The Bad News
I’ve been trying to find the gentlest way to address this, and–well–there isn’t one, so here’s the thing: My third book, and the second in the Blood of Ages series, “Divided They Fall”, isn’t going to be ready for the beta draft on the date I originally planned, at the end of September. Please don’t cry. I won’t bore you with background as to why this book won’t be ready for deadline. Let’s just say that the story was going in the wrong direction, and fortunately, I picked it up before it reached a stage where I couldn’t fix it. Unfortunately, these wrong directions are not an easy fix. They’re an entire re-write fix…like, all the scenes, everything I’ve been working on for the last twelve months, my precious baby…it’s all got to go. I know that there are (a handful of) people out there in the world who are waiting for this next book. I…
Shit Just Got Real (The Beta Draft Begins)
So a couple of weekends ago, Muse and I got together for one of our usual writer’s weekends.
Amongst other–more important–revelations over that weekend, I learned that I don’t actually hate vodka and orange juice, as I’ve always thought since I tried it as a teenager, but rather that vodka is just a tricky beast that hides inside your drink, undetectable, and slowly takes away the ability to string a sentence together.
We spent the majority of the time drinking and watching Catfish (the documentary and then the TV show, because why not?).
Anyway.
‘Divided They Fall’ is FINISHED*!
* Put the streamers away. It’s only the first draft. I’ve been waiting SO LONG to be able to make this post. Ahem. I FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF DIVIDED THEY FALL LAST NIGHT! You have no idea how freaking happy I am right now. I’m still on a high. Last night, I slept SO well. Yes, I know I’ve used this GIF before. It’s as relevant now as it was back then, if not more so. So Divided They Fall has been in my mind since around 2002, making it technically 12 years old now, although it didn’t exist in its current idea form until around 2009. The DTF2002 (that’s my special name for it–it’s code, see if you can figure it out) outline was as, um, “imaginative” as the very first outline of The Genesis (which had the door knockers that talked, and the genetic experiments that also talked, and…
Extending Deadlines
Alright, nobody freak out, but I’m pushing back the self-imposed deadline of the first draft of Divided They Fall to mid March. I have been working on this book more-or-less non-stop since November 2013. I need a break. I know people are waiting for this book (which is something that freaks me the fuck out. I mean, I have my usual 3 friends (Muse, Richy, Dee–see there’s actually 3) who ask me when the next one is coming, but now I have Internet friends and relative strangers asking about the next instalment. That kind of thing is just…my mind, it’s boggling at the very idea. The Internet, man. It’s a powerful beast.). And I am working on it, but the going is slow and painful. And at the rate I’m going, I just can’t see a finished, workable first draft being ready by the end of January. So to save…
I Apologise in Advance
I have set myself the challenging (but by no means impossible) task of completing the remaining 60k~ words of the first draft of my third book for NaNoWriMo this year. As a result, November will be a stressful month for me while I try to extract all these conflicting ideas from my brain and kind of smush them into words and paragraphs and scenes and eventually an entire novel that make sense from beginning to end. So I apologise in advance for if you get caught up in any of the following that I do in the month of November: Being quiet/unresponsive both on and offline. Talking about nothing except word counts, targets, goals and word counts. Demanding to be left alone. Not eating. Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine/alcohol, depending on the time of day/day of week. Threatening to “punch you in the throat” or “slap you in the dick”,…
Bring It Back
Apologies for my recent absence on social media. I’ve been mostly offline, chillaxing, recovering, and generally soul-searching, which has so far resulted in the possibilty that I don’t have one. I also spent many hours watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which I still can’t decide if I like or not after four and a half seasons. And I’ve been speaking to my proofers and going over the small army of typos that made it through to ARC stage, including my possible favourite, referencing a scooter as a Vesper (which is a cocktail) instead of a Vespa (which is what I meant). I thought I’d already corrected that one, but evidently not! As well as a few instances of rearranging word order. I have nothing with which to defend myself, other than to say I can be an idiot, at times. Anyway, I’ve put all the changes I’ve had so far…
The Magic Spreadsheet, Competitive Word Counts, and Writing Consistency
So I joined The Magic Spreadsheet, which is a community of writers all in agreement to produce a minimum word count every day. The purpose of the community is to promote consistency and routine, to get (and keep) its writers in the habit of…well, writing. Also, it provides a little competition–and that can only ever be a good thing, right? I won’t be posting daily word counts here. Follow the third book’s journey to completion on Tumblr. Firstly, Don’t worry, I know progress tables aren’t that interesting to those not directly involved with them. I won’t post these often, if ever again. Secondly, The ISBW in brackets by my name is an indicator of how I came across this resource. ISBW stands for the “I Should Be Writing” podcast by Mur Lafferty, which is great for all authors, both published and aspiring. In other news, I got “From The Ashes” back from…
Divided They Fall, Draft One* Begins
I am going to be working on “Divided They Fall (Blood of Ages, #2)” from now until I get the edited version of “From The Ashes” back at the end of August. I’ve been trying to find a song to best summarise all the next book, but it’s hard. A lot happens in Divided They Fall: it’s easily the busiest of the three novels. Readers get to see other sides of the war. The world gets bigger. New characters arrive. Old characters leave. The order shifts. The field gets levelled. Basically, shit goes down. I think the below summarises the story’s sentiment quite well, although I do have some backup tracks. In all, I’m hoping to get the first draft of Divided They Fall finished by the end of November. * This isn’t technically the first draft, since I’ve had bits of this story floating around since 2010. However, I’m planning…