Posts published in “Writing”

The art, craft, and life of writing.

Nanowrimo 18: Spiritual Gold

Published November 1, 2016 by centaur

So for the 18th time I’m taking on a National Novel Writing Month challenge (counting Camp Nano), this time starting Dakota Frost Book 6: Spiritual Gold!

Dakota Frost is the best magical tattooist in the Southeast, and is rapidly becoming the best magical investigator ... but what about magical medicine? When Dakota's called on to help with a zombie epidemic, is the solution simply finding a cure for a disease ... or stopping an implacable force determined to break down the walls between the living and the dead?

And an excerpt:

Those who live by the sword, die by the sword, or so the saying goes; personally, I like to say that those who acquire a dangerous magical blade ought to learn to use it properly, or they’re likely to die skewered, embarrassingly, by their own faerie lightsaber.

On that note, having the most powerful magical sword in the world sure wasn’t saving my ass today. For that matter, my ass was not well being well served by my martial arts training, my considerable magical expertise, nor even my vast library of magical tattoos.

Because I’m Dakota Frost, the Skeptical Witch, and while I am many things—the best magical tattooist in the Southeast, a Skindancer who can dance her tattoos to life, making me, allegedly, one of the most powerful magicians in the world—one thing I am not is a fencer.

“Ow,” I said, as my instructor whapped my ass, once again, with a springy wooden Japanese practice sword called a shinai. I stumbled away, swinging my own shinai back at her, as she stepped back and laughed. “No fair capitalizing on my … my stupidness.”

“It was your idea to add free form practice,” said Gina Ho, the secondary instructor at the dojo where I dilettanted at Shao Lin. She was an actual Olympic-grade sabreuse who’d agreed to train me after hours. “Pick a style and learn the basics before picking up that … that thing.”

She jerked her head at the wall of the dojo, where I had piled my gym bag, my satchel, my folded leather pants, my carefully folded leather vestcoat, and leaning carelessly atop it all, an innocent-looking brown leather case with shoulder-slung strap. One had too look at it closely to realize that the handle poking out of the end meant the leather case … was a scabbard.

“You practicing?” asked Master Ho cheerfully, and Gina and I jumped. Gina’s uncle was a genial, balding Iowan of Chinese descent, whose Midwestern accent belied his deep roots in the Shao Lin tradition he’d received from his father—down to a near-supernatural ability to move around silently on his perpetually unshod feet. “No? Give her her money’s worth.”

“Money?” Gina grumbled. “Uncle Marcus, I’m volunteering to—”

“Remember your proverbs,” Ho said, mock-sternly. “Always listen to your uncle.”

“Fine,” Gina said, stomping off to the lockers. “Alright, Dakota, you get your wish.”

I smiled, bowed politely to Gina’s back, bowed to Master Ho … and then darted back to my things, hefting the long case, feeling its weight. “My precious,” I muttered, though I really wasn’t that attached; still, my eyes gleamed … as I drew the Salzkammergutschwert.

The Salt Chamber Sword was a dark metal sword, strangely angular, like a geometric S. Thirty one inches from tip to guard, tapered triangular, like a cleaver, the Salzkammergutschwert was forged from a strange lustrous metal as dark as hematite—not one blade, but two, back to back, with a hairsbreadth’s distance between them; they never seemed to strike each other, but resonated, like a tuning fork, leading to its other name … the Songblade.

Current theory was the Songblade wasn’t a sword at all, but a component of a larger faery artifact, some magical resonator which merely happened to be indestructible—and sharp, leading early humans to wrap its “hilt” with dark, oily leather straps enchanted for durability. Maybe that was why the hilt, thirteen inches from guard to pommel, was fashioned in two angled parts that didn’t quite align with the blade, but it gave the weapon a comfortable hand-and-a-half grip. Backing the resonator theory was a circular space in the pommel, showing all signs of being a setting for a magical gem; but that missing component didn’t prevent the Salt Chamber Sword from serving its primary magical function as a negative energy resonator … making it of great interest to a Skeptical Witch who knew a little physics.

But still, it looked like a sword, and was used like one, because it was indestructible.

Time to learn how to wield it.

More soon. I got 1500+ words done tonight! Just 48500 words to go!

Onward!

-the Centaur

Reading “One Day Your Strength May Fail” at the Los Gatos Lit Crawl

Published October 9, 2016 by centaur

Hail, fellow adventurers! I’ll be reading my flash fiction short, “One Day Your Strength May Fail” at the Los Gatos Lit Crawl this Sunday - today, in about twelve hours, eek! Axually, my reading will be closer to four, but as part of the Los Gatos - Listowel Writers Festival, and organized by the Flash Fiction Forum, a whole passel of writers will read from 3 to 5 all over the city:

3:00pm – Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Company – featuring :

Kevin Sharp – Saturday Night & Sunday Morning

Victoria Johnson – Broken Dreams

Lita Kurth – How to be my Revolutionary Boy

Pushpa McFarlane – Bring on the Harlequins

3:30pm – Carry Nation – featuring:

Susannah Carlson – The Whale’s Bargain

Bob Dickerson (and Ina on banjo) – River Bird

Caesar Kent – Weekend Work Program

Parthenia Hicks

4:00pm – The Black Watch – featuring:

Maria Judnick – Walking the Line

Caroline Bracken – Five

Keiko O’Leary – The Golden Beauty of Carlina Johansen, Author of Milliner’s Dreams

Anthony Francis – One Day Your Strength Will Fail

4:30 pm – C.B. Hannegan’s – featuring:

C.K. Kramer – Kendra

Jade Bradbury – Blam

Beth Collison

Tania Martin – Brut 33

Lots of great readers will be there, including Keiko O’Leary of Write to the End and Thinking Ink Press reading her fascinating and disturbing story “The Golden Beauty of Carlina Johansen, Author of Milliner’s Dreams", along with many other authors who are mainstays of the Flash Fiction Forum reading stuff I haven’t heard before. Come check it out!

-the Centaur

Pictured: Something I ate in Los Gatos once, as I could not easily find other pictures I’ve taken of Los Gatos.

Jeremiah Willstone and the Choir of Demons

Published October 4, 2016 by centaur

Jeremiah Willstone returns to your aerograph dial in her latest cylinder of two-fisted science adventure: “A Choir of Demons”, published this October 1st on Aurora Wolf magazine!

Michael Pennington, the editor of Aurora Wolf, did these two super fun digital illustrations of Jeremiah for the story, which he graciously agreed to let me use to promote the story - a tale of Jeremiah’s very first adventure out of Academy. It’s one thing to have an great reputation. It’s another to be thrust too much responsibility too soon. On her very first day as an Expeditionary, Jeremiah is called on to fight what appears to be a choir of demons - but is she up to the task?

An excerpt:

Bharat looked at her thoughtfully. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said, handing the dispatch to her. “Looks like your bailiwick.”

“A … police matter, sir?” Jeremiah said, her voice unexpectedly rising; most unbecoming in a soldier, but she hadn’t expected to be sent on a formal mission on her very first day. Navid clearly had talked her up too much! “With respect, sir, I’ve not even completed orientation—”

“You’re wearing the tailcoat,” Lord Bharat said firmly. “Aquit it well. Dismissed.”

Jeremiah clicked her heels, whirled and marched off, her head positively spinning. What were the protocols? Who were the players? She was going in blind! She tried to pump the dispatcher for details, but he sternly sent her on her way: the plea was urgent.

And so, within the hour, Jeremiah found herself halfway across Boston standing beside a detective policeman opening the bloodied front door of an artisan’s shop. Even as the hardbitten woman’s shaking hand cranked the passkey, Jeremiah steeled herself.

“Not sure whether this is an Incursion,” the detective muttered, “but it sure as hell looks like Expeditionary business.” The lockpick engaged, and the spattered door swung open with an ominous creak …

To read more, check the story out at Aurora Wolf! And stay tuned for more Jeremiah in upcoming anthologies and the novel THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE!

-Anthony

Persistence is Rewarded, Despair is a Mistake

Published September 18, 2016 by centaur

So I’m proud to announce that “A Choir of Demons” was just accepted by Aurora Wolf magazine, with a projected release date of October 1st. More news as that gets finalized, but I’m more interested right now in the process by which this story was sold. Had I acted on feedback which made me despair on the story, I might have changed it ways that ruined it for its right home.

As I’ve documented before, I once sent my stories out to many places, only to get discouraged, and created a narrative that I’d sent them out until I exhausted the markets, and gave up. The reality was that several stories I told myself were no damn good actually got great feedback, but the markets that wanted to publish them went out of business.

Maybe those markets went under because they weren’t accepting better stories, but actually, many, many magazines went out of business right around that time, so I really was in a market contraction - and a time crunch, as I quit work on stories as my PhD ratcheted up, as I cut back writing because of RSI, and because I helped found a startup.

But when I started sending things out again, things got much better. I still get only a 15% acceptance rate, so on average I need to send a story to half a dozen markets or more before I get a success. But my latest story, “A Choir of Demons”, a steampunk police procedural which I wrote specifically for Analog or Asimov’s, wasn’t getting a lot of traction: it racked up almost a dozen rejections.

Most were form letters, but a few had detailed feedback. But that feedback was strange and contradictory. One complained that the beginning of the story didn’t get inside the character’s head … when the first two pages were primarily the protagonist’s reactions to her situation. Another complained the story wasn’t sufficiently standalone, when I tried to make it specifically standalone. And so on.

I was considering a major rewrite, but remembered Heinlein’s famous advice for writers: “Write. Finish what you write. Send your work out. Keep it on the market until sold. Only rewrite to editorial order” and so reactivated my subscription to the story-market service Duotrope, finding another dozen markets I hadn’t seen on the free listings on the similar site Ralan.

I have to give kudos to Duotrope - I found three markets that each responded almost immediately. The first two gave me prompt but nice rejections. The third was Aurora Wolf - whose editor passed on a few kind words which essentially called out “A Choir of Demons” as the kind of thing that they were looking for.

Had I limited myself to just a few markets, I might not have found a right home for “A Choir of Demons”. Had I changed the story to mold it to fit the markets that didn’t want it, I might easily have broken the things about the story that made it a good fit for its ultimate home.

So persistence is rewarded - but the road of persistence can get lonely at times, and it’s easy to lose your way. Don’t despair while traveling that road, or you might drive off the road straight into a mistake.

-the Centaur

Con Crud!

Published September 2, 2016 by centaur

So, I had all sorts of plans to post on my upcoming panels and the ambience of Dragon Con, but I overslept. Not by, like, an hour, or two hours, but more like eight hours. Sure, I got up and killed my alarms, a few times, but what really happened as I kept trying to get up and kept crashing out was that I realized I had caught a case of con crud.

Science fiction conventions gather an enormous amount of people, and hence, their diseases, and hence: con crud, that mysterious illness that hits you a day or two after you get to a con. I know a lot of people who have been knocked out by it, but it's hit me hard only two or three times.

This time, I ended up sleeping on and off for twelve hours out of sixteen. Fortunately I didn't get the cough or sniffles, though I felt them starting. But I rested up, and got up when I felt rested, and even though I missed hitting the dealer's room today, I had a lot of fun at my two panels.

So what I'm saying is, be good to yourself. It's easy, when you're at a con on a mission, to get caught up on all the things you could do. Well, do the things you should do, take care of yourself, and relax: cons will roll around again, and you want to be healthy enough to survive them.

Up tomorrow, 10AM: You've sold your first book, now what? A bunch of people much more experienced than me tell you what to do when you're facing book two. Oh, and I'll be there. At 2:30PM, I'll be talking about synopses that will sell - or not sell - your book. And at 10PM, I'll be talking about fun ways to kill your character. Oh, hell, here's the whole list:

You’ve Sold the First Book, Now What? Saturday 10am, Embassy CD – Hyatt What happens next? Publishing professionals offer information about the industry–what they’re going to do, and what you need to do for yourself.
Writing a Synopsis That Will Sell Your Book – MODERATOR Saturday 2:30pm, Embassy CD – Hyatt Writing a great synopsis may be harder than writing a book. These outliners and pantsers will offer suggestions to make the process easier.
101 Fascinating Ways to Kill off a Character Saturday 10pm, Embassy CD – Hyatt Description: Our favorite writers recount some of the more interesting ways they’ve eliminated characters–or tried to.

Also, THIRTY DAYS LATER is still on sale for $0.99! Onward! -the Centaur

This pays for that

Published August 23, 2016 by centaur

I’m not dead, I’m just playing a game of this pays for that. The above is this - reinforcement learning for robotics. The below is that - writing. I want to be doing more writing, but I need to keep working to pay for the writing. That is all for now …

20160821_132506(1).jpg

-the Centaur

Finished a rough draft of PHANTOM SILVER

Published August 13, 2016 by centaur

I just finished a rough draft of Book 5 in the Dakota Frost, Skindancer series. I’d love to sit back and reflect on all the novels I’ve finished (3 published, one at the editor, 3 more drafts finished, 3 more beyond that partially finished, one in the sock drawer, and one half-finished novel that got away from me) but I have contracts to edit. So, for now, I’ll just leave this here...

Phantom Silver v2 Small.png

One Day Your Strength Will Fail

Published July 31, 2016 by centaur

One Day Your Strength Will Fail

Wow, it’s already here - my flash fiction short story “One Day Your Strength Will Fail” is about to appear in the very first issue of the Bay Area’s new literary magazine, Fiction Silicon Valley! Thanks to Steve DeWinter for making this magazine happen!

Viiictory the Fifteenth

Published July 31, 2016 by centaur

Once again, I’ve completed the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenges - this time, the July 2016 Camp Nanowrimo, and the next 50,000 words of Dakota Frost #5, PHANTOM SILVER!

Phantom Silver v2 Small.png

This is the reason that I’ve been so far behind on posting on my blog - I simultaneously was working on four projects: edits on THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE, writing PHANTOM SILVER, doing publishing work for Thinking Ink Press, and doing my part at work-work to help bring about the robot apocalypse (it’s busy work, let me tell you). So busy that I didn’t even blog successfully getting TCTM back to the editor. Add to that a much needed old-friends recharge trip to Tahoe kicking off the month, and I ended up more behind than I’ve ever been … at least, as far as I’ve been behind, and still won:

Camp Nano 2016 July 31b.png

What did I learn this time? Well, I can write over 9,000 words a day, though the text often contains more outline than story; I will frequently stop and do GMC (Goal Motivation Conflict) breakdowns of all the characters in the scene and just leave it in the document as paragraphs of italicized notes, because Nano - I can take it out later, its word count now now now! That’s how you get five times a normal word count in a day, or 500+ times the least productive day in which I actually wrote something.

Camp Nano 2016 July 31c.png

Also, I get really really really sloppy - normally I wordsmith what I write as I write, even in Nano - but that’s when I have the luxury of writing 1000-2000 words a day. When I have to write 9000, I write things like "I want someoent bo elive this whnen ai Mideone” and just keep going, knowing that I can correct the text later to “I want someone to believe this when I am done,” and, more importantly, can use the idea behind that text to craft a better scene on the next draft (in this case, Dakota’s cameraman Ron is filming a bizarre event in which someone’s life is at stake, and when challenged by a bystander he challenges back, saying that he doesn’t have any useful role to fill, but he can at least document what’s happening so they’ll all be believed later).

Camp Nano 2016 July 31d.png

The other thing is, what I am starting to call The Process actually seems to work. I put characters in situations. I think through how they would react, using Goal Motivation Conflict to pull out what they want, why they want it, and why they can’t get it (a method recommended by my editor Debra Dixon in her GMC book). But the critical part of my Process is, when I have to go write something that I don’t know, I look it up - in a lot of detail. Yes, Virginia, even when I was writing 9,000+ words a day, I still went on Wikipedia - and I don’t regret it. Why? Because when I’m spewing around trying to make characters react like they’re in a play, the characters are just emoting, and the beats, no matter how well motivated, could get replaced by something else.

But when it strikes me that the place my characters area about visit looks like a basilica, I can do more than just write “basilica.” I can ask myself why I chose that word. I can look up the word “basilica” on Apple’s Dictionary app. I can drill through to famous basilicas like the Basilica of Saint Peter. I can think about how this place will be different from that, and start pulling out telling details. I can start to craft a space, to create staging, to create an environment that my characters can react to. Because emotions aren’t just inside us, or between us; they’re for something, for navigating this complex world with other humans at our side. If a group of people argues, no matter how charged, it’s just a soap opera. Put them in their own Germanic/Appalachian heritage family kitchen in the Dark Corner of South Carolina, on on the meditation path near an onsen run continuously by the same family for 42 generations, and the same argument can have a completely different ambiance - and completely different reactions.

The text I wrote using my characters reacting to the past plot, or even with GMC, may likely need a lot of tweaking: the point was to get them to a particular emotional, conceptual or plot space. The text I wrote with the characters reacting to things that were real, even if it needs tweaking, often crackles off the page, even in very rough form. It’s material I won’t want to lose - more importantly, material I wouldn’t have produced, if I hadn’t pushed myself to do National Novel Writing Month.

Up next, finishing a few notes and ideas - the book is very close to done - and then diving into contracts for Thinking Ink Press, and reinforcement learning policy gradients for the robot apocalypse, all while waiting for the shoe to drop on TCTM. Keep your fingers crossed that the book is indeed on its way out!

-the Centaur

Hashtag #stormofghosts

Published July 6, 2016 by centaur

Camp Nano 2016 July 5.png

Once again, starting behind on Camp Nano, but I am starting to get a little traction on the story, thanks to a lot of help from my friends. Of course, the most important thing is taking this week off for vacation, so I’m cutting myself a little slack here - but I plan to take one full day to just get caught up on writing. Hopefully soon. But at least tonight I solved two major problems in the story - how the climax works out, and how and why a couple characters that seemed to get dropped from the story can come back with a vengeance. Onward, fellow adventurers!

-the Centaur

P.S. Upon uploading this, I noticed I made a mistake - I counted writing done yesterday the 5th as being today the 6th (it’s just after midnight). The role of posting about Nanowrimo is to reinforce the purpose of National Novel Writing Month - to provide a public benchmark for your private achievement. Many people are runners, but a marathon provides a specific, external, timed goal at which you have to participate to succeed — and at which you fail if you don’t go the distance that everyone else is at the time everyone else is. My buddy Nathan Vargas worries that this can create a failure mentality, and I agree at that; many people don’t need to be exposed to the possibility of failure, but instead encouraged to success. But as my buddy David Cater knows, a marathon can push you to do things that you never would otherwise - and Nanowrimo can do the same. But that external accountability only works if you externalize it - and that’s why I sign up for Camp Nanowrimo, and why I post my writing goals here. I want to write more than 150,000 words a year - and I rely on all of you to help me do it. Onward!

Camp Nano July 2016: PHANTOM SILVER

Published July 2, 2016 by centaur

Phantom Silver v2 Small.png

National Novel Writing Month is November, but the Camp version - Camp Nanowrimo - has rolled around yet again, and I am returning to finish the final part of PHANTOM SILVER, which will be Dakota Frost Book 5. For my own entertainment, I put together the above cover, which will NOT be the cover of the final book - but it’s teaching me more about cover design.

http://campnanowrimo.org/campers/xenotaur/novels/phantom-silver-273805

Magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost just wants to raise her adopted children in peace, but when a routine film shoot at a haunted house awakens a real ghost and an ancient curse, she finds herself in a race to prevent the devious phantom from hurting her family ... if the curse hidden in the family silver doesn't kill her first.

Sounds exciting! What’s more exciting to me is that after a long conversation with the estimable Gayle Schultz, I’ve found a way to resolve the climax which could only appear in a Dakota Frost book - or maybe in a Jim Butcher book if he got on a lot of drugs. Now I have a destination - time to finish the drive.

Onward!

-the Centaur

Clockwork Alchemy Schedule

Published May 27, 2016 by centaur

Ahoy, fellow adventurers, if you’re interested in tales from a traveler who’s voyaged far and wide across the sea of unending stories, yet somehow returned to the shores we know, you can come listen to me talk at Clockwork Alchemy this year - I’m on four panels!

Saturday

4PM: Overcoming Writer's Block
Scheduled Presentation Time: Saturday 4pm - 4:50pm
Location: Author's Salon (Monterey Room)

Sunday

10AM: Writing Victorian Sci-Fi
Scheduled Presentation Time: Sunday 10am - 10:50am
Location: Author's Salon (Monterey Room)

12 Noon: The Science of Airships
Scheduled Presentation Time: Sunday Noon - 12:50pm
Location: The Academy (San Martin Room)

2PM: Organizing an Anthology
Scheduled Presentation Time: Sunday 2pm-2:50pm
Location: Author's Salon (Monterey Room)

I’ve given the "Science of Airships" before, and have done panels similar to “Writing Victorian Sci-Fi” and “Organizing an Anthology”, but “Overcoming Writer’s Block” I’ve not presented before to a public audience, so it should be interesting!

Come check it out!

-the Centaur

Finnegan’s Firewall Flashcard

Published May 19, 2016 by centaur

Wow, something awesome just happened. Our publishing company, Thinking Ink Press, independently invented the idea of a postcard short - a flash fiction story on a postcard - and a new one has just been published which really ups the ante in the genre with its postmodern take on a postmodern book, illustrated with a mashup of The Book of Kells and a Nook!

Finnegan's Firewall: Awesome art by my wife Sandi Billingsley, great design by Keiko O'Leary, cool story by David Colby, all in a postcard! Right now you need to get this in person from Thinking Ink, but we’re working on making it possible for you to check it out!

-the Centaur

Viiictory the Fourteenth

Published April 30, 2016 by centaur

Viiictory! I successfully completed Nanowrimo for the fourteenth time - adding 50,000 words to PHANTOM SILVER, Dakota Frost #5. And, by working hard, I did it!

Camp Nano 2016-04-30a.png

Because of work, life, and other writing, I got behind early this month, and had to press hard to really make it. But I successfully got it off my plate one day early. Because Nano’s site counts words differently than Microsoft Word, I had to push a bit past my Word word count, and so saw something I rarely see on this graph: a negative velocity debt, meaning I could write backwards and still end up finishing the count (at least the Word count) exactly on time.

Camp Nano 2016-04-30b.png

For a bit late in the month, especially around the 26th, it was as bad as I’ve ever gotten it: 6000+ words behind only 5 days from the end of the month. But somehow I managed to pull it out, setting a couple of daily records on writing … though I never even came close to my absolute max writing rate of 7,000 words a day.

Camp Nano 2016-04-30c.png

Strangely, even though Camp Nano doesn’t have November’s holidays, it still works out that most of the writing gets done near the end of the month. Go figure.

Camp Nano 2016-04-30d.png

Alright, late, tired, going to bed, more commentary later.

-the Centaur

Life is More Important

Published April 29, 2016 by centaur

So after catching up for a while on Camp Nano, I fell behind again … because I and my wife traveled back to Greenville, South Carolina to assist my mother’s rehab from knee surgery, and frankly that’ more important than any amount of word count. The good news is, she’s doing very well, and came home from the hospital yesterday … the even better news is, that my wife and my mom patched it up after eight years of not speaking to each other, a feat which I didn’t think was even possible. What a wonderful trip!

Camp Nano 2016-04-29a.png

I lost my momentum the moment I hopped on that plane, and after that it was tough to get it back when I was caring for Mom - you can see the dent in the schedule around the 20th - and getting back on track after that required a full court press. But, in the past several days, I was able to do just that, and managed to pump out 2000+ words on all of the past five days, and double that on three of those. As of tonight, I am caught up.

Camp Nano 2016-04-29b.png

As for now, there’s two days left, which I could tackle at a normal pace—though I’ll likely try to finish by Friday so that I can chill out on Saturday and have a nice relaxing weekend.

Wish me luck.

-the Centaur

Reality intervenes, but …

Published April 26, 2016 by centaur

Camp Nano 2016-04-26.png

… we may still pull it out. We’ve been in worse scrapes ...

Camp Nano 2016-04-26vs.png

Er … well, no we haven’t, but it’s still clearly possible. More news in a bit.

-the Centaur

Now it’s starting to feel possible again …

Published April 20, 2016 by centaur

Camp Nano 2016-04-19b.png

I was literally dreaming all night about the chapter I wrote today - I got up several times with tears in my eyes, as one of Dakota’s enemies unexpectedly turned into one of her strongest allies. Fascinating what a fictional world can do to you. But the upshot is, I got 4,000 words done for two days in a row … and have a clear path for what I need to write tomorrow.

Camp Nano 2016-04-19a.png

We may win this one yet! Assuming I survive this weekend’s craziness! Which I can’t tell you about, but … aaaa!

-the Centaur

Now that’s what I’m talking about …

Published April 19, 2016 by centaur

Camp Nano 2016-04-18c.png

4200 words today! Keep that up for 3 more days, I’ll be more or less back on track.

And then I’ll still have 18,000 words left to write this month. AAAAA!

Onward!

-the Centaur

Briefly …

Published April 18, 2016 by centaur

Camp Nano 2016-04-18a.png

Is the novel back on track? NO. But am I up to speed? YES.

Of course, I know I’ll lose more days, so really, to finish, I’m going to need to do even more than the—hork!—2750 words per day that my spreadsheet predicts I’ll need to do to get back on track.

But I’ve gotten a much better groove, the story is starting to dovetail nicely, and some sections which felt out of place have, after a few moves, found a nice home in the story.

Camp Nano 2016-04-18b.png

The rocket is taking off, but there’s a long climb ahead.

Back to it.

-the Centaur

The good news and the bad news

Published April 17, 2016 by centaur

The good news is I wrote ~2800 words yesterday, more than I needed. The bad news is I wrote 900 of those words by hand in my notebook (so as to not disturb the other diners in the dark and quiet restaurant with the typing coming from my glowing laptop), and took most of this afternoon’s writing session to get them all typed in. Argh! Still, I’m happy with the results ...

“So,” Avenix said. “We have begun to seek out, in all our holdings, other threats—”

I raised my hand. “Hang on,” I said. Filling in the blanks, this ghost had to have been a fae hunter; that’s why they called me. But Avenix wasn’t saying that outright: he seemed to be feeding me my own lines. “You feared a threat to your realm … started a search for dangerous use of magic … then called me to deal with the problem. Did I get that right?”

“Well … yes,” Avenix said.

“Don’t lie to me!” I said, slapping my hand on the table. “What’s your real goal?”

“I am not lying to you,” Avenix said.

“Why would he lie to you?” Nyissa asked. “It’s a reasonable course of action—”

“Are you all insane?” I said. “Do you have no memories? Ten years ago—ten months ago—you’d have all been tearing each other apart, lashing out at everyone in sight, blaming anyone you could get your hands on to deal with your problems. You’d have been at war with Sidhain just because this happened on her doorstep—”

“Not likely,” Avenix said, shuddering.

“Save it! She has a real bad attitude,” I said, “but she’s pretty damn inoffensive for an alleged apocalyptic horror, and I’ve seen you in action against witchhunters! You can’t expect me to believe you’re all playing nice just because I came along!

Sounds like Dakota and Avenix are going to have it out. Onward!

-the Centaur