Archive for the ‘winter wolves’ Category

January Report

Posted: February 2, 2011 in fantasy, Tears of the Mountain, The Oncoming Storm, winter wolves, writing update
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January has come and gone – yes already. One twelfth of the year has already flown by.

Writing wise it was a decent month. Notable points are;

130K words written – mostly rewriting old drafts but still that is progress.
70K done on rewrite of Winter Wolves novel.
10.5K done of rewrite of Dawn of Wolves novella.
Tears of the Mountain published on Smashwords/Amazon.
Halfway into the rewrite of He Stands Between.
Various notes and ideas done for other stories.

Hope I can keep up the pace for February.
Aims for February are finishing off Winter Wolves and hopefully Dawn of the Wolves, plus a short story or two. And trying to market Tears of the Mountain better.

Progress and Plans

Posted: January 14, 2011 in Tears of the Mountain, winter wolves, writing update
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The year has begun and we are already a couple of weeks in so I thought it time to take stock of what has happened and what I have got planned.

Firstly I have managed to write everyday of the year so far, and not insubstantial amounts. If I am rather liberal with my definition of ‘written’ then I have written 58,000 words in 13 days. The best day was yesterday, with 9,500 words done. Of course a large chunk, read most, of those words are rewriting old drafts into newer drafts. It is much easier and faster doing it that way, but of course the rough drafts need doing first.

Some of those words are on rough drafts, of which some have already received some rewriting, which seems a rather fruitful way of doing it. Scribble up the rough draft in the morning and in the evening get stuck into a rewrite of it.

All of that has been spread over a number of projects I’m busy working on to try and finish off, ranging from novels to short stories. The quick they are done, the better.

In addition to all that, I have finished the editing and polishing for Tears of the Mountain (or at least that is the theory – I have probably missed half the errors in it.) To celebrate I have put it up on Smashwords, and plan to make it available at more places (such as Amazon), as well as pushing it around the traps – but more on that later.

So that is what has been happening. Now for what I have planned.

I do at some stage need to give the old website an overhaul, updating the statuses of various projects, stories, collections and the like to reflect changes that have happened.

Short term plans are to complete the last part of the initial book of Cara’s Choice – the rough draft is getting close to being finished – and also to finish a rewrite and update of an old novel, Winter Wolves. Winter Wolves was sitting on around 60K of its rough draft when I left it but finishing Tears of the Mountain inspired me to return to it, given it takes place in the same setting and features one of the same characters. Since I wrote it there have been a number of changes to the setting that need incorporating, as well as it needing a complete overhaul of the ending; it didn’t work at the time and works even less due to various changes. But in a day and a half I’ve done 13,000 words of the rewrite of it.

Longer term is a goal to increase output, that being a short story every two weeks, a novel/novella every two months. An audacious target I know, but if I keep up my current output then it is entirely achievable.

I even had the short list of what those projects will be;

Winter Wolves (gunpowder fantasy novel)
He Stands Between (epic fantasy novel)
Hammer of the Skies (steampunk novella)
Cara’s Choice: The Awakening (urban fantasy novella)
Primal Tales III (fantasy short story)
Nhaqosa V (fantasy short story)
Cahuac and the Fisherman (fantasy short story)

Between all that I should be busy for a while.

Meet Professor Halir, The Unexpected Character

Posted: January 3, 2011 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, Sharael, Tears of the Mountain, winter wolves, World Building, writing update
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Professor Halir Ashford. Historian, Explorer and Adventurer. One of the favourite characters I’ve written so far. And a character who really shouldn’t have existed beyond a minor mention. It happens from time to time; characters take on a life of their own and demand a bigger say in things.

His story starts back with a novel I was planning (but never got around to starting). I needed someone to introduce the main character (Heric ‘Harry’ Ban, likewise a character that came about unexpectedly) to the adventure, and so I came up with Halir. he had been a friend of Harry’s father back during a war and was now a professor and historian. The novel was abandoned and the character would have been forgotten except for another novel I started sometime later, Winter Wolves.

Winter Wolves was my first serious effort at plotting and then writing a novel, and was designed to be a showcase for the setting and for Harry Ban. I even managed to complete a round draft. There was a need for a character who would draw Harry into events, and for that I went back to Halir and brought him along.

Though I finished the rough draft, I never got around to fleshing it out, instead, as is my want, I moved onto other projects and suddenly Halir took over somewhat. He got himself two lengthy short stories, Gifts and Sacrifices, and The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings, and then he got himself a full novel in which to star – Tears of the Mountain – which is the first novel I’ve completely properly.

It won’t be the last that Professor Halir is seen either.

Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards

Posted: January 1, 2011 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, Tears of the Mountain, The Oncoming Storm, winter wolves, writing update
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I’m not going to look back at my resolutions for last year – I know that most of them never got done, which is why I normally don’t bother.

It is a good time, however, to look back over 2010 and to look forward to 2011.

2010 was a year of missed opportunities, both writing and otherwise.  While I did actually complete my first proper, full length novel, my writing output was way down on what it should have been and that single novel should have been more.  Moreover, it is still sitting there gathering dust and hasn’t been used yet, something that needs to be rectified.

2011 needs to see an improvement.  I’m not going to make any resolutions – because they will just be broken – but I want to see a lot more writing done, both novels and short stories.  I’ve got all these ideas floating around not being used.

I’m going to go over the Pure Escapism page and stories and clean it up, make it look more professional.  That includes new and improved covers.  I have a few that I’ve worked on and that I need to upgrade the rest to that level.

I’d like to try and add at least one new short story to the collection a month – more of the time permits – and of course to try and exchange the reader base. Cleaning up and polishing the pages here and at Smashwords, plus starting to join up on various forums should help with that a bit.

The big one is of course the novels. I’ve got one complete and two half complete. They need to get completed, polished and made ready as soon as I can. And then I have to make a big decision.

Do I try for an agent and publisher, a long and laborious process that has no guarantees of any success?

Or do I try and go independent? There is no success guaranteed there either but there will at least be something to show for it, which is more than would happen if I ended up with no agent. It would require a whole new skillset – that of self marketting – but there have been a number of successes to show it is not impossible.

Progress Update

Posted: March 15, 2010 in fantasy, winter wolves, writing update
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Work on Winter Wolves is still coming along, slowly but surely.

I’ve just hit the 44K mark on the rewrite, or around 11 of the 21 planned chapters. This part was the easiest to do though. The first half saw minimal plot changes – it is during the second part that the plot deviates more substantially from the initial draft, as well as having a few new scenes to insert.

I am planning to put the polish on the initial chapters and put them up on the site to people to have a look at, Further plans are to round up some victims – er, volunteers – and having them provide some critique of the story so far.

Huzzah!

Posted: April 9, 2009 in winter wolves, writing update
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The rough draft of Winter Wolves is complete, finally.  Did around 1600 words today to wrap it up and the grand total of draft comes to around 55,600 words.

Much work remains to be done, especially on the ending.  It is decent, but has the potential to be much better.  Plus need to add another 20-25,000 words during the rewrite.

Still, it feels good to be finished with the draft.  Might have a day or two off from it, working on a few short stories, but I can’t let up now – must press on, get it in a decent, finished format, then start shopping it around in the remote chance someone may think it is worth publishing.

Incidentally, I love that word, Huzzah.

Winter Wolves hits 50K

Posted: April 6, 2009 in winter wolves, writing update
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The rough draft of Winter Wolves is finally nearing completion, and has just passed 50,000 words.

I have just started the 20th of 21 planned chapters, so not long until the rough draft is done and I can start the rewrite, as well as adding in extra scences that I have planned in the meantime.  There are a number of them that need doing.

Missing Character

Posted: March 25, 2009 in winter wolves
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I’m frankly a bit embarrassed about this but I seem to have misplaced a character.  I’m not talking about a minor character either, I’m talking about a very important main character and the only female one to boot.

Just realised there is this gap of three of four chapters where she is meant to be around but no mention is made of her at all.  No idea how that happened.  Must go back over them at some stage and weave her back into the story.

I think this may have beena  result of some changes done between the synopsis and the draft which I forgot to factor in…

Two Thirds and One Half

Posted: March 23, 2009 in winter wolves, writing update
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Something of an odd title, but currently I am both two thirds and one half through writing Winter Wolves.

How can it be both?  Simply, I have written fourteen of the twenty one planned chapters, meaning that that part is two thirds complete.  Likewise I have written roughly half the planned words.

I am not too worried about the word count lagging behind – this is after all the rough draft and will undoubtedly expand during the rewrite.  The first three chapters, which have already been subject to a rewrite underwent this.  They roughly doubled in total during their rewrite, and now total around 17,000 words between them.  The subsequent ten written chapters in total only make around 20,000 words, but that will increase in length as they are written.

Plan now is to write the last seven chapter, hopefully over the next seven days, and bring the rough draft to a close.  Then the rewrite and polish can commence.

Winter Wolves Milestone

Posted: March 16, 2009 in winter wolves, writing update
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I just did a quick count on what has been written so far, including today’s efforts so far, and the total has now passed 30,000 words, half way through chapter ten.

All in all around 2/5ths of a book, so still a fair way to go, but progress is being made at last.

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