G. K. Masterson

After so many years of writing things that would have been awesome had they only seen the light of day (other writers will know what I mean), it is with great pride and excitement that I announce that Twilight of Lanar’ya is now on sale at CreateSpace and Amazon.com in paperback or at Smashwords in eBook format! It will be available in the Amazon Kindle store within the next 24 hours. Edit: Now available for Kindle here.

If you are ordering the paperback edition, I do prefer that you go through CreateSpace for that as I do get a larger royalty payment from them than from Amazon. Also, the reason for the $10 price on the paperback is that the manufacturing costs came up to $8.00 USD. Otherwise, it would be selling for $5.00 USD if I could swing it.

I will post about the various adventures I’ve had actually getting this thing published later. For now, I’m going to go celebrate!

Thanks to everyone who has stood by me while I got this thing written and published. Thanks to my parents, my illustrators, Keary and John-Paul, to my beta readers, and to all my friends out there. I did it guys. I finally did it.

At long last, I have finally completed the final checks on the proof for Twilight of Lanar’ya. This is the cover, done by the awesome Keary Taylor, and a little promotional video that has the release date in it.

Download Twilight of Lanar’ya Cover



Unless catastrophe strikes, you will be able to purchase Twilight of Lanar’ya from Amazon.com for the Kindle or in paperback format on March 23, 2012.

I will be announcing the final price later this coming week so check back for more news then! Also, more news about Midnight of Lanar’ya in the coming weeks!

I just got the approval from CreateSpace to order the proof of Twilight of Lanar’ya on Friday. I will have the proof in my hands on Wednesday. I’m not quite ready to announce a release date (I need to double-check the proof, make sure nothing needs to be corrected, and then bask in the awesomeness for a day or two) but I have started putting together a little promo advert that I will release on YouTube once I have approved the proof.

So, I haven’t done much writing in the past couple of days. Sony Vegas Movie Studio is a tool that needs a lot of hand-holding (and a fair amount of playing the “Video FX finder Shot Game”). But, right now, I’m rendering the first draft for a full playback to see if it works out the way I want it. If it does, then I’ll just have this ready to go when I get the proof check finished next week.

And, since the render has just finished, I’m going to go run the check on it!

No, I haven’t forgotten about this place or forgotten my password or anything like that. I’ve been busy the past couple of weeks moving about 1,200 miles across country and starting a new job. Since I’m getting paid for my 10 am – 7 pm time block — and since I did not have the Internet at the apartment until yesterday — I haven’t been doing a lot of posting here. I’m still hard at work on Midnight of Lanar’ya and have plans to have the draft completed by the end of April. Twilight of Lanar’ya just had its final cover check today (thanks a bunch, Keary!) and I should be uploading the final cover and ordering the proof before the end of this week.

A while back, either here or over at Magisters’ Terrace, I talked about achieving a work-life-writing balance. I do fully intend to get my balance back but starting a new job does require a bit more of my time and concentration since I want to do an absolutely smashing job at work so that they decide they want to keep me. Once I get over the eggshells of being the “new person” and feel a little more secure on my feet (trust me, moving cross-country and starting a new job all at once may be fun, but it’s a nerve-wracking kind of fun. Imagine riding Space Mountain only without the adrenaline rush), I’ll relax more in the evenings and be able to write more. I’m also working on tying up the last bits of Alayne’s Story — a long World of Warcraft fanfic I started back in 2007 and am bringing to a close nearly five years later. Finishing up any piece of work that you’ve spent five years on takes a bit out of you. I know that, perhaps, one day, after the distaste of the next scheduled expansion has been purged from my being, I may pick up Alayne’s Story again. However, for now, I’m bringing it to a close and that’s taking a lot of the energy that I would otherwise be putting into Midnight of Lanar’ya.

And yeah, there have been a couple of instances of me goofing off playing Star Wars: The Old Republic to relax. I figure it’s better to do that and chill out a bit than to force myself to do a bad night’s worth of writing just to say “there, I worked on Midnight of Lanar’ya.” I may not get as much done right now as I’d like but, believe me, it’s much easier to catch up than it is to try to salvage pages that should never have been written to begin with.

But, for now, I’m going to go curl up with one of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt books (The Crystal Shard and no spoilers please!), relax a bit, and then do a little bit more work on Alayne’s Story and Midnight of Lanar’ya before I turn in for the night.

I just spent the day formatting Twilight of Lanar’ya for CreateSpace and Smashwords. Now all I need is the cover, spine, and back and I’ll be ready to roll everything out.

Formatting is probably my least favorite part of publishing a novel. I understand the necessity but there are times I wish I had the programming skills to create an application that would just take the raw output and magically render it into perfect formatting for where ever I’m publishing. Every service has a different way it wants things formatted and you’ll easily spend an hour or two getting your document redone along the lines they require.

Ah well. At least that part is over and done with and I have a better idea of how to format things in the future so it will go more quickly. For now, I’m going to go play Star Wars to unwind a bit. Tomorrow it will be time to get back to the grind. I hope to finish the first draft of Midnight of Lanar’ya by the end of April and have it ready for publication this summer. I also want to get some kind of commercial done for Twilight of Lanar’ya and a few print banners done to distribute around my home town and in bookstores in the area to try to get some more sales. Also, once I’ve approved the proof, I’ll need to start getting cracking on my online marketing presence. Books don’t just sell themselves, after all.

We had a little visitor this weekend who left a gift for my mother and I: a head cold. I’m well on the mend, though, after spending a day lazing about with a sore throat and a mild fever. However, the resultant lack of energy means I haven’t done much writing this week. And, I’m not going to get a terrible lot done the rest of the week due to other commitments. But, I am not worried overmuch about it. Why? Because, years ago, I learned that the absolute worst trap I can fall into is attempting to power through.

Some writers — and I must include myself in this — feel it necessary to meet a deadline; even just a deadline we set for ourselves. I generally like to get at least five pages per project added each week. And, I generally meet, if not exceed, this goal. However, on weeks where real life commitments or illness prevent me from hitting my target, I’ve learned to relax a bit instead of trying to power through late in the week or forcing myself to double-up the next week. The few times I have tried either strategy my writing has been mediocre, if not regrettably poor, in quality.

Many people who do not write tend to think that writing is something you can do any time and that it requires little energy. Some new writers also believe these things and fall into the trap of powering through a rough time or over-committing themselves. Writing may not be a physically demanding pursuit like carpentry or sports but it does require a tremendous amount of energy. That energy may be mostly mental but it does not matter to the body. Energy expended thinking and analyzing is no different, on a bio-chemical level, than energy spent walking. True, it does not raise your metabolism or get you into shape, but it is energy spent that is then unavailable for other pursuits.

When you are not feeling well, your body needs energy to fight off the infection as well as to maintain itself. Since writing involves a high amount of thinking and analyzing and your body, when ill, prioritizes such higher-function tasks as secondary to survival, that means you have less energy to devote to writing when ill and you should not power through just because writing involves sitting in front of a computer and pushing some keys.

I expect that tomorrow I will be back to form and will probably get some writing done. I may even hit my five-page-per-project goal. However, I’m not going to beat myself up if I do not. If I can get three pages per project tomorrow, I’ll be happy. I do have another commitment to meet that requires me to travel out of town next week so my schedule may be thrown off then as well (though I do plan to take my laptop with me).

For now, I’m going to go get some more rest. I want to be at my best next week, after all.

I am a gamer. More than that, I am the kind of gamer who, if I get caught up in the story of a game, will play until ridiculous hours if I don’t have some urgent responsibility weighing down on me. When I was working full-time, I could usually get myself into bed by midnight at the latest and be up at 6:30 the next morning. But now that I am not working full-time (though I’m job-hunting), I find my sleeping schedule getting more and more erratic. If I’m not up until 3 am writing, I’m playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, World of Warcraft, or I’m reading. That means I may not wake up until 9 am which throws my whole morning off.

And yet, despite that, I’m still generally able to hit my daily and weekly goals. Even this week, when I didn’t get much work done on Monday or Tuesday due to various Real Life Issues, I’m still easily on track. That is partly because I did a lot of work this weekend and partly because I’m so caught up in the events of Midnight of Lanar’ya that even 48 hours off doesn’t throw me into a spiral of confusion.

Another reason I’m able to keep pace with all of my projects and still have time to play World of Warcraft and Star Wars is because I am a relentless and religious scheduler. I’ve found that appointing each task its proper “time of day” helps me keep my life balanced. Here’s how things normally work out on a day for me:

Morning — Wake up, check email, check the news
Noontime — Quick lunch. Possibly work out a bit (go for a walk)
Early Afternoon — Raid in WoW if needed or do dailies
Mid Afternoon — Work on Midnight of Lanar’ya
Early Evening — Check the news and work on websites
Mid Evening — Do WoW dailies or play Star Wars while working on Midnight of Lanar’ya
Late Evening — Play Star Wars
Night — Go to sleep at some point

When I was working full time, my schedule looked more like this (still balanced though!)

6:45 am — Wake up, get dressed, go catch the bus
8:00 am — Get to the office and start updates while checking my work email and the news
8:30 am – Noon — Work!
Noon – 2 pm — Lunch break. Eat, play WoW, write.
2 pm – 5:30 pm — Work!
5:30 pm – 6:00 pm — Walking home
6:30 pm – 7:30 pm — Cook and eat supper. Write.
7:30 pm – 10:30 pm — Play WoW (raiding, dailies, dungeons).
10:30 pm – 11:00 pm — Write.
11:00 pm — Shower and bed.

On weekends, my schedule now is pretty much the same. So, if you’re struggling to hit your goals, do what I did. Sit down and think about what you need to get done in life and appoint each time of day its proper task. You can do it by time of day (as I do at the moment) or by hour (as I used to do when I had a full-time job). Then stick to it! After a week, you’ll find that the habit becomes so strong, you don’t need to think about it too much.

And now, it’s almost lunch time for me so off to grab something light and then get back to work.