Benjamin Medrano's Blog, page 56

May 28th Update: At PaizoCon

As I said in the title, I’m at PaizoCon, and am writing this in advance. Not much will be happening for word count this week, but with any luck it’ll just be a one-week vacation. That said, I’m not leaving you completely in the lurch. Tomorrow the automated launch of another chapter of Into the Eternal Wood goes out to my mailing list, and below I’m adding a basic overview of what will be going into Before the Godsrage.

Before the Godsrage is intended to be a 3-novella anthology. I’m starting...

Giving Thanks

So, I should preface this by stating my wife’s name is Jessica. If you’ve looked at the dedications page of my books, you’ve seen her name.

If it weren’t for Jessica, you wouldn’t have read or be reading Ancient Ruins, Spells of Old, or anything else of mine. Every time I’ve started a story, Jessica has encouraged me. When I was working as a cashier, in the bakery, or even when I was unemployed, Jessica encouraged me to follow my dreams. She was the one who bought me a Kindle as a Christmas p...

May 21st Update

Right. So, I tried to increase my daily production to 3,000 words during the week, hoping to get Halls of Power to 50,000 words, and I succeeded… technically, anyways. I didn’t manage it during the week, but I managed to barely squeak by to 50k overall last night.

It was a rough week, both for inspiration and interruptions, none of which I can nail down a cause for. I suspect that part of my issue is I’m terrified I’m going to screw up Halls of Power and disappoint everyone. I dunno for sure....

Surprise Super-Story!

I moved a few pages around, and named my setting with its superpowers! I had to weasel-word a bit. For those that don’t know? Marvel and DC have trademarks on the word Superhero, so you can’t put up a book which has that name on the cover or description without them nailing you to a wall. It sucks.

Anyway, I present to you: A Date Gone Awry

This is a short story approximately 5,000 words in length, about a male main character (shocking for me), who’s a somewhat reformed villain, and who is ha...

Sale Incoming

So, as of tomorrow Ancient Ruins is on a newsletter going out through Robin Reads, and at the same time I’m putting it on sale for $0.99 for a week. I don’t know if anyone who’s reading here will care, but I thought I should let people know.

May 14th Update

On Friday I mentioned that I’ve had a number of distractions this past week that slowed me down. I should also mention that I hit a point in Halls of Power that was… emotionally distressing to me. I’ve worked past it, but I’ve ended up with only about 35,000 words, which is short of where I wanted to be. Yes, this means I hit my 12,500 words a week goal, but I was hoping to get more than that. Still, this is a lot of work done.

Halls of Power is also turning out to be stressful in general. Th...

An Interruption

So, yesterday was fun. I woke up expecting to get lots of writing done, then to run my semi-regular Pathfinder game in the evening.

I don’t think I’d mentioned this, but my brother had been staying with my wife and I while he was going to college. Things wrapped up, and I knew he was going to be moving out sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday I found out about 9 AM that my dad and uncle would be over in a few hours to help my brother move. This threw… a lot of chaos into my plans....

Worldbuilding: Magitech

So, I’ve had an idea running through my head the last few days that has refused to let go, mostly for a setting. I’ve written down the basics, but I can’t help but keep thinking about it, so I thought I’d share.

This idea is inspired by several very different games, movies, and series. Grand Central Arena by Ryk Spoor, Spelljammer, the Starfinder RPG, and Treasure Planet. I’ll go over the basic concepts of some of them, for those who may not be familiar.

Grand Central Arena is a weird series...

Stories, Patreon, & Musing

I’m continuing to meet my daily goal on Halls of Power, but only just, as the middle portions are being difficult. I want to get out all the information, but not while ignoring the main characters of the story, which makes this very difficult to parse in my head. It’s still progressing, but getting from point A to Z is going to take some work.

So, another person suggested that I start a Patreon. I’ve been somewhat resistant to the idea thus far, but another part of me wonders if it might not...

May 7th Update

Halls of Power is sitting at a bit over 22,500 words thus far, and is going reasonably well. I wish my muse wasn’t so fickle some days, or I could have gotten even more done this past week, but things are going well as I get into it.

The poll I put up for the next series after Ancient Dreams has now had 94 votes, with nearly half going to Born a Queen, with Through the Fire in second place and Sisters of Radiance in third. Dreams of White is in such distant 4th place that it’s unlikely it’ll...