Drafts of Books 3 and 4 are more or less complete

 Just another update, I've managed to insert enough new material to bring the Book 4 manuscript up above 200 pages, making it just long enough to really call it a novel, and I'm very happy with how it's turned out. I've finished naming chapters on both book 3 and book 4, and I think the drafts are at a point where I can set them down long enough to get back to work on other projects.

Also an interesting thing I wanted to share; while going back to do some work on the audiobook for book 2, I went back looking through my notes and files on my XP laptop where all of my books started. The first inklings of a plot idea for Book 3 were recorded in late May of 2018, approximately three weeks after I finished the rough draft of Book 2. This early note was very short, but it contained the core concept/theme of "discontinuity" that carried through the manuscript all the way until now, along with the idea of starting book 3 with a "deleted scene" from the first book that dates all the way back to 2016.

But the idea stayed on the back burner for quite a while, as I was focused on completing and publishing books 1 and 2. Compiling ideas and notes for book 3 began in earnest in 2020, along with the first few pages of actual writing. The plot for book 3 really started to come together in 2021. But numerous distractions, including life changes and changes in routine during and after the pandemic, along with the very particular problem of watching too much streaming TV, slowed the writing process for some time. Progress picked up more about 18 months ago, when I made a conscious effort to make changes in my life to facilitate my creative projects.

I've really been blessed to see some of these projects come to fruition, and it was very satisfying to look back at some of these half-forgotten notes to see that the seeds that would grow into books 3 and 4 were already there before the first two books were even published.

More particularly, it's also very satisfying to see that the Jerry Copperpot series, which for years has only consisted of two books, will eventually become a four-volume saga worthy to be called a "series."

Book 3 manuscript now becoming two books!

After some consideration, it became apparent that my latest manuscript was so long that asking my readers to sit through nearly 500 pages of bad dad-joke humor was a bad idea, so I decided to split my newly completed manuscript into two parts. I got the idea to do this after I tried to tell one of my kids a plot summary, and she lost interest halfway through.

Book Three will still be called Jerry Copperpot and the Flight of Wagons. Book Four splits off at the point where the road-trip narrative ends, and the setting returns to Magicternia before subsequent events in the story. The working title for the concluding book in the series is "Jerry Copperpot and the Last Metaphor."

The only problem with this arrangement is that the story split occurs around page 300 of the initial manuscript, leaving only 155 pages for Book Four. Because of this, I have been hard at work coming up with new material to work into the narrative and flesh out parts of the story that I may have gone through too quickly in my race to get to the end of the story. So far I've managed to grow the new manuscript up to 180 pages, and I'm hoping I can get it up to at least 200 pages so that I can credibly call it a decent-size book to stand alongside the other three in the series.

Of course, this unexpected change of plans and focus on writing additional material means further delay for the audiobook of Book Two and other projects mentioned in my previous post.

I have also managed to experiment with making cover art for the two books using multiple generative AI tools, and the resulting illustrations so far look very, very promising. It's tempting to post them here now, but I don't want people to get an illustration into their heads that doesn't wind up being used; I know how frustrating it can be to expect one thing and then get another later on.

Progress update 09-22-24

I am excited to report that the rough draft of Book 3 is now complete! If I didn't mention it before, the working title is "Jerry Copperpot and the Flight of Wagons." It's taken a long, long time, from the first early notes in 2018, to the first paragraphs in 2020, the plot summary in 2021 and three years of on and off writing. It's been a longer and messier process, more reminiscent of the first book than the straightforward experience of writing the second. But I'm so glad to finally have the whole story in a readable form. I feel like this book brings the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. Not to say that more books featuring Jerry and his friends aren't possible, after all it was a long 5 years in Jerry's timeline between book two and book three, and anything could have happened during that time. But for now, I believe a trilogy will be sufficient. The editing process of the first two books took a couple of years each, so it would be logical to say that the book will likely not be available for at least two more years.

On a separate note, I have gone back to work on the audiobook for Book Two, and the completed file for Chapter 18 is now up on Soundclick. (Only 7 long chapters left to go)

There are other projects in the pipeline:

-The Spanish version of Book One is way back on the back burner for now, but it is still a project with some progress made.

-I've also entertained the idea of an encyclopedic guide of sorts to the world of Jerry Copperpot, talking about all the characters, locations, etc. in the series.

-And finally, I've gotten requests from my kids to write a full version of the book-within-a-book Harvey Totter and the Philanthropist's Clone, which I've done a tiny bit of work on, but if we ever see it completed, I expect it will be released under the pseudonym "Jake A. Rolling."

So there's your update.

Releasing my first music album

 

It took 20 years, but I finally released an album of music! This is a collection of songs, mostly written by my brother Rob Goble. In 2003-2004 I recorded my own interpretation of a number of his songs, along with one instrumental, on a Tascam 4-track. Recently I decided to take those tracks (which had since been digitized) and enlisted soundman Bill Durham to help me mix them and make them listenable. The result was this album, "A Place to Run."

You can buy the album on Bandcamp https://mikegoble.bandcamp.com/album/a-place-to-run

And you can stream it for free on Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/michael-j-goble

Please spread the word about it so that maybe some people who don't even know me might find out and listen to it.

Fans of my audiobooks may notice that the album contains the instrumental "Copperpot" (previously known as Untitled Instrumental) which is used as the backing music in the beginning and ending credits section of the audiobook. My wife suggested that I give it that name for that reason.

It also includes the song "Grandpa was a Cowboy" which is based off of a poem by my uncle W. Kent Goble.

Thanks to Rob and uncle Kent for letting me release these, and special thanks to Bill Durham for being willing to help out mix these old tracks up to a better standard, making them sound way better than I ever could. Also thanks to magician Rick Morrill for his advice on improving the MIDI keyboard tracks on the electric version of the title track.

Theme Song for Chipmunk's favorite anime

 

Hi folks,

Those of you who've read or listened to Jerry Copperpot Book 1 may recall that Chipmunk's favorite TV show is a fictional anime called "Mega Mutant Matsumura Metamorphodroids." I've been on an A.I. music kick lately, so I decided to revisit the one-off joke of a fictional anime by using the Suno A.I. music generator to create an actual theme song in Japanese. So here is a link to the song:

https://suno.com/song/cf26760d-2542-4723-9fa2-ec5abbed2969

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

And yes, for your information, I actually am a white belt in Matsumura Shorin-Ryu. I took it for three weeks back when I was in third grade. I learned to count to thirty-nine in corrupted Japanese, do a stance and a couple of blocks and punches. Then I quit because I wanted to stay home and read my library books.

March 2024 Update on Book Three

Hi folks,

I thought I'd stop in and give you an update on Book Three of the Jerry Copperpot series.

The working title is "Jerry Copperpot and the Flight of Wagons." It mostly leaves behind the Harry Potter, Goonies, Star Trek/Star Wars and Narnia references of the previous books, and instead makes extensive parody reference to the Rankin-Bass animated films "The Last Unicorn" and "Flight of Dragons," along with Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" among many other things. In part, it's a road-trip novel, set five years after the events of the first two books, and Jerry is now a teenager with a driver's license. Jerry wants to leave the weirdness and metafiction of his past behind him, but it catches up to him in a big way, sending him on a final adventure with consequences for both his personal life and his whole world.

I almost wrote a whole advertising blurb for the plot, but I think I should save that for the final release of the book, once it's all written and copyrighted.

I estimate I'm about 75 percent done, now about 360 pages of manuscript so far. This sounds like a lot, but with it being the conclusion of the trilogy, I have a lot of material to cover. Also I have a lot of parodies and mashups to include- there are multiple targets to the parody and that makes it a little more ambitious and more complicated at the same time. I'm really excited to finish this story and eventually share it with people.

Work on the manuscript has accelerated in recent months, partly as an emotional escape from the stresses of life (of which I have many right now, to understate things) and partly just for the reward of a sense of accomplishment in working on my hobby.

I also had to leave behind certain other hobbies; namely watching too much TV. After two years of the book languishing near the back burner, I decided if I didn't cancel Netflix and other paid streaming services, I'd never get this book done. My kids were kind of mad that I canceled Disney, but I had other reasons to cut expenses at the time anyway, and we're getting by just fine without it.

Maybe now that I've told everyone what I'm working on, it will give me a little more accountability and motivation to move forward and get it past the finish line.

Plus once I get the rough draft done, I will be able to refocus my attention on the audiobook for Book Two, which has also been slow in coming in recent months.

Wish me luck!