The Hobbit trailer is out! Of course now we have a 51 week wait until we can watch it, so in the meantime keep hitting replay. And then we have to wait another year for the second part.
One of the memorable things about the book is that it has a lot of songs and poetry, and by the prominent way one of them is part of the trailer, it would seem that they have included them in the movie.
I have finally finished the re-edit of Winter Wolves. In addition it has received a new cover as well, in keeping with the others of the series.
In addition to trying to fix up all spelling and grammatical errors that I could find, I also re-wrote the last 10,000 words. I had never been entirely happy with the ending, given I felt it had too much in common with the ending of Tears of the Mountain. And there was a good reason for that. I had started work on Winter Wolves first, plotting it out and writing about half of it. Then, as is my way, I switched projects and starts on Tears. This time I actually stuck through to the end and finished Tears. However I had never had an ending for Tears planned and in the end borrowed the one I had planned for Winter Wolves. When I went back to Winter Wolves I found myself without an ending and tried to cobble one together, one that I felt had too much in common with the ending of Tears. The re-edit gave me a chance to re-write the ending into one not so similar, and one that I fell makes more sense – at least for me.
The new versions are kicking around at Smashwords and Amazon.
It is not long now until the Tintin movie has its release here in Australia, and I am looking forward to it. In theory a collaboration between Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg should be good – and one based on the Tintin comics as well. As a kid, the Tintin stories were right up there along with Asterix as my favourites. Of course going by the trailers seen to date it seems more a ‘loosely based on’ style rather than the true to the source style that the TV show a few years back used.
In part it is based on the ‘Secret of the Unicorn’ and ‘Red Rackham’s Treasure’ two parter, which was always my favourite. I always enjoyed those treasure hunt style stories, such as in Indiana Jones, The Mummy, The Goonies, Treasure Island, National Treasure and numerous others. I did write, way back in primary school, some stories of that nature, and went back to that partially in Tears of the Mountain. I hope to do some more of those (revolving around Professor Halir of course) in the future.
Anne McCaffrey, the US born author who was one of the first female writers to break into Sci-Fi has died, age 85. She is best remembered for her Dragonriders of Pern series, which started out fantasy and became more and more sci-fi as the series went on.
I first read the Pern books in my early teens and, as was the way as a very young writer, wanted to incorporate elements into my world, such as the dragon riders and pets like fire-lizards. Luckily that is long in the past and my stories are my works, not cheap knock-offs of other authors, a big risk among teenage writers.
End of the year is rapidly approaching and I still have a few things on the list that I want to see done by then, so I’d better knuckle down and get them done.
First up is to finish the re-edit/re-write of Winter Wolves. I’m down to the last 2K to go, so hopefully won’t be long. After that I need to work on a new cover for it, like the others of that series.
Secondly is to finish off Dawn of Wolves – it has been sitting there for a long while now. At 40K down, there is about 10K to go for it.
Lastly is to do another short anthology of short stories – somewhere between 3 and 5 of them. I’ve got a couple of collection in the works – just need to work out which to finish first.
From the 2011 Children in Need show comes a short skit involving the Doctor and also a trailer for the 2011 Christmas Special. Very obvious what it is based on.
The re-edit of Tears of the Mountain is now done, fixing up various little grammatical and spelling errors that hadn’t been caught previously. It also now has its new cover. The edited version is now up and working on Smashwords and is currently being published on Amazon, so should be ready to go in a day or two.
Now to start on Winter Wolves.
I’ve finally got the re-edits of all the short stories completed and now have the hard part to go – the re-edit of the two novels. The first, Tears of the Mountain, will be the easiest given it is just a grammar/spelling check, but Winter Wolves will take a while longer as there is a large section I want to rewrite, given I was never entirely happy with it.
In the meantime I have to finish working on some new covers. I have some done so far, but there are plenty more to update to the new and improved style. Here are the ones done so far.
And finally, when that is all done, I can return to the 2/3rds done Dawn of Wolves.
Just an update on the process of re-editing all the old stories – so far two have been done. The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings and The Adventures of Ray the Robot have now had a go over trying to fix any errors that fell through the cracks previous times. I also gave The Adventures of Ray the Robot a new and slightly improved cover.
The other stories will slowly get the same editing process.
Also, the next two Nhaqosa short stories are getting close to being finished, and after that it will be time to finish Dawn of Wolves.
Mist and Shadows 