An Improbable Journey

Yesterday concluded The Fast and the Dead, my first take on zombies. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed writing it, and I think I’m going to enjoy editing it, but now it’s time for something different. I’m pulling the pieces of my next story together.

I have a concept, a character in mind, and a setting. Tomorrow begins the actual writing. So far I’m thinking of something along the lines of Robert Lynn Asprin’s Myth series, only science fiction. Not quite like the Phule’s Company stuff he also did though. The first thing that popped into my head was Space Quest. I’ve always been a huge fan of the old Sierra/Lucasarts adventure games, and Space Quest was such a favorite that I forgave it for not having been able to run some of the later games due to bugs.

I should dust some of those off and replay them…

Another Good Day

I don’t want to jinx anything, but today was another good day. It’s looking like it may be time to get back to game design. This ongoing project of mine won’t be changing at all; I’ll still be writing every single day and getting my work out there on Amazon and likely other eBook formats too. We’ll see what happens.

No details to offer yet. Those’ll come when things pan out, if they pan out. In the meantime, it’ll be more writing tomorrow! Both fiction and resume.

The Price of Demand Edit & The Fast and the Dead

The Price of Demand edit is ongoing; I’ve got outside help assisting so it’ll be a bit longer yet. I have LOTS to fix. I love the story, but there’s a serious price to be paid for writing it as quickly as nanowrimo demands!

The Fast and the Dead is causing me some concern. I could almost literally keep that story going on forever. It’s at over 14,000 words now, which is huge for a short story. I may have to break from it for a bit and figure out a faster way to get them to the ending I have in mind.

The Price of Demand Edit in Progress

Just a quick update tonight. I’ve been working on the editing of The Price of Demand all day. I finished the first draft review on paper, and as suspected, there was an awful lot to fix. I used a LOT of ink crossing stuff out and writing notes!

Since then I’ve been doing the second draft pass in Scrivener, folding in the changes from the first round and doing further edits as I encounter things I missed.

If all goes well I expect to have the third draft complete tomorrow, and at that point I’ll begin converting it into an eBook as well as posting the update to the Draft Stories blog.

And now back to it…

A New Challenge

I’ve decided to take up the challenge of present tense. Ever since I wrote that first post about my brain having difficulties with present-tense works, I’ve been thinking about it a great deal, and so I’m going to go ahead and give a solid attempt at reading the first book in the Spellsong series by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

Maybe I’ll get into it; the concept is a fascinating one, which is why I was drawn to the book in the first place. I expect it’ll be tough going at first, but this past year has all been about challenging myself in various ways, and so far I’ve risen to every challenge, so I’m sure I can manage it.

In other news, my fascination with reddit.com continues to grow. There’s a fantastic community of communities over there, including several for writers that seem really interesting; particularly /r/write. Keep your fingers crossed that things will work out there. There are interesting plans afoot.