Tag Archives: urban fantasy

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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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The 7-7-7 Challenge

I was nominated for this by @out_ofthe_fog on twitter. The 7-7-7 challenge is a fun little chain letter thingy encouraging writers to share a little bit of their work in progress. Once you’ve done the challenge you nominate 7 others. I chose 7 folks from twitter that I’m either stalking or find engaging in some way. I didn’t pick anyone that I’ve already bought books from and intend to buy more. I focused of folks who I’d like to see what they’re up to or how their progress is coming (provided any of them / you choose to take that challenge).
One of the motivators in finishing my work or just writing in general is getting out on social media and actually talking about writing and issues. Not only that, reading what others are up to has been helpful for me as well. That said, one of the biggest motivators / tools of encouragement is sharing my work. Even if I don’t get feedback, I still know that a couple people might take a look at what I’ve written and so I look at my own work with a much more critical eye. So, that there was a long-winded explanation as to why I decided to do the challenge.
The challenge works like this: You do this by going to page 7 of your manuscript, counting down to line 7 and then sharing the next 7 sentences in a blog post.
I’ve got two works in a state that I could give this a go. I chose a section of the first chapter of Wine Bottles and Broomsticks. The whole chapter is available over on http://www.channillo.com and the second installment is coming this Friday!

“Not completely. We get her to a place we can corner her and see if we can out her. Once we’ve done that, we bring her in, and work out whether or not we can tie her to anything.”
“This doesn’t sound legal. Shouldn’t we have probable cause? What is it that this woman is suspecting of having done?”
“Being a witch is probable cause.”
“But what if that witch hasn’t done anything -not that I’m saying there are witches.”
“You can’t be a witch, unless you’re a witch.”

So, there it is. Now, I’ve stalled my run long enough. Now, for another challenge: Time to get out there and raise awareness for usher syndrome.