mirror’s gate: first draft

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I’ve been in another prolonged writing funk, which has been frustrating–so tonight I tried another round of throwing tiny bits of words at stuff. Got up to just over 200 by throwing small words at four different things, so I’ll take that!

So we’ve got 51 words into Chapter 4 of Shadow of the Rook, which is currently in the middle of an Enverly scene–his first since the events at the end of Lament of the Dove. Let’s just say Father Enverly has had his first actual religious experience, shall we?

Mirror’s Gate is still in Chapter 2, with Yevanya going to have a friendly little chat with her dead husband’s former teacher and colleague, which should set her up nicely to learn some disturbing things about what’s going on in the city of Istra. 57 words to that, and I gotta say, I rather like this fragment:

Genrek was a great hulk of a man, towering over her by many inches, and yet she had never found him anything but amiable in his gruff fashion. She always supposed it was not because he found her fragile and dainty; next to Genrek many things were, such as carriages, hills, and the smaller varieties of bear.

Over in Bone Walker, I’m still in Chapter 11, with Kendis and Christopher about to get hugely distracted from the question of whether Christopher can, in fact, cross Lake Washington. ‘Cause something is about to give them a disturbing little phone call. 52 words there.

And last but not least, in the still untitled Warder-universe story of Elizabeth and Ross, Elizabeth is realizing that she has no business snarking on a man who’s just told her his dead sister was the magical defender of the city. Not when she is, herself, a psychic. 67 words here.

So yeah. 227 words total. Not much overall, but something!

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Looks like I’m back to trying to lure words out of my brain a small dribble and drabble at a time.

Tonight, at least, I managed to throw words at both Mirror’s Gate and Bone Walker, though, so I’m calling that a win! Still in Chapter 2 on the one and Chapter 11 on the other, but between ‘em I got roughly 500 words tonight. So I call that a win!

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 267
Chapter 2 total: 2,231
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 6,014

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 293
Chapter 11 total: 682
Bone Walker total (first draft): 30,683

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I’ve hit another dry spell lately, which is annoying, so yesterday I decided to try to do something about that. Throwing small chunks of words at everything I have in progress seemed to help. I did at least over my usual desired target quota of 500, even if those 500 words were scattered across six works in progress. ;)

It all means no real major progress in any of it, but at least there was small pointer advancement! We’ll see what I can do today.

Written on Mirror’s Gate, Chapter 2: 157
Written on Bone Walker, Chapter 11: 174
Written on Shards of Recollection, Chapter 1: 150
Written on Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: 26
Written on Shadow of the Rook: 30
Written on Untitled story about Elizabeth, psychic chick of size, and Ross, brother of a dead Warder: 34
Total words written yesterday: 571

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Today’s Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction panel went swimmingly if I do say so myself, and as soon as I have a link to the transcript, I shall post it here! There was quite the turnout, not only of Drollerie authors but of one non-Drollerie author as well, Lucy Snyder, whose urban fantasy Spellbent I think I’ll have to be reading now.

Meanwhile, tonight’s Maynowrimo performance was not quite as awesome as yesterday’s. But I did throw words nonetheless at three total books!

Bone Walker: 238 words into Chapter 10, just enough to push me up over the 27K mark for the book. 30K is possibly doable by the end of the week.

Shadow of the Rook: 277 words into Chapter 3. A Faanshi chapter, the first in this story so far. And now I’m all “oh RIGHT Faanshi and Julian and Kestar! I really like these characters! And their story isn’t done yet either!” Shadow is hovering around 14K at the moment.

Mirror’s Gate: Only 79 words here, on Chapter 2. Mostly I was too distracted by the other two books, even though I’d also opened this file. Book’s now around 4K.

All told that’s 594 words, which is still above my old quota of 500 a day, so it’s all good!

P.S. I picked up a couple new followers on Twitter today, so if you folks clicked through to see this post, hi there! Hope you’ll hang around for more.

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Do y’all know how weird it is to be able to actually say “I’m on a PANEL”? ‘Cause, y’know, it is!

I’m sure it’d be weirder if it were a big-time physical face to face type convention, but you know what? A virtual convention is still pretty damned awesome. And tomorrow–okay, today, since it’s after midnight now and that does technically make it today–I will be participating in the awesome! I’m in on the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction panel at 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern, along with several of my fellow Drollerie authors and Spellbent author Lucy Snyder! Come by and say hi and listen in. Details on how can be found over at CoyoteCon’s site.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having great fun participating in the CoyoteCon word wars. Like those run by , they’ve been doing wonders at making me get used to throwing words out onto the page on a regular basis again. Today I was feeling particularly ambitious, and managed to add words to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of the works in progress! Go me!

Bone Walker now stands at nine complete chapters, and those of you who are fond of Elessir may find yourselves going WHA WHA WHA? at the reveal about him I drop at the end of Chapter 9. Muaha. No, I won’t be posting it.

Mirror’s Gate started Chapter 2 as Yevanya reacts–badly–to seeing someone she thinks is her dead husband Aleksandr, and over in Shadow of the Rook‘s shiny new Chapter 3, Faanshi reacts to realizing OH HEY she did something severely, hugely game-changing, about which I will not be elaborating because it’s spoiler-rific for the end of Lament of the Dove. Trust me on that ‘un.

And, I threw another hundred words or so into Shards of Recollection, which is still sitting in Chapter 1, but every little bit of progress counts!

All in all? This has been a good day.

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My friend Catie, along with several other writers of her acquaintance, runs a lovely, lovely thing: a chat room where they simply hang out with each other and do what they call “word wars”. The idea is that all participants, rather than actually chatting with each other, do half-hour chunks in which they write like mad and then check in when the half-hour is done to see how far they’ve gotten to their stated goals.

I decided to try this out for the first time today, and ye gods this was crazy effective. I’d decided to try to hit my historical usual daily goal of 500 words, but after three rounds of word wars I’d actually topped 800. After that, the other participants dropped out of the chat room. I was feeling on top of the world, though, and ambitious enough to keep going. Screw 500 words, I thought. Let’s aim for end of a chapter.

And it worked. Ye gods, it worked. I have written 1,592 words total for today, ladies and gentlemen. Chapter 1 of Mirror’s Gate is now complete. And Yevanya has now laid eyes on the man who looks very disturbingly like her husband Aleksandr–only Aleksandr is supposed to be dead! Dun dun dun!

Clearly, I am going to have to participate in the word wars more often if this is what it takes to kick my muse back into this kind of gear. Those of you out there who are also writers, I highly recommend this for encouraging your compatriots to work along with you!

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Pried a couple hundred more words out of my brain tonight, some for Bone Walker and some for Mirror’s Gate, mostly for the sake of advancing the pointers on at least a couple of stories. And being able to say that I actually wrote something tonight. This long dry spell is frustrating in the extreme, folks. Intellectually I know that the solution is simply to buckle down and write, but man, trying to re-establish the habit is hard.

We’ll see, though. These two stories remain the two pulling at my brain the most for new words, although Queen of Souls is sternly reminding me that its second draft edits are long overdue to be resumed. I really need to beat that thing into proper queryable shape so I can get it out there.

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When I find myself staring dully and tiredly at the screen and no words are flowing, that’s the signal that it’s time to go to bed. But I did at least make a few words go tonight! And even if about 100 words into each of these things doesn’t seem like much individually, it will at least add up if I keep at it. That’s good advice to keep telling myself.

Let’s see if I can do this again tomorrow.

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 110
Chapter 7 total: 1,723
Bone Walker total (first draft): 18,457

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 115
Chapter 1 total: 1,417
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,417

Untitled short story:
Written tonight: 115
Story total: 615

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I’ve been frustrated enough with my months-long block on regular writing that I figured tonight I should try the multi-novelling trick. That’s helped in the past, and I felt it was long past time to try it again, just for the sake of advancing some pointers on various works on progress. I’ve mentioned before how it’s often helpful for me to just try to do little chunks at a time–and tonight, I was pleased to note that it worked again.

So yeah, a small number of words for Bone Walker, Mirror’s Gate, and Shadow of the Rook out of the novels in progress–and a few more for the as of yet untitled story about my Psychic Chick of Size. Whose name is, by the way, Elizabeth Breckenridge. Her male lead is Ross Taggart, and so far what I know about him is that he’s actually too heavy himself (because if there’s anything as rare as a fat heroine in a fantasy story, it’s an overweight hero) by thirty or forty pounds, and that he’s either a private investigator or a reporter or maybe a blogger. I’m not sure which yet. Waiting to see if anything pops out of my head as I throw words at the story.

And we’ll have to see if I finish it in time to submit it to and for their anthology.

Meanwhile, the word stats:

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 109
Chapter 7 total: 1,613
Bone Walker total (first draft): 18,347

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 104
Chapter 1 total: 1,302
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,302

Shadow of the Rook:
Written tonight: 112
Chapter 2 total: 3,950
Shadow of the Rook total (first draft): 13,378

Untitled short story:
Written tonight: 266
Untitled short story total: 500

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Not much to report on this; this is mostly just me trying to kick myself back into gear yet again and write whatever words I can manage to coax out of my brain! Still in Chapter 1 on Mirror’s Gate, and working on the scene where Yevanya arranges to sell her old house with her half-elven barrister.

Written tonight: 120
Chapter 1 total: 1,198
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,198

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Word catchup

Just to quickly cover the rest of the words I wrote on Mirror’s Gate while at Conflikt, this quicky post!

A brief snippet from Aleksi’s POV is now in place, although I think I’m going to have to work on that in the second draft. That snippet may actually need to be an entire chapter. But I want to get the first draft written first.

Yevanya is also now on camera, and has started off with a bang, attempting to sternly remind herself that no matter how severe the provocation, ladies of quality simply do not, do not, murder their cousins!

Written at Conflikt: 532
Chapter 1 total: 1,078
Mirror’s Gate total: 1,078

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Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to report that as of this evening, I have received royalties for my writing for the very first time in my writing career. Actual money for my actual words is now in my possession. It ain’t much, I grant you–I am, after all, a micropress ebook author–but it’s evidence that somebody out there has in fact cared to put down a few of their dollars in exchange for my work.

Roughly 217 somebodies, in fact. If you’re one of those 217 or so, I thank you wholeheartedly and hope you’ll have enjoyed what I provided. Most of these sales are indeed Faerie Blood, although Defiance does have a tiny blip of presence on the statement. Also, it is a point of interest that the reported sales are for Drollerie Press’s own site, Fictionwise (by far the majority of the sales), and Mobipocket. Amazon sales are not represented and hopefully this will be updated as of the next statement received. Clearly, though, Fictionwise loves me. <3

There are more words on the way! And tonight's addition to that "more", tapped out on the iPhone at Conflikt while listening to the inimitable Alexander James Adams belting out his best (and then more typed after), was a few hundred more words into Chapter 1 of Mirror’s Gate. I know now that the lead characters are Aleksandr and Yevanya Morokev, and that Yevanya’s cousin who’d really like nothing better than to step into the esteemed position of “husband” with her is Antoli. The names are of course Russian-influenced, although I’ll be playing around with this some and thinking about how the elves of Vreyland would have affected the language and the naming conventions. Plus, I just want to throw in a few character names that aren’t direct real-world analogues.

Tonight’s efforts got paused though as I got to a point where I need to mention the name of the city serving as the primary setting here, and I’m not sure yet whether I want a short terse name or a long exotic one. Spent some time mulling the list on Wikipedia of Russian cities, but so far none of them have served as inspiration for naming the Vreyish capital. Potential elven influence may be called for here.

Written tonight: 316
Chapter 1 total: 546
Mirror’s Gate total: 546

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It looks like Christopher and Elessir are suddenly going to have to fight with the male lead currently known as Aleksi for my word count love. Mirror’s Gate got its first official words tonight, since three chapters’ worth of outline is enough to get me started and this story really wants out of my brain. We’ll see how well I can keep it up.

I can say that I actually haven’t been this excited about producing something in a while. Maybe I just needed a brand new idea to play with, I don’t know! thinks that I must have been working on this under the hood and it popped out for attention when it was ready; if that’s so, I can forgive my muse for many months of silence!

And I’m looking forward to playing in Vreyland. I want to write about its snowy city streets and the colors its people wear, bright and bold against the long pale spans of their winters. There are elves in Vreyland, immigrants from the west, but most of the true-blooded ones keep to themselves. The elven blood has blended with that of Vreyland, though, and it is from that that the Vreylanders get their magic.

The Vreylander mages are as free with their powers as magic never is in Adalonia. There are magics to protect houses and light the city streets, to seek out truth and to protect the sanctity of an office of law. And there are greater magics a man may use if he has the talent–and some of these magics will be what drives this story.

I need more names for characters, and Aleksi still needs to tell me if that’s his full name or if it’s an endearment… but now he has sprung into his first few paragraphs of life. I’m going to like getting to know him.

Written tonight: 230
Chapter 1 total: 230
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 230

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