One-Quarter Down; Long Way to Go
I’d hoped this holiday break from work would be a more productive time than it has been, but that’s not how life works out sometimes. I’m more than 1/4 of the way through the first draft and struggling a bit at getting going some days. Once I get fully settled in and running on a scene, all is well. It’s the getting there that’s the difficult part each day. Read more…
Title Change…
Not gonna say what the new title is yet, but the Away the Crow Road title is now only a working title I’ll use to refer to the first novel in the Miravur series. Yeah, I said it: Miravur. Series. Read more…
Away the Crow Road
The Miravur-based story I’m working on currently is slowly taking on an urban crime fantasy life on its own, still a wee bit Noir but not hitting all the right beats to be strictly considered part of that subgenre. It’s still as dirty and unpleasant as I was aiming for. And that makes me happy. Read more…
Noir Fantasy
Call it Fantasy Noir, if you please. Or, if you prefer, listen to Fraser Ronald who calls it Sword Noir… coincidentally, the title of his fantasy RPG. Regardless, I’ve finally realized that although I have, at various times, really enjoyed J.R.R. Tolkien, David Eddings, R.A. Salvatore, and a lot of other more or less mainstream, popular fantasists, I do not belong in such polite company. Read more…
“… be responsible for your own art.”
Dean Wesley Smith is right. Holly Lisle says a lot of the same things, too — and more. Between the two of them, they’ve got me convinced Big Publishing should have to earn the privilege of distributing my work rather than the other way around. Read more…
Fifth Anniversary of One Damned Sad Day
Today is the fifth anniversary of the day Dad died. It has also been five years since the world lost a pretty damned good fantasy writer, David Gemmell.
I felt both losses very acutely at the time, but I obviously miss Dad the most. I still have David Gemmell’s books; all I have left of Dad now is just photographs and memories.
It Worked for Dr. Frankenstein…
I read widely, both nonfiction and fiction, and in many different genres. As a result, I have more than once thought it would be cool to write in multiple genres that I enjoy, too.
This past weekend, though, when that thought came back around my next thought was instead: Why not quit worrying about all the crap and just get down to writing ONE kick-ass story? Read more…
Borders Gone
Sad day. I was buying locally from Borders whenever I had the choice, but no more. Probably by the end of the week, they’ll be boarding up the last of their nearly 400 remaining brick-&-mortar stores, and letting almost 11,000 people go.
Reading between the lines, it’s enough to make me seriously nervous about traditional outlets for aspiring writers.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll be looking a whole lot more seriously at all of the alternatives to the traditional publishing model before I take the leap.
Deadline: 205 Days
Including today, there are exactly 205 days from now to my next birthday.
I will complete the first draft on time.
Taking Stock
I took a good, long look at a bunch of notes today. I spotted a trend that is more than just a little disturbing. I also dug out everything I’ve done for NaNoWriMo since 2004. What I saw was that I’ve been trying way too hard for far too long to adapt just about every original story idea I’ve ever had to fit the Naswor world. And, almost universally I have failed… miserably. And, therefore, I’ve failed those ideas in the process. Read more…
Naswor Is Dead; It’s Time that I Moved On…
I still have swirling around within my head so many of the original ideas from when David and I first sat down to map out our futures as literary giants… yeah, right.
I find it hard to put all that aside after all these years, but it’s obviously well past time that I start to let go of some of that stuff now. I need to try to move on to finally getting down to doing what I have always declared that I truly want to do. I have stories to tell and I can’t keep rehashing the same stuff and hoping for something to miraculously click into place. Read more…
Back to the Original Map… Sort of
I was working on outlining Last of the Esharim, my project for NaNoWriMo ’08, and the way I originally envisioned the story working out will turn out best if I either go back to the original map of Naswor or adapt that original map somewhat. The story never really leaves the single continent, and that continent no longer really exists in the previous, heavily-doctored map that used to be the header image on this blogsite. So, I went back to the pencils, pens, and paper to rework the original map. Read more…
Back to Naswor
There’s a sort of long post already on another blog I used to keep — now blasted to bits — that had explained more about where I find myself stuck these days and why I think that is, plus what I plan to do about it. Now, taking what I spoke of over there a bit further, I come back here to dig into more details on my plan to put my act into better order and get things rolling with my writing. Why? Because it seems inevitable that those plans will involve Naswor. Read more…
Wow, Rip-off Much?
While going over files and stuff saved over the nearly 20 years of Naswor’s fitful evolution, I discovered some very disturbing truths about what I did way back when. Basically, I appear to have been trying to rip off David Eddings — not directly, of course, and definitely not intentionally — but you know how appearances are and how important it is to avoid the wrong one. Read more…
Huge Changes Coming… Someday
David is off doing his own thing, for one… and, two, he’s having a hell of a scare over his wife’s recent diagnosis of heart problems. He’s got enough to worry about just with Wendy’s possible pacemaker operation, or heart transplant depending on what the doctors at Emery decide upon.
I’m doing nothing. Not a thing on anything, much less progress on Naswor. I don’t really foresee getting back to it with much hope of doing anything productive for quite some time. Read more…