Posts Tagged ‘Short story’

It feels a bit surreal to be making this post, but I’ve had a review of Pure Escapism: Volume One.  A good one too, which almost makes it immodest to post.  To remain balanced I shall be obliged to post up a poor review as well, even if I have to write it myself.

The review comes from Mr. E. Patrick Dorris, who came across it at Smashwords.  He also writes there, with the series John Smith, World Jumper – more on which later. He is one of the highest rated authors by readers there too, which makes it a double honour. I encourage people to have a read of his story too.

His main review was on his blog, which can be read here. Part of what he says goes as follows;

As I have attempted to do with the John Smith, World Jumper series, Mr. Warwick seems to write in a fast paced, action oriented style while presenting characters that aren’t overly angsty and flawed like so many of today’s heroes.

I write what I like to read, and if others like it as well, that’s an added bonus. I guess I grew up reading a different era of heroes – sure, they had their problems, regrets, doubts and the like, by they didn’t descended into sullen, surly angst. They got out and did what needed doing without moping around the place. And because they were heroes, they often died in the process.

He also has a couple of shorter reviews of the first two stories at the webpage for Volume One.

For Cahuac and the Sun he wrote;

“Cahuac and the Sun,” the second story in the series reminded me so much of Native American myths (although clearly not set there, at least not in this universe) that I could see Mr. Warwick writing a believable mythological background for a world of his own making. It was completely original, but with themes and elements so familiar that if one slipped it into a book containing hunter-gatherer or early agriculturist myths, not many would suspect it was not authentic myth

This was exactly what I was aiming for, so it it pleasing to know it worked. A thing that wasn’t raised in the story, and really there was no need to, is that the people in question, the Aracan, aren’t even human. I am shortly planning on doing a post that will explain in a bit more detail where the story, and the Aracan came from, as they have had a fairly lengthy evolution to arrive at their current form.

Failed to make the quota yesterday sadly.  Didn’t even make 1K words.  Overall for the first five days I’ve managed 9075 words, so need to put in a good day today to catch up.

The goods news is the drafts for all four stories for the second volume fo Pure Escapism are now done, ready for editting, though in the case of The Village I think it will take some major editting.

Still, hopefully by the end of next week, it will be ready to go.

First two days of the June Challenge have gone well – around 4100 words written.  All of that so far is working towards the second volume of Pure Escapism.

Most of the work has been on The Hall of Black Trees, which to date is around 7300 words long and the first draft not yet completed.  It appears as if it will be the main piece for the volume, as the other stories aren’t going to turn out anywhere near its length.

Should have the rough drafts finished by weeks end at this rate, ready for editing.

Well, June is upon us, and with it winter down here in the southern hemisphere.

With it I am setting myself a new challenge – 2K a Day. For the next sixty days I plan to set myself the task of writing 2K words a day. I had initially planned for 3K a day, but thought that might be a little too optimistic. I shall certainly aim for that if I can, but the 2K mark will be the minimum.

The initial phase will be to finish off the short stories for the second volume of Pure Escapism. If I can keep that up rough drafts should be done by the end of the week. After that I will start work on other things, perhaps some of the stories for the third volume, but hopefully also getting back to working on a novel.

The good news is that I hit the mark for the first day, doing just a bit under 2100 words.

What Not To Write

Posted: May 25, 2009 in General
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Came across the following article at Strange Horizons, an online SF magazine, about what they don’t want to see more of – basically story ideas they have seen submitted too often.

I am fairly certain I’m not guilty of any of them, at least not recently.

A few examples from the list;

# Scientist uses himself or herself as test subject.

# Evil unethical doctor performs medical experiments on unsuspecting patient.

# In the future, criminals are punished much more harshly than they are today.
1. In the future, the punishment always fits the crime.
2. The author is apparently unaware of the American constitutional amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, and so postulates that in the future, American punishment will be extra-cruel in some unusual way.

# White protagonist is given wise and mystical advice by Holy Simple Native Folk.

Twenty weeks into the year already – where does time go?

News of the week is that I’ve finally finished the last of the four short stories I have been editing, at least well enough for the purposes I want it for. Hopefully sometime during the day the four of them will be available on the site, in one form or another.

Still no closer to working out the conundrum from the previous post – still requires more thinking I guess.

Well, finished the editing of the third short story over the weekend. Just one more to go.

That one is the longest of them though, and the first one written, so will probably take the longest. I hope to have it done in the next couple of days though.

Sat down and finished the rough draft of another short story, so far titled The Tomb of the Togosa Kings. Currently it is a bit over 9000 words in length.

I’m not releasing it for viewing yet – I want to give it a bit more polishing first, especially the ending. I haven’t quite managed to get the hang of doing proper endings yet I don’t think. None of the short stories I’ve done so far I’m totally happy with how they end.

This one isn’t your standard fantasy, being of the later time period of the world that I have alluded to before. It also introduces a number of characters from Winter Wolves – Harry Ban, Elraes, Professor Hjalir and other – when they were younger.

Hopefully the polishing won’t take a long time to do and I can put it on the website for people to read.

After a great deal of time I have finally finished the first draft of The Bronze Man short story.  All up it comes to a bit over 9600 words.  It will need some going over and tidying up, especially the later parts, which should undoubtedly add even more words to the finished story, taking it beyond 10K words and into the range of a novella and not simply a short story.

I will let it sit for a few days before going back over it again.  I have a couple more short stories that also need to have first drafts completed.

The Pit

Posted: January 14, 2009 in writing update
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I have finally had a chance to sit down and finishing writing the first draft of The Pit, a short story I have been working on of late. It still needs a polish and I think the end needs a littlw work as well, but I am happy with the overall story beyond that. I have added it to the website for people to have a look at, in the Book of Deeds section.