Almost 1 million eBooks in Kindle Store!

According to a Techcrunch article, Amazon has nearly 1 million eBooks in the Kindle Store now! The actual number is a little less, but it's just a matter of time before they go over the 1 million mark. According to the same article, eBook sales are expected to grow from $3.2 billion this year to $9.7 billion in 2016. I guess I should be happy when my book has a 5-digit ranking in the Kindle Store -- it means it's selling better than 90% of all eBooks!

Can't wait for The Hunger Games movie

I just saw the new trailer for The Hunger Games. It looks great! I can't wait for the movie to come out next March.

George and the Galactic Games

I'm excited to announce that my second book (and first novel) is available in the Amazon Kindle Store! It is titled George and the Galactic Games, and it is a science fiction story suitable for young readers as well as adults.

Description:
George is the new kid in school. He also recently lost his father to a heart attack. In an effort to cheer him up, George’s mother takes him on a camping trip. That’s when their troubles really begin. Extraterrestrials abduct both mother and son. Now George finds himself an unwilling participant in the Yumal Contests, a galactic game against an alien species. He must overcome his fears and limitations to win because these games are not just a casual sporting event… his life hangs in the balance.

Searching for the next Hunger Games

I've written before about how great I think the Hunger Games trilogy is. Since then, I've read other books in the genre, hoping to find a worthy successor. The closest I've come is Neal Shusterman's Unwind and James Dashner's Maze Runner trilogy. IMHO, Unwind was the superior book, but Maze Runner came closer to re-creating a world similar to Panem. I've also read some recommendations in the genre that were disappointing, most notably Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy. Despite its good reviews, the story never grabbed me so that I couldn't put it down, mainly because I thought the characters were hard to believe in and sometimes acted irrationally given the circumstances they were in.

If anyone has other suggestions for books similar to the Hunger Games trilogy that I should read, let me know!

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The NaNoWriMo website let's authors track their progress throughout the month and hands out certificates to those who finish a novel of at least 50,000 words by the end of the month.

I heard about this a few years ago and have always been too chicken to try it because I didn't think I had it in me to write a novel at all, much less to do it within a month. Now that I've actually written a novel, I might consider participating in NaNoWriNo in the future. This year, I've set November 1 as the start date to work on my next novel! I won't finish it in a month, but at least NaNoWriMo will have nudged me into starting it.

Goodreads

For two years, I had been using the weRead Facebook app as my online bookshelf. I had never used anything to track my books electronically before, and at the time, weRead seemed like a good choice because some of my other Facebook friends used it too. Now, two years later, I'm switching to Goodreads. There are several reasons for making the switch:

1. I don't like having to log in to Facebook to view or update my bookshelf.
2. The weRead app is down more often than I like.
3. The functionality in Goodreads is better. For instance, I like being able to sort by rating, which, believe it or not, I can't do with weRead.
4. I like the recommendations on Goodreads (so far).

Additionally, I've heard that Goodreads is a good platform for authors. I haven't looked into those features yet because I've been using it as a reader more than as an author.

So now I will leave you so that I can enter more books I've read into Goodreads.

Writing is fun, editing not so much

I have spent the last three weeks editing my book based on feedback from proofreaders. It hasn't been fun. Unlike writing, which I enjoy doing, I find editing to be more like work than like fun. Part of the reason is that I'm tired of going over the manuscript so many times. Since starting on the first draft, I've worked on the entire story seven times already, and I expect to go over it all at least once more. I've written and re-written some parts of it more than ten times, probably more than twenty! There are only so many times that I can stare at the same words without getting bored or going crazy! The other reason why I don't like editing is because every time I go through the manuscript, I find something to tweak. Maybe I'm being a perfectionist, or maybe I'm just indecisive. Either way, I feel like I'll never be done. To draw the line somewhere, I've decided to put a limit to my editing: if I go through the manuscript and change 1% or less of the text, then I will consider myself done.I hope I get to that stage soon.