What have I been doing for like the past six months? you ask.

Let me tell you:

TAKING CARE OF A BRAND NEW BABY, that's what.

This, folks, is baby B. Back in late August my incredible wife had a very short but intense labor, totally rocked it, and little B is the result.

In December my wife went back to work, and I've been doing the stay-at-home-dad thing while also trying to write full time. It has been an interesting process (one worthy of another blog post entirely), but I'm happy to say that things are going wonderfully on both fronts (baby and writing). And it looks like blogging may finally be working its way back into my regimen as well :-).

I've included a picture montage of the past six months for you. Enjoy (because, seriously, my child is freaking adorable).

Things started out a bit slow.

Sleep was the general order of the day.

But soon B's curiosity took over.

She's become a wide-eyed observer of the universe
(and totes has FOMO--if she knows Raych and I are doing
 something and she isn't part of it, she definitely lets us know).

Her personality has begun to emerge, and let me tell you--she's an absolute card.

We've explored the outside world together (and sometimes she wasn't that impressed tbh).

She experienced her first Christmas. (Also pictured: her amazing, gorgeous mother.)

Alaskan blood runs strong in her veins.

She owns a pair of mighty fine kicks (probably a few dozen pairs, actually).

And when she isn't wearing her mighty fine kicks, one of her recent hobbies includes chomping on her own toes.

She got her first haircut just last week and had a ball.

We're pals, she and I.

And she's pretty much had me wrapped around her finger from day one.

So yeah. That's why I haven't blogged for the past six months. Pretty great excuse, if you ask me.

Wretched Queen

Some of you may have noticed that the progress bar for "Wretched Queen 1.1" reached 100% last week.  That's right!  Draft 1 is finally complete.  This has been an interesting project to work on.  The story, in a nutshell, plays with the tropes we all know and love about Dark Lords (aka Evil Overlords, aka Big Bads, etc)--in this case, an Evil Queen.  This idea first came to me some time in 2008, during which I wrote what I thought was backstory for the piece.  As I've written this first draft, however, that back story has sort of wormed its way through the main narrative.  I'm preliminarily pleased with the results.

Why am I working on a short story (a novelette, actually) when I've got an entire novel burning a hole in my hard drive, just waiting to be revised?  The Writers of the Future contest, that's why.

WOTF is great.  If you can win that contest, you've got a pretty good "in" as far as the publishing industry is concerned.  Problem is, the contest is uber-competitive.  Which is why I plan on submitting a story every quarter of the contest until I win or they tell me to stop*.  We'll see which happens first.

Anyway.  I was talking about "Wretched Queen," right?  Here are some brief facts about the story:

Title:  "Wretched Queen"
Total Word Count:  11,688
Total (manuscript) Page Count:  56
Sections: 7
Viewpoint Characters: 2 major, 1 minor
File Size:  74 KB
Start Date:  I think it was March of 2008 when I started brainstorming and planning the idea, and drafting out the "backstory."  I returned to the idea for WOTF in mid October of 2012
End Date:  16 Nov 2012

Now, of course, this is just a first draft.  I'm planning on doing a major first revision starting tomorrow, and taking care of some of the major glitches in the story.  From there, I'll give the story to some first readers and see what they think, make more changes after that, and so forth until I submit the story--hopefully by the end of December to get it in to the contest in time for Q1 of 2013.

And there are, indeed, some major issues I think may need fixing.  The amount of viewpoint characters, for one, may be a bit too much for a novelette.  I also play with a number of things as far as form is concerned (tense, person, etc.), and I'm not quite sure whether I pull that off or not.  But, that's what revision and readers are for!  So, without further ado, that's what I'll be jumping into in the next couple weeks.

Wish me luck.


*  Now, I may not submit for the second and third quarters of next year (however long it takes me to finish BTD 2.0).  While the contest is important to me and a good way to "break in," even if I do happen to win, that doesn't do me much good unless I have a novel waiting in the wings and ready to go.  But, once that's taken care of, I plan on submitting essentially every quarter.

New Look

Just because.  I think the lighter tone suits the site well, don't you?

ups and downs

Some of you may still be curious about a certain post that I slipped in a week or so ago, discussing some changes. Others may have noticed that the progress bar for my YA Novel project has been suspiciously stagnant recently (and that it has now been reset to zero).  And it is obvious that I haven't been as consistent at getting posts up in the past week as I have been in the past two months.

Yeah. Well, all that can be traced back to one initial fact:

Writing is hard.

Seriously. It can be really hard sometimes. I'm looking back at my original novel, The Rising, and I'm wondering HOW I DID THAT. I mean, really. That thing is huge. And even though most of it sucks, there are some okay parts in there. And I wrote them. So that is good, right? I did all that.  Its something to be proud of, and I'll be honest, I feel pretty fabulous about it.

But, now that I'm trying to do it again, I'm having a hard time of it.

A lot of the difficulty, I think, comes with beginnings in general. The more I write, the more I realize that (at least for me) the hardest part is almost always just getting started--getting the beginning down on paper (or on the hard drive) and then going on from there. When I think back on TR, I sometimes forget how hard the beginning was in lieu of how easily the rest of the thing seemed to flow (which is not to say that the project itself was easy, because I don't think it was, or even that words easily came to my mind to write down every day, because they didn't). But the point is that the beginning of TR was difficult as well. It took me about the same time to write the first fifty pages as it did for me to write the last half of the book. So I'm no stranger to difficult beginnings.  I just think that those difficulties just get lost in the euphoria of what went well--a selective memory as it were.  And, now that I'm trying to get through another project, I'm having a really difficult time of it because I'm only remembering the good parts of my latest writing experience, and none of the bad parts.

Which brings me to my current project.  ORIGINALLY it was supposed to be an experiment in the urban fantasy genre, with "young adults" as the intended audience.  Well . . . to put a long story into a short container, I think that that particular idea just lost its momentum in the past three months.  And, honestly, I'm okay with that.  I think it was a necessary casualty in finishing TR*.  Which is sad in a way, I do think it is a pretty good idea with some potential, but I've concluded that now just isn't the time to write it.

So I've moved on to something else.

It is another YA Novel, of course.  But instead of an urban fantasy, its more of a "straight-up" fantasy.  It takes place in its own world, with its own rules and religions and geographies and peoples and so forth.

Basically, its about heroes.  And prophecies.  And the expectations of the public for said heroes because of said prophecies, and what happens when those expectations aren't fulfilled.  There's also an elitist school, monsters, a quest or two, some really mean kids, and much more.

Thats the basic premise.  And, in case you haven't caught on, that's the big change I was talking about in this post.  (If you're not a writer it may not seem like much of a change, but if you are then perhaps you know how drastic changing ideas mid-project can be.)  And, to be quite honest, I'm much more excited about this idea than I am about the previous one.  The previous one is good, like I said, I do think it has potential, but it just wasn't cutting it right now.  This new idea, I think, will (cut it, that is).

So, what does this mean for my own personal NaNoWriMo that I was so excited about a few weeks ago?  Well, it does mean that there is really no way I'll be able to have my NEW YA NOVEL PROJECT done by the end of July.  Really, there's just no way.

But, starting on Monday**, I'm (hopefully) going to get heavily into the New YA Novel Project.  My hope is to re-start my NaNoWriMo goal, and ideally be finished with the first draft of this project by around this time next month.  I think I just need to press through these beginning parts, do my best and hopefully gain enough momentum to start propelling me the rest of the way.  I really think that this (beginnings) is one of the most difficult things for me when it comes to writing.  I'm always so picky about what I want that I'm never satisfied with what I produce at the start of a project--and unless I push myself onward, I get stuck on those first few chapters, or even paragraphs, for days (or, when its really bad, for weeks).

So, thats whats been happening with my writing lately.  I've been in a bit of a funk, and it hasn't helped that my writing time has been severely diminished in the past few weeks (not necessarily a bad thing, but when it seems to happen too consistently it gets frustrating).  But I'm going to get back into it now.  I'm motivated, I can do it.  I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.


*  For those of you who don't know, I wrote the first two or three chapters of the ORIGINAL YA NOVEL PROJECT back in April sometime, right in the middle of when I was writing TR--then I set it aside and didn't touch it, thinking I would come back to it later this summer.  Well, I did, and things just didn't work out.


**  I've already done a great deal of world-building and character exploration for the new project, as well as something sort of like a first chapter.  But, starting Monday, my plan is to take a serious dive into it, and hopefully not re-emerge until I'm through the "beginning blues" I've been suffering.

on beginnings, and my own personal NaNoWriMo

So I'm back to work on my YA (young adult) novel--a project I started briefly in April on a whim, and then set it aside, as most of my time and energy was going into finishing The Rising.  I wanted to flesh the idea out enough that I wouldn't forget it, but put it aside to resume work on TR.

Things are going well.  I already had about 2.5k words done, and now I'm working on pushing that up, slow and steady.  At my high points while working on TR, I was writing 4-5k words/day.  I would love to get back into a groove like that with this YA project (as yet untitled), but I've forgotten one thing . . .

How FREAKING HARD BEGINNINGS ARE.

For the most part, I'm a discovery writer.  That means that, although I'll do some world-building and some very vague and sparse outlining, I really just start with an idea and run with it.  I generally have an idea of where I want things to end up, but more often than not that idea gets blown out of the water by other, bigger, better ideas as I'm writing.  Its a very organic process, and I love it.  But it also makes beginnings very difficult.  I can write a first chapter, no problem, but then I am strongly tempted to go back and revise that chapter, change it, make it better, or whatever.  Sometimes I even completely re-write the first chapter(s).  And then go back again and revise, change it, make it better, whatever.  And then rewrite them again . . .

It can be a very tedious and, more importantly, a futile process.  It doesn't get me anywhere.

So my biggest challenge in starting a new project is to just keep going.  I can't allow myself to go back and worry about whatever crap (and, for the most part, it is usually crap) that I write in the beginning.  I just have to persist and push myself forward until I start getting to the really good stuff (or, at least, the better-than-crap stuff).

Then, when I finish the whole project, I go back and start revisions.  (Anything [almost] can be fixed in post.)

Of course, I could dedicate an entire blog-post to my writing process and quirks--and perhaps I will--but right now I won't.  I just want to let everyone know that I am working on a new novel, and so far its going well.  I'm really excited about the crisis I have to start the thing out, and then, well . . . we'll see where it goes from there.

Also, in order to motivate me to press forward in the process and not worry too much about what I've already done (and, probably, screwed up), I'm declaring the month of July my own personal NaNoWriMo.  NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month.  Its a challenge and/or contest held in November, where writers all over the US attempt to write (the first draft of) an entire novel in one month (here's the official website).  50,000 words is the general word count consensus, which aligns quite nicely with the word count goal I have for my YA project.

So . . . I'm taking the challenge!  50,000 words in a month!

Think I can do it?  Thats quite a few words to write in one month, if you aren't aware.  About 1.6k words/day (although I'm planning on writing only 5-6 days a week, so it closer to 2k/day for me).  Nothing I can't do, as I've demonstrated with TR, but I just have to get into the groove.

So here goes NaNoWriMo, July edition.  Wish me luck.

Every New Beginning . . .

. . . comes from some other beginning's end.

And thus I finish my first novel.  Ever.  And simultaneously begin my first real blog.

OK, technically I finished the novel last week, but I took some time off.  Sue me.  And I'll talk about this blog and its purposes more later.  For now, the novel.

Was it surreal, you ask?  Yes.  Invigorating?  Absolutely.  Motivational?  Indeed.  Everything I dreamed it would be and more?

Not exactly.  But it will do.

I've spent 3-6 hours/day of the past 6 months working on this thing, writing every weekday and as often as I can on weekends.  I don't do mathy things, but thats a lot of hours.  And as much as I absolutely loved it, I admit that sometimes it was like wrestling greased-up giant eels.  That are poisonous.  And swim in burning lava.  In other words, it was difficult and sometimes painful.  And just motivating myself to DO it was a task in and of itself--setting deadlines and goals for yourself can be tough stuff when there's no one but yourself to enforce them.

But it was worth it.  I've heard a lot of writers, both published and unpublished, say that the first novel is inevitably a "practice novel"--something in which they begin to realize how to enhance their skills as writers and storytellers, but that usually ends up being quite unpublishable.  This novel may very well be that for me.  But even if it does turn out to be my "practice novel" and no one even sneezes in my direction because of it, I'll be OK with that.  I learned a whole heap writing this thing.  I learned some of the best ways for me to motivate myself.  I learned a lot about what works and doesn't work for me in preparing to write a novel, and then actually writing it.  I got to know some really intriguing, mysterious, dangerous, heartbreaking characters--many of whom revealed sides of themselves to me that I never saw coming when I started this thing.  Loved that.  And the experience taught me that I can DO this.  I can write novels.

Of course, there is a small percentage of authors who DO publish their first novel.  Depending on how revisions go with this thing, I'd like to think that there's a chance (however small) that I could be one of those guys.  Chances are, five years from now I'll look back at this post and shake my head at my own naive ambition.  But there is also a chance (however tiny) that I'll marvel at my foresight and ambition, too.

Of course, as amazing as I think this novel is, it is also a rotten chunk of excrement.  Here's my doublethink:  for the most part, this novel is ROUGH.  There are whole scenes missing.  A few chapters, even.  I changed things later on in the text that I haven't bothered to go back and change in earlier parts yet.  There is even a character or two who I decided I didn't need, so partway through the novel they literally cease to exist.  And some of the writing is atrocious.  I know six-year olds who could do better.  That's just how this draft went.  And for those of you saying "hey that would make a great postmodern novel," shut up.  You're wrong.

All that being said, I think this novel has a LOT of potential.  And that's why I think its amazing.  There are some OK parts in it right now, to begin with.  But I see so much more in it.  If I can get some of those things to emerge in revisions, I'll be quite blissed out.  I don't know if that will be possible, but I'll give it a try.

Lets see some stats.

Some Stats:
Total Word Count:  184,654 words
Total Manuscript Pages:  877
Chapters:  58, not including Prologue and Epilogue
Viewpoint Characters:  3 major, 5 minor
File Size:  3.3 MB
Start Date:  4 January 2010
End Date:  4 June 2010

Yikes.  If you're at all familiar with MS formatting and how it vaguely converts to real bookly pages, you might now be wondering what on earth I'm thinking.  185,000 words.  That's a lot of words.  And I admit, the length in and of itself may make the thing unpublishable as a first novel.  Perhaps some of that will come out in revisions.  But, honestly, it could just as easily inflate itself even further.  So we'll see how that roles out.

And, finally, you may be wondering what its about.  Well.  I think I'll try to post some of my pitch ideas in the future (one-sentence, one-paragraph, and two paragraph pitches all to come--I know the following would never do as a pitch, so don't hate on me, I'm just giving a taste), but for now I'll just tell you that its a fantasy novel, on the darker side of fantasy I would say.  Its about a man who lost his memory.  Its about a woman whose new husband left her on their wedding night and doesn't know why. Its about a priestess whose sister and best friend--and eventually her entire family--is accused of heresy.  Its about a little girl who is hundreds of years old.  Its about finding truth and recognizing when its not worth finding.  Its about changing.  Its about recognizing one's own strengths and weaknesses and trying to figure out how to deal with each of them, especially when they happen to be the same thing.  And its about understanding how minute one life can be in the face of history and future.

Or, at least, I like to think its about all those things.  The more likely scenario is that its about a bunch of flat characters who travel to boring places and fight really awkwardly with other people whose motivations don't make sense.  And most of them have really weird-sounding names.

But I'll admit, I'm proud of those flat characters and their blundering battles with senseless enemies as they try to figure out what they hell they're doing in this ridiculous world in the first place.  Because its mine, and I wrote it.

So . . . there's the rub.  One novel down, a whole lot more to go.