E. Kaiser Writes's Blog, page 9

September 8, 2014

August Update! Yes, I made it... barely....!

 Hey there!!! 
  
    Yes, we made it through August!
 August to me is one of those difficult months... it's too hot to enjoy summer any more, but we're still not ready to acknowledge that it's almost fall. It's like something inside is screaming "I wanna go back to May!!!"

   Which isn't possible... so, everything just slides into a long, sticky string of events, like molasses. Black strap molasses, in fact.  Wink

 But by the time we reach Semptember everything is better. The temps are cooler, the weather more gorgeous, the harvest is coming in and from time to time you can almost catch the smell of fall in the air. And that's okay, in fact, by this time, we're looking forward to fall.
 Hey, by mid-canning-season: we're even looking forward to winter!!!

  So, the big question is: Did I make my 20k goal for August? 
    After the creativity draining Camp NaNo in July, where I over shot my original 20k goal to produce 32k.

          ...Let me tell you, August did not start out with a thunderclap of writing frenzy.

 In fact, August didn't start out with any writing at all.

 My batteries had to seriously recharge.
 And then some Real Life stresses stepped in and messed things up in their own sweet way, and then it was the middle of the month and I had hardly written anything at all.

 So of course, there was mild panic, because I don't want to break my "20k monthly goal" success
streak! Ever since January '14!
 This is the 8th consecutive month that I've produce 20k words in.

 And yes.... I did get them produced. Wink

  It was tough, but I finished the final 2k needed on the next to the last day of the month, and then I just called it quits.
    I seriously need to recharge my batteries!!! Wink


  Progress So Far This Year     So, on the flip side, I do want to take a minute and publicly consider what this commitment to "Monthly 20k" has resulted in.
   
   August was the 8th month!!! Can you believe it???  (I can't hardly! Wink)

    Here's the math:   8 x 20 = 160
      That means that I have written a minimum of 160 thousand words, so far.

 A minimum! 
  That is 3 novel's worth. .... Or 6-to-8-ish novellas... or... 
    Well, actually, it's two 30k novellas, one 90k novel, and I've got the follow-up novel at about 50k, with a couple of thousands tossed into roughly three of the later in the series.   (Yep, all new since January '14!!! Yes, I am kind of freaking out. It seems I've finally closed in on the secret to letting the stories out of my head in a smoother stream!)
  Since I have overshot 20k on more months than not, the total word-count is at least 200 thousand new words.

  That is... to me... pretty amazing. I wouldn't have thought it possible even just a few years ago, and now...? It's still pretty amazing.

 But, having the flexible-timed, large-monthly goal has helped me keep motivated without getting discouraged.

       Discouraged is a horrible place for creativity.

       And learning how to refine the quality of my writing time has hugely affected the words-per-hour.... since I no longer sit at the computer beating myself up for not having a clue what should happen in this scene.

 And having a truly gripping set of plot-lines has inspired a much better conversion rate of time-in-chair. Wink
   
   So, thanks to expert, knowledgeable, professional folks like Rachel Aaron, Dean Wesley Smith, and Hugh Howey for publicly sharing their hard-won perspectives on the realities of being a writer... and particularly, an indie writer.
   You have each inspired me!
 
   (And if you don't know them yet, I heartily recommend checking them out! As writers, they are truly great role models to watch, and learn from!)

   Future Progress  Also, in August, to get me through to the goal, my first reader and I did a lot of plot brainstorming. We now have the next four-to-five novels lightly sketched out, and the possible spinoffs nailed down enough so that their possibilities will not be impeding forward motion on any of the next up books.     This is huge!!!
 And I'm so grateful to have a sister like that who can bring clarity to the muddle of my inspirations! Wink
    (Also, I do intend to make a post about my/our plotting process to share! ...Soon... ish... Wink)

  So... that was my August. How was yours? 





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Published on September 08, 2014 00:30

September 4, 2014

Blast from the Past: Why I write.


Click here to Pin!   I was searching for something the other day in my various stacks of repositories, and came across a paper with this written on it.
   I remember writing this... but I can't remember exactly when. I think it may have been as far back as eight/ten years ago... or maybe not that many, I can't place it for sure.
 Anyway, here it does:


"Why do I write?

 Why do you dream?

 When I write, life recedes a distance and I am on a different level... where the temperature drops on the mist of my thoughts, condensing then into drops of words.

  Then, like dew on a spiderweb... stringing into sentences and paragraphs. Images and feelings, swirling and fading, in and out.
 
 I wanted to write because I loved reading so much as a youngster. I wanted to contribute something good back... and that's never changed.

 When I emerge I am refreshed; renewed.

 Day-to-day returns and I can face it with a cleared perspective.

 ...I have learned something from myself."


  What do you think about that?
       Why do you write? Hm???
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Published on September 04, 2014 20:09

August 28, 2014

ICA Blog Train: David Bergsland Interview!

 Welcome to the next stop on the Independent Christian Authors Blog Train! 

I'll begin the "linked blogs" on this train by interviewing of fellow indie author, David Bergsland. We both belong to the online group
ICA and connected through there... a great place to learn from the many experienced members on there who happily share of themselves, and David is right in among those!

 So I am glad for a chance to introduce him to you all, and hope others will be encouraged, blessed,  and perhaps even challenged by his story!
  If you're a writer looking for a warm, helpful place, I'd highly recommend joining ICA on Facebook here. 


We'd welcome the chance to get to know you!


So, David; what or who inspires you to write? Is there a “real person” you pattern either your protagonist or antagonist after?It’s just part of who I am. I began as a scientist when I got out of high school in 1961. In full rebellion, I was one of the early flower children [pre-hippy] in the 60s. All the drugs gave me a strong desire for a creative outlet. I graduated from college with a fine art degree. 3 years later I met the Lord. It became quite obvious that the Lord had no plan to bless my art career even though the desire was still there. He led me into graphic design, then art director, then teacher, font design, and finally dropped writing into my lap.So, writing started as a ministry supporting my teaching of digital publishing. The state school is taught in [Albuquerque TVI] didn’t allow me to mention Jesus in my class or coursework, but He blessed my time there and I ministered to many students over the years. My technical books on book design, using InDesign, font design, typography, so on are still what He blesses for me, primarily. When I was forced out of teaching [the school dropped the degree], I happened to be 65—so I “retired” early—accepting this as the time where the Lord would finally let me write for him. It’s a financial necessity for me to work at my trade. So, I began writing Christian books: Bible studies and creationist books. They’re beginning to sell, but they’re a small part of my income.I also had two relatively complete novels almost completed. They were released as The Righteous Perish, a radical, edgy, non-conventional endtimes thriller patterned after what I knew as a prophecy teacher and Bible teacher for 40 years, and as an associate pastor supporting my wife’s ministry.The 2nd novel was released as Daniel’s Mighty Men. It’s an epic technothriller with the heroes and heroines roughly fantasized out of people I know. It shows a privately owned black ops company made up of over the top, Charismatic/Pentecostal/Fundamentalist Christian warriors. It’s wonderful to read—but it’s a massive book, so it’s taking a while to get traction.Where do you want to be in your writing career five years from now?Serving Jesus in power, following His lead. I have no idea what His plans are.What one piece of advice do you have for other authors?We don’t need more entertainment. We need more books which the Lord can use to transform lives.Which author, either living or dead, would you most like to meet?The Apostles Paul & JohnThe prophet IsaiahWhat book project/s are you working on right now? An inspirational book on what it takes to be a Christian author with a strong call called Writing In Holiness: While Keeping It Real.An epic fantasy about a world where political control is a fight between an apostate church and occultic evil. The true believers are being slaughtered by the church. The hero is a calligrapher/artist called by God to strengthen the true believers and the heroine is a princess running for her life from her brother who has sexually assaulted her physically and demonically. It’s the first book in a series called Staff of Light.Plus new editions of my technical books on font design and book production for Christian self-publishers.  Author Links!Amazon Author page: David Bergsland    My latest release is Designing ePUBs With InDesign. It’s the ebook production portions of my main book design offering Writing In InDesign CC 2014 Producing Books.    My books are in the iBooks Store, NookBooks, Kindle, Createspace, Kobo, Books-a-Million, Scribd, and many more.Social Media:FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/radiqxpressPinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/radiqxpress/Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/radiqxpressTwitter [Christian]: @radiqxpressTwitter [technical]: @davidbergslandGoogle+: +DavidBergslandScribd: http://www.scribd.com/bergsland
I’m also active in: christianwriters.com, and several private or secret FaceBook groups.
My technical blog: The Skilled Workman focused on book production, font design, and typography for the Christian author http://bergsland.org
My Christian blog: Reality Calling specializing in Reviews of Christian speculative fiction http://radiqx.com
My normal email: david@radiqx.com    Thanks for joining us, David, and we look forward to seeing who you interview on your blog Sept. 2nd! 
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Published on August 28, 2014 02:00

August 19, 2014

Surprise Guest Post!


 Well, the internet has done it again!
 I am once again surprised by my own post.

   Vaguely Circular is featuring my guest post today on the Mathematics of Speculative Fiction. You should take a look, and then tell me what you think of the theroy?
 After all, who loves a good theory more than Spec-Fic lovers???!!!!


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Published on August 19, 2014 10:33

July 30, 2014

July 30th Update!

Okay!!!
 July is almost over. I mean, like almost OVERRRRRR...  for which I am actually really happy. I know, I'm supposed to be shocked and surprised at how fast time is flying, but instead I'm kind of
like; "YES!!! Come on, come on! I can't wait to get to the end of this tunnel!"

 Which speaks of my belief that the best is yet to come, I guess? ;-)

 Either way, I'm happy to report to you all that this month I did indeed make my 20k Camp NaNo goal... in fact I did better than that and wrote a total of 31,740 words.

 Which is a great!

  ...Even though not all of it was on the particular ms. I wanted to wrap up this month.
 (Should I be learning something here, do you think? My "wrap this up" goals never seem to work in monthly segments, methinks.)

  Anyway, back to the subject.
 I wanted to finish off the first draft of Prince of Demarken, and since I already had nearly 40k on it I thought that should have been a do-able task. Unfortunately, it appears that the "easy part" had been the first 40k, and the rest of this is proving more dicey.
 You see, in the first part of Demarken, our boy faces some major musical overtures in his home country, having caused great distress to his kingdom and his family, (political/ diplomatic, as well as personal reactions all having a heyday.)
 So, he's in serious hot water, and because of stuff that happened in Winter Queen, he's not handling any of that very well.
 So it's a real, royal mess of a familial stress event, and it's a bit tricky to chart the course correctly.

 One of the snags I hit upon this month was his brother's personalities. His oldest brother, (by over 2 decades) is the current king, and it goes from there. Having a large family, (boy, am I a sucker for this or what?) makes for interesting situations, but getting everyone to have a distinctive personality, and knowing them well, is crucial for having the key players be unique enough to add spice to the story, not glop it all up.
 This is of course a tricky proposition, but something I know can be handled well. And I think it's important to have literary representation of genuine family relations... since authors so often go with the cop-out of "the Orphan!!!" ;-)

 So, in order to understand how his brothers act now, I had to go and write some scenes of them in their younger years.... when they were the main players in Twelve Dark Knights. Yep, about 15 years ago.

 It's amazing how much info you can get from a younger form of a character... and let me tell you red headed, green eyed Helje is quite the kid! He's complicated and somewhat embarrassing in a manner so authentic you can't help but feel sorry for the fella. His twin Morten is so much better equiped to take on the world, even at eleven. But the special relationship between the two is super endearing, and I can't wait to see where they go a little later in their lives.

 Anyway, so I wrote these particular pieces in Demarken by flipping back and writing a scene for Knights, then a current scene from Demarken, back to Knights, back to Demarken.... this kept the characters on pitch with themselves and made the whole world of the family crystalize into clarity.
 It was pretty amazing to see how much the brothers were shaped together in Twelve Dark Knights, and it's kind of a little bit sad that our boy missed out on lots of that because he was the littlest by such a large margin.

 But the family dynamics are really resonating through the series, and I'm very excited to listen to them hum.

 So although Prince of Demarken won't be wrapped up here this July, I do now have several thousand on Twelve Dark Knights, which has me super excited to get to that stage when the slot comes up!

 And Prince of Demarken currently stands at a little over 57k, so we're definitely closer than we were before! :-)
   But there's still a whole lot of story left to go.


 What'cha think? Will I ever be able to correctly predict my word counts? Or the time needed to finish something? ;-)
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Published on July 30, 2014 12:39

July 24, 2014

Guest Posting on Vaguely Circular

Hey! I'm a featured guest poster recently over at Vaguely Circular's Imagine This! celebration of
creativity.
 I maybe should have given everyone a bit more notice, but it just snuck up on me!

 Oh, well!

 In other news, I'm over 20k on my July writing, so that means I've reached my Camp NaNo goal. Should I reset my official goal to 30k, or just keep that as an unofficial goal?
 What say you all?


 Anyway, on the my guest post opening!

 "It seems a lot of ideas come from dreams, and I have a theory that dreams and spec-fic actually are located in the same place… as in, spec-fic is stories set entirely in the dream world, that is why they work, and why they appeal.
Because we are waking when we read them, our conscious minds demand the stories follow their own internal logic and rules (unlike dreams); but, so long as they’re consistent, writers can get away with anything… because we all know in dreams, anything goes.
I’m known for active and colorful dreams, and there was a stretch..."

 Go check the rest out on Vaguely Circular!
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Published on July 24, 2014 13:48

July 16, 2014

Title Image for the Thaw series


 What do you think of this as a title promo image to kind of sum up the whole Thaw series?
 It is visually linked to the first four covers... and I like the way the water drops and the silver metal-look letters play off each other.

[image error] 

Tell me your thoughts!!! 
 
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Published on July 16, 2014 10:29

July 9, 2014

Winter Queen is Wrapped!!! (At least for now!)

Working Cover: Winter Queen by E. Kaiser WritesWinter Queen is wrapped up!
  I really do believe I've gotten everything I can think of that needs to be in it... put there! Now to do a
bit more tweaking and then we'll be looking to see what we get as feedback from it!
 It goes without saying that I'm very relieved to be done with that manuscript... but I do wish I'd managed to finish still in June.

 This means that I needed part of July to finish WQ... unlike I had hoped.... But, since it's finally over, I can now feel free to move on to the sequel.

 Only on slight problem... I'm feeling a wee bit drained. (Ack!!!)
 And since it's Camp NaNo, the pressure is a bit on.

 I've set my NaNo goal at the same monthly goal I've been doing, 20k... so it really shouldn't be that scary. But the NaNo stat bar dictates a proscribed number of words Per Day... which you all know is not how I work best.

 So that is a little bit scary to me.

 And you know I don't work well when frightened.


 Anyway, I've been tapping away at my July NaNo doc, and I've gotten 6,583 words so far. Which puts me above the curve needed to make my stats approve of me... but I'm not feeling energized and refreshed like I'd like!

 I am having really outlandish dreams, though, which usually is a sign of creative muscle that just begs to work! So what I need to figure out is how to connect the two wires and get the creativity to boiling on Prince of Demarken!!!


 P.S. What do you think of our working cover???

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Published on July 09, 2014 20:54

June 30, 2014

Blog Reader Question!

Via PinterestOkay, peoples! Here's a question for you... everyone who takes any interest in my blog should pretty-please answer this question:

  What kind of posts do you like to see?

 And also, how often do you think they should appear?
 As in: what's the absolute LOWEST amount per month you think is nice for you as readers, and what would you consider to be really a maximum?

 Because as we get deeper into summer, I'm wanting to do this blog justice... (well, actually, you lovely people who read it, justice!)

   But I'm also stacking my plate full of projects, (as well as everyday work and such that isn't really too negotiable.) So I've got a lot going on, and I need a structured plan with which to approach blogging.
Via Pinterest
   What I'm saying here is that I love you guys! Everybody who stops by and comments and joins the
conversation... it's like being visited by flower fairies. Both beautiful and inspiring!

 So I definitely want to keep you lovely creatures happy and content with what you find here!

 On the other hand... I don't want to be putting more time and effort here than is required, thereby shorting the completion of the other projects going on in my life.

   So, enlighten me! You who ARE my audience... tell me! 
 What do you think??
Via Pinterest
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Published on June 30, 2014 01:00

June 27, 2014

Camp NaNo Is Coming Right Up!

 Well, June is nearly over, and as any of you who are aware of the Wrimo programs may already know... that means that NaNo Camp July is right around the corner!
 Like... RIGHT around the corner.


 This means that I'm a wee bit stressed, because I've been really, really wanting to wrap up Winter Queen before the first... so that I can start back on Prince of Demarken! I am really looking forward to getting back to that story!

 And that's what I've been up to.


 Well, better get back to work. Winter Queen isn't going to wrap itself up all alone!!! Wink
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Published on June 27, 2014 18:24