dreamz-Work.” It lists some of my latest works and projects in development.
–Matt
“Dream Crossing is to be published in, now looks like June or July. My associates came through – there will definitely be something “different,” in a good way, about this offering!
Cheers!
Matt
Dream Crossing is coming to the Amazon.com Kindle store, to be published in April or May! There may be something special to accompany this publication….so stay tuned for that!
–Matt
As I continue my first editing pass, I notice that I am taking out about 10% of the general prose. At the same time, I am adding to the dialogs among characters. The conversations need breaking up and refashioning with reactions and such.
I need to flesh out some of the sections that I left primarily as place marks during the draft. These are sections that were primarily narratives, and need to be expanded upon and given life. Instead of saying, for example, “So and so struck a deal…” I put it more like, “So and so stuck out his hand. The other so and so, took his hand to seal the deal…” I also add some dialogues in these sections where there were none before.
Another major task this time around is changing much of the writing from a passive voice to an active voice. Phrasing things in the passive is one of my biggest writng sins, and changing just this one aspect improves my story considerably.
A last thing I will note now is that I am rephrasing some sentences to more original arrangements and replacing ordinary words with out of the ordinary words. I have to be careful not to over do this. Too much makes writing seem overworked and contrived, even comical.
I am finding that editing is still hard work, but it goes somewhat faster than forging new territory in a novel. Today, I began editing in a major way, and in the course of about four hours, I have made it through the first three chapters of the story.
This with the inevitable interruptions from my kids and wife; about one per five minutes on average. It comes to about a chapter an hour. When I was writing the novel from scratch, I might have finished one chapter in 5 hours, on a good day, but more often 7 or 8 hours.
Editing is also rewarding in that when I finish a passage, I am a little more satisfied that I have a better product, albiet just a small portion of it. I now also estimate that I will have to go through the story from beginning to end a second or even a third time before I will feel confident in sending it out for agents to consider.
I have added a new page at the right called “Excerpts.” Here I will share some of the more intriguing passages from the book. Still subject to editing though. This first one is from Chapter 6… Enjoy!
I hope to have ”Dream Crossing” available for purchase in November or December. I will update this as it gets closer to publication.
Partially as a way to motivate myself, I have set the goal of completing the editing of “Dream Crossing” by September 08. As I go through the editing/rewriting process, I will be taking notes on the side of some of the details, so that there is consistency and continuity.
