Reboot and Revisions

It’s been over a year since I opened the “new blog post tab”. I cut ties with most of my social media circle, but I intend to return. 😀 I had to go away for a while because all this social media stuff made me very tired. I also made a huge pause in writing. No new words for over a year. Then something magical happened and I opened the Scrivener’s blank page and the words just flowed. I made a pause with the Rjg series and instead will be diving into Falaha’s new adventure. I was supposed to release the Rjg in 2018 but it wasn’t that good a book to do it yet. Rjg needs to be worked on more diligently, otherwise it will be a mediocre novel. It should be a “bang” instead. 🙂

Now, onto some good stuff.

First, I will probably continue with my world-building posts, after all, this what this blog was supposed to be. I won’t blog frequently, but I will be putting up some valuable pieces for the worldbuilders this year.

Second, I started a new book. By the way it began for me I will breeze through it rather quickly and soon there will be a massive new read. There were questions left unanswered and ties left loose — Falaha’s world is too vast to fit into a single story.

Third, I hope to find some great new reads this year to inspire me to write more.

Fourth, I will continue to work on my Skyrim mods. I have written some large story quests for it and this is what I intend to implement ASAP.

Now I need to survive my exams in January (I’m studying logistics now!) and a driving theory and practice exams to finally get my license! Onto the new year!

Onto the New Adventure

The new book is progressing nicely. I have finished two chapters so far and slowly moving onto the third. I’m still questioning my sanity about making this a trilogy though. Maybe I’ll return to the original idea of it being a single large book. Anyway, again this is going to be a free write, with no solid outlines or anything. Don’t tell me about plot points or a climax or whatever. I don’t want to know, or I will never get there.

Book One got its first round of beta reads. Or, should I say, alpha reads. These are different, I shouldn’t have called them betas. But I call every pre-editor reader a beta. My two usual betas were doing fine, suggesting me what could be improved, but the new ones I managed to find sucked mightily. The next time I will try a new beta reader, it’s going to be a paid one (or two), and I’m going to make sure the match will be ideal or near ideal. Thus no one would have to be frustrated and disappointed. And more importantly, no time wasted.

Also, since I’ll be having funds for my projects this year and beyond (I got a new job!), I’ll be looking for cover illustrators. This means my books will be getting some neat covers. I just need to figure out what I want on those covers.

I’m still thinking of whether I should participate in A-Z blogging challenge this year. I haven’t got my theme yet and not that I’m particularly interested in blogging lately. So the fun challenge could easily turn into a bloody challenge to produce any sort of content. I wouldn’t want to inflict that on myself, though I would like to have new blogging friends. I still have no desire to finish my worldbuilding article series, though I’m getting a lot of requests about them. I’d rather pour those words into books.

Still, this is going to be a promising year. 🙂

When Things Get Done

2016 was a long year for me. It was also a tough year (I’m sure it was for the most of us.) I’m finally happy to announce that the first book in the new Rjg trilogy is completed. I no longer have to stare at the blank page and think, “If only…”

Yesterday, 2000 words short of the ending, I was feeling elated, I had so many things to say in this blog post. Yet it didn’t feel right to write about my small triumph without actually finishing. Now, done with the book, I forgot everything I wanted to write here. 😀

Many things changed throughout that year and I moved away from the idea of writing a single large novel and went for a trilogy of smaller novels instead. Three books @ 90k each is better than one @ 250 000 words. At least to me.

Possible cover for Book One, Rjg: Blood Threads

Since I’m done with book one, I can speak a little about the story without spoiling anything. The main character of Rjg is Yaren, the notorious grandfather of Falaha and Eyuran from Falaha’s Journey, who had lived a very long life. This is a tale of his youth, when he is barely 24 (human) years old and spanning years of his and his people’s struggles. A story of slavery, war, and love, it also features several other prominent Falaha’s ancestors, namely Warmaster Saga, one of the progenitors of kennar Fargann, and General Telgaro, who is also Baro’s ancestor and the reason Falaha is short. 😀

It took a while to get it into shape, and more work is ahead of me, with all the revisions and edits, but here is a resolution for the year 2017: I want to write every day, even if it is only 50 words a day. With this I feel I can accomplish what I have started.

I was hoping to finish book one before the new year. I was late but I still did it, several days into the new year. Now, onto the new adventures of books two and three.

Also, this year I will possibly participate in A-Z blogging challenge. It will be my third attempt, when the other two had miserably failed. Now I only have to think of a good theme for my blog posts. I will keep you updated.

This is all for now, and a belated Happy New Year. 🙂

Happiness is… Writing Again

I’t’s been a long time since I have been productive. I procrastinated and pretended that everything was fine. But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. Skyrim has been the outlet for my frustration and sadness and a method of avoiding the work I should have been doing. I couldn’t even blog properly. Yet somehow modding the damned game made my creativity flow again. The winter just arrived to this hemisphere but in my head the winter is over. *Happy Dance*

Within the past few days I wrote two and a half chapters worth of story, and I’m only a few chapters away from finishing Part One (which is more of a Book One, to be fair).

progress1
Blurred out to be spoiler-free 🙂

It wasn’t a perfect piece of the story, but at least it was something. Something that can be edited and built upon. I don’t really care now what it is as long as I’m putting those words out and finish this year. I can see my goal clearly again! Then I will be editing a bit and going through a few beta-readers before setting out to write Parts Two and Three. Those are barely in development yet, though I know what I will be doing there. Writing multi-POV books is hell, I tell you. Writing epic-sized multi-POV books is triple that. And no matter what I do, it takes me a year to write a medium-novel-sized book (~90k). I hope to celebrate the New Year with one of my goals completed.

It is too early to say if I will be releasing the story in three parts or as one piece, but it won’t happen until all of it is written. There is a possibility that I will handle finishing the next two parts faster. I’ve been doing this before.

At least I no longer feel guilty to be called a writer. I’m writing, after all. 😀