Richard Raley's Blog, page 3

Started War to End All Wars

 8k down, Mancy knows how much to go.

Also started a non KH book I've wanted to write for years.  Tons of writing happening!  The elevator pitch is...Blade Runner meets Percy Jackson, with a touch of Stargate and God of War.

Have spine doctor today, rest tomorrow, then I'll post the Seismic Semester Release Date on Wednesday.

Well That's Gonna Help My Work Ethic

 https://www.footballmanager.com/news/development-update-football-manager-25-1

FM 25 got cancelled!

Also, if you've beta read before, check your email/spam filter and respond.

Seismic Semester is Done

Limping to the finish line, but we reached it.

I am so mentally destroyed, it's incredible.  I have done almost nothing but edit (beside when I recovered from the RFA and got the flu) for four months.  Be it "Seismic Semester" or the 2024 editions of the novels with all the note taking (ended up 100 pages of hand written notes by the time I finished btw) that's been my life.  Worse than "almost" for all of January.  JUST editing.

I am spent.

So I'm taking a week or two off to watch television and stupid movies and...maybe even read someone else's novel!  What a crazy idea!

When I come back, I will start the beta read and finally give you fans a set release date.  March is all I can say at this point.

Thinking about a Friday release so you have the whole weekend, sound good?

After release...I want to write for a year.  That's it.  My favorite thing in the world.  I can't mentally handle any more editing for awhile.  So even if I finished the Vicky Novel (remember, it's 1/3 done!) or completely blow through "War to End All Wars" in six months, I just don't think I can do any more editing that soon.

So...Vicky Novel, "War to End All Wars", "Most Obvious Trap"...just gonna work on them all at the same time and whatever piques my interest is what I'll dive into.  Probably the Vicky Novel first.  That novel is constant political warfare.  Gonna be fun!

Actually...they'll all be fun!

Just no editing!

Please!

Seismic Semester Name Mentions

I searched with "match case" and "whole words" but obviously in our winner's case he's referenced as a surname most often, however...the vast majority is still him and I'm sure he's above second place regardless.
*if you want to go in blind, obviously this does give a sense of the novel, so...on you if you read it*


Welf/Heinrich = 930
Valentine/Val/Boom/Boomworm = 519
Lady/Maudette = 381
Miranda = 361
Ceinwyn/Miss Dale = 309
Plutarch/Paul = 182
Juliette = 180 
Summer = 166
Hope = 152
Olivia/Olive = 146
Raj = 145
Asa = 143
Gavin = 128
Divjot = 124
Naomi = 123
Pocket = 119
Vick/Vicky/Victoria = 110
Jesus = 109
Moira/Mama Welf = 104
Max/Maxwell = 97
Tat/Tatiana = 92
Agnar = 79
Eva = 73
Wolfgang = 72
Leah = 67
Debra = 63
Sigrid = 59
Jackson/Jason = 46
Connor = 39
Quinn = 30
Jessica = 24
Meteyos = 6
Tyson/T-Bone = 3

Can See The Finish Line

And yes, my poor Paperwhite is a decade old and beat to hell at this point!  So, last edit is on the Kindle.  Traditionally, changes at this point are deciding what should be italicized, splitting paragraphs, finding typos, occasionally removing a paragraph or line if I decided its unneeded.

BUT...

Novel is basically the novel at this point.

I'll decide the final release date soon, but I'm still thinking early March.  Pity I didn't get it finished before Christmas, since the whole last chunk takes place as the semester ends and there's serious holiday vibes.

I love this novel, by the way.  It's hard to pick a favorite child and it's not going to have any Eurekas, but there's so many great character moments and I found myself laughing and tearing up while finishing the last pass, and that NEVER happens at this point.  Usually I hate my novels with the fires of a thousand suns by now and I don't feel that at all.  Maybe it's just because it feels like a miracle and such a relief after every that's happened, but...I really hope you all enjoy it too.

Last Seismic Semester Tease?

Wellknown fact that the teenage girl’s ability to ingest souls rises in relation tohow pretty they think they are, dresses only amplify this effect.

Locke Error in Everchanging Dilemma

I've fixed a few continuity errors during all this note taking, but this is rather worth highlighting.  Obviously editing while in insane levels of pain, stuck in bed, not an environment very conducive to finer points and some things slipped through (they always do!).  Really, I'm shocked the novel is as coherent as it is.  I remember I had to rewrite the whole last conversation with Ceinwyn because it felt too rushed and I wanted more between the characters (it was largely just Strange reading the Lady's letter and being like, okay, this is my life now!), but...don't remember doing it.  Actually I remember being on my side, with a pen and paper, slathering up Biofreeze so I could manage 30 minute bursts.  But the words...

Weird experience these last couple days, reading your own novel and to not remember what you put it in!  I think when the mind is in too much pain it goes a little gung-ho to protect you and blocks out whole swathes of memory, since...I know I also watched and read plenty those couple years and it's hard to recall what I saw and learned.

So, as for the error in question here, I had Dean Locke dying just after the Lady graduated and that's not accurate.  He, uh, had some stuff to do before he passed.  It's even in my history timeline, so...I guess I just didn't check it cuz...incredible amounts of pain and all.  It now correctly reads:

The man I think of as Papa you’ll know as TheodoreLocke, our first dean.  He retired a fewyears after I graduated, replaced by Ludwig von Welf.

Also, I said Root had "sisters" but he only has one.  So that's corrected too.

Not sure when I'll get around to uploading them into Amazon (before the new novel releases obviously).  But...the noteapalooza is officially finished!  Yay!  Never again!

As far as Seismic Semester, we are here:

Conclude FM6, 3 Ancillary Novel Noteapalooza.
Common Errors Search-a-thon. (now that I'm using modern spellcheckers, the typo issue is SO much easier BTW)
Ellipsis Hunt and the Defuckening.
ADDED:  Another Pass on Sessions 89, 90, and Last 50 pages of the novel.
Formatting.
Kindle Copy Edit.
Beta Reading.
Release.
So...progress, but those chapters felt very sparse and straightforward prose-wise for certain sections while I was searching through them, XX did this, then XX did that, so on.  I just want to give them a little more attention before my final full look at the whole novel.  Add some spice and glitter and all that.
It's coming along!

Crazy Part of the Edit

I'm currently searching words that I consider wishy washy for possible removal.  The entirety of my night was going through every "maybe" and "possibly" in the novel and removing about a third of them.  Maybe more.  See!!!  Fuck you "maybe!"  Get back in your box!

Next up is "even".  Then the biggest pussy of them all "was".

There are 2,500 uses of the word "was" in Seismic Semester btw.

*whimper*

"That sounds like something a crazy person would do, RR, are you--"

Yes, I know!  But it makes the prose better for some godforsaken reason!

Don't even get me started on "that".

Asshole unneeded word half the time.

Grrr.

URGH

Spent the last four days in bed 24/7, watching the Iron Chef channel on Prime (some serious college nostalgia for late night Food Network twenty years back!).  Might finally feel decent enough to work some tomorrow, we'll see.  That's one nasty respiratory infection thingy going around!  The things I'm coughing out of my lungs at the moment...ewww.

Dodge it if at all possible!

Sick Christmas

Of course, why not?

Doesn't seem TOO bad, a head cold for the most part, but any coughing and sneezing with this spine can be very dangerous.

Finished FM6 notes, almost finished with Dread Fortress.  Still on track for March release for Seismic Semester.  Maybe even early March.

Currently each dose of Dayquil earns me about an hour of work, outside of that I'm miserable.  Finally catching up on a little TV.  Watched Dan Da Dan on Netflix, very solid wild anime with a bopping opening song that's been stuck in my head for the last few days.  Plays quiet a bit like a romantic comedy with battle elements more than the other way around and if you get through episode 7 without balling your eyes out, you have zero soul.  Moving on to Season 2 of Oshi No Ko now.

I don't know why anime is so much easier for me to focus on than American TV.  Maybe, because I'm having to read subtitles and there's an element of having to pay complete attention to it, where when it's English my mind wanders to other things, mostly writing at the moment.

Am also 6 episodes deep into Season 2 of Arcane.  Mixed feelings.  Prefer Season 1, for sure.  The fact I haven't instantly devoured it probably says something.  It's still beautiful, but...the characters feel less like characters and more like action figures.  Which isn't great.  Also goes against every drop of storyteller blood in my body.  And even outside of that it's super rushed with way too much going on.  When I have too much going on, I write thousand page novels, Riot!

But in comparison to the Dan Da Dan episode, there's supposed to be this poignant, sad event at the end of episode 6 and I didn't really care.  Total fridge moment.  Got to create emotional connection to elicited emotions, ya know?  Hard to feel for a plastic action figure.

This negativity is probably the sore throat talking...

Happy New Year to you all!

Heh.