(I don’t know what to think of this song.)
One more project to go before I hit the summer with a lighter load on both my body and mind. I’ve decided to call the 3rd book of my news series, War of Nytefall: Rivalry since it revolves around an old rivalry that’s gone out of control. I won’t tell you who the characters involved are. Though, I don’t know if that’s important since it’ll be the December release.
Surprisingly, this book has been flying quicker and bigger than the others. I think part of it is because the cast has been locked in and I feel more comfortable doing a first draft with them. I was ‘meeting’ them for the first time in Loyalty and getting a since of their growth in Lost. I pinpointed that parts of characters that I had a habit of forgetting such as identifying marks and personality quirks. The list is kept near me for when I started, which is a new tactic and it’s worked. Now, I’m just throwing them into the fray and letting them pull the action. Clyde is a lot more comfortable with his role too, which takes pressure off me. Enough to pull off a week of 3-section days, which means 5 of 17 chapters are written.
The weather has been getting warmer here too, which is good and bad. It means I can wear shorts without shivering and be a little more comfortable. That’s good. It also means the upstairs heats up a lot and I’m driven downstairs to work. That’s not so good. My new headphones help out there, but people don’t always take it as a sign that I’m working. They can’t hear the music while I can hear them. Still, it beats sitting in a sweltering room and trying not to sweat on the keyboard. This weather has me really working hard to get this first draft done before school ends next month. If it’s already getting into the low 80’s now then it’s going to be rough during the summer. Writing a novel in the heat was always a slow process.
I’ve decided that my only summer projects will be the finale for ‘The Raven Series’, which is always haphazard. Fourth time around and I’m still not sure what I’m doing when it comes to horror. That’s why I share it on the blog. Beyond that, I’m going to work on characters and ‘outlines’ for the Sin series. This isn’t what comes after Clyde, but I want to get Sin through the initial planning stages before I do the full outlines for ‘Tales of the Slumberlord’. I was thinking about doing the next Ichabod Brooks collection, but I might save that for later in the year. Depending on how the next school year starts, it could be smarter to do short stories instead of the next War of Nytefall book. Probably need to fit more editing into it too.
I’m noticing that with all of this, I have no idea what to do about Bedlam. I really do miss writing Lloyd and Cassidy. Their 3rd (4th if you count the blog one) book has already been written, but the series doesn’t sell. All of the cover art and promotional money I spend is practically throwing it into a hole. So, I’m left wondering what to do with them. I’ve considered having them be blog only with a weekly chapter section, but that feels like giving up. It’s baffling too because these stories get such great responses on the blog, but it never translates to sales.
This coming week is going to be a little shaky as far as writing. With it being Memorial Day, everyone has Monday off. I’m hoping to get a chapter written this weekend to counteract the loss of that day. Yet, I also have a few appointments that might make this rather choppy. This leads into next weekend, which is the 13th anniversary of that whole wedding thing. Seeing ‘Deadpool 2’ and eating somewhere that serves food. Yeah, that’s as far as we’ve gotten, so you can see how great we are at planning these outings. Either way, I doubt I’ll be writing that weekend. Maybe Saturday night, but that’s all I’ll get if I’m lucky.
So, what are the goals of the week?
- Continue writing War of Nytefall: Rivalry
- Appointments!
- Sleeping, eating, and biking.
- Keep reading this thriller book where people REALLY have to stop standing next to the main character. Either the bad guys hire some terrible snipers or they want him to hide in his house. I mean, 3 times a person standing near him has been killed or injured. Are they even aiming for him?
- Possibly gather images for September posts.
- Tinker with the Super Earth/Mylrixian concept. Might make that a post for tomorrow.
- Get tickets for Deadpool 2 to make sure we have seats.
- Watch the last two episodes of ‘Lucifer’ and hope it gets picked up by someone.
- Plot escape from the Matrix and give up at thought of the real world having horrible pizza.
When I start developing a character sometimes, I construct the person in my head; then I start writing down how she/he is going to be. First the ‘shell,’ then the inside. I very rarely ‘use’ someone I already know… someone I have met or is familiar to me.
Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
