Author's Log Stardate 04112011

4/11/2011

_TWOE_ should arrive in Fran Lewis's (reviewer) hands tomorrow. Will be the first pro review of my novel. One should never worry about something that one can do nothing about, but I am excited. Meanwhile ...

When Sensei Dean Wesley Smith isn't driving the point home to write, write, write, his wife Kristine Rusch is ... and they're both point on! Kristine just published a very informative piece about promotion here (and the comments are also informative) which illustrates that the best way to sell more books is ... to WRITE more books!

So what have I done to write more ... let's see - little league, ad-hoc consulting, house falling apart around me, more little league, college (going after my 2nd and LAST degree) ... did I mention LITTLE LEAGUE aka BLACK HOLE OF SUCKING SECONDS OF MY LIFE AWAY!

But I digress ...

Writing is an art and as with all true art forms, there is a discipline that must be attached in order to turn out work. The way the discipline is carried out varies from artist to artist but without discipline there simply is no art.

So, after reading Dean's and Kristine's words of wisdom on the subject of writing as a profession - I'm constantly working on refining my discipline.

For me, the best approach is working from macro to micro, like this:

Goal: Become an accomplished writer within five years (Accomplished = 15-20 novels published)

Objective:
- Write and publish 3-4 novels every 12 months

Target Pace: 300,000 to 400,000 words per year = @30,000 words per month = 6,900 words per week = 1,200 words per day.

Current Pace: On average, an abysmal 400 words per day.

No excuses, I simply need to keep my focus on the macro. The fact is that I will never write uniform amounts, so I need to really turn words out on paper when I'm in my groove ... and I need to get in my groove more days per week.

Right now I have two novels in my head. One I'm writing, one on a pad in bullet points.

Today, writing will be like pulling teeth.

Did I mention I'm also trying to lose 30 pounds ...

End transmission

(Please feel free to leave comments – your comments can be as helpful as anything I write for others. I hope this series turns out to be less my talking at you and more – a group of like-minded storytellers that self-publish or intend to. Peace & God Bless!)

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Author

Gerard de Marigny is an American novelist, producer, and scriptwriter, starting with the publication of his 2011 thriller, The Watchman of Ephraim (2014), now in development. New books scheduled for release in 2017 are New Detroit (Cris De Niro, Book 6), the novella Joshua's Country, and the novella White Widow (ARCHANGEL, Mission Log #3).

Born in Brooklyn to an owner of an office supply manufacturer who served in the U.S. Marines in both WWII and Korea, and his wife, on June 28, 1963, de Marigny attended St. Francis Preparatory School, a Catholic private high school. He did not complete his senior year, leaving high school to help form the rock band, Americade. Americade went on to record two albums from 1981-1984, and their remake of Grand Funk Railroad's, "We're An American Band" video won "Best New Video - Heavy Metal" in 1983 on MTV.

After the original lineup broke up in '84, de Marigny went on to write, record, and produce music for other artists and for TV. However, his music career ended abruptly in 1996, when he was diagnosed with a recently-discovered sub-type of Hodgkin's disease, a form of lymphoma cancer. Unable to find work in the music industry after his diagnoses, surgery, and treatment, de Marigny finally earned his G.E.D. in 2006, and then attended Penn State University where he earned a degree in Information Science and Technology, graduating with honors in 2009.

In 2007, de Marigny began working in the financial services industry. By that time, he had started to pen a number of short works of fiction, initially in the Christian Speculative fiction sub-genre. None of them were published. In 2010, at the urging of his wife, de Marigny decided to resign from the firm to focus solely on his writing. It was at this time that de Marigny, who had been shopping the Christian Spec fiction manuscript, opted to shelve that manuscript and start work on an idea he had since he and his wife lost one of their dear friends, Daniel Afflitto, in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. That idea became his first novel, The Watchman of Ephraim.

de Marigny shopped _TWoE_ and received 74 rejections before choosing to release the novel himself, independently. He founded JarRyJorNo Publishing in January 2011, and released TWoE on January 21, 2011. Sales were slow going in the beginning, with TWoE selling only 47 copies between January 21 and September 10, 2011. However, de Marigny woke up on September 11, 2011, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, to find that his novel had hit Amazon best seller lists in eight countries (US, UK, CA, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, and Australia).

The book's 9/11 basis resonated with espionage sub-genre fiction readers globally. It was considered to be extensively researched, very detailed and savvy when it came to the set-ups of a non-governmental counter-terrorism firm and modern geopolitics. By 2014, de Marigny had written four Cris De Niro novels and had introduced a spin-off Archangel novella series with two releases, focusing on The Watchman Agency's paramilitary arm, Archangel.

Outside of his fiction, de Marigny also began work on two rock memoirs, in 2014, when he was contacted by renowned producer Michael Greenburg (MacGyver, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis). Greenburg loved the novel and immediately identified the potential to turn de Marigny's Cris De Niro series into a Cris De Niro feature film franchise. He offered de Marigny the opportunity to co-write the script adaptation of TWoE and to become a co-producer. de Marigny has set aside his novel writing while he and Greenburg are completing work on the script adaptation of The Watchman of Ephraim.

JarRyJorNo Publishing

Author's Log Stardate 04112011

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