The Calm Before the Storm

The Calm Before the Storm

Wow, life as a writer is very quiet at the moment. It’s taking all my patience to keep my head down and focus on writing and reviewing. I can pretty much give a list of what I'm going to be doing for the next six months. It’s going to be a winter of hard work that’s for sure. There will be very little posting, or anything to report, hence the 'calm,' but once it’s all done it will be close to publishing time and the 'storm' of marketing will commence :)

The Next Six Months

1) I will be editing through the second book of the Chronicles of Elementary. I’m on chapter three so far. There are a lot of changes, but it’s reassuring to see how much my writing has improved in three years.

2) The last edits of the Book of Prophecy need to be made, but once they have it will go to the editors at the publishing company.

3) I will be reading a variety of books and reviewing them.

4) The art for the front cover of Book of Prophecy will appear at some point. I'm very excited to see it.

5) The changes for B.o.P will come back from the editor/publishers and I’ll need to work through those.

And that is most likely everything for the next six months. That is the glamorous life of a writer in a nutshell. It’s part of the process and after more than three and a half years this is the closing stage of one chapter. Once the Book of Prophecy is published it will be a massive relief and weight of my shoulder. I  really cannot wait to start marketing it. But first it’s time to knuckle down and work as hard as I can. 

Hello!/Keeping A Short Story Short

Hello!

First of all I would like to say an official hello on here to anyone who has 'liked' my Facebook page recently. Thanks to KristellInk's competition there has been about forty of you and if you have come to look at this blog update via F.B, Hello! and good luck with the competition :).

Keeping A Short Story Short

In my previous update I talked about a short story I've been working on and the effort it took to find what I needed for it. The short story is now ninety-nine percent finished. It needs some little bits added, but I will do those at some point soon.

It has been really fun blending Ancient Greek Mythology into a Steven style story and I think people will enjoy it. I've called it, 'Blood of Atreus: The Last Hope for Gods and Mortals.' The word count was meant to be about eight thousand, but I hope I can get away with ten thousand. Even getting it down to that was a struggle.
   As I wrote I had a lot of really cool content, but by the time I got to thirteen thousand words I realised I needed to stop. I saved that version and one day I will keep writing and it will probably be a twenty to twenty-five thousand word novella. With that version saved I started cutting and editing what I had written and managed to slim it down to ten thousand words.
   I'm happy with this, as it's still a really good story with all the main ideas I wanted, but I do feel it can be expanded and even more interesting and enjoyable. I'm really looking forward to sharing this short story with you and will post about when that will be in the future.

I have also decided to turn my Frankenstein short story, and two other ideas for stories, into novellas. I think having these three, and the Greek Mythology short story as a novella, will make a really good collection if put together in one book. This is a few years off though, as I have to get book one of The Chronicles of Elementary: The Book of Prophecy, ready for publication. I also need to start properly editing the second book of the series and I'm going to try to keep reviewing other stories too.

As always there's a lot of work ahead for me, but I love creating stories and I hope you will enjoy reading them once they are ready to be shared.

The Thin Line Between Genius and Insanity

Not that I think I’ve been on the side of genius at any point in my life, well except maybe for when I learned how to walk and talk, but recently I’ve certainly crossed the line into insanity.

I'm currently writing a short story and needed to find a brief quote that was vital for the story. The quote was from a book but it was obscure and due to having audiobooks, because of my dry eye issues, I had to search through two audiobooks that were both sixteen hours long. In total it only took me about 8-10 hours of searching over three days. I say 'only' because it could have been a lot worse. Fortunately I knew which character said it, so that helped, but it was in a really obscure place in the book that I hadn’t remembered. After checking all the obvious places I stumbled across it and you can imagine my relief when I finally found it and could get on with actually writing story.

It made me realise how crazy I am with my writing and how focused and determined I get when I want to achieve something. That said I am very lazy in many aspects of my life and this focus rarely gets seen- unless I'm trying to furnish a flat for free. (That ones for you Bear Wills). 

Published! (in 2014)

(A part of what I posted on Facebook)

KRISTELL INK HAVE PURCHASED THE RIGHTS TO MY NOVEL, 'THE BOOK OF PROPHECY!' Cannot wait for this!! Thank you to everyone at Kristell Ink and to you guys for all the help and support you've given me over the years. This is a massive step up the ladder and cannot wait until it's published- Bring on Autumn 2014!! :D 

https://www.facebook.com/KristellInk/posts/639936652701408

http://www.kristell-ink.com/future-releases/the-book-of-prophecy/

A Professional Opinion

A few weeks ago I decided to contact the Teaching Assistant who deals with a lot of the Gothic Horror aspects of the English Studies course at Stirling University (where I once studied sport- No I'm not joking. I studied sport there. Honestly I did. How'd I go from sport to this? Well it's a long story that is explained at the very start of this blog, I think). Anyway... I contacted Matthew Foley asking if he'd take a look at my Frankenstein story. He was very nice and took the time to look at it. This is is what he said...

'I think that you write well -- i'm very fussy about style normally! -- and also that the rewriting of Victor as having created the bride of Frankenstein is a super idea that you handle intelligently. You also set up a convincing premise to the action. The nods to Walton will keep the fanboys happy, too. All in all, style and premise are great.'

He also pointed out one or two technical issues, like sentence structure, and also gave a suggestion to make it a full Novel, which is funny as that was the original plan. I'm thankful for the time Matt took and that he had such positive things to say. 

There's a lot of other things in the pipeline and plenty of updates to come. I will also have another review of someone else's work I've been reading and I will post that soon.

Writing Groups/Reviews/Jealousy/Working Hard

Writing Groups

I’ve joined a few on Facebook recently and I’m enjoying reading some fun stories. Any I like are being posted on my Facebook author page.  It takes a lot of my time, but I feel giving something back is important and I’m enjoying looking at all the stories.

Reviews

Because I’m reading other peoples work I’m also reviewing them on Amazon when I can. It’s really difficult because you want to be helpful and give a balanced review, but often I’m worried I’m being too hard.  Honesty is always the best policy in my opinion and I do believe you can, and should, give critical feedback in a positive way.  I tend to write two different sides to my reviews: one with my own stupidly high expectations for the stories I read, but given in a positive way; and one from an object point of view as if I’m the target audience (if I don’t feel I am). Ultimately it’s just my stupid opinion so it holds little value, but it’s fun reviewing. That said it does have some value though as every review and piece of feedback, whether good or bad, is important. Every experience holds its weight and value as long a person is willing to see it.

Jealousy

This week I read a new friends writing and it, and the story, were so good that I’m incredibly jealous. I read the 18,000 piece in a few hours. It burned my eyes out of their sockets- thanks to my stupid dry eyes issues, but it was worth it. The story telling and writing was just so fantastic. All I wanted to do was read more and more to find out what was going to happen. I’m looking forward to reading more of her work- but hopefully over a longer period of time, and in little doses, so my eyes don’t get destroyed J.

Working Hard

I seem to have a lot of writing stuff on my plate at the moment, but I love it! I’m probably taking on too much though and hope I don’t burn myself out.  However it’s going okay. To finish I’ll give a quick run down of my own writing:

-Just finished going through BoP... AGAIN! ‘sigh’ But actually loving it still. I’m going to give the last half a read over and then the whole thing. Then... well we’ll see ;)

-I’ve been marketing the Steampunk Anthology recently and a few people have bought it. I really hope they like it and give good reviews, and spread the word. Relying on other people’s enthusiasm to spread the word is a massive part of this journey and it’s why I really want my writing to be the best it can be. I let people down first time around, as my story wasn’t at the standard it should have been. It put people off and I have plans to rectify my mistakes and hopefully get people on board to help me as this time it will be the best it can be.

We also got another review for the Anthology on amazon.co.uk and once again my story was one of the reader’s favourites. This is really nice to hear and gives me a needed confidence boast. It made me think more and that maybe my story is actually good. I thought of how I could get more feedback and had an idea to ask the Gothic Horror lecturer at my old university to take a look. My story is an Alternate-Reality take on the Frankenstein story with a sprinkle of Steampunk, so thought he might enjoy it. I emailed him and he said he would read it. He said he was busy but would read it in a week or so. I’m excited and nervous to hear what he thinks.

-Once BoP is done I’m not sure whether to go and do a quick run through of Empiphany again, or go onto  the following book after BoP, ‘Nurture Fails, Nature Remains,’ which needs the style change I gave BoP. I think I’ll do Emph first (it won’t be as much work), and then NF-NR, but I could do it the other way around. We’ll see how i feel in a few weeks when BoP is out of my hands...

The Butterfly Effect

I just wanted to write a short update of what's going on.

The editing the Book of Prophecy seems to be going well. Sammy had it for a while and has done what she can in her very busy life, and I'm so grateful for all she does. However I felt like it was time for me to take it back and see if my writing has improved enough to make a difference. But more importantly so she didn't have to do the majority of the editing work; especially when she could be doing more important things. It turns out that this was the right choice. I sent her some of my recent edits and she says I'm on the right path. It was nice to hear this as it's been a long struggle to improve. The plan is to keep working on the last half of the book and send her chapters here and there to look at. Then change anything that needs changing. Once this is done I'll give it a read through and send it to her and see what she says.

It's not all easy going though as Sammy has highlighted some issues with character development and plot weaknesses. This is good though as she's always pushing me beyond my own expectations and helping me see how I can improve the story. If it wasn't for her this story would never have reached it's potential and I would never have improved the way I have.

With her constructive criticism I have made some changes to the plot and this is why I've titled this the Butterfly Effect. A few small, but significant changes have been made at one of the most pivotal points of the story. Although these changes are small it has meant spending a lot of time changing other things so it all fits. It does seem to fit well though and I'm excited by these changes.

The next few months will be spent doing a lot of work on this story, but hopefully some time this year it will actually reach its potential and be finished.