Category: #aSotS

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#aSotS #tIRS On My Writings

Poetry, Books, and New Magic

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Hello everyone!

It’s been a while since the update, and I have a feeling there are a couple of things that you would like to hear about.

A lot has happened since my year in review. As a complete shocker, I haven’t really followed the schedule that I laid out in the review. But, I have been productive nonetheless.

First, I finished writing the rough draft first book in my series, The Inner Ring Saga. It was a long road to get here. But, the sense of accomplishment that comes with writing a nearly six hundred-page novel is pretty incredible. The novel is a little over 151,000 words long. But, I will be adding about eight or nine viewpoint chapters and a new character in the second draft. There’s a lot of work to go in the book, but it’s one step closer to being finished.

This is the rough draft printed out in its entirety. A lot of editing to come!

Since I finished writing the rough draft, I’ve decided to let it sit and rest for a bit. I’ve worked hard on that book for nearly five years and I need to be away from the story for a little bit. I’m in no way done with it, but I do need some space before carrying on with the second draft.

So, what am I doing in the meantime?

Well, a couple of things.

First, I started outlining a new fantasy book in a separate universe from The Inner Ring Saga. This world is very unique and has some interesting dynamics that will be fun to play with. This book I’m outlining is the first in a trilogy (and it will stay a trilogy because I can’t write another seven-book series. It’s not viable for publishing). The story is like The Witcher meets Sherlock Holmes and the main character has just come out of the world’s school for magic. Speaking of magic, the magic is based entirely on the mind. There are several different types of magic (which you’ll have to read the book to find out) but they’re all different aspects of how the mind operates. It’s set in a pre-Victorian era style world which is a setting I’ve always found super cool. As far as the actual outlining is going, it’s gone rather slow. Which I’m totally okay with, I don’t want to get burned out again.

Second, you may have noticed I have been posting some poems here on my website and on my Instagram account (which you can follow here). I’m trying to branch out a bit in my writing style, and poetry and short stories are giving me a new style to take a break from the longer fantasy novels I have typically been writing. Right now I’m working on writing a short story and poem collection called Seasons. Each part of the book will be centered around Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. I want there to be at least one short story and four or five poems for each part. It’s a super fun project to work on. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it when I’m finished. I don’t want to publish it traditionally, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to self-publish it either. We’ll have to see what happens. First I’ve got to finish it.

I hope to start posting more to the blog here, but I can’t really make promises. To keep up to date, the best bet is to follow me on Instagram. I’ve been more consistent with posting there than anywhere else.

As for what I’ve been reading lately, I haven’t been reading as much as I’d like. School has taken a pretty decent chunk of that time. But, I did start reading the Stormlight Archive and the Green Bone Saga, both of which have been excellent. Kaladin is quickly becoming a favorite, and the intrigue of what happened in the prologue has me hooked on Stormlight. The Green Bone Saga also has some really interesting character dynamics and the plot being like crime lords warring against each other is pretty awesome.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. Until next time!

Thanks for reading! If you want to get exclusive updates on my writing, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to know about exciting new projects! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below!

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#aSotS #tIRS On My Writings

July 2020 Update On My Projects

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Well, it’s been a couple of months since I updated everyone on the status of my multiple writing projects (subscribers to The Raven get monthly updates). So I figured I’d go ahead and update you guys!

The Site
I’ve got a couple of several part article series in the works. I want to write them in their entirety before I post them just so I can make sure that I’m coherent all the way through them. So be on the lookout for those in the next few months!

The Epic Fantasy Project – #tIRS
I made some decent progress in #tIRS this past couple of months. I’m at about 35-40% of the way through the story with nearly 50k words written in it. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve written so far. I’m not unhappy with it. I know it’s flawed, but it’s a rough draft. What else should I expect? I’m about to be taking a break from writing it for a month or so while I work on one of my other projects, which I’ll talk about below.

The Screenplay
My goal for the fall is to have this entire screenplay written. This is why #tIRS might take the backseat for a month or so, I’ll need to outline the screenplay. I don’t think that it will take as long to write the screenplay once I finish outlining it. I’ll update my progress on outlining on the site and on Twitter (so be sure to give me a follow if you haven’t already).

The Backburner
– Short Story Collection: Still about where I was last time. Not much progress done. Hopefully this fall I’ll knock out a couple of stories in it.
– Science Fiction Project: Needs to be outlined before any work on it is started.

I haven’t been nearly as productive in my writing lately as I’ve wanted to be. I’m hoping to manage my time better this fall and create good consistent time to write. We’ll see what happens!

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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#aSotS #tIRS On My Writings

May 2020 Update On My Projects

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So, it’s been another month. That means a new update on my projects.

Yes, I know. It’s an easy out for an article. But, I’ve been super busy just with life lately, so an easier article was needed. I’m hoping that the next one I publish will be a book review on The Hero of Ages, but don’t quote me on that.

The Epic Fantasy Project – #tIRS

I’ve made a lot of progress here in the last month. I’m now close to reaching 40k words in the rough draft. I’m still only about 30-35%ish threw the story. But, I finally finished writing Chapter Eight (which clocked in 35 pages in length and 7,601 words). Chapter Eight was immensely fun to write, but I have a feeling that it will be edited a lot. But, it was a nice break from my protagonist and now I’m glad to be back with him on his journey. I may have said this before, but Book One is by far the most trope-filled book in the series, but it also has a few scenes that are big implications for the rest of the series. It is definitely going to take a lot more work to finish the rough draft, but I’m feeling confident. I don’t know if the rough draft will actually be finished by the end of the summer, but I’m hopeful it will be.

Short Story Collection

Not much progress here I’m afraid. I haven’t finished outlining the first story yet, nor have I started writing it. But it’s because I’ve been writing a good bit more in #tIRS, which is a good thing.

The Science Fiction Project

Same as the short story collection, not much progress. Which, this story I won’t be putting a lot of effort into until after I finish the first book in #tIRS.

The Screenplay

This is a new one! I’ve had an idea for a screenplay for a movie. I’m sort of in an ideas phase. It’s not outlining yet, but it’s not on the backburner either. I’ve been reading a few books on screenwriting to prep for writing it, and I think it’s gonna be fun! It’s nice to be able to change which medium of writing I’m working on at any given moment. It’s gonna be a fun experiment for sure. The story is one I’m super excited about. I could write it as a book, sure. But, as a film the end of it will be even more gut-wrenching and touching. Before there is speculation on what it is, it’s not a fantasy or science fiction movie. I actually haven’t figured out which genre it fits in, but I will. I just need time to learn the genres.

So overall, it was a fairly productive month. Granted, I still didn’t write as much as I wanted too, but I did write a little more consistently. My goal is to start writing better articles here. I have several that are in mind, but they will take a good while to write.
I want to hear from you guys though! What type of articles would you like to see more? Would you rather me focus on my novels and other projects and not be as worried about the content on this site? I really want this to be a community where you guys feel safe to post questions and such. And please, email me with questions on writing! If I don’t have an answer, I’ll find you one!

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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April 2020 Update on My Projects

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Well, another month has passed by so it’s time for me to give you an update on my projects. You may have noticed that I haven’t titled this article “April 2020 Update on #tIRS” and I did that for a reason. I now am working on two projects at one time. I’m still working on #tIRS, but I’m also working on a short story collection as well.

The Epic Fantasy Project – #tIRS

Not much has happened here I’m afraid. I’ve put in a few words here and there, but I’m still at about 26k words. While I am very proud of what I’ve written so far, however rough it may be, I decided to take a break from it for a couple of weeks. This is because I have passed a major plot point in the book, and I feel I did much better writing the first act of the book this time then I did in my first attempt. My goal is still to finish writing the rough draft by the end of the summer, and I think I will accomplish that goal. But, writing the second act is probably going to go a lot slower as I will need to accomplish a lot not only to set up the climax but to hint at what’s to come in the series. This first draft really is only me putting the story down on paper, but I do want it to be the best it can be that way I don’t have a lot of work to get done. As I write it and come up with more and more ideas, I am beginning to realize that the first book is going to be the shortest in the series by far because the rest of the series will have more viewpoint characters and grow more complicated. I think when I go to outline book two, I’ll need to outline at least books two and three so I can properly foreshadow what’s to happen at the end of book three. After I finish book three, I will probably work on some other projects before finishing off the series.

I think I will say that while my goal is for these to be published books one day, I do not write them solely for the purpose of publishing them. If they get published, awesome! If they don’t, that’s fine. I love writing and this story is one I want to write. So I won’t stop writing #tIRS if I don’t get it published. I will definitely continue writing it.

Short Story Collection

I’m fairly certain that this is the first time that I have mentioned this project in one of my articles. So let me give you guys a brief description of what it is. The book is going to be a collection of short stories. These short stories all have the same two main characters and several recurring characters. The story is set in America in the 1950s. The short stories will all be mysteries and each short story is a different case. The idea spiraled out of me when I began to think about classic detectives such as Sherlock Holmes, Poirot, or Father Brown. All those characters weren’t set in America and none of them were set in modern times or close to modern times. So I’ve been exploring the idea and have come up with some really good stuff. I am still working on outlining the introductory short story which will most likely end up being closer to a novella. But, I have already finished the second short story in the book. My goal is for this to be a good project that I can take quick breaks away from the intensity of #tIRS (it takes a lot of brainpower to keep up with all my characters and places) and write a quick story and then return back to #tIRS. I don’t know when I’ll say that this collection is complete, but there definitely won’t be just one collection.

The Science Fiction Project

This project is going to take the back burner for a while. I might begin outlining it once I finish the rough draft of #aSotS, but I doubt I will even start until I’m completely finished with #aSotS.

I know, that’s quite a lot of projects! I don’t want to give estimates on when I will have them out for you guys to read because I will be submitting #aSotS to agents and publishers first, and from what I read it can take a while to get responses. I hope that it will be sooner rather than later for these projects, but before I start thinking about publication, I need to finish writing them!

I also want to take a moment and thank you guys for reading. I may not have many readers of this blog, but the few of you that do are faithful readers and read almost every article. While the numbers are still few, I am very thankful for all of you guys.

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

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March 2020 Update on Book One in the #tIRS

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I was thinking about it recently, and you blog readers haven’t had an update on my book in a while (I give readers of “The Raven” weekly updates on it though). So, I thought, “Let’s give the readers an update!” So here we go.

The progress is going slow, really slow. I haven’t had a week where I wrote over 5k words in my novel. I am currently sitting at 25k words and am roughly 31% of the way through the story.

But, I will say that it’s not for lack of thought about the story. In fact, I keep having new components and plots pop into my mind, and I’m not sure if five books will be long enough. I hope that isn’t the case and I’ll be able to do it well in five. But, lately I’ve realized that there are a lot of plots and subplots lining up! The first book is going to be pretty basic and set-up major parts of the story. But as we get into the later books in the series, there will be more major characters. The first book will be long (right now I’m guesstimating it will clock out at somewhere around 100k words, but that’s just right now, it could change), but it won’t be as complex. There are only two main characters and two viewpoints, and they are the antagonist and protagonist.

My goal is to finish the book in its entirety by the end of the year. That includes all my editing drafts, getting people to read it and give me feedback. So I need to have the first three drafts done by October at the latest. I think I can hit that, but as my plate fills up, it gets harder to make time to write. Doing one article a week can be a bit much too, in fact I’m considering dialing it down to an article every other week so that I can make more time to write. But, I’m not fully committed to that yet.

A big reason why I think the progress is going so slow is because this is my first big project I’ve undertaken. I’ve written a couple of stories that were not good and that I am not proud of at all, this one is gonna be different though, I can promise you that.

I have already added several, several characters and scenes that I had no idea about when I jumped into this draft. They have all worked out splendidly and I’m pleased with them, but we’ll see if they survive the next few drafts.

Another thing you may be wondering, “Why does he still keep referring to the book under these dumb hashtags? Just tell us the name!” And to that I say, it’s coming, eventually. I don’t want to reveal a name until the book has been accepted by a publisher or until I self publish. I will be submitting the book to publishers first and then if that goes poorly, I will try to do another draft, try again, and then if that fails, I will self-publish the book. So I’ll still have it done before the next book in a couple of well known series have come out.

From my pen to your paper, may our swords never clash.

Thanks for reading! If you want to get updates on when new blog posts come out, subscribe to my newsletter, “The Raven,” and be the first to get updates and exclusive updates on my writings! If you want to contribute to the conversation, please comment below! I will try to respond to all comments!

By clicking submit, you agree to share your email address with the site owner and Mailchimp to receive marketing, updates, and other emails from the site owner. Use the unsubscribe link in those emails to opt out at any time.

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