Austin Belanger's Blog - Posts Tagged "sequel"

Writing Update

I wrote a blog earlier, but my computer crashed. Seems to be the story of my life lately! Well, here I go again. I hope the computer gremlins stay away long enough for me to get my thought down.

I set up a laptop as my "writing" machine. Not sure if it's going to work out. You know what I'm talking about if you do hours of typing on a system and it's not "right". I hate the "chicklet" button keyboards that most cheaper laptops have nowadays. I might have to go shell out a few bucks to get a decent laptop with an older school push-button style keyboard, more like the desktop keyboard that I use for everything else. Aside from the "feel" of the keyboard, I need a bit of processing power and the ability to save a decent amount of data. Reliability is paramount if I'm going to trust my writing to this thing. I'm not totally sold on this old HP laptop that I'm sprucing up for the job - but you know, beggars can't be choosers! I don't have the money to shell out right now for a nicer machine. I guess that I will just have to make do!

I will be starting work on my new book in the immediate future. I'm looking to begin work on the outline, then flesh out some main points and brainstorm and free-write for a couple of days. Once the framework is set, then I will need to compare my story to the other book timeline and figure out how to make the connection logical and believable. I have some good ideas. We shall see if I can put them down in a coherent fashion!

Anyway, the writing is beginning again, so that means my creative mind will be in the driver seat. Working in IT, that can be a problem! Everyone always wants logic and answers. I won't be that guy for a while!

Thanks for following my writing saga. Please pick up a copy of The Champion of the Golden Queen. It's available in Kindle and paperback formats on Amazon.com com at this link:

http://a.co/27YVwMa

Thanks for your interest and support! Have a great Mother's Day!

Austin

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Published on May 13, 2018 16:53 Tags: austin-belanger, fantasy, sequel, thechampionofthegoldenqueen, writing

Starting All Over Again

I have spent the week dreading starting my sequel. I love my first book, but I didn't want to change the impact of the story by adding another aspect to it. Then it happened.

You writers know what I mean. You start daydreaming about the story. You know, when you're driving, and stuff. Then you show up at your destination, and you don't remember how you got there, but you have some great book ideas to scratch down somewhere, really quick.

Or you go to bed, and you dream about your story, and all of those little abstract notes start lining up in your subconscious. I know you get it. You wake up, and if you could write it all down real fast, you'd have an instant book!

Well, yeah, that started happening over the past week. While I was trying to get one computer working 100% in my house, and I was buying backup media for my files, I started piecing together the sequel to my book.

I started mapping it all out today. I began by writing out a document I affectionately call, "Playbook." It has all of my characters, where they are from, what they do, who they are in a relationship with, what race they are, how old they are, etc. My first book chronologically followed the life of Puryn and his supporting cast, so putting the surviving characters into a new book is not easy if you want everything to match up accurately. Accuracy can be especially hard when you've already determined their deaths and when they die, and you included that information in the first book. Everything has to match up, or the timeline nazis will show up, and you're in for it!

So, I wrote 4312 words over 15 pages of documents to support my second book. I think I may be a little over ambitious with the amount of content in this book, but we shall see if I can get it all in there or not!

I'm off to write the Introduction.

Here I go again.

Thank you for reading my thoughts!

My first book is "The Champion of the Golden Queen", and it is available on Amazon at http://a.co/5E1vucT

The Champion of the Golden Queen by Austin Belanger

Please pick up a copy and leave a review. Have a great weekend.

Austin
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Published on May 27, 2018 20:24 Tags: book, champion, fantasy, indie, sequel, writer, writing

First Day of Writing in the Books

Yesterday I wrote the prologue to my new book. Being a sequel, it had to fall in line with the end of my first book, but I already did all of the prep work a couple of days ago.

I can't say that I had writer's block, per se, but I was experiencing a logjam of different angles that I could use to attack my introduction to my next labor of love. This was a minor annoyance and distraction so I started free writing all of the ideas down in Word as fast as they came to me. The result was a jumbled mess of incoherent gibberish that had no continuity with the timeline. That is when I walked away from the book for the night and began again this morning.

A fresh perspective and another night to dwell on the direction to where I wanted the book to go and I was ready for action.

Today I spent around 8 hours rewriting, editing, and proofreading 8 pages of text, totaling a whopping 3724 words. Not a big payday for me considering the time spent, but I think that it is a quality product for a revised third or fourth draft. It might even be acceptable in a month or two of scrutiny!

I am excited to be working on book two! I never thought that I'd finish with book one!

My first novel is entitled The Champion of the Golden Queen . It is available on Amazon at http://a.co/3aNwYvC

The Champion of the Golden Queen

Please pick up a copy and leave me a review on Amazon and here at Goodreads!

Have a great evening. Thanks for reading my thoughts!

Austin
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Published on May 28, 2018 21:09 Tags: author, book, champion-of-the-golden-queen, fantasy, five-star, indie, rating, reading, sequel