Posts Tagged ‘Short story’

Yes, I Am A Pulp Writer

Posted: April 10, 2011 in Pure Escapism, steampunk, sword and sorcery, writing
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I have written two novels of what I like to think as serious fantasy, and have plans for more, but I have come to the realisation that at the moment I am a pulp writer – and I like it.

Those big, epic, world changing bookstopper fantasy series – they aren’t me. It was hard enough to finish off the two novels at novel length. It was after doing so that I realised that I prefer the short versions of stories – shorts and novelettes and novellas – and more importantly, prefer writing stories in the pulp style; action, adventure, larger than life characters etc. Nothing too serious, nor high literature, but fun to read.

I find myself even preferring to read the shorter style stories – I haven’t read one of those mega series in a long time.

For the time being I am going to be concentrating on writing pulp style shorts, working on four series mainly; The Chronicles of the White Bull, Primal Tales, The Sir Richard Hammerman Adventures and Peregrine and Blade.

The Chronicles of the White Bull and Primal Tales both have stories already written and available in the Pure Escapism collection; Primal tales is fantasy set in a primeval, low-tech world, a place of wild forests and prehistoric creatures. The Chronicles of the White Bull follows the exploits of an escaped minotaur gladiator, travelling a dying world in the search for home.

The Sir Richard Hammerman is steampunk pulp; currently with a novella and novelette half-written. Sir Richard Hammerman is a gentleman adventurer who travels with his companions who travels an Earth similar, but not exactly, to our own, a place of weird science, of pterodactyl riding pygmies, airships and odd contraptions.

Peregrine and Blade is pure pulp, inspired by the likes of Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber and their ilk. The first novelette has been written up in rough form – and can be read here – the first of many.

March Report

Posted: April 2, 2011 in fantasy, General, writing update
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Here we are, a quarter of the way through the year already. Where does time go?

Output fell again, down to around 40K last month, though there were a number of reasons for that. For half the month I was dog-sitting my brother’s dog while he was overseas and that tends to chew up time. Also looking for work.

Output wise saw work on various short stories/novelettes, cleaning them up and re-releasing them on Smashwords, and putting some of them up on Amazon for the first time. More on that in a latter post. I also, finally, finished off Cara’s Choice; it is currently in editing when I can find the time and I hope to have it released in April at some stage.

Against my better judgement, I started work on two new stories; the Tirhanium novella I mentioned previously and a pure sword and sorcery pulp idea that I will post about later.

Sales dropped from February, down to just five, but as I’m not actually pushing it at the moment that can be expected.

Not setting any real goals for April – will just see what pans out.

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.

A New Nhaqosa Story: Wisdom from the Ashes

Posted: December 3, 2010 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, writing update
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The next chapter in The Chronicles of the White Bull is now on the site, entitled Wisdom from The Ashes.

It follows on from the events of Echoes of Dark Reflections and Nhaqosa is not in a good state physically or mentally from the encounter in the dark crystalline tower. His band is starting to fray without his leadership, and worse are the dreams that haunt him both day and night.

A New Approach

Posted: December 2, 2010 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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I’d be the first to admit that I am not all that great at marketing myself – in fact I am terrible at it. I just don’t have the personality to push myself forward like some do.

But that has to change. I need to start doing so, to get my stories out there for people to read and hopefully take an interest in. Otherwise why write if no one is reading them?

Starting tomorrow I am going to look at ways to do so, finding forums and sites to share my work and get opinions, to push myself on twitter more and the like. After all I have some 24 stories on the site (plus 2 more to add) totalling around 110,000 words. That is a lot of effort.

I also hope to write a lot more than I have been – the aim being to add one new story a month from now on in.

Coming Soon

Posted: October 6, 2010 in fantasy, Pure Escapism, writing update
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Just a quick update of what is in the works – besides the work on the website.

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, I need to complete Wisdom from the Ashes, the forth story in the Nhaqosa series, The Chronicles of the White Bull. The sooner the better, so that I can update the compilation for Smashwords and make it premium.

I also need once last look over Tears of the Mountain and to start approaching agents to see if I get any interest.

Plenty Of Minotaur Fans Out There

Posted: September 21, 2010 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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Since I started this blog almost two years ago I have made some 300 posts. Of them one post – simply entitled The Minotaur – has been responsible for more hits from search engines than any other. By a massive amount. Minotaur has resulted in almost 7 times as many hits as the next highest term, which is ‘fantasy clichés’. In fact seven of the top 10 hits from search engines have to do with minotaurs, and even the Cyrillic spelling of minotaur rates a mention on the list.

Maybe most of my posts haven’t been interesting or maybe there is a bigger pool of Minotaur fans than I realised.

I’d like to think it is the second, and if it is so then it would seem a good idea to expand on the stories of Nhaqosa the Minotaur, of which three have been written so far.

So with that in mind I shall work hard on completing the next in the series and ponder further stories beyond that.

Upcoming Changes

Posted: September 18, 2010 in Pure Escapism, writing update
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Its been a bit since I last posted on here – got kind of sidetracked with others things.

I’ve got a couple of things planned to do soon ™.

First is to get The Tears of the Mountain tidied up enough and start shopping it around.

The other, and bigger, project is to do a revamp of all the short stories completed to date and collated them into single volumes and give them proper covers. This is mostly for Smashwords purposes, to clean up all the stories over there and maybe give people a reason to purchase them, though a number of stand alone stories will remain by themselves (and free).

The four collations will be Cara’s Choice, The Cahuac Cycle, Primal Tales and Nhaqosa’s stories.

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