Here's an update about the hardcover book, Oceans. It's a coming-of-age story loosely based on my childhood experiences in Puerto Rico. It's a passion project I've been working on and off for about three years. I might have posted it here under a different title but I've since changed it to Oceans.
It's a short novella, about 135 pages that tell the story of a young boy and his fishing mentor, an old man by the name of Don Andres. For me, this being my third novel, it's my favorite tale of all. So much of this story draws on my childhood and frankly, it's hard to shake those years (13-17) and I often think about those good old days and so this is a great way to have a keepsake for myself and my family to remember those amazing years.
This hardcover will be published on B&N platform hopefully by next year. I'm still re-writing some parts and proofreading and doing all the things it takes to bring a book to life. I wrote the first draft in about a month and let it sit for almost a year before returning to it and I was very happy with the words at that early point in time so I went ahead and continued writing and developing the story.
Right now it's at its best point where I've finally nailed the opening and the ending so everything in between is also coming together. I need to spend more time on it and by the end of this year I hope to finish this book and my board game (Millennium) so I've got my work cut out, as usual, and that's how I like it.
Recently I've also updated Edge of The Apocalypse novel that goes with the game. I'm talking about the full-length novel (about 320 pages). I've never written a book so fast. I banged out that first draft in a matter of weeks and then expanded it chapter by chapter and I've revised that to strengthen the main theme and so I just need to fine-tune the short books so the stories are seamless. I'm looking to finish all three projects early next year.
I'm used to juggling several projects at once and that's the best way to work because you need to detach yourself and step back for a while so when you revisit the project you can see it through fresh eyes. So while I work on one project, I take on several others while the first one marinades and so on. It sounds daunting but it's actually a good process to get a lot done in a short time.
I love to design and talk about book covers so I'll soon post something about Oceans and how I went about developing the image for it. I think it works so far. I really have a hard time with covers because I want to include too many ideas but it's best to focus on one main theme. That was my approach for this cover. I think it tells a story that readers want answers to. Although, the tease on top has enough clues about this story and so everything has to work in unison.
Stay tuned for more about all that and for a sneak peek at the opening paragraphs.
