Elysae Shar's Blog, page 5

The Laws of Time Don’t Apply in Morson

I’ve no idea how I managed to miss this for so  long, but Lost Among Shadow has a massive time inconsistency right at the beginning. Chapter I takes place in the early evening of one day. Then Chapter II takes place late morning that same day and is followed by III that night. IV happens the day after, but V takes place in the evening of the first day again…

Fortunately, this is easy enough to fix by moving them around, but it’s astonishing  how completely I missed this when reading through it. And that was with a month’s break from the story.Had  I gone right into revision, I probably wouldn’t have caught it at all and that’s a sobering thought.

I had another of these inconsistencies further into the story, but that one, I caught early on.

I’m Such a Genius…

After finishing the scenes I wanted to add to Lost Among Shadows,  I took myself to the gaming section of a local store. I figured they might have Civ V: Brave New World for less than Steam (that one would cost me more than I paid for the Gold Edition). They didn’t. So, because I’m not already slow enough when it comes to revision, I picked up Dragon Age Origins Ultimate edition, instead. Took me almost a week to get back to Lost after that…

I did, however, manage to finish revisions on the first chapter and I wrote about 1k words of a novelette that will be useless until I bring Ash Manor to a conclusion.

 

Small Personal Comparison of Pantsing VS Plotting

I finally read through what I have of A Fool’s Errand (outlined). Then, just for fun, I compared it to Lost Among Shadows (starting point plus rough idea where I was going) and the first quarter of Chaos Unbound, my 2014 NaNo (pantsed).  Despite its reluctance to adhere to my outline, I expected Fool to be the most consistent plotwise. If anything  it’s the least while Chaos is the most consistent.

If anything  it’s the least while Chaos is the most consistent. True, Chaos has its own share of problems. Like the threaded thin middle and an intentional Deus ex at the end, but even that doesn’t fully come out of nowhere. It’s hinted at throughout the story, but never properly set up.

It seems that A Fool’s Errand isn’t the story, I thought it was. I still want to write it, though. So, I’m going to scrap about 20k words and  carry on from there. Once I’ve released Lost Among Shadows. That one “only” needs to be revised and I want to get it out sometime this year. So, they’re trading places.

Procrastination Thy Name is Civilisation V

After a random Civ V video popped up in my Youtube feed,  I figured a quick game couldn’t hurt. Only, I suck at strategy games and got it into my head to finally beat king difficulty, so one quick game became almost two weeks of “quick” games. Then I decided to see how well the Ai worked in a team.

Then I decided to see how well the AI worked in a team. Ended up with Caesar to my right, Washington above, Isabella to my left, and two other civs that didn’t make to the end of the game. Washington and Caesar were on my team, which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse as Washington started bullying city-states by turn ten and Ceasar waged war after war on the other two AIs. As a result, I spent most of the game  at war with Isabella, but at least, Washington sent troops every time.

At some point Isabella captured a city, I’d founded on accident and which was tanking my happiness. Washington returned it to me a few turns later. So, I gave it to him, almost cutting myself off completely from Isabella.Hey, that was his war after all.

Around this time, someone built the UN– an unachievable victory condition, because all the City states belonged to either Isabella or Washington and two AIs were gone. So, good job whoever tried to go for that. When the time for voting came, the victory screen popped up. I’d forgotten to disable time-based victory.

All in all, it was a fun game with a somewhat unsatisfying end, but I beat king and now I’m back to working.

 

 

 

It’s a Love /Hate Thing

After adding a few scenes to A Fool’s Errand and feeling like they had little to nothing to do with what I’d already written, I realized that, if I wanted this to go anywhere, I’d have to read through and reacquaint myself with the whole thing. Since I didn’t fancy the idea of reading 40k+ words on a computer screen and managed to wreck my only printer cartridge, I had to wait for the stores to reopen today. Only to realize that I could have just turned the whole thing into a quick and dirty ebook and dumped it on my Kindle…

On the bright side, I spent the weekend reading through a March printout of Ash Manor 3 (now tentatively titled Lost Among Shadows) and rekindled my love for it. Seems I’m destined to hate every part of this serial at some point.That’s good to know because I was seriously considering pulling episodes 1 & 2 and pretending I never wrote them. Instead, I’ll be adding three scenes to this one while I read through A Fool’s Errand.

First Month Wide and New Relesase

I released A Crack in Time wide on March 31st and until April 21st, when What Lies Within came out of its Select term, that was the only title I had wide. Yet, while I’ve only gotten the Tolino statement so far, that one title not only brought in more than John & Other Stories did in August 2015, it also outperformed six titles on Amazon in April. Though I’ll likely send future releases through a single Select term, I’m staying wide and looking toward adding Smashwords.

On May 9th, I released No Such Thing on Amazon. No such thing is a short story set in the same universe as my short stories Just Us (John & Other Stories) and A Child’s Playmate (Winged Tales) and kind of a prequel to a series I’m planning to start later this year.

No Such Thing

Sidr wants a safe adventure before he commits to the quiet—and boring—life of a farmer. Though often visited by all sorts of adventurers and said to hold an ancient treasure deep within, the cavern just outside of town seems like a great place to find such a thing. Even children play in there without trouble.

But Sidr, being neither child nor adventurer, wastes no time in getting lost in the intertwining tunnels of the cave.

Can he survive long enough to make his way back to the surface? And what about that treasure?

Find out in No Such Thing.

 

Get it here

Now I’m back to writing A Fool’s Errand and I have to say, distancing myself a bit helped  with getting over the  loss and with seeing through the outline diversion. I remember too little of what I already wrote to be bothered by it…

 

A Minor Change of Plan and Direction

I’ve spent the last two weeks doing a major rewrite of the last finished short story, I wrote almost two years ago, bringing it from 1.9k to ~6k. I’m going to spend another week to get it ready for publication, then focus on A Fool’s Errand for the rest of May. That pushes Ash Manor 3 into June, but I’m feeling more like fantasy at the moment, so…

I’m waiting for D2D’s April statements before deciding whether or not the short does a turn in select. A Crack in Time hasn’t done much on Amazon (read anything), but if I’m reading tings right, it’s moved copies on other channels. And if that’s true, I’m saying goodbye to Select for good.

Not as Bad a Loss as I Thought

I wrote one lonely scene since my big screw up and, within that scene,so much changed that I would have ended up ditching or heavily rewriting most of the beginning anyway.

Since, every time I write a scene with Fryn that so much as mentions Caden, he starts to worry about him, Fryn no longer gets to be the antagonist. Means I’ll have to make Perron more prominent  in the beginning. So, I essentially saved myself a lot of rewriting and inserting right there.

I’m also ditching the prologue for a scene, a little later,  that gives Caden and Diomar a stronger connection and Diomar a reason to care what becomes of Caden.

I’m still grieving for those 8k words, but I’m coming around.

Camp NaNo Update

A few days ago, I managed to delete a good 8k words while copying my daily progress into the main document. Of course, I didn’t notice until after I’d already “updated” all my backups. On the bright side, it was the very beginning before the story decided my outline doesn’t matter.So, at least, it’ll be easier to recreate than it could have been. Still frustrating, though.

I’m not going to give up on A Fool’s Errand, but I’m not going to push it at 2k+ a day anymore, either. I just don’t have the heart for that. Since I never raised my NaNo goal past the initial 30k I’d set myself (in case I wanted to revise Ash Manor instead), I’m good on that end.

Camp NaNo Day Thirteen

Got a little over 2k today. Not too bad, considering I spent most of yesterday cooking up new ideas for later use. At least, now I know that I really shouldn’t buy craft books right before the start of NaNo. I resisted for eleven days, though, so I’m proud.

I started today with a scene that put Caden on the path to blackmailing another major character, which is one of the worst crimes in this universe. Seems my characters didn’t like that idea, though, because Caden saw reason at the last moment and the came to an agreement instead.

Caden is shaping up to be a lot more open-minded than I thought.