The Process

Last year I mentioned at a writers group meeting that I was thinking about penning a science fiction piece. I told the group there would be no lasers, explosions, love interests or any of the other plot devices common in the troupe. One of the members squawked saying it would be something to the effect as, “the most boring read ever.”
Challenge accepted.
What I have detailed here is how I have been developing this work-in-progress and promoting it for readership. I also added narrative notes for the reader if they were interested in my thought process.

Promotion

In terms of social networks, I spend a good deal of time in Google Plus. One of the communities I partake in is called Saturday Scenes, where writers, every Saturday, post scenes, chapters, whatever they like to the public stream with the hashtag #saturdayscenes. I also post to Twitter with the #amwriting to help drive even further possible traffic. Upwards of 60 writers post, share and seek an audience by working together. It is a grand experiment full of rather nice people, good writers and a chunk of fun. Yes, a chunk.
In the past I posted several short stories that received very nice reviews and shares by other writers; enough for me to try something new. A serial story released week to week.
I wanted to do this right from the get-go, so I purchased a domain name, king4flight.com at google’s new domain service. Here is my cost breakdown:

• $12 at domains.google.com (king4flight.com)
• FREE blogger.com account
• $5 bookcover at fiverr.com (not needed, but feeds the ego)

The Process

I needed a way to work on the writing while at home, or at work during my lunch hour. Enter stackedit.io, the markdown service I am using right now to write this blog entry. When I have finished I simply publish to the blog from stackedit.
And that’s it. I create, edit and publish from stackedit.io.
You are probably wondering why go through all the bother. Well, for me this is less of a bother as all my content creation and editing takes place in stackedit.io, no matter my location.(lunch hour at work, home, driving…). I can also maintain content from multiple blogs from one spot:

• Serial novella (Last flight of the King IV)
• Writers Group Blog (The Missing Dwarven Phaser)
• My Personal Blog (michalsen.wordpress.com)

You may also be wondering why I’m posting the chapters to their own blog instead of leaving them in the wild on G+. Well, you probably aren’t, but I was looking for an excuse to show you something really cool. I have setup a small script that shows or hides my story comments during the readers experience.
That’s all fun and games. What we really need are photos.

Here is stackedit.io interface. The markdown, where you type, is on the left, and how it renders is on the right. If you are new to markdown, rest assured it is easy and there are plenty of cheatsheets out there.

By clicking the hash in the upper left gives you the fly-out menu.

Where you are given a host of choices to publish and save your material.

I choose to publish to blogger.

Here is domains.google.com where I point the domain to a blogger page. Easy-peasy.

Now, I ask….How can you choose not to read that?

So, you are probably wondering if this is the end all/be all of my adventure. Not even close!

Stay tuned!