Tim Cody is currently:
Writing: Crimson Soul II
Playing: Resident Evil 4 HD (PS3)
Recently Watched: Eden of the East
Eating: Count Chocula (cereal, not the actual Count)
A few months ago my contract as Sucker Punch Production's Community Manager came to an end. I immediately began writing and marketing as if it was my new full-time job, because essentially, it was. I devoted at least eight hours a day to the effort, pushing myself and my book, and continuing progress on Crimson Soul 2, in full force.
So thirty(ish) resumes and ten weeks later I am to rejoin the work force, courtesy of ArenaNet (creators of Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2). Thus ends my stint as a full-time starving author.
So how did I do? What did I learn? What's this mean for my indie author efforts?
Well, at the very least I did exactly what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it. If you Google search Tim Cody you'll get a few hits for me, but if you Google search Tim Cody and pretty much any third word that has to do with writing or books, I have most of the real estate on the first few result pages. That seems pretty okay to me--I'm not the only Tim Cody on the internet, but as far as Google is concerned, I'm the most prominent writer named Tim Cody.
As of today it looks like my blog's got seven followers, and it gets a few hits every few days--not just when I write a new post, but sometimes in the middle of the week, and on older posts. So if the stats are correct, it looks like at least a few people are reading what I'm writing. And when someone reads what an author has written, that's pretty much a win for the author.
I only amassed a handful of Twitter followers (https://twitter.com/Tim_Cody), and an even smaller handful of FaceBook Likes (https://www.facebook.com/TimCodyWrites). FaceBook Likes aren't as important at this stage, but I did manage to reach my short term goal of 25 so I could create that nifty little URL.
Reaching my target audience has always been my greatest challenge, and as such, book sales are less than stellar. However, I currently only have a single book out at the moment. The next step is to keep moving forward, and to see if releasing a second novel will help to increase sales.
On moving forward, balancing writing and work is something that I find relatively simple to do. I wrote Crimson Soul 1 while working at Sucker Punch, and I intend to keep a similar schedule now that I'll be at ArenaNet.
That is, the weekends are reserved for writing. Saturday and Sunday, about ten pages a day. At a rate of twenty(ish) pages a weekend, I should be able to finish Crimson Soul 2 in maybe five weeks. After that it's a few weekends of edits, final edits, and then the publishing process is pretty simple. I think Thanksgiving is a nice target.
Crimson Soul 2--anticipated release date, Thanksgiving 2011.
And finally, blog updates will likely be moved to Sunday, instead of this weird Thursday schedule I've been on lately.
It's pretty tough, though, when so many games are being released this holiday season. Uncharted 3, Batman: Arkham City, I have Disgaea 4 completely unplayed, Resistance 3 and White Knight Chronicles 2 are waiting to be both purchased, and played. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD, Elder Scroll V: Skyrim, Silent Hill HD Collection, Dark Souls, Silent Hill: Downpour, goodness. There just aren't enough hours in the day.
And so I steal hours from the night, cutting sleep from my weekend routine so I have time to consume all the delicious video game goodness.
So in closing, I think I did okay. I could have done better, yes, but I feel like I've created a nice base for myself. A nice little headquarters that I can now use to expand my presence in the near future.
Now the difficult task of naming my new headquarters begins.
Secret Technique #46: Blog Topic Change!
Just a short one today, since there isn't much to say about Resident Evil 4 HD. The game's always been awesome. They could keep porting it for every console, and people will keep playing it.
I'm not entirely convinced they've actually done a full HD port, because it looks, graphically, very similar to the original Game Cube version (the one I played when it was released years ago). However, it's always looked quite good. The character models are detailed and crisp, the environments and animations are super rad, it needed very little work to begin with.
It's not broken, so they didn't fix it. This, however, is also true for the controls--which actually seem slightly broken. My only complaint is the old school Resident Evil tank controls. Updating them would have made the game nearly perfect. Being able to rotate the camera completely around Leon would be just great. It's simple enough to get used to them, though, so it's not so difficult to overlook for the rest of the game.
That's that and marmalade.
-Tim Cody
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