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 […]
Even though the title of the first Gabby Wells novel was finally released (Kneel & Prey), I have been writing the first draft of the story since the beginning of August. I originally set my word count goal at 50,000, but bumped it up to 65,000, because that’s the universally accepted length of an official […]
Sonlight Press is happy to announce the first novel in the Gabby Wells thriller series will be titled Kneel & Prey. In this fast-paced thriller by author Pete Bauer, Gabby Wells, a high school freshman from a small Florida town, tries to stop a fellow student who lost his father in the war on terror […]
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 […]
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 […]
Now that we’re turning the novellas into novels, we’ll have to change some of the titles. Here’s why. The original titles of the five books included an ampersand. The first two are Water & Blood and Shadows & Lies. For marketing purposes, we’d want to make all of the titles consistent, so we’re going to […]
I finished the first draft of Lost & Found this week and the writing process for this novel allowed me to finally find the correct voice and tone for all of the Gabby Wells novels. It was weird to me that it took two novels (that have since been trashed) and three novellas to find […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Plotting out Lost & Found has really come in handy. In a week I’ve written nearly 8,000 words. The story is humming along. I’m about half-way through, so it should end up in the 30,000 – 40,000 range, like the rest. I have been amazed how changes in the market, or new information I have […]
I’ve been chugging along slowly, but surely. Mostly slowly. I was able to draft almost 7500 words on the Lost & Found novella before I slowed things down. I realized that I knew the end of the story, but some of the middle parts were fuzzy. And, since I was diving head first into writing […]
Something important occurred to me this weekend. Something that placed a crap ton of pressure on me. As I fleshed out the plot for the second novella, Lost & Found, I realized it is the single most important book in the entire series. Why? Because, we intend to give the first novella The Homecoming Incident […]
Author Pete Bauer and Dorothea Bauer discuss the impact of the novellas on the novels, causing for a rewrite of novels 1 and 2. Plus the lessons learned from Teen Beta Readers. Teen Beta Readers Specific Expectations 145,000 Words A Professional Endeavor Art Show Facebook Art Polite Critiques Annoying Analysis Aging Well Novella Novels Semi-Mysterious […]
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. […]
I finished up the first draft of the novella Skyway this weekend. It ran long, as I expected, and will probably be even longer when I get it through the Beta Readers. But it’s a fun ride that starts out with a kick and throws in cool plot twists at the end of nearly every […]
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 […]
In this podcast author Pete Bauer and marketing head Dorothea Bauer talk about the different paths your writing career would take depending on if your approach it as a hobby versus a career. Writing as a Hobby vs. Career Three Mandatory Things Consistency & Deadlines Establishing Brand and Presence 1500 Words a Day 80/20 Rule […]
Funny thing about writing. It’s a lot like life. Just when you think you’ve got it all planned out, it changes right before your eyes. I’m nearing the completion of the second novella Skyway in our five novella Gabby Wells series. The goal of the novellas was to introduce the readers to the characters and […]