Tag Archives: author

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First draft of a second book

Winebottles_Broomsticks

I know I said I was going to update this blog more often a few weeks ago, then didn’t. Well, I got busy. With the end of the year on me, I started to feel the press of time with respect to my second book (which is the first in a series). Oddly enough, I never intended it to be a book. Really, I was just aiming at writing practice.

Earlier this year, I think June? I finished the first full draft of an epic fantasy novel and sent it out to beta readers. The feedback was very positive, but pointed out a lot of problems. Problems that are likely beyond my skill to fix, just now. So, I set it aside in order to focus on more immediate issues, like making sure I was still employed come August and the ducks had a place to live before the snow hit the ground. However, at about the end of July a funny thing happened. In a non-writing related conversation with a friend, I said: “You know, the funny thing about witch hunts is that sometimes you find one.” Well, that was it. It grabbed my attention. Then, perhaps a few days later I got a DM from someone telling me I should write a series on Channillo.com. I concluded that it would be something to try, so I sat down to see what my silly little quote might turn in to.

At first, I wasn’t really sure, except that I liked the concept and characters. Since I was putting this out for sale right away, I decided a nice book cover was in order, so I bought one. Unfortunately, I bought one that didn’t quite match what I had in mind, so given that I had a cover and no story, I wrote enough of the story to fit the cover. Much cheaper than spending a lot of cash on a custom cover for a book I wasn’t even sure would be a book!

For about the first chapter, I figured that if I made sure I was doing a chapter every 3 weeks or so, I could satisfy my Channillo.com goals and also be done with a draft sometime next spring. Yeah, that pretty much didn’t happen. I mean, it did at first, but that second chapter was written the day before my self-imposed due date. I don’t like operating that way, so I set out to write several more chapters, just so I was a little ahead. Then, I went to Kansas City for training, which was cool. Spent all day training, then socialized with co-workers for a while, but I still had hours to myself. So, I sat down to write. I think I knocked out 3 1/2 chapters that week alone (~12K words), My pace slowed a bit in November because of the great programming distraction of NaNoWriMo 2015, but picked up again after I went to Orlando for more training in early December. That time, my pace was more like 2~3 chapters. In any case, I plowed on through December until Christmas day when I sat down to organize a handful of content that had gotten out of order and didn’t fit properly into the timeline. Turns out it wasn’t that far off and a little manipulation put it close. So, yesterday, after getting back home, I realized I was maybe a chapter or two off of hitting the end of the first full draft – so I sat down with my Christmas coffee and went to town.

You know what? I got it. Today I went back over the second half of the book and concluded I needed feedback and to set it down for a while. So. there it is. My second full-draft book is complete – yes loads of work to be done, but the bulk of the story is there, and in only 5 months. Needless to say, I’m over the moon with myself. So what am I going to do with myself while I cool off from Wine Bottles and Broomsticks? Write book 2, of course.

Also – if you’re interested, you can hit http://www.Channillo.com to subscribe and check the series out. In January, I’m going to release one chapter a month. Once it’s all out there, it’ll be on Channillo for a month, then poof – gone. You’ll have to wait until I can figure out how to get it published.

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Inspiration from a blank page

Calvin_HobbesFrom the Last Calvin and Hobbes comic by Bill Watterson, published on December 31, 1995.

I went into this blog post thinking I’d like to talk about inspiration for a minute, and I’ll get there. It is, after all part of this story, but it’s not where I want to start. The other day I was thinking about this particular strip. I have no idea why, but I was. Whenever I try to conjure up an image of the strip in my mind, the only bit of it I can recall with any clarity is the last wide panel on the bottom.

With a few minutes of quiet before my wife arrives home from work, I decided to sit down here at my kitchen table and bang out a quick blog about what inspires me – practically speaking, anything that comes out of anyone’s mouth is liable to become fodder, but I think that’s pretty typical of writers. To get started on this little thing I searched the Internet for the image. I found it right away, but found other people’s thoughts on Calvin and Hobbes. This, of course, led to more searching, which got me to Wikipedia and that led to even more poking around. As you might expect, I found a lot of people saying a lot of really nice things about the comic in general. The whole process got me derailed and thinking fondly about the hours I used to spent reading and rereading the Calvin and Hobbes books. Turns out this is a hard thing for me to do. It’s like reading a letter from a childhood friend who’s passed away. When I read these comics I don’t just see what Watterson wanted to say, I also see my own childhood – quite literally – with every passing page. Even though I didn’t head off to college until a year and a half after this comic came out, I often recall the two things happening at roughly the same time.

Dave?

Yes?

What the hell does this have to do with writing… or anything else for that matter.

Just be patient. I’m getting there, okay. This is serious shit.

Like with any kid going off to college, that’s how it feels. A new adventure, but you know what, I never really felt like that’s what Watterson was talking about, it was always about creative expression. Flipping around through the Internet and reading about Calvin and all of the heartburn Watterson endured over keeping the strip as pure as he could, I came to the realization that Calvin and Hobbes is quite possibly my biggest influence and source of inspiration.

That doesn’t make sense Dave. This blog is about writing dragons, isn’t that your thing?

No, being creative is my thing. It just so happens that I was writing a book on dragons when I made this blog. That project has been tabled for a bit until my skill level catches up, assuming that happens.

Okay, but you don’t write anything like Calvin and Hobbes. I mean, you’re writing about highly fashionable witches at the moment.

It’s not so much about inspiring me to do the same thing or even try to accomplish what Watterson did. First off, you can’t have another Calvin, not even worth trying, and secondly it’s not about doing what he did so I can get rich. It’s about being creative and doing what you want. It inspired me in the sense that it made me feel that being creative was not only okay, it was cool, and I can do it on my own terms. So, what is it about this strip in particular? It’s all of the whitespace that has yet to be filled with things.

When first I read the last strip at 17, I remember being sad and disappointed, but it stuck with me and once the shock of losing a friend passed, it resonated with me. I mean shit, the older I get the more I believe that Calvin and Hobbes possibly has the best ending to anything ever. It’s a new beginning without the weird circular stuff that you sometimes get with ongoing series.

Whenever I start a new project or I’m staring at an empty glowing screen trying to work out how to jump in, the image of that mostly blank page with a couple of characters rocketing into the unknown pops into my mind.

At any given moment, I have a ton of projects going on, a couple of active ones and a bunch that are just rolling around in my head. Most of them aren’t going anywhere, some I’ll finish, and there will be others that will morph from a single witty one-liners into something I truly enjoy writing. I can’t tell you how many times a day I hear something or see something that suddenly threatens to become a story. It makes wonder how it is people ever get writer’s block. Not that I haven’t stared at that page and wondered, what have I got to say that anyone would want to hear? It may not make me a good writer, but exploring that blank page is one of the many reasons I do it, and the fact that I can put anything there that I want, well that’s amazing.