Winter Is Coming?

You’d be hard pressed to prove it by the conditions here. Mid-70s today, although the trees are mostly bare, and the nights dip into the 30s. Still seems wrong.

Status

The Wizard’s Cat
My NaNoWriMo ended with 60k new words in this title. It’s a mess right now but I like where it’s going.

New Ishmael
No progress. Been focused on new words. These stories still live rent-free in my head, though. I’m looking forward to clearing away the Cat first.

Tanyth Audio
Yeah. I botched it. Starting the upload process again. Sorry. It’s on me.

What Am I Reading?

I finished Murphy’s Order of the Seer books then went back to read the next Burnell Foreign Sorcerer book, before lighting on Matthew O. Ducan’s Lt. Reilly series. Reilly is an engineer who gets tied up in a lot of unlikely problems and adventures in a post-war universe. Crime syndicates, political intrigue, and some good ole fashion pew-pew. I went through all three in a matter of days and kinda hope there’s another one in the works.

Maybe grab a sample and see what you think.

Last Words

My goal for November was to get my writing under control. I succeeded (mostly) with that. I averaged 2k a day all month and really like the way the new iteration of The Wizard’s Cat is going. It’s been a struggle, which hasn’t been helped by my seeming inability to get my boots on to take my morning walk on anything like a regular basis.

December’s off to a better start (even though this post is a day late). We’ll just have to see how it works out as the month goes on.

Safe voyage.

No Wonder

October was not my finest hour. Or even a good week. Mostly it boiled down to distress over The Wizard’s Cat.

Status

New Ishmael
I haven’t made any progress on getting those three books polished up. It’s been a struggle to get anything done at all.

The Wizard’s Cat
I had about a third of a novel written on this. I chipped away at it, throwing words at the page for days at a time only to get to the point where I realized none of it was working. I closed the file and went back to the drawing board. It took NaNoWriMo to get me off the starting blocks again, but I’ve kept up with it so far. It’s only day 3 so we’ll see how well this goes.

Audio
I need to light a fire on the next two Tanyth audio editions. They’re not available in the stores and it’s all my fault.

Talking On My Morning Walk
I think I walked twice in October. Now it’s November and I haven’t been out yet this month. Perhaps today. It’s still dark here and I don’t know if it’s still raining. Long time listeners will know I have these fallow periods where I don’t get myself moving. They’re usually related to the periods where I’m not very productive. It’s a problem. I’m working on it.

What Am I Reading?

After a couple of the Foreign Sorcerer books, I’m back into litRPG. Andrew Brooks’s Station Core series takes the alien abduction trope and layers it onto GameLit. Our intrepid hero is plucked from his desperate life as an elite gamer and stuffed into an alien construct that looks like a game. It’s an interesting take and unfolds nicely.

It’s been a particularly interesting take for me because I’ve been able to take a mental step back from the actual story to look at the components that make it compelling for me. I’m attracted to the progression, the way the story builds as Milton grows. The way he makes mistakes and overlooks things that come back to bite him. It’s helped remind me of what I like most about Ishmael’s saga. It’s given me some headspace to let new stories seep in.

Maybe grab a sample and see what you think.

Looking Ahead

If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, you already know two significant things happened last month.

The first was my birthday. I turned 69 (nice). The second was that my therapist retired. For the first time in a decade, I’m no longer in therapy. I’m not sure how much those two factors lie at the root of my issues last month but November is off to a marginally better start. I’m keeping up with the NaNoWriMo schedule so far and I like this new take on the Wizard’s Cat story. If I can get my boots on and get out to walk again, things should pick up and even out.

The message I want to leave you with is that even at the best of times – which none of this is – progress isn’t constant. Just like anybody else, there are days or weeks or months when just getting up and taking sustenance seems like a win. October, which is usually my best month, wasn’t that great this year.

Here’s to looking forward to a better month in November. Now all I need to do is actually do it.

Safe voyage.

Fantasy

In 2009, my friend Mur Lafferty challenged me to complete NaNoWriMo in half a month. For the un-initiated, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month and it falls in November each year. To win, write at least 50,000 words of a new extended work of fiction starting at midnight on the morning of November 1 and ending at midnight in the evening of November 30. For most normal purposes, 50,000 words is a rather long novella or a rather short novel, but it’s a handy target and every year thousands of erstwhile novelists from around the globe pit themselves against their keyboards and the clock.

In 2007, I completed the first draft of South Coast in November and had the podcast out by Christmas. In 2008, I failed to break the 2,000 word mark because of day job conflicts–travel, new high-priority projects, etc. In 2009, I accepted Mur’s challenge and the result was the first draft of Ravenwood. The first of what I hope will be a new series of works set in a fantasy setting.

Why fantasy?

2009 was the year of The Challenge with NaNoWriMo. After I accepted the speed challenge from Mur, another friend challenged me to get out of my genre and write a fantasy work while a long time beta reader finally nailed me down to write a female lead character. Little did I know how much of a challenge it would be, or how much fun I’d have working in this new country.

Keeping with my idea of twisting tropes, I approached the Epic Quest Fantasy by first identifying the things I wanted to change. In the typical story, the kid leaves home to seek fame and fortune (or escape the boredom of the farm) and adventures across the land becoming a hero and gaining powers as they go. So, I wanted to tell the story of an older person on a quest to find a place to settle down and write her magnum opus — a book on the collected herb lore collected from a lifetime on the road. The result is Tanyth Fairport – a wandering herbalist in the autumn of her years in search of the last of the keepers of the Old Knowledge.

I had so much fun with this book, I can hardly wait to get back into the world.