Introducing Character

Posted Sonlight Press Author Blog, Blog, Gabby Wells - Book 1, Gabby Wells Novel, Novel, Writing

As I mentioned in my last post, Kneel & Prey is the third time I’ve had to introduce the character of Gabby Wells in the series.  The first attempt was in Water & Blood, the second was The Homecoming Incident and the third is Kneel & Prey.  Each time I spent a lot of time […]

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Word Count & First Draft Finished

Posted Sonlight Press Author Blog, Faith, Gabby Wells - Book 1, Gabby Wells Novel, Marketing, Novel, Word Count, Writing

The first draft of Kneel & Prey has been completed. If you’ve been following along, this isn’t so much a first novel, as a reboot. 🙂  The first novel, Water & Blood, became the fifth novel.  The second first novel, The Homecoming Incident, was scrapped and will be offered later as a bonus.  So the […]

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Political Correctness = Boring Storytelling

Posted Sonlight Press Writing

I hate political correctness for many, many reasons.  One of them is that it’s social pressure limits creativity. Right now, the only person that can be the butt of jokes is an average white guy, usually a dad.  Watch commercials on TV.  How many of them show a white guy/dad being stupid?  A lot.  Too […]

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Time Compression

Posted Sonlight Press Author, Author Blog, Gabby Wells, Gabby Wells - Book 1, Gabby Wells Novel, Novel, Writing

This happens to me a lot.  When I outline my book where the climax takes place at a certain place/time, I backtrack and plot when the things leading up to it should happen.  Invariably, as I write the actual story, things that I sketched out would take three weeks in the novel occur in a […]

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Writing is like Owning a Mall

Posted Pete Bauer Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novel, Writing

For a business owner, one of the hardest goals to achieve is to duplicate your income. For brick and mortar stores, like fast food restaurants or furniture stores, the only way to double your income is to duplicate your location somewhere else. Like franchising. The great thing about being a writer is every book you […]

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Podcast – Marketing and Finding Your Voice

Posted Sonlight Press Author Blog, Gabby Wells Novel, Marketing, Podcast

Pete Bauer and Dorothea Bauer talk about the various marketing research and strategies they plan to employ with the release of their first book.  They’ll also talk about the process of finding the correct voice for a novel and how that impacted the other work. Mobile Users: Click here to listen to the episode. Topics […]

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Writing as a Business

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novel, Novella, story telling, Writing

Whether you are independently published or traditionally published, the majority of the ownership for your success falls on your shoulders.  It is up to the author to write good stuff, build a fan base, establish beta readers and street teams and marketing plans. It’s why real writers treat writing as a business.  It’s where the […]

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Life After Gabby

Posted Pete Bauer Faith, Gabby Wells, Novel, Novella, Writing

The completion of the Gabby Wells storyline will take me some time.  A couple of years.  Not including the time it took to convert screenplays into novels that have since been tossed, just getting the novellas written, edited and published will probably take a year in total. We’ll release the novellas, one at at time, […]

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Word Count and Wreaking Hovac

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Novella, Word Count, Writing

Been very efficient this past week, typing out over 12,000 words.  I’m nearing the end of the first draft of Lost & Found and I must say I’ve really enjoyed putting Gabby through hell. Writers have an odd relationship with the characters they love.  They create them, cherish them, give them hopes, dreams, goals, loves […]

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Writing is a Lot Like Golf… or an Ex-Girlfriend.

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Blog, Gabby Wells, Novella, Writing

Writing is a lot like golf. It only takes one good swing to keep you hacking away for another 18 holes. While working on the first draft of Lost & Found I inadvertently setup a really awesome situation.  The options were limitless.  With that came pressure not to screw it up. So, I tentatively started […]

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Word Count & Novella 3 (Really 2)

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Novella, Word Count, Writing

I finally finished the first draft of Skyway, one of the novellas of our five novella series.  It’s placement in the series has shifted, as I mentioned before, moving from novella #2, to novella #4.  The current word count is just over 40,000 and will probably need another 2,000-3,000 when all is said and done. […]

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Independent Publishing

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Blog, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novel, Novella, Writing

It’s time to dump the term “self-publishing.”  Lets call it what it really is, independent publishing. A decade ago, the only legitimate way to get your book to the masses was through the traditional publishing houses.  Sure, there were some print-on-demand options available, but the quality of those books suffered in comparison.  The marketplace also […]

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Word Count & Nearing the Finish Line

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novella, Word Count, Writing

Getting over the hump sure has helped.  In a little over a week I was able to write 10,000 words and probably have another 3,000 ahead of me before putting Skyway aside. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the scope and placement of Skyway has changed and the ripple effect of those changes […]

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Word Count & Getting Over the Hump

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novella, Word Count, Writing

This week was a tough one, writing-wise.  As mentioned on our last podcast, the second novella, Skyway, takes place over a continuous 36 hour period.  Because of this limitation and a lot of the moving parts having to do with plot and character, what would normally be a smooth process has been quite a struggle. […]

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Word Count & Rewrites

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novella, Word Count, Writing

I did a lot of writing, but not that added a lot to the word count. I did add a couple of thousand words to Skyway, but spent most of the time re-writing The Homecoming Incident based on our Beta Reader feedback.  The end result was a couple of hundred more words in total, but […]

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Word Count & Stumbling Along

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novella, Writing

I didn’t do it.  I didn’t keep up my 1500 words a day.  I tried, but the empty page glared back at me this week. My problems were three-fold.  First and foremost, I was burned out.  I have never written 1500 words a day in my life.  Not solely toward a book.  Sure, I probably […]

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Word Count & Beta Readers

Posted Pete Bauer Author, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novel, Novella, story telling, Word Count, Writing

The first Gabby Wells novella, The Homecoming Incident, is in the hands of my first group of Beta Readers.  Can’t wait to hear their responses, make the tweaks and send it to our second group of Beta Readers. I’m about one-third of the way through the first draft of the second novella titled Skyway. Not […]

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Novella 1 – First Draft Complete

Posted Pete Bauer Faith, Gabby Wells, Marketing, Novel, Novella, Podcast, story telling, Typecasting, Writing

Last night, after a long three days of writing over 10,000 words, I finished the first draft of the Gabby Wells novella called The Homecoming Incident. I’ll let it sit a couple of days so my brain can recover.  There are a lot of things I need to add to the beginning in order to […]

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