The Crossover Alliance...Now On A Ning Platform!

Last month I mentioned that I was in the process of moving my social community - The Crossover Alliance - from a SocialGo network to a Ning network. Well, that day is here! I've even obtained the proper URL, and you can now find the Alliance at www.thecrossoveralliance.com. I still have some work to do on some of the pages and features, but for the most part, the foundation for the community is there and ready to be built upon. Head on over to create a free profile and get involved in the community. Membership is free, and I will even be putting on a giveaway soon to kick off the launch of the new site.The old site will be disappearing next week to make way for the official launch.

August Update

I know it's been about a month since I last posted - and I do apologize for that - but I've been knee-deep in some personal matters, and I've also been taking a long hard look at the projects and tasks on my plate and have had to make some hard decisions on what is worth doing and what is worth forgetting about. My first and foremost priority is to write. Write. And beyond that, I want to reach people with that writing using my website, social media, and word of mouth. But those things have to come secondary to the writing.

First off, time to celebrate because I actually finished Camp NaNoWriMo! This was my first year doing the campy summer version of National Novel Writing Month, and to be honest I didn't think I was going to reach my goal of 43,112 words to get my third Expired Reality novel past the 100,000 word count mark, but I did it! And now I have a legitimate amount of story material to craft my novel from, so hopefully I can get this third volume in the series - which has been in the works for a few years now - onto the bookshelves soon.

The second piece of news I want to share is that I've made the executive decision to move the genre community - The Crossover Alliance - to a Ning based network. Since it's creation, The Crossover Alliance community has been residing on SocialGo. And while SocialGo is a really great company to start out on, Ning has many more options for social networking and content which I think will only benefit the community once things are moved over. The new site will be ready in the next couple weeks, and ample notice will be given to give time for the shift from one platform to the other.

And the third solid piece of news I'd like to share is the decision to merge the two blogs that I currently run. Right now, this blog is my main blog where I talk about my writing projects and the writing process, but I also have another blog - Of Dreams and Faith - where I've been blogging about my faith and the incredible journey God brought me and my family through to get us here to the Bay Area. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no reason to keep my faith and my writing separate from one another, especially if everything I am writing nowadays is either edgy Christian speculative fiction or a non-fiction account of my faith walk with God.

Aside from those three major announcements, and the work I am currently doing on my non-fiction book, Of Dreams and Faith, which chronicles my faith walk with God, I also have some side projects that I need to start tackling - such as the resurrection of my email newsletter, some revamping of certain items on my website, and some episodic and short story writing I want to start cranking out.

Dark Horizons

Just recently, I took advantage of one of the rewards of winning NaNoWriMo last November - 5 free copies of my book from Createspace. Seeing how I never actually ordered any paperbacks of Endangered Memories when I revamped the cover design at the beginning of the year, I went ahead and ordered five copies and now display them magnificently on my desk. I found though, that like many of my books, I will sometimes pick it up and start reading it. And lately, by reading a lot of my older works, I can feel my passion for writing returning in full bloom.

This isn't to say that my passion for writing ever went away. It just got a bit buried under the monumental task of moving here to the Bay Area, getting acclimated in a new place, and trying to get back into the groove of online marketing and whatnot.

With that being said, I'm also happy to say that I'm back at work on Dark Horizons, thanks to Camp NaNoWriMo. I have a lot of great ideas for this installment in my Expired Reality series, and I hope to write them all out and get this manuscript done as soon as I possibly can, seeing how it's been on hiatus for the last few years. Starting as a nearly 60,000 word draft, Dark Horizons will pick up where Lost Birth left off and continue the story of David Corbin and both his search for the Codex of Ra'f and his battle against the emergent Legion.

Camp NaNoWriMo Changes

With yesterday being the official start of Camp NaNoWriMo, I took some time to sit down, open up my old NaNoWriMo draft of Dark Horizons, and scanned the book to see how badly this thing would need to be overhauled and rewritten for Camp NaNoWriMo.

Boy was I surprised.

This manuscript is an absolute gem that's apparently been sitting in a digital folder since August of 2011 - the same month my son was born. After perusing the nearly 60,000 word manuscript, I've come to the conclusion that my Camp NaNoWriMo goal needs to be changed. This draft of Dark Horizons has a nice edgy feel to it - one of the main reasons I was going to rewrite it to match it up with the feel of my Black Earth series. It also follows most of the plot lines I was going to write the new manuscript in. And I can't ignore the fact that already 56,888 words are written in this thing.

The beautiful thing about Camp NaNoWriMo is that it can be used for edits, revisions, or alternate word counts. Unlike its big brother, NaNoWriMo (every November), Camp NaNoWriMo allows you to set your word goal to one other than the typical 50,000. So, I'm going to take advantage of this and set my goal to 43,112 words. Seeing how my manuscript draft is already 56,888, this would bring the draft to 100,000 words by the time July is over with - the perfect size for a first draft.

Today and tomorrow I'm going to be spending some time chiseling out an outline for the manuscript, and then after the holiday weekend, I'll be starting work on the 43,112 words I need to complete before the end of July.

Of Dreams and Faith and Camp NaNoWriMo!

In recent posts, I've been making vague mentions at a non-fiction project I've started. I'm happy to announce that I have an official title for my project: Of Dreams and Faith. As some of you know, I have another blog that I run by the same name. Both the blog and the book detail the journey of faith that God has taken me (and my family) on in my lifetime, but the book will go into greater detail and offer more of an autobiographical look at things, while the blog continues to chronicle our move to the Bay Area and the church plant - Canvas - that we are a part of.

I am hoping to finish this project in the next couple of months, and then move full speed into my Expired Reality series. Which brings me to my next newsworthy topic...

I've decided to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. I have been doing the basic, November-based NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the last eight years, and I just found out about Camp NaNoWriMo, which is basically a July version of NaNoWriMo, only you can set the word-count goal yourself instead of having to abide by the 50,000 words. I will be setting my goal at 50,000 to start off with though, and then if I get to the middle of the month and have surpassed that, I will reevaluate my word-count goal.

The novel I'll be working on for Camp NaNoWriMo is my third Expired Reality novel, Dark Horizons. I had already done a draft of this novel for one of my November NaNoWriMo contests, but this manuscript needs a complete overall from beginning to end, now that I decided to incorporate my Black Earth writing style into the series.

If there are any of you wanting to keep up on my word-count progress or participate in Camp NaNoWriMo yourself (it starts July 1st), here is a link to my profile there - DavidCorbin.

Of Dreams and Faith - The Book

I am proud to announce that I am currently working on a brand new non-fiction project which will go into detail about the incredible journey God has had me on in regards to my writing career and promises He's made my wife and I. The book will detail a little about my past, how I came to love writing and make it my permanent career, and the incredible chain of events God set up to get us into the Bay Area.The book will be less an autobiography and more a chapter-by-chapter peek into the ways God's hand has moved in my life and the life of my family.

I did struggle for a while picking out a title for this project, but in the end I think the answer was staring me in the face the whole time with the existence of this blog: Of Dreams and Faith.  I plan to release Of Dreams and Faith (the book) before the end of this year.

Gamification and HabitRPG

For some time now, I've been trying to use To-Do lists to feel productive throughout the day. And it hasn't worked. Mainly, because I'm an avid gamer, I lean more towards achievement driven success than I do a simple task list to check off each time I do something productive. I went perusing the internet a couple of weeks ago and found that there is actually a term for my ailment - gamification.

Gamification is essentially the act of rewarding players/employees for accomplishing tasks by giving them points, achievements, tokens, badges, etc. When I heard about this, I thought it was a dream come true. Being an avid gamer, I revel in gaining achievements for the work I put into something, and I feel productive and accomplished even when I win something as trivial as an in-game bauble. It's just the way that I am wired.

After finding out about this, I realized that I have the potential of being more productive if I apply the same gamification ideals to my own life and writing career. So I went in search of apps that cater to this obsession online, and found very few that an individual - as opposed to a company - can use to do daily tasks. But one that I did come across shows promise. HabitRPG.

HabitRPG is an online, open-source app that runs To-Do and Task lists as if you were the character in a role playing game. You get gold and experience points as you complete tasks. The experience points help your character grow stronger, and the gold can be spent on weapons and armor that increase your experience or protect your health. The coolest thing about HabitRPG is that you can create your own reward system and set the gold standard that has to be spent to reach it. For example, I have a reward that I can purchase that gives me a day off from work if I spend 500 gold.

But it's not just about rewards. It's also about habits. You have daily habits that have to be performed, such as drinking your daily allotment of water or writing for an hour. If you don't complete the habit that day, you ding yourself and your health goes down. Once you're health reaches 0, your character dies and you're knocked back a level.

The game has other great options, like manually setting the difficulty of each task - although the system has it's own algorithm built in that may/may not really need to be adjusted, setting deadlines for each task, and getting bonuses when you get a streak - a consecutive number of the same task done daily. 

HabitRPG does have bugs and glitches here and there, but they are being worked out, and of all of the online options I have seen for this type of system, HabitRPG is by far the most promising.

San Francisco

As many of you know by now, my wife, son, and I made it safe and sound to the Bay Area. We moved here to help start a church plant - Canvas - in the middle of San Francisco. While the actual road God put us on to get out here will be detailed in a non-fiction project I am currently working on, I thought I'd start the engine on this blog once again with a sneak peak into our recent wanderings.

To begin with, we found an apartment in Daly City, which is on the border of the city of San Francisco. Daly City is a bit more family-friendly and suburban than some parts of downtown San Francisco. The weather here is almost always cool - a far cry from Arizona's brutal heat.This city is a great one to move to to get acquainted with the Bay Area.

I live literally a half mile from this stunning view - 

This is my new workspace - my desk and bookshelves in part of the living room -

I've had the chance to explore much of SF, including Chinatown...

...Japantown during the Cherry Blossom Festival...

...downtown SF...

...Ghirardelli Square...

...the piers...

...Ocean Beach...

...San Francisco's eclectic food trucks...

...and I even stumbled across a unique bookstore - 

And of course, I can't include pics of SF and not include the Golden Gate Bridge -

I absolutely love it here!

Simplicity

As most of you have noticed, I've been MIA from social media for a while now. For the last couple months, I've been focusing on getting settled here in the Bay Area (Daly City) for the church plant we are a part of - (Canvas) - which should be launching publicly in late September. With all of this time away from my projects, I've had a chance to think about what direction I want my marketing efforts to go. And the one word that keeps coming to mind is...

Simplicity.

After months away from the old version of my website, when I did jump on to see what could be fixed, I was pained to see how cluttered and messy my website looked. The colors were all wrong, the graphics and text were a clustermess, and some of the links didn't even work. Aside from the website, my business cards have needed a facelift, as has this blog, and even my Facebook pages. I've even become unhappy with the face I've given to The Crossover Alliance, a social community I created for writers/readers of edgy Christian speculative fiction.

With the realization that all these facets of my author platform need to be simplified (and overhauled), I did something about it.

I am proud to introduce to all of you my brand spanking new website. This site has been rebuilt from the ground up. While I've somewhat enjoyed using WebEasy Professional for the past 8+ years to build my site, the time consuming glitches and issues within the program have forced me to find a different avenue through which to build my website with. So I turned over to Wix.com and came up with a fresh, new design that is easy on the eyes and simple to update...

On top of that, I created some new business cards which I am in the process of ordering...

I also updated my author Facebook page with a new graphic. More changes to all my FB pages will be coming down the line in time...

And, you have probably already realized that I also update my blog's theme. Simplicity is the common theme running through these designs. Solid brown color schemes to go with the soft blue of my tree and star logo. I've also changed the font that my name is written in to be a little less 'fancy' and a little more professional and writerly.

And last but not least, I created a brand spanking new logo for The Crossover Alliance. Something that resembles the edginess of our fiction but at the same time represents our professionalism in the writing community...

I'd love to hear what you think of the new changes!

April Update

As most of you have noticed, I've been away from this blog for the past couple months. It's a very long story as to why I was MIA from social media in general, but for the moment I'll simply give all of you an update on what I'm currently working on and what projects are on the horizon.

Most of my time at the moment has been spent getting settled in California. Back in August, my wife and I were called to become part of a church plant in San Francisco called Canvas. Canvas won't officially launch as a church until September, but 25+ people from Arizona are in the process of relocating to the Bay Area to make this plant happen. My wife and I just finished securing our new place in Daly City, and we'll be moving in there next Monday the 15th. Once I'm completely settled, I'll be getting back into the full swing of my blogging routine, and I'll be plugging back into my online venues such as The Crossover Alliance and my own website.

Another piece of news is that today I'll be sketching out an outline to a brand new non-fiction project - a novel that details the journey of faith my wife and I have been on over the past few years. I've been meaning to begin this project for a while now, and I figure now that I'm finally getting settled with things I have the time to dig into it. This non-fiction novel is tentatively titled "Never Forsaken" - a title based on Psalm 37:25. A release date for this book has not yet been determined. For those of you who have been waiting for the third novel in my Expired Reality series, fear not because I am going to be working on it side-by-side with my new non-fiction project.

Over the course of the next month, I will be revamping many of my online channels. I'll be using MailChimp to help me craft and manage better email newsletters, Weebly or Moonfruit to help me streamline and polish my website, and Hootsuite to help me manage my FB and Twitter feeds more productively.

That's some of what I'll be working on over the course of the next couple of months. In the next couple weeks I'll be getting back into my blogging groove, and as soon as my aforementioned channels are updated, I'll let everyone know.