Done

I finished up a major rewrite of Blood Plague last night. It has a totally different ending, one that fits the story better. It was about a 40,000 word rewrite so it was quite a process. I had to reread what I had a couple of times to make sure I tied up all the loose ends of subplots, but it’s done.

Time to put it on a shelf again, and let it sit while I write something else, and then I will go back and start editing it. I finally came up with a title and can scrap the working title of Blood Plague, now it reads The Truth of Iron at the top of the manuscript. In this particular world, those who are around iron for extended periods of time gain some special abilities. I am considering a subtitle that does mention plague.

Now that I have a 92,000 word monkey off of my back its time to pick a new project. From my post a few week ago you can see that there are quite a few partially finished items on my to-do shelf, and I am not sure which one I will pick to yet. I did read some  advice from published authors via the internet that I am going to consider as I try to pick what I want to do next.

It is pretty straight forward and something I should have thought of before. Authors get pigeon holed depending on what they get published first. When you are first starting out, write want you want to known for (in my case fantasy), and then later once you have a few things published, write a YA novel or a vampire novel.

Setting aside the projects that are not fantasy and the ones that are more idea than anything concrete narrows my choices to Empire’s End, The Rising Dark, or Godswar. I am going to have to reread what I have done and then decide.

I love getting stuff off my to do list.

Stuff and More Stuff

I have a bunch of stuff to write about today, sorry for the weird jumble of info. So in no particular order…

Item: Chicken Pox. I had them, it sucked. Why won’t people stay home when they are sick? Why do they all think the library is a great place to go when they are too sick to go to school or work? I could rant on this one for awhile, but instead imagine running a fever for four days with red itchy spots all over your body, now imagine that you know who did that to you and that they had told you “it is a good thing to take your kids out when they have the chicken pox. Every adult has already had them, and the kids need to be exposed to it.” Imagine what you want to say to that person, then pretend I wrote that.

Item: Twins. It is official we are having a boy and a girl. We had the ultra sound yesterday. It was really fun to watch them swimming around. At one point the ultra sound technician was trying to get a good view of the boy’s face, the girl promptly swam over and rubbed her bottom on his face until we looked at her again. I am not sure what that means but it has to mean something.

Item: Mile High Con. We won’t make it this year, for those of you wondering. Maybe next year but I do not want to try driving six hours with a pair of two month old babies.

Item: Short stories. I think I am done writing short fiction. The last three times I sat down to write one I hit the 10,000 word mark and decided “this should really be a novel”. I am not done forever but apparently the stories in my head have gotten a little more complex over the past few years. I am sure I will have an idea now and then that works better in a shorter format, but for now I am done. I still have five or six stories that haven’t been published, if no one picks them up you might see them here.

Item: Blood plague war. It’s done. WOOT!!! Just finished it last night. I am not sure if I will even put the time into editing it. I have known the story was broken for awhile I just wouldn’t admit it. Maybe if I sit it on a shelf for awhile I will come up with some ideas to fix it during the editing process. The problem is that about half way through the novel it switches from a book about a group of people dealing with a natural event (the blood plague) to a novel about people in the middle of a civil war. It feels like two completely different novels, maybe I can weave in some stuff to make it more uniform but I don’t really want to look at the thing right now. To put it another way, I kind of have a love hate relationship with the stuff I write, and Blood Plague is sleeping on the couch, and if it doesn’t watch it’s P’s and Q’s it might have to find a hotel for the night.

Item: New Novel. Okay, I agree. That is an awful title. But I am only two paragraphs and an outline into it, give me a break.

A Little Flare (Up)

There was some good news and some bad news for me today—The bad news: Today my stomach hurts, I am running a fever, my brain feels cloudy, my muscles ache, my joints are swollen, stiff and arthritic, and I can barely stay awake. The good news: I feel ten times better than I did yesterday and a hundred times better than I felt on Wednesday. Yes it was a lupus flare up, and was quite a big one, at least for me.

I have no doubt that my minor case of discoid lupus has become systemic lupus erythematosus as the doctors had told me it might. Of course, like an idiot, I didn’t go to the doctor to be sure. The only thing I felt like doing on Wednesday was sleeping, and the last two days I went to work despite feeling awful. (I am trying to save up sick days for when the twins are born). So there is no diagnosis for sure, I am going to have to force myself to go to the doctor next time I have a flare up.

I guess I can always be grateful that this flare up only lasted a couple of days, and that, judging from that last few years of discoid lupus, they will be rare. (Crossing my fingers)

I ended up breaking my new year’s resolution to write at least 400 words a day. Yesterday my knuckles were so swollen I couldn’t type, but it was leap day so I am not sure if I have to count it. I mean it isn’t like its really a day. Its kind of a pretend day that a bunch of super smart math guys added to the calender so that we wouldn't have christmas in June. Anyway, despite this set back I am growing closer to the end of Blood Plague aka Blood Plague War aka Chronicles of the Blood Plague aka the book I can’t seem. It was super annoying to take a day off when the end is in sight.

Of course I did get a chance to watch most of Season 3 of The League, so it wasn’t all a waste. I found a website online where I could watch it for free, which kind of sounds shady to me, but I figure the network would sue and get them to take it off line if they were really upset about it. Hopefully if it is an illegal site they will take pity on the poor lupus stricken writer who couldn’t type and not arrest me.

This season of the show doesn’t have much fantasy football but it does have “vinegar strokes”, and “zipper fairies” every episode seems to be more about sex than fantasy football, but it is still funny. It just seems to have lost a little bit of its focus, a problem that I have no doubt they will fix before the season is over. The writers of the show are a little crude, and sometimes they like to beat you over the head with the plot, but they are pretty good writers.

I'm done!!!

The first draft of my latest novel is finally done. This one took me awhile but after some revision I think I will have a very good story. As you can see from my progress bar to the right I have three projects I am working on now.

City of Roses is a fantasy piece that all the ideas are coming together for. I am going to start world building and outlining. I know it's shocking, but I think I want to try writing something with an outline and see if I like it.

History of Blood is my vampire novel that I sat to the side to finish up Blood Plague(still need to find a better title). The novel follows a vampire through 10,000 years of history. I need to go back read what I have and figure out where I am going. The same is true for the last thing on the list.

Haven was a YA novel about superheroes that I was trying to write for Nanowrimo, but I lost my flash drive. Amazingly enough I found it again and recovered 30,000 words of Haven and about 25,000 of God's War another fantasy novel that I had started. So I need to go back and see what was going on in them. I don't even remember what they were about.

So I won't be writing for a little while just preparing to write, and then I need to pick which of the projects I feel like doing. I love starting a new project so I have a feeling it will be City of Roses but then again Haven is almost half way done. Hmmm...sometimes I wish there were three of me.

80,000

I didn't even realize I made it past 80,000 words in Blood Plague during my last writing session. 80,000 Words is offically the mark where I do a happy dance because the book is a "novel" by anyone's standards. I am going to estimate I need another 20-30 thousand words to tie everything up but I can't believe I didn't even notice when I hit 80.

The State of the Union

It has been real busy the last couple of weeks. I had the stomach flu and then I had to do a bunch of stuff for the summer reading program (The Kick-Off Party is June 4th and we are having an international hot dog bar, for anyone in the area who is interested) I have my trip to the elementary schools planned, I will be walking classroom to classroom giving a presentation about the Summer Reading Program. I am also done with planning events for all of the six weeks. This summer's theme is One World, Many Stories and I have been planning programs about other countries. Being a children’s librarian is exhausting.

I have also been attempting digital painting, I say attempt because they are pretty awful, but just like anything else practice makes perfect. I have been trying to get everything done because we have a little vacation planned this week. During June and July I can’t take any time off of work, it would even be hard to take sick leave, so we are headed up to Deadwood. We are leaving tonight and coming back on Friday. Should be a nice little break from work. I am bringing my laptop, I always get some writing done on vacation. Jessy falls asleep a good two hours before I do, and just like at home that is my writing time.

With everything going my writing time has been cut back but progress on Blood Plague War is going forward. I just finished a really hard scene the last one before I start building to the climax. The rest of the novel is like a little movie in my head, which judging from past experience, means I should be able to coast right to the end. I also found a few anthologies that I would really like to write something for. I haven’t had the urge to write a short story since last August. Maybe I only write short fiction in the summer?

Anyway, sorry for the meandering nature of this post. I didn’t really have a plan when I started writing it. Happy Tuesday, and I’ll let you know if I when the $10 million progressive jackpot.

Some Art

I made another attempt at doing a digital painting today. I think this one came out pretty good. Instead of recreating a drawing, I tried to paint a real life scene. I got kind of bored and switched the background around a little. Instead of woman jogging, I made weird glowy woman jogging in space. But important thing is I think I could make a painting from most any photograph of a person now. Sometime I'll have to get a camera and a halloween costume and see if I could do a book cover for Pill Hill. This took me all day so I don't think I'll be doing a lot of art. I probably should have written a chapter of Blood Plague War but this was a nice change of pace.

Exhausted

I am exhausted. Yesterday I visited nearly one hundred local businesses trying to get donations for the libraries summer reading program. After 8 hours and some blistered feet I can say that I collected more this summer than last which is always good, and next year I can go to way fewer places in person. There were a ton of them, over half that just wanted a brochure about the program and a mailing address. Next year I can just mail those places a brochure and I won’t actually go there in person.

But being physically exhausted has me feeling mentally inspired. I am going to write a few chapters of Blood Plague War today. Next time I am feeling uninspired maybe I should move some furniture or something.

The Taming of Chapter 23

Finally done with Chapter 23 in Blood Plague. It was a relatively short chapter, just a tiny bit over two thousand words but wow they were rough. I have been worried about this chapter since I realized it was coming.

A major subplot ended in the last chapter, so I had a few loose ends to tie up from that. But this is the chapter were my characters come to the realization that surviving the plague wasn’t enough, that the war of succession caused by the plague is going to tear what’s left of the world apart and they can do something to stop it. It is a major turning point in the book and I was dreading it.

I also tried to untangle the web of subplots a little. I have three viewpoint characters and three other characters in the main storyline, and I gave them all their own side goals/agendas. It was getting to be a bit of a mess, so I had to tweak everything a bit. I am willing to bet about half the subplots are going to end up being cut as I flesh out some of the others but I like to give myself a lot of options when I trudge through the second draft.

So a major turning point is done. It is incredibly rough, the dialogue is unrealistic, some of the character motivations need some work, but that can all come later, the plot is on paper!

I know some writers are different but I don’t even think about editing anything until the first draft is completely done. So for now I can say whoo-hooo and move on!

Sunday Update

Not a whole lot to report this Sunday. I have been working on Blood Plague and A History of Blood. Something kind of interesting happened when I was writing the last chapter of A History of Blood, I wrote 3000 words in 45 minutes. I have no idea how that happened that is over 3 times as fast as it usually takes me to write something(about 1000 words/hour if I am into the story). It seemed like I couldn't get my fingers to move fast enough across the keyboard, it was really cool. I hope it starts a trend but I am not going to hold my breath. I have gotten 8000 words done in 12 days not bad considering I also did 5000 on Blood Plague.

I am going to try to try and focus more attention on Blood Plague, I really want to have it done before the Summer Reading Program starts at work. As soon as the program starts I will running programs everyday for six weeks, and last year I came home exhausted almost every day. Storytime for 50+ children is tiring, I only got 1000 words written during the entire six weeks. If I can get Blood Plague done then it will be perfect. I can set aside for six weeks and then start editing.

I got a couple of rejections this week for short stories, one of them was really nice. I have had a few form rejections from the market and then in this one they say that they really liked the story and hoped to see more from me, it just didn't fit the theme of their magazine.

I have been contacting artist for PHP, we have a whole new line up of novels and we need cover art, I found a couple of new people on the web and have tried to contact a couple of artists we have worked with before. We usually ask the authors what they had in mind for a cover, it is interesting what some of them come up with and they are all so passionate about what they want. I think it is always fun to get art for them.

Christmas 2010

Christmas is over. I had a lot of fun with my family and really enjoyed most of my break. Except for the fact that I decided to catch the stomach flu on Christmas night. I won’t go into details but I was violently ill, sick enough that my wife almost took me to the ER.

But everyone at work had the stomach flu the week before, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t food poisoning, so I toughed it out. I am hoping when I look back at this Christmas I remember all the fun stuff and forget about the projectile vomiting.

My wife really liked her presents. I got her a kindle, a king size electric blanket(she has wanted one for years), and some pens with her name on them. I think I did a good job picking out presents, she really seemed to enjoy them. She got me a laptop, which was awesome because the mouse buttons on mine had stopped working just a week before Christmas. My other family members (cousins, aunts, uncles, and my father in law) got me an array of t-shirts, a nice metal book mark with my initials engraved, and a signed Orson Scott Card novel.

Like I said the family was a lot of fun this year, no drama, no arguments. After everybody left I got a little down. It happens every year, I start to miss my parents, both of whom have passed away. But it didn’t last very long this year. I guess time really does heal all wounds.

I did get a little writing done, as you can see progress on Blood Plague has gone up another couple of percentile. And I sent some queries to agents for the Laws of Summer, we’ll see how that works out.

Happy New Year!

Update on Blood Plague

Well, I hit 27,000 words on Blood Plague. Writing on the novel has been slow and steady. The first wave of the plague has just ended, so it has been a little rough to write. I have three view point characters and they have all had to deal with a lot of loss, writing about digging mass graves is a little depressing.

But the novel is coming along nicely. I think it might go over my estimated 100,000 words but I'll adjust the current projects box accordingly when it comes to that. With the holidays coming I think I will have to take a break from writing for a few days.

Unless I get some great news (hint, hint to book publishers that aren't ever going to read my blog) this will be my last post until the new year.

So Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, I hope you have a wonderful, magical, holiday season.

(Yeah, I said Merry Christmas in a blog post that mentioned mass graves. Never thought that would happen when I started writing this blog)

Shadows & Light II and writing

I try not to get too much into Pill Hill Press on this blog but I thought I would give everyone an update on Shadows & Light II. We just got the last of the contracts in. We are starting to prepare the book for print, and hopefully it will be out late December/early January, but with the holidays it might get pushed back a little. Kind of depends on how much I can get done on it this weekend. Just wanted to let everyone know that it was coming along. I am a little slower than Jessy but it shouldn’t be too much longer.

On the writing front I have finished another 5,000 words in Blood Plague(working title). I think these are my best characters ever. Period.

If I can keep the plot going this might be the one that gets published, crossing my fingers. I didn’t know writing could be so easy until I started on this one, every time I sit down to write I get 2,000-5,000 words done.

I just need to get myself to the computer and keep at it, again with the holidays and now Shadows & Light II it is kind of hard to find time to write.

An Acceptance and Other Writing News

My short story, Blood of Warriors, Blood of Kings, just got accept to Iron Bound Ezine. I'll post a link when it is live. The story is a short fantasy piece that I wrote for one of our shootout competitions. So I got quite a bit of feedback on it, every author in the shoot out made comments. About half of them really liked and about half of them really didn’t. I got comments like- this was great, reminds me of Robert Howard, and I love sword and sorcery this was awesome. I also got- this reminds me of a bad fantasy movie. So if you like sword and sorcery you’ll probably like if you don’t, you probably won’t.

I made it to 5000 words in my new novel, The Blood Plague, and I am hoping to get another couple thousand words done before I go to bed. The novel is set in a fantasy world that is torn apart by a devastating plague. So it’s kind of an apocalyptic fantasy novel, and so far it has been really fun to write.

Finally, I received two more rejections for my novel, The Laws of Summer. One was a personal rejection. All the editors who read it say the same thing "We enjoyed your novel", "We like your writing style", etc. And then the big but comes, "But in the current economy, sword and sorcery fantasy is very hard to market” Sometimes they call it heroic fantasy, sometimes they just say fantasy, or sometimes they say novels in this genre, but they all mean the same thing.

I thought this might be some kind of industry standard rejection but many of the letters go on to talk about specific ways to improve the novel. Which I don't understand at all if it isn't marketable, but my rant about that is a little off topic so I will refrain from going on about it.

My conclusion?

The fantasy stories I like to write apparently aren't what publishers want. This leaves me with a couple of problems.

First, the novels I write are the kind that I like to read. Therefore, the novels I like to read are not "marketable" this must be why I am having so much trouble finding anything that looks interesting, from a new author, at the book store. My “books to read” shelf is growing smaller and smaller.

Second, main stream publishers have absolutely no interest in my novel. I have a few mid list publishers that I want to try, after that I am not sure what to do with the novel. I am not sure I want to send it to a small press. Not because I dislike small presses in any way or have anything bad to say about them. I have read a lot of good stuff from small presses in the last couple of years.

It is because Jessy and I own a small press, and it seems silly to send it to another small press to make 15% royalties when we could do it ourselves and make 100%. On the other hand we did not start Pill Hill to publish our own work. Not that there would be anything wrong with an owner of a small press publishing their own stuff. I already have a few short stories in some Pill Hill anthos (mostly because people didn't return contracts and we wanted to have a specific number of stories).

But if we publish my novel I am always going to wonder if it was good enough to publish. Yeah, I am one of those writers, the kind that thinks everything I write is crap until someone tells me different, then I assume that they also think it is crap but are trying to be nice.

Anyway, maybe I can find a small press that is well respected or one that pays advances. I’ll have to do a little research. If I send it to a small press I want to be sure they can bring something to the table that Pill Hill cannot. Hmmm…Or maybe I can spend half the night blogging in circles because I don’t really have a point and I am not sure what I want to do.

I am going to stop now and write a chapter in Blood Plague. Writing is so much easier than getting published.