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Friday, March 23, 2012

New Hardware

So, up until now I have been writing either on my desktop computer downstairs or on the laptop that my mom gave with almost no functioning keys and a ten pound paperweight.

I had to buy a wireless keyboard/mouse combo in order to function. The problem with that was that even with the wireless keyboard, I would have to set my laptop on the coffee table. For anyone with a wandering 1 year old, you know what trouble having a laptop open can be.

So I've been restricted to either waiting for him to go to bed or going downstairs and writing on the desktop. Since I work 4 nights a week, that cuts out a significant portion of my writing time and my wife works nights sometimes too so I can't just go downstairs to write.

Well, we recently paid off my wife's laptop on our best buy card so I started looking at laptops for myself.

I finally settled on a toshiba ultrabook. It's crazy thin, has a Solid State Drive and only weighs 2.47 pounds.

I just got it on Wednesday and spent most of the night getting it set up, but I can already see that I will be able to get a lot more writing done.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Looking for Blog Tour Hosts for September!

I'm looking for Indie Author and/or Fantasy book blog sites to host a September blog tour to celebrate and announce the release of my first novel; The Cerberus Rebellion.

If you have a blog or know of one that might fit the bill, please leave a comment or tweet me @authorjkjohnson.

Thanks!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

How Many Points of View?

As I was planning out The Cerberus Rebellion, I had to make a decision on how many Point of View characters I wanted to include.

I had already concluded that I would be writing in third-person limited. I have written some short stories in first person and I have a couple of pen-on-paper novels written in third person omniscient, but right now 3rd Limited is where I feel comfortable. I like how 3rd Limited allows you to show a character from a different point of view by having them appear in someone else's POV chapter.

Part of my goal in writing The Cerberus Rebellion is to tell the story of how the events of the book, and ultimately the series, affect my main characters.

I wanted to avoid the overwhelming number of points of view (especially as seen in the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George RR Martin) while at the same time telling the full spectrum of my story.

I've decided to start my first novel with 4 main points of view. I was going to include some secondary POV characters for one-shot chapters but decided that those stories could be used for short stories or novellas at a later time (kind of how David Weber fills out information through his anthologies).

How do you decide on how many POV characters to use? Do you think more than 1 is too many or do you like to see multiple sides of the story?