David T. Allen's Blog, page 4

Star’s Reach by John Michael Greer

Star’s Reach is a post apocalyptic book that follows Trey, a ruinman who scraps pre-war buildings as he searches for, essentially, the Lost City of Atlantis of his time. Along this journey he accrues a number of friends and followers, sees countless cities, and discovers some of the biggest questions of his age, though whether or not he can find answers hangs over him throughout the book.

I would normally write a review about how engaging the plot was, or how much I loved the characters, b...

Echo Chamber Heist: Full Manuscript Read Through

Last month, I put Echo Chamber Heist away for a few weeks so I could re-read it with fresh eyes. I didn’t get the whole way through, as holidays, work, a two-week uber cold, and a trip to Japan halted my progress. Still, I read a fair amount, and now can work through the most important edits with Leslie.

The first step was to put Echo Chamber Heist on my Nook. I do most of my reading on an e-reader, so this makes the manuscript feel complete, which means my expectations are higher th...

Coauthor Chapter Editing Board

Before our trip to Japan, I had read most of Echo Chamber Heist on my Nook and took notes. When we returned, I wasn’t sure where we had left off. I knew Leslie and I would be passing chapters back-and-forth and out-of-order at this stage of editing, so I built a board to help manage who currently “owns” a chapter.

As usual, I prefer project management techniques that are in real-space over software, since you can answer important questions at a glance without memorizing URLs and logi...

Pittsburgh Santarchy & Bananarchy

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they have to make a decision: Santa, or Banana?

My friend, co-worker, and standing-desk partner Gabe went to a costume bike ride for Halloween. He was handed a flyer for the Eleventh Annual Santarchy, then, not much later, was handed a flyer for the First Annual Bananarchy, which listed the same location as Santarchy. Gabe found this amusing.

Santarchy is an event run by the Pittsburgh Social Club in which a bunch of people bar crawl dresse...

The Good Morning Rats

Historically, I had the tendency to fall asleep after Leslie, and wake up before her. Sometimes, I wanted to start our day early—and for college Leslie, early was any time before noon. So, instead of nagging her awake, I would pick up our pet rats, put them in bed with her, and sing a song while our rodent friends worked their way under the covers, clinging to Leslie’s body for warmth:

Here comes the welcome rats,

the welcome rats,

the good morning rats.

Here comes the welcome rats

to-day~

(...

Sprint 12: Back to Work

Boy howdy, we crushed our November goal. We did only have the one, and it was an easy one besides, but we still graduated with honors.

The reason for the minimalist goal was twofold:

A two week trip to Japan

Thanksgiving

We were to have fun, and, for once in our lives, not obsess about writing.

Aside from time spent in airports (and hauling our luggage to our hostels), we had nothing but fun in Japan, and though we used our experiences to help inspire parts of our upcoming novel,...

Things I Love About Japan: Mascots

Dave and I are recently back from an amazing two-week adventure in the historical city of Kyoto, Japan. While I sort through everything we brought back, I can’t help but linger over some things, and one of the most consistent themes of the trip was mascots.

This is Uji-chan. He’s the toddler-prince of Uji, which is the green tea capital of Japan. In this town of expensive and elegant tea shops, this little prince is everywhere. And I love it. Depictions of him range from the normal (...

Sprint 11: Japan and the Waiting Game

October was a time of great revisions and querying agents. The end of October was so busy and exciting that I couldn’t remember what we did the first two weeks, until I reviewed the board.

Pitch Slam

We entered the #PitchSlam competition on Twitter, which was Harry Potter themed. We were accepted into Hufflepuff house and had 11 agents request our manuscript for Echo Chamber Heist!

Naturally, this changed our focus. We couldn’t plan ahead on our sprint board, since our tasks relied on whethe...

Wacky Cake and Blissful Icing

As the prevalence of birthday cake flavored foodstuffs proves, most people have a singular idea of what a birthday cake is. It’s a white or vanilla cake with very strong frosting, and most likely sprinkles. I think this became the defacto birthday cake only because so few have tasted the bliss that is Wacky Cake.

Long before I was born, my grandmother was in the grocery store trying to wrangle her three sons. As always, they were a handful. Some random woman, seeing my grandmother struggle to...

Sprint 10: Polishing Manuscript in October

September was a strange month. We finished the manuscript ahead of schedule, which disrupted our typical flow (but in a good way). In terms of process, we took a more Kanban approach instead of strictly planning full two week segments.

Pitch Wars

There was interest in our manuscript, but unfortunately, we were not selected. I do not regret entering the competition, though, because we heavily reworked sections that sounded good in theory, but didn’t work on paper, and ended up dropping over 10...