I’m working through a fist round edit of The Erasable Man and it’s going somewhat slowly. Of course, going slowly is better than not going at all. My editing rate is about five pages a session give or take a little and I’m sitting at page nine out twenty three in the printed manuscript. At this rate it will probably take me into next week sometime to actually finish the editing and then a little longer to get through a release process. I’m still not sure what the best approach on that is. I’m considering setting up a completely new domain for it or maybe a sub-domain off this one. That might work out better just not quite sure yet. Anyhow, I’ll keep posting updates here until I get The Erasable Man live somewhere.
So Much for That Title – The Erasable Man
Looks like I’ve gone through two different potential titles for this story. For the moment, The Forgotten Man is actually titled The Erasable Man and coming along slowly. I’ve penned about 2700 words that I’ll need to clean up. There is a nice starting cast of characters to work with; two in particular who I think are going to turn out to be interesting, Zachary Artemas and Sheridan Xidorn. There will probably be some character sketching posted here when I get around to it. Zachary could have enough depth to turn into a recurring character of sorts and Sheridan will very likely be a touch of a bane to him. Of course, I’ll actually need to finish this tale before I start planning too much around it.
Another Short Story – The Forgotten Man
I was digging around in some of my old files the other day and came across an old StarOffice file that I threw together several years back. At the time I wrote it, I was exploring the idea of how a person, removed from the memory of man, might be able to communicate with the rest of the world. The main character existed in a state where one looking for evidence of his existence would be either unable to recognize it or would subconsciously avoid it. If you’ve read That Which is Nameless you will notice the parallels between the two themes. Unfortunately for the character in my short story, he did not have all the advantages given by the Book nor some of the nastier problems.
This story will likely turn into my next little side project. I wrote that story a long time ago and it will need a complete rewrite to turn it into something worth reading. The file in question was about 890 words long and missing a good chunk of the needed framing for the story. If all goes well, I should be looking for some beta readers in a few weeks or so. Wish me luck!
Scare-Us Shirt!
For any who are interested, here’s a shot of me wearing my Scare-Us event shirt!
I’ll have to get a better shot latter, looks like this one blurred a bit. I’ll also have to get a shot with the book I won when it shows up 😉
That Which is Nameless Free!
For any who are interested: That Which is Nameless is free through the 5th! I just finished the most recent editing run through and had a few days left in this KDP registration period. Sine it restarts on the 6th and I hadn’t burned the 5 free promotion days, I thought I’d give any readers out there a shot at getting the book free! I only ask that you comment here or post a review when you do get around to reading it!
UPDATE:Tomorrow is the last day for you to get a copy of That Which is Nameless for free!
UPDATE 2:That’s it folks! If you haven’t picked up a copy of That Which is Nameless by now, you’ll have to pay for it. Thanks to all and be sure to post a review or make a comment!
Just Finished Reading – The Killing League
The Killing League by Dani Amore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The first thing that I noticed about reading this was that percentage counter at the bottom of my kindle display was keeping up with the chapter numbers. Dani used extremely short chapters as a means of quickly bouncing around her cast of characters, giving the book a very fast paced feel. I started out not sure how well this would work in the story and wound up finding that it worked out quite well. With the number of characters in the story, the quickly switching point of view keeps things moving.
There is a degree of graphic violence in the story. Of course, if you’re reading a story titled The Killing League you should really expect quite a bit of violence. Again, it’s not overdone anymore than your average action movie.
Overall, I’d say this is a pretty good read.
Scare Us – Aftermath
After everything is said and done, all the bodies cleaned up, the blood and gore washed away, and the numbers tallied, it looks like I made a dent in the Scare Us event over on Litreactor. It would seem that they gave prizes to the reviewers and I got tagged as having spent a large amount of time reading/reviewing during the event. I have to say that it was a fun experience, kind of like the first time that I ran through NanoWrimo, which I’m planing on giving another shot this year, and I finished a rather neat little story too. Now the question is, what do I do with it?
An update on That Which is Nameless: I just finished a new read through and, once again, have another hundred edits or so to go through. If all goes well, that will take me a week or so to finish, maybe a little less. Once that is finished, I’m sending it back to the editor for one more read through. That may take a little time, so I’ll probably be getting back to work on The Empty. Maybe I can get the ball rolling again on that. I may rework what I’ve already written to get a better feel/flow to it. I have a feeling that the story is a touch disjointed and, in some of my other attempts at writing, a rewrite from the start sometimes help get things going again.
I also have a few idea’s floating around for some new, lighter weight projects which might keep the creative juices flowing a little more smoothly. The idea of an episodic piece or set of pieces is appealing. To pull it off, I’ll need to find a syndication channel and get a regular schedule of releases going. That means working out a process and putting together a “team” and buffer queue (A few pre-written episodes) of sorts. Having a lead of a few episodes would provide some safety if I can’t get one finished soon enough for a scheduled release. I’ll have to see how that goes . . .
Scare Us
I’ve been reading through entries to the Scare Us event over on Lit Reactor and come to a conclusion: it is insanely difficult if not impossible to come up with a truly original idea. Any creative is colored by the things that they have seen, experienced, read, or etc. As a result, there are recurring themes that permeate any given
genre of art that eventually become obvious. The stories are different, have different characters, different settings, and different plots and yet are all similar.
It’s like seeing different mixes of the same ingredients or ratios of colors. They all start with a similar set of base elements—maybe the author picked up a certain distaste for insects, perhaps they watched one too many old Star Trek episode, or maybe they’ve read a little too much Lovecraft lately—and mix them up with just slightly different spices. Not that there is anything wrong with that; it’s just frustrating when you want to see something different and suddenly find yourself remembering a monster or character from some other story. The wider read you are, the more likely it is that you will be reading something and suddenly realize that it fits this formula or it’s a monster like that. Then you find yourself judging the present work in light of what you remember about the other one.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that readers are colored by their own experiences more than authors. I can tell you, from personal experience, that I’ve had what looked like a wonderfully unique idea, as a writer, only to discover that someone came up with it fifty years ago. Of course, a good deal of what I like to read is at least that old. ( Ahh the joy’s of a good space opera! I may have to write something in that venue . . .)
So much for that rant! Now if I can only get back to my current projects . . . . ARGH!
SPAM! SPAM! SPAM! and more SPAM!
I had attempted to avoid using something like Akismet for a relatively long time. Unfortunately, the number of spam comments appearing in my list of comments to moderate has been steadily increasing over the last month or so. Someone has decided that this blog makes a decent a place to fake out Google. That is not kosher in any way shape or form.
To get around having four or five spam comments to nuke on a daily basis, I decided to give the Akismet plugin a shot. So far, it appears to be working quite well! No false positives, at least that I’ve seen, and no spam comments to moderate even though the stream of spam has not abated. Wow! The plugin also provides some stat’s to give you an idea of how it’s doing.
With that, I have one less maintenance task to deal with! Maybe I can get some actual writing done!
Writing on Paper
I concluded this weekend that I need to get a little notebook to carry with me. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been realizing more and more that there are times, the throughout the day, where I find myself wanting to write, but not having the tools at hand. Even if I were to move my work to a more web-centric platform (Say Google Docs or the like) I’d find that I don’t always have a computer near at hand. For that matter, I’m not sure I’d want to write on every computer that I do have at hand. So, I picked up a small, college-ruled, notebook over the weekend, at Office Depot.
In theory, having the notebook at hand should allow me to write when I feel like writing rather than when I have the computer at hand. When I do get back to my computer, I’ll be able to copy what I’ve written or flesh out what I’ve noted and, perhaps, work on from there. It builds a partial rewrite into the middle of my writing process as well as giving me a means to restart the flow when I’ve walked away for a while. At least, that’s the theory that I’m holding to right now. We’ll see how long it holds up!
If you’re a member over on LitReactor, go give my entry A Thousand Cuts a read. There’s not much time left in the event so hurry! Also, give 0000911 a shot as well. A friend of mine, who has been very gracious in assiting with my own work, wrote it. His work has a unique character to it that keeps you reading. Give it a shot!
Update: I just rewrote my halting attempt at the the 5th chapter of The Empty! It would seem that this approach is yielding some fruit.
