My book exists :D 2 small changes were made for all future editions: 1 - Pages 66, 68, and 69 will have the broken ' ot ' sign fixed to make it a 'hotel' sign. For all intents and purposes, it will, contextually, flicker; so it won't ever be repaired entirely. 2 - Page 61 has a glow that glows SO BRIGHT the word "glowed" can't be read... Future editions will include the word "glowed", which no doubt will be a less-bright torch. Please feel free to fill in the missing information as an activity (or not.) |
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Planning to submit Chance of Tragedies for publication Tuesday, to be available for Halloween on Thursday!
The Dreary House can be purchased for $0.99 from 10/29/2019-11/1/2019 A Place to Stay is free from 10/29/2019-11/1/2019 More soon! (And, for anyone wondering, audiobooks are delayed again. "We'll get there.") August has been keeping me busy:
-Laptop down. -Audio book delayed. (How about October?) -Chance of Tragedies has resumed progress. (Also to be finished in October.) Looking forward to a scary-good fall harvest with all this summer work. Thanks to everyone who checked out People! It was fun to do a multimedia project while I recorded the audio book. I was thinking about returning to it when I edit the audio book, which I'll pick back up in September. For now, Chance of Tragedies is moving right along. It is on track to finish up this revision step next week! Finished the first draft of Chance of Tragedies. I'm not sure what to say about it, there is definitely still more work to be done with it before October. A second draft will be completed in August, with the final draft planned for October.
I often wonder if I've written a version of this story, or another story, that someone else would be perfectly happy to read. Surely, when I finish writing something, it must be perfect - I just changed everything that needed to be changed. Why wouldn't it be perfect? Then I challenge myself: "Well, if you're happy with all the changes, why did you make so many of them?" 'Why so many changes, indeed?' I ask myself. Then I go back to the beginning, knowing this is the first time the story will ever be read as it is. Maybe even the last time it will be read the way it was written prior, if there is more work to be done. Still, sure to enjoy reading over the work again. At least, right up until my imagination makes some other way. Then I'll stop reading and get back to writing. I'm sitting in a room that needs cleaning, so I'm going to clean it so I can start recording an audiobook for us to enjoy. Thank you for reading. Look for the first entry in my new horror mini-project next week, titled "A Blog Post." The rough draft for Chance of Tragedies is complete. I'll be putting in some work until the end of the month to make sure everything that can make it in makes it to the first draft. Chapters 9 and 10 were written in somewhat of a hurry, I'm still not sure how to feel about the pacing yet. I'll be reading over what is there today with a goal of about 550 words per working day since the rough draft is shorter than expected.
Around the end of the month, I'll wrap up the first draft and take a break. During the break, I plan to (finally, for those keeping track) record the audiobook versions of The Dreary House and A Place to Stay. That should take most of July. If all goes well, it should be ready for Audible by the middle of August, or so. About that same time, I'll get back to Chance of Tragedies for a second draft. Still looking forward to an October release. Between now and then, some things cut from The Dreary House and A Place to Stay might make there way on here. The blog recently passed 100 (and 200!) readers, and so far I have nothing but gratitude to give in return. Thank you! Working on Chapter 8 this week. Happened upon a rare instance of writer's block last night, it has continued to today. In fact, it is so much writer's block I thought to write a blog post about it. The usual methods were attempted last night:
-Go over notes -Go over what was previously written -Take a break -Eat some food To "take a break" is otherwise to 'not write', which I don't recommend except in dire circumstances. The dire circumstances in this case is what seems to be a severe bout of writer's block, and the block seems to have something to do with that word from last week's post, 'contrived.' As it turns out, taking a break didn't get anything written. I ate some food, which also didn't help. Sometimes it does help move things along. Many of my characters spend a lot of time hungry and it can be helpful to note the difference one experiences between not eating, eating, wanting to eat, etc.; despite having the work right in front of me, again no progress was made. Two other methods were attempted: -Write someone else's work -Sleep At some point, a healthy amount of description is going to benefit this story. A descriptive author came to mind and I took to copying down a passage of their work. Saving a copy of this work and passing it off as my own would be plagiarism, so it was promptly deleted upon completion. However, paying close attention to the way they structured their sentences while noting the act of typing 'something' rather than 'nothing' provided a degree of illusion for progress without directly accomplishing anything. The last method attempted was sleep. I shut everything down, cleaned up, and slept a bit. Nothing happened. No dreams, no wandering thoughts to resolve the problem, no waking glimpses of brilliance. More sleep exhausted any further options to keep writing. On my way back to sleep, I did have an idea. It involved taking out a part of the story to allow the rest of it to flow. And that may very well still work, but I didn't write down the specifics of the idea and am merely left with its remnants this morning. Even a small piece is a start: For all this writer's block, there were still almost 400 words worth writing here. Such a title seems more accurate at this point and, on that note, Chapter 7 for Chance of Tragedies is nearing completion. An essay containing a number of things about disingenuousness, contriving, offensiveness and respecting the source material from and for which things are written was jotted down to help better understand Chapter 7, but it will probably not appear here. Among the things jotted down were a lot of questions answered by more questions. It might make for an entertaining read at some point, until then hopefully most of the commentary will be kept about the story.
And then I still didn't feel I had a grasp on the chapter. Such a perspective as the previous paragraph still seems to suggest something incomplete. In fact, no one has read the essay. It might just be that bad, or even that mediocre. Instead a few conversations were held with others about how to approach what I was writing. Over those course of those conversations, something clicked, or I hoped something clicked, and there's a slight chance it helped. So there was enough understanding to start writing it. With an essay and some help from others, the chapter has one plot point remaining to be written. A quick process of grammar checking, story checking and something resembling 'le mot juste' will move right on to the next chapter. First draft soon. Since there hasn't been much by way of updates lately, here's a few things that have been keeping me busy:
At the end of March/beginning of April, I wrote a short story with every intention of posting here on the blog. As the days went by without posting it, I was considering what was to become of it before deciding it might make more sense in the story I've begun writing, Chance of Tragedies. Chance of Tragedies is slightly behind schedule at the moment, but not irrecoverably so. Chapter 3 is on the docket for today, out of a planned ten chapters which I'll hopefully wrap up by the end of June. Editing and revisions follow, still looking for an October release. |
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