Saturday Summary, June 11, 2011

Every Saturday, The Creative will feature a brief post about my current creative efforts and how they are progressing. If this doesn't interest you, read no further -- not only will I not be offended, I'll never know.

This week's post will be short since this week's creative work was fairly monotonous, albeit productive.  A few items before I get to the actual Summary however:

• If you live in the Indianapolis area and have not yet bought your tickets for the Raleigh Ringers concert on Monday, June 20, check out rrindy.com to get your tickets.  It should be an incredible concert.
• The Coming of the Heroes is now available in most e-book formats on Smashwords.  You can get it in PDF, HTML, or for your iPhone, iPad, mobile device, Nook, Sony Reader, or pretty much any other device you can conceive of.  
• You can now go to the Sadonian Chronicles website and sign up for the Sadonian Chronicles mailing list, where you'll get news and updates about the series, as well as the occasional sneak peak or promotional code.

Okay then, on to the update:

Music -- Oddly enough, I did no composing this week, choosing instead to devote all my time and energy to editing SC2.

Writing -- I forged ahead with my edits on SC2, though not as far as I would have liked.  I've discovered that I can edit between four and eight pages a day, depending on how long I work and how good my writing was in the previous draft.  At that rate, I should be done with this round of editing by the end of July (SC2 is just a little longer than Coming of the Heroes).  At the very least, I've discovered that I don't need to make my edits by hand and then copy them to the computer -- my brain is capable of skipping that very tactile step and still making good fixes, changes, and corrections straight on the screen.

Publishing -- I had a publisher this week reject some of my choral works that have been making the rounds, and had not one but two publishers pass on my arrangement of the Gustav Holst hymntune THAXTED.  All those pieces are once more making the rounds.

I had my latest releases from SoundForth show up at the Handbell World website, so that's exciting.  I also haven't mentioned the Jeffers' Hot 40 list in a while (it's their weekly list of their top-selling pieces for the past 90 days).  Beneath the Cross of Jesus from Beckenhorst was on there for several weeks this year, starting back in late February or March and going on through Easter.  The past couple of weeks, Requiem and Remembrance from Ringing Word has been on there.  There's no telling what that equates to in terms of sales, but it does at least tell me that someone is out there buying those pieces, playing them, and (hopefully) enjoying them.


That's it for this week.  I have one more week of relative sanity before the most hectic week of the summer hits (a Raleigh Ringers concert on Monday the 20th, a final dress rehearsal for a concert on Thursday the 23rd, and a Patriotic Concert on Sunday the 26th -- oy!).  Have a great week, best of luck in your creating, and we'll see you back here on Wednesday.

Oh, and check out The Coming of the Heroes!