It has been a while since I have last updated what has been going on writing wise. Probably about time I did.
I have today just finished off the rewrite of a brand new short story, in the Peregrine and Blade series. It comes in at around 11,000 words and is titled The Oasis of Broken Bones. The series has been the main focus of my writing as of late. There are currently 16 stories completed in that series, ranging from 2000 to 25000 words in length. Between them they number some 166000 words, which is a fair amount. Only seven of those have ever been seen so far. In addition, 8 more are in various stages of planning. All of them will be coming to light soon I hope.
In addition, there are some 24 other short stories and novellas in other collections gathering dust, with a number more planned.
More news on what is going to happen to them all should happen soon. At least that is the plan.
We have now completed the second month of the year so it is time to look back over the progress of it.
I did not have quite as much time to write this month, given I was doing relief work for two days a week during it, and as a result the output did drop a bit. Compared to the 120,000 from last month, this month was only 81,458 in comparison.
Of that 13818 words were written on the background notes for the new epic fantasy under design. I had been aiming for 14,000 so fell just short.
24812 went into drafts of new stories, a bit short of the 28,000 I had been aiming for.
42,828 was of rewrites of old drafts and stories, slightly above the 42,000 I had set for the month.
There are now 1 novella, 11 novelettes and 2 short stories complete, an addition of 5 novelettes from last month, still all from the same three series.
Obviously the proofread, edit and covers didn’t get done last month. No promises for this month either…
January is now over and it is time to take stock of the last month.
In terms of writing, I have never done more. The grand total was 120203 words written. Those were split the following way.
16878 words were written on the background notes for the epic fantasy series I’ve started working on. That covers the history leading up to around the time the books will be starting. From now the notes will be a little more detailed and will start to sketch the outlines of the stories.
32769 words were on rough drafts and outlines. I wrote up short outlines for 14 stories, as well as finishing off 2 previously started rough drafts and completing 2 new rough drafts of short fiction.
70556 words were of rewrites of old rough drafts. I now have 1 novella, 6 novelettes and 2 short stories finished, with another 2 novelettes in the process of being rewritten. Those are split between three of my short fiction series – The Chronicles of the White Bull, The Deeds of Peregrine and Blade and The Adventures of Sir Richard Hammerman.
During this month I hope to proofread/edit them, get them covers and publish them.
I was reading various news articles yesterday and I came upon one about a naturally occurring eternal flame burning behind a waterfall – and science has no idea how it is produced. Which got me thinking about how a place like that would fit perfectly in a fantasy setting. Fantasy worlds often have places of wonder in them, where strange phenomena produce all manner of natural marvels.
Now given that they are rare and unusual, even for fantasy worlds, they would attract attention, and any visit there is not likely to find the place abandoned, unless in a really dangerous and out-of-the-way place, and not always then. Consider the climb up Mt Huashan in China, arguably the most dangerous tourist walk in the world. People have been travelling along narrow plank walkways hammered into the side of cliffs for 700 years there.
So even the most remote places of wonder could have visitors. You could have hermits and mystics and pilgrims there, merchants taking advantage of it to make a profit or even villages and towns built up around it. Consider something like an eternal flame. Maybe an enterprising dwarf tribe has set up there and have used it to power their metalworking business. Free fire means lesser costs coupled with superior dwarven quality. A win for all. Well, the dwarves at least.
So when creating these places of wonder in your worlds, consider how the locals would react to it – and how they might try to make a profit from it.
The story that I started working on for NaNoWriMo, Stormraven, I am now starting to release as a serial over on wattpad.
For those who do not know about wattpad, it is a site where writers and readers come together to share stories. I have a number of my free stories available there. For me it is another way of trying to raise awareness of my stories.
The plan is to release a new chapter each week, and once it is concluded, to release the whole story via the normal means.
Stormraven can be read here. Feel free to vote and comment. 🙂
This year I had a real crack at doing NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month. The aim of it is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I fell a bit short, making 42,000 words. Still, not a bad effort given the last couple of weeks were spent on doing the final major project for the course I am doing, so it understandably took priority. The story I am calling Stormraven, and is the introductory story to a fantasy series in the work. It was always meant to be a novella length story rather than a full novel, so it fitted in well with NaNoWriMo. Hopefully it wont take too long to finish off.
In between working to finish off a couple of short story collections, I’ve been doing some world building for an epic fantasy series that I’ve talked of before – The Oncoming Storm. Back some time ago I made a solid start to the first novel (almost 60K words) but it has been sitting idle for a while, something I want to rectify.
In contrast to my other stories, it is a more traditional fantasy, set to have knights and castles and princesses and all that. Yet, as ever, other ideas and inspirations have come in that threaten to change things up again. One thing especially among that are the Polish Winged Hussars, one of the most dominant, and striking cavalry forces of their time.
For a view of what they looked like I found this youtube clip.
So, I’ve been wanting to add something similar to the setting, but somehow retain the knights and also another group, the Warrior Brotherhoods, plus various other groups, which has led to a varied mix, and also decentralised, make up of the setting. I think I may have figured it out as well.
The setting comprises a number of states that form a unified League – while semi-autonomous, they are under a High King. Each state has their own nobles, with their personal collection of retainers. Normally this is where the Knights would figure, but instead I’ve made them more like the old Military Orders, such as the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights Templar, or the Teutonic Knights – independent entities that owe allegiance to no state or noble, but operate across all of them. The Warrior Brotherhoods operate in the same manner, but are a precursor to the Knight Orders, and aren’t made up of noble born like the Knights. The largest of the states, Liantria, home to the High King, is the one that uses the Winged Lancers. The nobles and their retainers form the various units of the Winged Lancers, and when combined they are a formidable cavalry force.
And one of these days I’ll get it all written up and a story finished…
I’ve finished the rewrite of The Rose of Nakunwe, the followup to Dawn of Wolves and next short story in the Frontier Wolves collection. I want to finish off the one after that, an as yet unnamed short story that has been plotted but not yet started, before releasing them both.
And then it is two more short stories, another novella, and the collection is done. Hopefully before the end of the year as well…
The first rough draft of the next story has now been completed. The Rose of Nakunwe is a planned novelette which is next in The Commonwealth Chronicles series, forming part of The Frontier Wolves sub-series.
The rewrite should be done by the end of the month.
However I’m still debating what exactly to do with it. It may be a little short to release as a stand alone story. I may end up waiting until the following novelette is done and releasing them together – or maybe wait until the entire Frontier Wolves story is told and releasing them all together as one volume.
That decision can wait for now, at least until the rewrite is done.
Mist and Shadows 