The Rocket's Shadow

Yeah, so some of the numerics are useful but that tool is so completely oriented towards trying to be top dog of the Amazon heap by gaming the keywords. How about displaying the middle of the road, bulk sales instead of concentrating on trying to outsell Stephen King and James Patterson?

That and it didn't really help me figure out categories, which was my first question. But I looked at a whole bunch of titles and I have a little more sense of what is being written (and selling).

And, oh boy, feeling newly inadequate. Also intrigued. As in, I picked up over a dozen sample chapters from novels that just seemed so interesting. That's our new data world, right there. I have tens of hours of YouTube videos saved to History that looked interesting enough to bookmark but I didn't have time to watch yet...

And oh yeah. Finished the Car Ferry chapter. After almost two weeks of reviewing the flow of the novel I finally figured out what I could do there and, more importantly, what I couldn't. Sigh. Once again a wonderful setting for some crazy action and it didn't fit the flow of the story.

I also reviewed the chapter at the National Museum and I'm not going to change it. I guess. I had the idea of taking a longer time to talk about the history of the Greek people and break it up and make it a little less dry by wandering around the exhibits at the museum. Yeah, and snogging with Markos. But in the end it is about flow of the story and there's enough words there already.

Two of the things I had to do in the Car Ferry revision was explain one of the bad guys a little more. So the main edit from this point is to pick up on that; make sure I'm giving the right part of the revelations in the moment just before the bomb goes off and when he's got his rifle out on Scorpion Island. Yeah, it gets a little less visiting museums and a little more action movie towards the end there.

Those two weeks were not just wool gathering. I re-read, reviewed, and did a lot of little edits. So there's less left. I think I can move on to doing a grammar pass this weekend and by Monday ready to work on the cover.

I'm also re-thinking hiring a professional cover person. The other thing I've been doing with my keyword searching is looking at covers. And, yeah, I'm still on the fence. Enceladus Calyx is so left field that -- assuming it is category and keyword placed so as to be obviously a suspense book with history/archaeology elements -- the weirdness of the title might grab some eyeballs. There are way too many same-looking titles out there already.

Still, I can't help coming back to The Fox Knows Many Things. The main arguments I had against it, I'm pretty much over. Well, that's next week.

The next one, I'm doing in eight months. Just have to plan a plan to constrain the variables a little. After all...the hard lifting is done now.