Kyle Belote's Blog, page 12

Mark of the Profane Release Date

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

The time has come! The long-awaited sequel to The Bearer of Secrets—Mark of the Profane—has a release date of August 1st, 2021. For those of you who haven’t read, you can find the first book here. You can read it for free on KindleUnlimited or pick up the ebook for a mere $1.99 in anticipation of the upcoming release.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, Mark of the Profane, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

THOLAC 2.2, Critiques, and More

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

Without preamble, I’m 10% done with the second draft of THOLAC. I know it doesn’t sound a lot, especially when you break it down into chapters: 3 out of 30, but I’ve added texture to a … supporting character, added tension, and given voice to a prominent cast member. I’m about to finish the fourth chapter I’m working on, which is the 13th chapter, and hopefully, over the weekend, I can tackle some more.

The offer for a chapter critique/swap is still open. While I know my blog doesn’t get much traction, I’m surprised I’ve heard from absolutely no one. So, there’s that. I will leave it open for a while longer. If I hear nothing, then I’ll just close it and go on my merry way.

Stay tuned for a volume II announcement…

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

THOLAC—2.1

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

It’s official. The second draft for THOLAC is underway. I just finished with chapter 3, so I’m roughly 3% of the way done. Of course, this is going by the total number of chapters rather than word count. If by word count, then I’m 4.76% done. Not much difference. And yes, that’s not the first chapter in the book, but I typically write and edit differently than most writers.

I’m notoriously anti main character (MC), but THOLAC is different in this regard. I set out to write this book like my fantasy series, with many characters but no MC. What I ended up with was several minor and supporting characters around the MC. And you know what? I find that I’m okay with that. It’s always good to try something new.

That said, my minor and supporting characters need a lot of work, so that’s what I’m focusing on in the second draft, primarily Amice, Maro’s bounty hunter partner. She’s integral to the plot and to the MC, so I need to make her narration strong. So, I decided to start with her. I’m still struggling to find her unique tone, but it’ll come with time. I’ll try to post more as I write, stir up some traffic to this site, and garner attention on works I already have out. We’ll see.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

THOLAC–Lessons Learned Part 2

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

In the last blog, I talked about lessons learned from writing the first draft of THOLAC. There’s something else I learned a little late in the writing phase of the book. Well, that’s not exactly true. I learned of this tidbit years ago, but I never incorporated it: word sprints.

When I first heard of word sprints, I didn’t give it much thought. I mean, I was a pantser, after all, and word sprints were a way of life. In fact, every novel was a word sprint. So, I just filed the information away for later. It didn’t help me then, but I continued on. Plus, to be fair, the word sprints weren’t helpful to me, at least not in terms of the story I wanted to tell. See, the exercises were of random stuff, subjects I didn’t care about at all. My thoughts were, “This won’t help me because it’s not going into the book at all, so why bother?”

I read a book recently, 5,000 Words Per Hour: Write Faster, Write Smarter, by Chris Fox. In that book, he talked about word sprints again. And it got me thinking, maybe this guy’s on to something. Did I do his word sprints? No. Did I do word sprints related to my own books? Yes. I did this with the plotting of Book 2 of the THOLAC series. And, you know what? I found it helpful. This is a prime example of not discarding things but merely filing them away for later use.

As I’ve touted countless times before, I’m not really a plotter at all, but I have found a nice happy-medium balance of broad stroke plotting while pantsing. With that said, in a few short sessions, I have book 2 plotted about 60-75%. I say that with such an error of margin because I don’t have all the answers, and I like it that way. I want wiggle room. I have the main characters down, though not all the details, and I’ve really fleshed out what I want to do for a minor character, an internal journey.

So, what did the word sprints do for me? Well, I’ve seen an increase in my writing speed, no doubt about it. Like Chris Fox said, word sprints are about training your mind that when you sit down to write, it’s time to turn on the creative juice. And, he’s right! So, I’ll share my progress. Not every word sprint is faster than the last—mainly due to plotting out a tricky character and unsure of what I wanted to do with him—but overall, there’s an improvement.

Overall, I went from an average of 33 words per minute (WPM) or 1,980 words per hour (WPH), to 47.5 WPM/ 2846WPH. Here are my results thus far.

Sprint:              Words              Time                WPM/WPH

1                      500                  15:00                33/1980 

2                      470                  10:30                44.76/2685

3                      344                  7:15                  47.44/2846

4                      368                  9:00                 40.88/2453

How about it? Are you going to give word sprints a try? Make sure you take a short break in between sprints. Don’t stop, don’t check your phone, just sit and write what comes for you. In fact, don’t even correct spelling and grammar, just write. Fix it after. This will train your brain to be okay with getting into the seam, even though there are mistakes present, and just writing.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

THOLAC—First Draft Lessons.

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

A little while ago, I finished the first draft of The House of Lust and Candor (THOLAC). This book was a little bit different than previous books I’ve written in many regards. In short, this post will be about the lessons I learned from THOLAC.

Anyone who’s read my blogs or knows me in writing circles understands that I’m a prominent pantser and a staunch naysayer of plotting. But in crafting THOLAC, I had to stretch beyond my normal bounds. Not all of the book was written on my personal computer due to … reasons, and I often found it challenging to write without perusing my notes.

Enter plotting.

I knew the general gist of where the story would lead, so this presented the perfect opportunity to try my hand at plotting. That said, I undertook this new task the same way I approached a story: I pantsed it. No, the notes weren’t detailed, nor was every nuance figured out well in advance. No, any major plot twists weren’t written down, and all roads led to it. In fact, I only touched on the broad strokes of where the story would go, and I selected each major point to a specific chapter; that way, when I sat down, I could just focus on getting to the meat of the story for the defined parameters. What ensued was laser focus writing.

So, what did I learn? That plotting out the broad strokes is actually helpful. I wrote about 70,000 words in 3 weeks. Is it the fastest I’ve ever written? No, but it came close. When I get into a seam of writing, my fingers fly over the keyboard, and it doesn’t matter if I’m pantsing or going from plotted points; I’m just in the moment.

The only downside to writing so much in a short time is burnout, not with writing but with the story. So, I did what I do best, I recharged my batteries with a shift in focus and edited another project. With that task complete, I came back to THOLAC and finished it out with my traditional pantsing method.

So, what does that mean for me moving forward? Well, I probably will dabble with plotting a bit more. I’m a discovery writer at heart, and it all starts with the characters. If I understand them, I know the story. I won’t get that from plotting, but I can define the parameters of the tale with some forethought.

That said, I’ve already started brainstorming and plotting the sequel. I’ve got some interesting notions to explore and answers to find. I would like to sit down and just knock out the storylines, and I might be able to. Only time will tell…

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

Flawed to the Core: Building Memorable Characters and Writing

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

I haven’t talked about this book in a while, but it’s still here. This will be the second book I publish this year, after releasing Volume II of the Dark Legacy Series: Mark of the Profane. If you haven’t read the first, you can catch it here.

Flawed to the Core (FTTC) is a deep-dive into characters: what makes them tick, how to develop a well-rounded character, their motivations, and delivery of a well-crafted, flawed individual that can wear the skin of any fantasy race or sex. Strong characters aren’t “strong” because we say they are; great characters are resilient and only grow through adversity, overcoming the obstacles in their path. Whether they fail or succeed, the journey has changed them, and that’s what readers want to see, an evolution … or, to put it in more writer-friendly terms, a character arc.

While FTTC is still months away from release, I would like to allow a few people to beta read it and give me feedback, likes, dislikes, what was something new they never thought about before, what they incorporated, and so on. If you’d like to read this book, contact me through the blog, and I’ll send you a link to a copy.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

Critique Submissions—Still Open

Just a quick note: the Critique Submissions/swap is still open for those of you on the fence about submitting your first chapter. Read the previous post here for more details.

Open For Critique Submissions

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

This time, we’re going to do something a little different. As a Reddit browser, I see a lot of writing groups and stuff out there, and I think this is awesome. I also see some of the opinions expressed, great advice, and the not-so-stellar vitriol that accompanies some posts/submissions. Because of this, I don’t wade into the mire all that often, but a time or two, I did.

So, here’s a story about Sophie. I was perusing one night, over a year ago, and I saw a post about critiquing someone’s first chapter, and the premise was they needed help. Maybe I was just in the mood to critique someone, or maybe it was in the way they asked for help, but I responded. Enter Sophie. So, I critiqued her chapter. I gave her the full Kyle treatment, the same I give to everyone else in my writing group. Critiquing takes time, and in some cases, a lot of time. I’ve had critiques take upwards of 4 hours. Sometimes, it’s brutal and a slog, other times, it’s fantastic! Those are the unicorns of the writing world. I digress.

So, I returned it to her, knowing I might’ve shattered someone’s dreams. And that’s the thing about critiquing. You have to walk a very fine line between being helpful and being borderline … (insert whatever word you want). I tried to be nice about it, even somewhat positive while actually being critical of certain elements. Long-story-short: she thanked me profusely, and we evolved from strangers on Reddit to partners in a critique group.

And now, the circle is complete, when I left her, she was but a learner, now she’s the master—er, wait, wrong movie. Kudos to any of you who know that movie. So, I want to open up to submissions to give a critique here on the website. I’d like to help other writers out there. We’ll hash out the details of when I can fit it in my schedule. Depending on time and number of submissions, we may even be able to do a video chat about it or talk about writing on Discord. In addition, I’ll submit to you the first chapter to THOLAC, the latest story I’m working on, so you can flex your critiquing skills, too. You may critique me as a fellow writer, or if you feel uncomfortable with that, then as a reader.

Let’s talk about submissions:

Contact me through the website. When you do, insert the following information about your chapter/work. Genre: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Horror, Romance, Grimdark, Erotica—give me an idea of context. If you don’t know, put that you don’t know but liken it to something close. Draft: Tell me what draft number you’re on. Is it the first? The tenth? Target Audience: Adults, YA, Children.Narration: Tell me if you’re in 1st Person, 3rd Person Limited, 3rd Person Omniscient, etc.Length: Tell me how long your overall work is and how long your first chapter is. Remember, you’ll be submitting your first chapter, and this should be the focus of your discussion. Strengths and Weaknesses: Tell me what you think they are. Everyone’s got them, and turning inward to talk about yourself in a critical way is sometimes hard, like filling out a bio about yourself. Synopsis: In three to five sentences, give me an idea of what the overall story is. Doesn’t have to be detailed, just broad strokes.The submission: We’ll be using Google Docs, that way you can keep control of your work, restrict people from copying or printing, and you’ll give me permission to comment on it. Please use 12pt Garamond font, single spaced, and justified alignment. Super easy, super quick to fix.

Once I make a selection of those who submit, I’ll either post a quick blog to let folks know who was selected, or send out emails to let you know the selection has been made.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

Round One: THOLAC 100%

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

As the title implies, I’m 100% finished with the first draft of THOLAC. The book, on the shorter side of my works, comes out to 123K words spanning 30 chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. I have some ideas where I want to go with the series or trilogy—still haven’t decided what I want to do in that regard—but the immediate future, the events following the closing of the book, remain a mystery. For now.

So, it’s time to switch gears, and do something else to get the batteries recharged to dive back into round 2 of THOLAC. During this time, I’m going to focus on getting volume II published for my fantasy series. It’s ready to go, but I need to come up with a marketing plan. If you know of anyone that would like to give pointers, let me know! I’m also looking to expand my writing group that I’m a part of. So, I may open up my website for submissions and offer critique swaps to other writers out there. Stay tuned for that post shortly.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.

Round One: THOLAC

…And I’m back! Welcome to Outpost Dire, home to the shared Dire Universe of epic, grimdark fantasy, military sci-fi, thrillers, and more! Let’s dive right in.

In a new writing update, I’m closing in on the finish line of THOLAC. For those of you who don’t know, that stands for The House of Lust and Candor. As a panther/gardner, I don’t make outlines and know all the details along the way. To me, this stifles creativity. Sitting down and just writing, having the vaguest idea of where I’m going produces something much more organically for me. That said, if you’ve found what works for you, stick with it.

So, during this writing phase, I knew I had a plot hole. Well, not so much a plot hole, but a gaping, unspoken question that you couldn’t ignore. In fact, it was an integral question to the whole plot and series. “Why didn’t this character do this? That would make the most sense!” And that’s when I realized I was in trouble. I had to answer this question for the rest to click into place. It’s not so much as writing into a corner, it was writing a building with one side missing.

You might ask, “Well, why didn’t you have the character do that? Seems like the easiest choice!” And you might be right, but it went against everything I was building. So, I did what any good writer would do in my shoes. I started working on something else, and I put the story and the conundrum onto the back burner. Granted, this new project I was working on was part of the book/trilogy/series, but had no direct impact on it. And during this world-building item, the answer came to me.

Now that I have my answer, I’m moving full steam ahead with THOLAC. The first draft is almost done. I have two or three more chapters and an epilogue to write. Granted, this book won’t be hitting the shelves anytime soon, but it’s nice to have a project under my belt. I’ll probably end up trying the Brandon Sanderson method for this book, and that is to rewrite it at least five times. I know there are bolts to tighten, detail to render, and some characters that need a lot of work to flesh out and make unique, but I’m really happy with this first iteration.

So, what’s on the agenda after the completion of the first draft? Glad you asked. There are a number of projects that have been tumbling in the back of my mind. The first prominent one is The Demon’s Fate sequel. The second is a sequel to the novella The Dark Portal. I’ve been tossing around ideas for that one. If and when a sequel comes out for The Dark Portal, it will be a nonlinear story, meaning that it will not follow the folks in the first book.

That’s it for this round, short and sweet. I shall return…

If you enjoyed this content, check out my books, The Bearer of Secrets, The Demon’s Fate, The Dark Portal, and For Heathens of Heaven on Amazon. All works are available on Kindle Unlimited, eBook, and print. Reviews can be found on Goodreads and Amazon.