Blog Archives
Where I’ve Been
Like Jim Anchower, it’s been a while since I rapped at ya. There are various reasons for this, not least being the attempt to pull off a NaNoWriMo in July. Several friends joined me, which was cool, although attrition is beginning to take its toll. I’m working on the sequel to The Curse of Troius right now, and I’m over 23k words into it. I’m having fun and liking it, and 50k written (or more) in July will go a long way towards getting me to finish. It’s tentatively entitled The Siege of Anticus, although I’ve been toying with Northreach Besieged lately. We’ll see. I hate trying to make titles for things.
Writing Slumps
God, I hate getting into a writing slump. Some days, writing is the easiest thing in the world, you already have the sentences you want to write fully-formed in your mind and they just flow in the natural course of writing. Other days, everything you write sounds like the most godawful piece of shit string of random characters that have ever been put into a sentence. Today is one of the later for me. Everything I write looks and sounds like shit, doesn’t convey what I mean, is utterly lifeless and boring. I am doubting not only what I am writing now, but everything I have ever written. God I hate days like this.
The Curse of Troius: A Zombie Fantasy Novel
That’s my book! Buy it on Amazon, CreateSpace, or other online retailers! Join the Facebook page for excerpts and other news! Woot!
Five Things for Monday, May 10th
1. My novel is now on sale at Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s website, even a couple of Indian websites and a couple of Asian ones. Crazy. Before I did it, I said I’d be pleased if I sold a dozen copies. I’ve sold 15, so I am now officially happy. I’ve set up a Facebook page for it and already have over 40 fans, a couple of whom I don’t know and never met. It’s cool. I was afraid to set one up, feeling like the world’s biggest narcissist, but Lady Aravan had a good point: I want to write for a living, and I need to promote the thing as best I can. She’s right. Now I just need to stop checking the page incessantly.
Holding Your Novel
I got the proofing copy of my novel in the mail yesterday. Holding your own book in your hands for the first time is surreal. So is flipping it open and looking at words that you vaguely remember writing, but still feel alien and strange. Some of it seemed like it was written by someone else – I literally cannot remember writing those words, even though I know exactly the scene it represented. Flipping it open to a random page, I would see phrases that chunked like a frozen brick on a sidewalk, while others that sounded almost literary.
Five Things for Friday, March 26th
1. I’ve been reading a lot about the idea that this health care reform bill is going to cost the Democrats a lot in November’s elections. The Republicans are planning on pushing the idea of repeal as a cornerstone of their election plank. The problem I see with that approach is the idea that health reform is going to be on the minds of the public in seven months. I think that overestimates the attention span of the American electorate by about six-and-a-half months at least.
Five Things for Thursday, March 4th
1. I noticed today how rare it is to make eye contact with a cashier, other than initial approach, and even then both parties are usually distracted. I tried to make an effort to keep eye contact unless it was necessary to break it, since I thought the cashier lady would appreciate being acknowledged as a human being. Instead, she looked back at me with increasingly odd expressions. I don’t think cashiers are used to having their customers look at them much, so when they do, the cashier thinks it odd. I’ll have to try it a few more times.
Winter in Derenemyn 