Weekly Updates - w/e 7-14 & 7-21-2012

The final rewrite of The Killing Zone is now 6.0% complete.
Attended the first of two writing workshops taught by my editor. The follow-up workshop will be in August. 

My writing group, "Jordon's Twelve" will meet this week. We received our first royalty check for Tales From Half Moon Room.

Weekly Update - w/e 7-7-2012

The final rewrite of Mystery at Little Bitterroot is now 100% complete.

 

Added a first chapter to The Killing Zone that will engage the reader in a way that the original beginning didn't. The final rewrite of TKZ is now 0.6% complete.

 

Signed up for two writing workshops to be taught by my editor. The first one is in July and a follow-up in August.

 

Flesch Reading Ease & Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level

For those of you who may not understand the theories behind the Flesch Reading Ease & Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level applications that I made reference to in my previous post, the following two links provide helpful information. Basically, the higher the Reading Ease, the more people will be able to comprehend your writing and the lower the grade level potentially exposes more people to your writing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test

http://mabfan.livejournal.com/105017.html

(The average reader in the U.S. reads at fifth grade level)

Mystery at Little Bitterroot

Mystery at Little Bitterroot is 100% complete. Using the evaluation statistics in MS Word, my novel checks out at 69,520 words with a Flesch Reading Ease of 84.0 and a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 3.9 (you want the higher the better for the reading ease and the lower the better for the grade level). Statistically, Mystery at Little Bitterroot grades out slightly better than Montana Harvest which was accepted by my literary agent. Now it's on to a final edit for The Killing Zone. Expected completion date for my third novel in The Jim Buchanan Series is September 30th.

                                    Montana Harvest        Mystery at Little

                                                                             Bitterroot

Counts            

  Words                                   64,549                     69,520

  Characters                           293,793                  314,377

  Paragraphs                              2,836                       3,021

  Sentences                                6,719                       7,095

                       

Averages                    

  Sentences per Paragraph            2.4                           2.4

  Words per Sentence                   9.5                           9.7

  Characters per Word                  4.3                           4.2

                       

Readability                 

  Passive Sentences                      0%                           0%

  Flesch Reading Ease                82.3                         84.0

  Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level      4.1                           3.9

Progress on MALB Rewrite

On June 14th I began a rewrite of Mystery at Little Bitterroot. Today, I passed the 75% completion mark. I have eight days left to complete the rewrite within a one month time-frame and I should have no trouble in accomplishing that. In fact, I hope to complete it by this weekend. 

Then I will begin the final rewrite for my third novel,  The Killing Zone and will give myself 90 days to complete it. The reason for the extended time is that the professional edit for that novel was provided as a hard copy edit, not as an electronic copy and I'll need extra time for that. 

With Montana Harvest, already in the hands of my agent, all three novels will be edited based upon the feedback I received during my trip to Montana by September 1st. Then it's on to my 4th novel, as yet unnamed.

Weekly Update - w/e 6-30-2012

The final rewrite of Mystery at Little Bitterroot is now 59.2% complete.

 

Attended my bi-monthly writers group meeting. Next meeting scheduled for July 14th.

Have decided to write a future novel based upon a real-life cold case murder.