I’ve been getting the writing bug a little more lately.  Not as much for the blog as I have the novel I started in 2016.  I haven’t done much with it in a while.  Every once in a while, I’ll bring it up on the laptop and do a little editing or add some content.  Lately, I’ve been all about working on my book.  Although, I have given up the delusions of grandeur of getting published and selling a million copies, having it turned into a movie, and living happily ever after off the royalties in a tropical paradise.  Not really, I still fantasize about that.  LOL.

I’ve been looking at sites that writers use to serialize their novels, or release a work one chapter at a time.  Turns out many very well know authors have done this.  Charles Dickens, Steven King, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Alexandre Dumas just to name a few.  Serializing an author’s work was a common thing in Dickens’ time.  A piece would run in a local paper, usually one chapter of the book.  It gave people an opportunity to read the book without having to buy it, especially at a time when most people didn’t have extra money for luxuries like books.

I decided to submit a chapter to Moonquill, one of the sites I researched.  Well, it got accepted.  To say I’m excited is an understatement.  In reality, it’s not that big a deal, but to me it is.  There was a process to submit and get approval and I made it.  There’s little to no money in doing my novel this way, but it’s getting out there.  And it’s possible that one day this could lead to getting published in the more traditional sense.  I get to keep the copywrite, which was a big part of me choosing Moonquill.  If I want to publish later exclusively with a publisher, I will be able to.

I noticed on the site that most authors don’t use their real names.  I think that’s weird, so I’m using a variation of my name, deGeorge.  First and middle initial in lowercase and my last name, all as one word.  Well see how that goes, I can change it at any time.  There also seems to be a formatting flaw.  I copied and pasted my work, but not all the spaces after punctuation made it for some reason.  I’ll have to look into seeing if I can fix that. 

I have almost 50,000 words so far for the novel that I need to edit and divide into good chapters.  My chapters seemed a little long compared to the other writers on that site.  I have mixed feelings about that.  On one hand, I’m changing the work I’ve already done.  On the other hand, if my chapters are too long, people might not stay with it.  Basically, I’ve created a lot more work for myself by making the chapters shorter.  But, I’m ok with that. 

I’ll post the link to Chapter 1.  Please, please, please check it out.  It’s free, another reason I chose Moonquill.  My goal with this project is make it into the Top 20 on the site.  That’s a lofty goal considering what I’ve seen so far.  There’s a lot of writers and a lot of books to choose from. 

*****IMPORTANT UPDATE*****   While writing this blog post, my 18-year-old son messaged me with my grammatical errors in chapter 1.  I have corrected them on the site.  Thank you, Ben!!  If you are one of the very few I sent this to before I made it public, I have corrected the glaring mistakes.  I went over it twice before posting, how did I miss those?  Because it’s in my head the way I mean it to sound, so it’s harder to find mistakes.  That’s why having someone looking over your work before you publish is important. 

Also, thank you MSG Wilkens for letting me use that picture from Afghanistan as my book cover.

I’ll post chapter 2 in a few days.  I have my work cut out for me.  Wish me luck.  And please, please, please click on the link and check it out.  Thank you in advance.  Good day, God bless.  Thanks for stopping by today.

https://www.moonquill.com/book/battlefield

Dave