The Chronicles of Stravos

Over and done with, and lots of exhaustion with it.  I’ve never had such a rough time driving myself on.   Between my wife’s failing health (congestive heart failure) and my own sickness, holidays, kids and finances, it seemed everything was against me.  Luckily, the other ML for Augusta was lovingly willing to shoulder the majority of the burden this year.  Goodness knows she deserves a medal for all she did. 

I did finish, though.  I hate it and am looking to revamp the whole series for Madison, but I finished it.  Midway through, when the going got horribly tough, I had an idea hit me.  I stopped and started on it, chomping my way through some rough scenes that will take a lot of patching to get them to work.  I’ll post more on it later.  As for Madison, don’t give up hope just yet.  She made it to the Mask of Lies, which was what the story was suppose to have her do, I just think that its time for her to rethink what got her there.  It’s to cliche.  I want WOW!!!!  not, yeah,right.  Harumph!  I’ll get it done.

It’s October 30th, one day before the kick off for the month long competition that drives my life during this time of year. It’s here, It’s here, It’s here. I’m so ready for this. What Madison will go through will make her stronger, though it will definitely not make her like me for putting her through it.

Lord, am I siked for this! I love this time of year. Whoo-hoo.

Sounds so final, doesn’t it. Well, it isn’t. What the title means is that I’ve decided not to write Book 2 of my supernatural thriller/adventure. What I AM going to do is to write the rest of the story. One of the problems that I have is deciding what goes where, where to cut off the story and my ever present, and quite overdeveloped, sense of proprietory word count for each book. So, I’m not going to feed those issues. I’m going to write the whole story and figure out where to cut it later. Book 1, luckily, is done already. Now I’ll take up the story from there and write until the story is over. It should be fun…if I don’t go insane trying to do it first.

Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.

I was working through the edits on Book 1 of Madison’s tale (Legacy) and realized that the book is way too big. It will probably top out at 120,000 to 125,000 words after editing. That’s way too big for a first book. Suddenly I got to thinking….what am I doing? Why am I not writing this as a complete story and worry about breaking it down into books later. BAMMM! The light went off. As Mr. Smee would say, “Lightning has junctified my brain”. I’m going to write the next “part” for NaNoWriMo and join it to my first book. I’m going to go as if there was no pause. Heck, in books there are jumps in time, so that should be easy. If I do well, I might be able to get all the story done by December and split out by January.

Wow, am I being optimistic!

The excitement of November is already on me.  I’ve been working diligently on getting Book one – Child of the Dark – edited so that I’m in the right mind set for the start of the competition.  Unfortunately, I’ve also got about twenty three sixth and seventh graders grumbling at me concerning November also, so it’s a bit befuddling at times.

You see, I am running an after school program at my school, a writing club.  I was pleasantly surprised by the response.  It’s been fun, that is for sure, but it’s been quite the challenge to keep these young kids focused on the idea of writing.  They’re full of energy and enthusiasm, but no focus.  I see some potential in them, a few showing quite a bit more than that, and I pray that my time with them will help.  We are doing our first real competition using the Young Writers Program in NaNoWriMo.  It will be fun, and definitely the learning experience for me.

Unfortunately, its taking my focus away from my book.  I try to plug away at my plot, but it is stalled on me.  It looks weird to me.  I don’t know why, it just does.  Maybe its time to step back and breathe.  A little time away might help.  Wish me luck.

I’ve made my decision.  I’m going to do book two of the Legacy Series for NaNoWriMo with year.  It took me the better part of a month to truly wrap my enthusiasm around it.  Not because I don’t like the story, I love  it.  On the contrary, it was something even worse.  To do this book I was going to have to do so much research that I found it daunting. 

Still, I did finally decide to do it.  I even scrawled down a tentative scene breakdown.  It’s real weak, but it give me a plot line to work with.  Clean it up, check it versus a timeline and then off to the real stuff: research.  I love research, but there is so much here.  I will be going through Old Jerusalem, having scenes in real historical and religiously significant areas and dealing with people that either were mentioned in the Bible or in the Book of Enoch.  That’s a lot of reading and researching.  I’ve already filled up the better part of a three subject notebook and that is just the character backgrounds.  Daunting, wouldn’t you say.

The first step is already underway.  To get a better feel for the book, I am editing the first book: Child of the Dark.  I’m just finishing Chapter 7 (out of 32 chapters).  I’m averaging a little over a chapter a day.  It’s not a full edit.  I’m just cleaning it up and filling in some areas.  In six chapters I only added about thirty five hundred words.  That’s not too bad.  Getting it right, though, is not the reason for doing it.  I want the story so far to be fresh in my mind when I start on the second book.  I need to know how the characters felt, what they had gone through right as the first book ended.  Then I can roll right into the second book and not skip a beat.  Well, at least that is what I’m hoping will happen.

Wish me luck.

Ok, I’m planting my flag. I’m going to do book two of my Legacy series for NaNoWriMo. It’s my favorite story right now (or as Sandtiger so poetically put it – the story of my heart). I can’t stop thinking of it. I catch myself musing over it while watching TV, as I’m drifting off to sleep, even while working on computers. Since I can’t keep it out of my head, I’m going to embrace it. It should be fun.

Wish me luck.

I’ve been asking myself that question repeatedly over the last few weeks.  I always thought that my abilities tended toward young adult light fantasy.  Then I tried my hand at modern mystery/horror.  I love it.  I love researching religious backgrounds and side stories.  I love the twists that you can add to horror.  It’s more fun than young adult simply because of the lack of restrictions involved (try writing about a fight when your audience is under the age of 14). 

So, is it ok to write more than one genre?  Does one affect the other, causing taints to the work you would prefer not be there?  Is it best to just focus on one to keep the mind centered?  There are too many questions t o ask.  It’s driving me crazy.  I get up one day and want to work on something dark and violent.  The next day I am focused on cutsy stuff, the funny kid stuff with some action involved.  Am I going crazy?  Maybe its split personality disorder just now coming to the surface. 

You know, this is depressing me.  I’m going to take my sandbox and go home.  See ya.

Oh, that means that I have to get back to work editing last year’s story.

I can’t believe that it’s taking over my every thought so soon.  Usually it hits around mid-september, but not this year.  I’m thinking about what I will write, what the plot will be, how it will interact with previous works..and it’s only August.  It’s driving me crazy.  It’s even affecting my work on the challenge we are doing.  I’m almost done with that story and yet I can’t keep my mind on it.

Fortunately, I already have an idea on what I want to do.  I’m going to keep going on my Madison Quinlen story, the young girl who happens to be a vampire.  I’ve been thinking long and hard where I wanted to go with this one and it’s time.  I’ll work the month of September editing last year’s story.  This should be me focused on the story again.  Then October will be character and story development.  The plan is to have the scene plotting done before they take the NaNoWriMo site down for archiving.  Then I’ll be ready…well, hopefully ready.

Wish me luck.