The time has come, dear friends, when NaNoWriMo lurks on the horizon. This means you can look forward to posts about my new NaNoWriMo project, and the flurry of posts tracking my progress through the month of November. But I need your help, first. National Novel Writing Month is a great program that is made free to its participants each year, but there are costs associated with the program, and the money has to come from somewhere. I know the economy is hard right now. My wife lost her job 3 1/2 years ago when the economy tanked and we’ve been struggling along since then. That is why I’m asking you to help. I’m trying to raise $250 to help support NaNoWriMo, and I’m asking for you to sponsor my novel by donating whatever you can to the fund. I’ve set up a fundraising page over at Stayclassy.org, so please visit it and donate if you can.
And if you’d like to find out a little more about the kind of book you’ll be supporting, keep reading. [click to continue…]
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Great merciful Elisabeth! It’s been three weeks since I’ve had a chance to drop a post over here. That’s way too long in my opinion. Then again, I’m not sure how much I really have to say about what is going on. Our main push is still getting the audio version of “Northern Mist” finished so that we can turn the audio over to Tee and Pip and they can finish it up and release it on Tales from the Archives, and we can stop using the code word “Northern Mist” and start using the real title. But progress has been slow due to health problems, insane schedules, and the Maryland Renaissance Festival. Perhaps I need to adjust my priorities… [click to continue…]
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Things have been progressing slowly of late. If you’ve been listening to me on Galley Table of late, you’ll have noticed that I’ve been talking about the story that I’m doing for the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences for quite a long time. In fact, if I’d done the recording right after I’d finished the story, I could have gotten it out in time to qualify for this year’s Parsec Awards. Obviously, that didn’t happen.
[click to continue…]
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Once more, I stand victorious, having weathered the storms of another year. A lot has been thrown my way in the past year, but I’m still in the fight. While my weight loss has become more of a struggle in the past year, my health has gotten better. It still warms my heart when people tell me that I seem to be smaller every time they see me, even if I know it isn’t strictly true. While some things haven’t exactly taken off for me, I’ve still managed to move forward and gain a better understanding of the writing world that I’m trying to break into.
My plans have changed for the coming year, but I believe those changes will make me more successful in the future. [click to continue…]
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Today, I finally completed my first draft of my first novel. This is a big milestone, but the work is far from over. The draft clocked in at 77,759 words, but I have to admit that there are a few notes stuck in there for things to be fleshed out, and a few sections I’m pretty sure that I’m going to cut. And given that I’m at least two editing passes from a submittable draft, the final version could be considerably longer or shorter.
Still, I think it is pretty respectable for my first time out of the blocks.
Of course, this is no time to sit backup upon my laurels. This is still a lot of work to be done, and I’m already planning out the next steps. [click to continue…]
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And, in what seems like a blink of an eye, another week is gone.
But it has been productive. Northern Mist went through editing in what seems like a blink of an eye. I must admit that the editing process was vaguely disappointing. I was expecting more feedback. For once I’m experiencing the desire to continue hammering at a story to polish it further. It has been a new experience. That nagging feeling that says, “I can do better.”
But production schedules will not wait for me. So I have to move forward. [click to continue…]
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For those of you, yes, both of you, who have wondered about the mysterious project code-named “Northern Mist” that I’ve been working on, I can now reveal a little more about it. I’ve kept quiet pending word from the author who invited me to write in his world that I can begin talking about the story. Well, I haven’t officially gotten that word, but my author has talked about things on his own site, and I don’t see any reason I can’t echo what he has said.
[click to continue…]
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It is past time I put out some kind of writing update. Well past time, in fact, since I’ve done a fair amount of writing since the last update, although I haven’t gotten much written lately. The last time I had checked in here about my writing progress, was back on February 26th, over two weeks ago, and at that time I’d written about 1000 words on “Mist”, bringing it up to about 1800 or so words. I followed this up by stealing some time on the ride in to work by writing during the carpool into work for about 300 words a pop. This got “Mist” up to about 2500 words. Not really great progress.
[click to continue…]
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