Posts Tagged ‘Pure Escapism’

Writing Projects Update

Posted: July 11, 2009 in Pure Escapism, Tears of the Mountain, writing update
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Thought I should do a post updating the various projects, where they currently stand and where they are hopefully headed.

The novel with the working title of Tears of the Mountain has been commenced, with 9K written of the first rough draft. Currently the rough draft is on a short pause as a proper plot and outline are worked on.

The prequel pilot novella, nominally called The Gift has been started, only around 4K done on it so far, but the story plot has been figured out. Aiming for 15-20K in length, it is intended to get a feel for the world, sort of like a pilot to a TV show does.

Pure Escapism is still coming along – need to finish off one draft and then edit it and a second draft to finish off the third volume. Hopefully this month, but certainly for next month.

For the contents of it, I have ideas for a number more short stories for a couple more volumes still. After that, while there will be plenty of one off stories, they will be fleshed out with ongoing series of stories which will, in theory, explore a number of different themes.

Cara’s Choice is going to be the only serial of them, an ongoing story told in episodes as they are released. It is an urban fantasy – nothing too out of the ordinary about it, except vampires will never ever be the good guys.

Of the core world of writing there are two main series, both from the earlier parts of history, but there will be other stories spread around in other time periods as well. I’ve had fun writing the myths of Aracan Hobgoblins in The Cahauc Cycle and so they will keep coming, and in time I may delve into myths of other cultures. The other series is planned to be The Book of Deeds, which relates the deeds of great Maedari Kings and Heroes during the bronze age of the world.

The series that I am calling The Primal Tales revolves around Braega and the lizardman Tudhala. There is plans for another character to join up soon. These stories aim to be wild and primal in nature, revolving around ruins, primeval creatures and the like. For these I have drawn inspiration in part from the Conan stories by Robert E Howard.

The other main series is those dealing with Nhaqosa the minotaur, which go by the name A Wanderer’s Tale. These are trending towards a more dark nature, and the world he finds himself in is more brutal and gritty in nature.

I have also been pondering on whether to write more about the sarcastic android Ray and his luckless master Brian in a sci-fi series, trying for a more humourous group of stories. May be fun to try something a bit more radical than the norm for me.

That is the plan at least – next step is to get it working.

Week In Review: Week Twenty Five & Twenty Six 2009

Posted: July 2, 2009 in Pure Escapism, Tears of the Mountain, writing update
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It would appear that I did not do one for last week, so here are two for the price of one.

Twenty six weeks down, twenty six to go. Had hoped to show more progress thus far, but slow and steady as the old saying goes.

Over the last two weeks I have finished off the second volume of Pure Escapism, started the third and also Tears of the Mountain, the working title of the novel I’ve started. I’m already 4200 words in to the rough draft of it after only a few days and I haven’t even really started. Pure Escapism Volume Three totals over 10K words also so far and I have yet to complete the main story, or start editing and fleshing out.

By next week those totals will hopefully be significantly increased.

July/Midyear Plans

Posted: July 1, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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We are now exactly half of the way through the year and it is time to take stock, recharge and plan ahead.

For July there are a couple of aims.

One is to finish off the third volume of Pure Escapism. That, however, is a secondary goal.

The primary goal for the month is to get working on the rough draft of the novel.

There are a few other minor things I’d like to see done – such as fix up the website – but they are only if time allows.

For the rest of the year, number one goal is of course finishing off the novel, hopefully finding a home for it. In addition I hope to put out at least two more volumes of Pure Escapism in that time.

June Challenge Report

Posted: July 1, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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June has come and gone and with it the challenge I had set myself.

It was to aim for doing 2K a day in word count, but to do at least 1K minimum. End result came to 40,000 words for the month.

Not as much as I would have hoped for, but if you look at it over a year keeping that pace up, it comes to almost half a million words. Which is a lot.

During that period I did finish off the second volume of Pure Escapism, and make a good start on the third. More importantly I did finally make a start on the novel in the last couple of days.

Of course, now I know what I’m doing, next month will be better. Naturally.

Another One Down

Posted: June 28, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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Just finished off the third short story rough draft for Pure Escapism Volume Three. Only one more to go and I can start the major task of editing.

The fourth one is going to be the longest, but I hope to have its draft completed by the end of the month, just a couple of days away. So far it has panned out that in each volume there is one major story that takes up about half the book and three others that fill in the rest. Not sure how that happened, but I think I’ll stick with it.

Pushing Forward

Posted: June 27, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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After finishing the second volume of Pure Escapism, I know I said I was going to move back to the novel, but somehow that hasn’t happened yet. Instead I’ve been working on the third volume and to date have two rough drafts done for stories, and two more in progress. One of those is plotted out and I hope to have done by the end of the day.

At this rate I’ll have all the drafts done soon and I can edit it all together. Hopefully I can also improve the Pure Escapism part of the site at the same time, and expand on the podcast for it.

Speaking of, when I get back to working on the novel, I might have a go serialising it via podcast as well. We will see how that goes.

Minor Update to Pure Escapism: Volume Two

Posted: June 25, 2009 in Pure Escapism
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Volume Two of Pure Escapism has had a minor update, basically fixing a few formatting/spelling/grammar errors.

1000 True Fans

Posted: June 23, 2009 in writing update
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Just came across a very interesting article, titled 1000 True Fans. A very interesting read.

The short version of it goes thus; You don’t need to produce a mega-blockbuster to be successful and make a living. It would be nice, but they are in the tiny minority.

If you can just garner 1000 True Fans, then you can make a living. By True Fans, they mean the type who will travel long distances to hear your next song, buy all your books, all the caps and mugs and calenders that are merchandise. Seek out autographed copies of your work. The type of people who will spend a day’s wage per year on you.

Of course, if you do the maths, you can see 1000 is more than you would need – and that doesn’t count lesser fans who buy the occasional item.

This is certainly something I’d like to aim for, though I’m currently about, oh, 1000 True Fans short. I’d be quite happy with a couple of hundred in reality

I visit a few communities where the 1000 True Fans effect is a reality – webcomics for the most part – and though I didn’t have a name to give the phenomenon, they certainly gave me the inspiration to give it a go myself.

Of course, my art skills are rather on the mediocre side, so I had to fall back on the written word. My hope is, eventually, to make more and more stories available, to expand on the website, maybe get some forums going – to hopefully be a good enough writer to attract a small community of True Fans to interact with. In this day and age, with the ‘net and all the resources now available, it is much easier to do.

It may just be a pipe dream in the end, but a nice one, and one that I think is at least worth pursuing. But there is a lot of work ahead before that day…

Megafauna In Pure Escapism

Posted: June 19, 2009 in Pure Escapism
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In the Hall of Black Trees, a number of unusual animals are mentioned, animals that seem fanciful in the extreme.

In reality these animals actually once lived, forming part of what is now the extinct Australian Megafauna.

These were a fascinating collection of animals, much larger than current species as can be guessed by the name. They went extinct some 40,000+ years ago, roughly at the time man first arrived in Australia. Whether that had any effect on the extinction is a matter of much debate still.

Only a few of the species get a guernsey in this first story – others will be seen in later stories of Braega and Tudhala.

The Thunder Birds that chase Tudhala are, or were, a species called Dromornis stirtoni – Stirton’s Thunder Bird. They were a three metre, 500 kilogram flightless bird that was probably carnivorous. For the sake of a good story, I am saying they are meat eaters. A smaller species, the Bullockornis, is also know by the colourful moniker the Demon Duck of Doom.

Alia is of the species Thylacoleo carnifex – the Marsupial Lion. They were the largest meat eating mammals in Australia, and one of the largest in the world. The size of a leopard, they nevertheless possessed the strongest bite of any known mammal, living or extinct. A 100 kg Marsupial Lion would have had a bite the same strength as a 250 kg African Lion. Her colouration is of course made up, but taken from a picture of one I saw when writing the story.

Alia the Marsupial Lion

Marsupial Lion

The Diprotodon I have mentioned before, but I can’t go without mentioning it again. Imagine a wombat. Now imagine it scaled up to three metres long, two metres tall and weighing in at almost 3000 kilos. Basically a wombat the size of a rhinoceros.

Diprotodon

Diprotodon

The snakes and lizards also existed, including a giant carnivorous goanna that might have reached seven metres and 2000 kilos, the Bluff Downs Giant Python that grew up to ten metres long, and the quinkana fortirostrum, a crocodile which grew from five, to possibly seven metres in length.

All in all, a collection of rather large and defiantly dangerous animals. Perfect, in fact, for the Primal Tales series of stories.

Fourth Down

Posted: June 19, 2009 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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Sat down and wrote the fourth short story, The Duel, for the collection yesterday. Its only 2000 words in length, but I think it succeeds in what I wanted from it.

Don’t want to say too much about it without giving away the story.

Now comes the next stage, getting all the stories compiled together into the next volume of Pure Escapism and making it presentable enough.

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