A number of authors have talked about their fears on their blogs, but this has never been a topic where I’ve had a lot to say on the subject. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I’m perfect and everyone else is flawed. Quite the contrary. We all have the same doubts. We all look at our writing at one time or another and say “This is crap!” For some, this becomes a paralyzing fear. They can’t move on and many consider quitting writing altogether. They figure that if the writing is crap now, it will always be crap, so why bother? I take a different view. To me, crap is a necessary stage. Everything has to start as crap. The difference is if you leave it as crap, or if you make it into something better. So, I pretty much haven’t been bothered by writing fears.
Until now. [click to continue…]
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If you’ve visited the site in the past couple days, you might have noticed that the progress bar at the top of the sidebar has updated! That’s right, the third draft of Perils has started! I’ve got all my Alpha Readers past the halfway mark. In fact, I’ve got all of them, except one, past the 70% mark and we seem to be on track to finish the Alpha Read by Valentine’s Day. I know I’ve had great fun transcribing the comments into Scrivener. My readers have helped me find a bunch of typos that managed to make it through the second draft, pointed out some of their favorite moments in the story, and shown me the places where I need to provide more information. Even better… [click to continue…]
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Things have been progressing well with the Alpha Read of The Perils of Prague. Of the five readers that have kept with it, three of them have sent me feedback for at least four of the seven review sections, and one of the other two has sent me comments on enough of the middle section to put him past the halfway point. I’ve encouraged everyone to keep with it, and with a little luck I will be able to close out the Alpha read around Valentine’s day. The better news here is that since I’ve got comments for more than half of the book, I’m getting ready to start the third draft this week! [click to continue…]
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Life, it has been said, is what happens while you were making other plans. My last post talked about some of the things that life has brought me, recently. This post, is about the other plans I’ve made. Last year, at Balticon, I started what I had termed my “summer project” to get my novel The Perils of Prague ready for publication by the end of the summer. That project did not go off as planned… [click to continue…]
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The plan for this November was pretty much the same as last November: Write a new novel for NaNoWriMo, and post a daily diary chronicling the journey. This year I had the added tool of the Magic Spreadsheet added into it. The plan was not just to write 50,000 words, but to do so by writing every day. So what happened? [click to continue…]
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If you’ve paid attention on this blog, you’ll know that I’m a big supporter of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences from Tee Morris and Philippa Ballantine. I’ve done reviews on Phoenix Rising and The Janus Affair, the two released novels for the Ministry, and I’ve even written, performed, and produced an episode for the Ministry’s podcast Tales from the Archives. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to post about the Ministry Initiative, the Kickstarter project to raise funding for a tabletop Role Playing Game based on the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences. Part of the Kickstarter was The Ministry Protocol, an anthology of short stories written by authors carefully selected by Tee and Pip. And that is what we’re talking about today… [click to continue…]
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The Alpha Read for The Perils of Prague continues. The pace is a bit slow so far, but I have two readers who have given me good, consistent feedback. Once they’ve gotten about half-way through the book, I’ll begin working on the third draft and shortly after that the Beta Read should begin. I have to admit that I have been tickled with some of the comments I’ve got from the Alpha Readers… [click to continue…]
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A lot can change in a year, and yet, a year can speed by you so fast, leaving so much undone.
This time last year, I was looking back at what I had done since my last birthday, and making plans for how I was going to move forward over the next year. Looking at it now, it sure seems like a lot of the things I had planned out last year didn’t end up happening. At least, the way things developed certainly was not what I originally planned. Whether that will turn out to be for good or for ill, time will tell. Perhaps I’ll know next year. [click to continue…]
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This is going to be a short, and somewhat late, #WriterWednesday post. Work has kicked my ass of late, and while I was Posty McPosterson last week, a few things have happened that are going to take up a bit of my time. So it may be a little tough to keep the posts coming on time. Part of this is because I am dealing with edits, again. [click to continue…]
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This is a late #WriterWednesday post, and it is also going to be a short one. Hopefully I’ll be able to add in a longer post later in the week. As you can tell from the title of this little missive, work has dominated my life of late. I had a good, long Fourth of July weekend, in which I was able to go to a couple of parties at friend’s houses, see some fantastic fireworks, play some Cards Against Humanity, and watch the cook consistently give my burger to someone else. It was a good time, but it came to an end all too soon. And then, the dayjob attacked! [click to continue…]
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