Xavier Edwards's Blog, page 5

Getting Things Done

I was glad this past week to actually get down and get some writing done. Eventually!

It wasn’t as much as I wanted, but every little bit helps, and it keeps the wheels turning, so that when time and availability line up again, things will not be too far back from where I want them.

One of the other things I’ve picked up on over the last week is to take part in the GoodReads “Ask the Author” program, where readers and other interested parties can ask their favourite authors any question they like. There’s no obligation by the author to answer them, but it does give authors another means by which to communicate with our readers and fans, and the opportunity for burning questions to be answered, rather than hoping that the author will somehow know to write about it in a blog, or say something about it in an interview.

Anyway, I’m going to keep plugging away at the writing, and try to steer my next story into some sort of releasable form in the coming weeks. I’m not pressuring myself -- at least not that much, but I do want it to be a decent length and great quality before I release it to the wild.

Time Goes By

I can’t believe that another week has gone by so quickly, especially one where I didn’t get the opportunity to put down more than just a few words here and there. It only felt like yesterday that last weekend had ended and, yet, here we are at the end of another weekend.

I’ve been extremely busy, but it hasn’t been the sort of busy that allows me to turn things into the written word for my fans.

The worst part about the last several days is that I kind of knew that the time wouldn’t be there, but still tried to make it anyway. At least the coming couple of weeks looks somewhat improved, and I am still getting words down -- just not as many as I want to. It’s one of the writer’s personal complaints. There’s never enough time to sit down and write when you feel like writing. But get writer’s block, and there’s never too much time to be sitting around staring at the wall, waiting for the inspiration to strike.

A Matter of Balance

Any author will tell you that real life always finds a way to get in the way of writing. Just as I think that I’ve got my new balance sorted out and can settle back into writing, when life decides to throw in yet another interesting twist.

The major work that I had been writing for a closed group over the last year and a half had all been done and completed at the start of May. I thought that with it being signed off, accepted, and distributed, that I had seen the last of it and could devote the effort that led to 200,000+ words of specialist writing to something that would have a wider readership. And something I would find more interesting to write about, as well.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Because the tome (at 1,000+ A4 pages across two volumes, it’s not much else) has been so successful amongst its desired audience, I have been told that they want to turn it into a very limited run coffee table book for distribution as official gifts to VIPs and as an award for employees. Originally, the volumes were meant to be printed to standard 80gsm A4 paper, spiral bound, with a full colour card cover and clear plastic sheet protector over the front. As such, there was minimal use of colour in the text, and the colour that was used had been designed to work when printed in black and white. Not only that, but the cover had been designed to provide all necessary context in the absence of a spine or back cover.

Having sat down with the publishing managers, it looks like the tome is heading for a case bound special print run. I originally thought that it was going to be cloth covered or leather / simulated leather covered, which was going to remove the need for redesigned cover graphics, but again I was caught out.

It seems that the volumes will be full colour paper covered, with matte imagery and spot UV highlighting (probably on the text). That means having to redo the cover imagery, coming up with suitable spine layout for a spine that may be up to 2 inches thick, and coming up with a suitable rear cover.

For each volume.

The graphic design work isn’t too much of a hassle. It’s coming up with suitable synopsis text for the rear cover which might cause some problems.

Because of the size of each volume, I suspect the sheets are going to be oversewn, which means having to manipulate margins in the content but, when combined with the extra tape binding (in appropriate colour), and two ribbon bookmarks per volume, it’s going to have some impact and will last for as long as a book of that size can.

I am going to have to think about the content and imagery again as, with metallic coloured end pages and a full-colour print on 120-135 gsm satin paper (which one is selected will depend on the final book thickness), something written to be printed on plain A4 copy paper in black and white isn’t going to cut it. I might have to revisit my font choices as well, but think that I will be able to get away with what is already in place.

I have a pretty good idea as to how I’m going to make the content worthy of such a high quality full-colour run and will be revisiting all my existing in-text graphics to make sure they’re going to look good when printed to full colour (and in black and white for those who are committed to printing from the electronic files).

The downside to this rather awesome and humbling opportunity is that it means another couple of weeks worth of work to get things up to the required standard.

A couple of weeks worth of writing that I had been planning to allocate to something a little more fun.

That’s not to say that I’m not managing to get the occasional thousand words or so down from time to time, but it is more of a struggle. At least I know that I will have that time to write in the future, with things back in balance again.

A Wintry Scene

Our first real cold snap this winter has come through over the last week and, while it hasn’t quite been cold enough for snow, at least at the altitudes we live at, it has been a nice week of cold, wet, windy weather. It made for a different sort of inspiration when writing my entry for the July Fever series of guest blog entries and giveaways being run over at Gemini Girls. I’ll have my post appearing in late-mid July, if anyone’s keeping track of what I’m doing.

The weather wasn’t only an inspiration for the July Fever entry, it has also helped shape some scenes that I’ve been trying to write. Writing is still going fairly slow, but at least I’ve managed to sketch out some scene ideas, and have been able to use the weather inspiration to finally be able to tie together the two major sections of one of my next books (when I can get around to releasing it).

After all of the family upheaval of the last couple of weeks, we’re finding our new “normal” again but, if one thing is certain, it is that there is never anything that can be regarded as normal about our family. My muse is coming back to me after having given me some time to grieve and celebrate in recent days. Now to see what I can get to do in terms of being able to write.

A Week of Joy and Sadness

I haven’t had the chance to do much writing this week. It has been a week of immense joy and sadness -- peaks that I had only ever dreamed of, and depths that I never wanted to see.

We welcomed a new life into the world, and farewelled another.

The one we farewelled was not completely unexpected, though it was sudden. A matter of days from the first time they looked a little off colour to no longer being with us. They had a very good innings, making it well into their nineties, and living independently right up until the very end.

She has been waiting for you for just over a decade. Go. Be with her. Leave behind the disease that took her, and the age that took you. Join your child and grandchild that went ahead of you both. We will mourn your loss and will reflect on the many joys that you brought into the world.

We will never forget you.

We love you.

Goodbye.

The little one we welcomed had been expected, but the date of arrival was not exactly known. I don’t know that I could have written a delivery like this one, where the active painful part of labour was over within a matter of minutes and baby was given to mum for a few hours to bond and nurse before being weighed and measured (and all that other stuff). Even more surprising was the shift in handling of newborns over the last dozen years or so. Gone was the whisking away at high speed of the little pink and purple goo-covered monster before handing over a cleaned, pink mini-human. Instead, the newborn was wiped semi-clean and passed up to mum straight away, even before the cord was cut. It was so quick that the first breath (and corresponding cry) happened while lying up on mum’s chest. The cord was clamped and cut, and that was it -- there was no further medical interaction with the newborn for a few hours.

Once the weighing, measuring, and first couple of injections had eventually taken place, it was off with mum back to her room. No side visits to the nursery. No washing clean (that’s a mum and dad job when they’re ready -- first bath and all that good stuff).

We have been waiting for you for over a decade. Your loving parents and older siblings have longed to have you join us and welcome you into this world -- it is yours for the taking. Your little cries, quiet as they are, are enough to melt the hardest man and make willing slaves of us all.

Though only a matter of hours old, you carry over three centuries of known history in your names -- carry your ancient family names boldly into this modern world. Let them serve you well, and you will wear them with honour. Centuries of family tradition have been reignited with your birth and, through you, they will carry on for centuries more.

We love you.

Welcome.

Writing Again

I was enjoying a week without writing after the effort I raced through to get the out-of-genre title finished. Originally I was planning to take more time before getting back to writing again, but I found myself unable to stop thinking about some of my stories and where they would be heading. I couldn’t stop visualising some of the scenes yet to be written (and some of the ones that had already been written and which needed writing again), so I sat down this weekend and started writing again. I was thinking that this weekend would just be a lazy long weekend, away from work, study, and writing, but obviously my muse had other ideas for me. At least there’s the third day of the weekend to make use of tomorrow to get some good writing done. I finally finished reading a book that I’d been stuck on for a couple of months, so there were small successes.

Now that I am writing for myself (and my readers) again, I can relax and take the time to properly build the scenes and characters without feeling rushed as I was at the end of last week. The deadline was good -- it forced me to actually finish the story, but I think that the book I sent off was lacking in some areas. I didn’t plan on doing so, but I went back and read through the book again, and felt the same emotional responses as I did when I first read it after writing. The funny thing is that I didn’t actually feel that sort of emotion while writing it but, even though I know what I wrote and have since read it multiple times, it still tears a fresh set of emotions out of me.

I think that the last couple of books, including the unreleased one, have unlocked something in me. The mysterious 40,000 word limit in a book has been passed without any real issue, and I can feel the next 10-20,000 words after that calling to me. The Deferred Honeymoon cheats a little, as it builds off an earlier starting point, but my unreleased book was written from scratch to be 40,000+ words, and I can feel that there’s a range of my works in progress which will be heading past that level without any real difficulty. This is a good thing, as I had previously been struggling to work out what I was going to do with them up to the 20,000 word level, struggling to find a way to even get to it.

Of course, books aren’t written specifically to reach a pre-ordained word count, but as long as I can tell the story that I can see in my mind, then I’m happy. The recent experiences have shown that I can keep those longer stories held together without making things feel forced, or at least too forced.

Out of Genre Title Finished

I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth over the last week and a bit, but it has certainly felt like it while I have been working hard on finishing my out of genre title. What was originally thought to be a 30,000-ish word story ended up weighing in at just over 43,000 words, almost 10,000 showing up in a little over four days, when I wasn’t expecting to have heavy writing sessions. This has turned it into a nice little novel, compared to the novella I thought it might have been.

It’s all done now, though. I managed to finish it within the deadline I had, which is the first time I’ve had a full book under the deadline of someone else (I’ve had short stories committed to deadlines in the past, but this is a first). Writing a full book to a deadline was an interesting experience and I was nearly caught out with the added editing time required for the longer work, especially as life likes to get in the way of being able to write and edit.

I would like to thank one person in particular -- Sofia Grey, who helped out with some pre-release reading. I originally wasn’t going to let anyone else read the title (mainly due to timelines, but also because of genre), and she ended up reading a title that was still stuck in the very beginning of an editing process and who knew very little about the content of the book before going into it (because I wasn’t telling anyone about it).

Even though I’m not in the position to be able to broadly publish the book at the moment (check again at the end of the year, when I’ll get to know if I can or not), I’m considering distributing a limited number of free copies to some people who have helped out from time to time. The other thing I might do with it is continue to add to it. There are some sections where supporting characters demand more exposure, and others where the main characters can be doing a lot more to flesh out their own nature. While pacing is okay with the book, there are sections where the pace of action can be slowed slightly and the ‘magic happens’ type of plot advances can be explained in detail.

I am pleased with the book, though. Once I had everything completed and tidied up I went back and gave the story one final read through (for last minute edits) before sending it off. Even though I was intimately familiar with the characters and plot, I found that I had an emotional response as the book unfolded. I can only hope that my lucky readers will get the same experience.

As to my normal genre works, I’m planning to take a few days break and start rolling back into them again soon. I’ve hit a good stretch of writing, generating a lot of words per writing session (and keeping almost all of them after edits). As to when my next in-genre book will be ready, I don’t quite know, but I am hoping to have something in the next few months. Based on my current writing mood, I think my next few works are probably going to be in the 40-50,000 word novel count, which means fewer but longer books.

Not a Book for Everyone

I’ve been asked again about when I will release the current title I’m working on under the Xavier Edwards name, and I’m now fairly sure that it’s unlikely to ever see a release as a Xavier Edwards title. Not because it won’t be a good book, but because of its content.

The title doesn’t feature heroes or heroines. Instead, the central character is much more of an antiheroine. People who have claimed I am a misogynist in the past will look at the book and say the same again. People who have triggers will probably not want to read the book. People who are Social Justice Warriors probably won’t want to read the book. Not because of what happens over the arc of the story, but because of the opening stanzas of the book.

Could I have written it without the controversial content? Possibly, but then it wouldn’t be the same book, and it wouldn’t carry as much impact for the effect it has on the main characters. I’m not going to sugar-coat it -- there are some very brutal scenes in the book, which are shocking just by being. It’s not a perfect world, and victims make mistakes -- they are human, after all.

Mistakes that result in perpetrators going unpunished.

It is a carefully crafted tale that is rooted in the real world, built around real places and place names, which alone is a bit of a departure from my normal writing.

I was worried for a little while that the story wasn’t going to tie together, but over the last few days I’ve had some good writing sessions, and the sections are twisting together very nicely, with some very nice characters (and some quite horrible ones, too) being fleshed out. There is one major plot that flows through the story, with a number of interesting branches, and a couple of overlying plots, one of which can be argued to be the new major plot line by the end of the book. This is structurally more complex than the works I’ve released until now and should make for interesting reading when it’s released.

There is definitely zero eroticism in the book, but it is still a good read. In fact, this post was delayed by a few hours because I went back and was planning to read just the first chapter to make sure my statements above are accurate. Instead, I read it from start to finish and found it a gripping read, even in its pre-alpha status, and even knowing exactly what’s happening to who and when and where.

Another Happy Mother's Day

A Happy Mother’s Day to all of my readers for whom Sunday hasn’t quite arrived yet. For the others, I hope that your Mother’s Day went well.

For us here, the weather forecast was originally for a rainy day, but it turned out to be a rather nice day -- light rain having fallen overnight and cleared by morning. We still had clouds rolling through, but we took the opportunity (after presents and sport) to head out for the afternoon to a nearby national park. Everybody loved the day out, especially the kids, who were able to see Koalas, Kangaroos and Emus up close. It did mean that I didn’t really get any writing done today, but the important thing was the kids spending the day doing things for mum. What it really meant was that they said they’d do it, and I’d get stuck with all the dirty work, but there’s nothing new in that.

Another working week beckons, including the chaos of coordinating school runs, afternoon sport, and all the joy and hassle of a house full of growing girls, cats, and fish. If I wasn’t stuck to a deadline for my next work, I’d wonder how I get anything done at all...

As far as my current writing is going, I’ve run into a small issue with the pacing of the work. All the pieces are sort of there, and I know what scenes are going to be in the finished book. The difficulty at the moment is that a couple don’t really seem to be pacing all that well, and others aren’t integrating into the flow very nicely. I’m sure it will be all sorted out, but it’s going to take some work to make it happen.

I have been asked if the book will ever see a release as a Xavier Edwards title. While I’m not quite sure at the moment if that will be possible, if it was going to happen, it wouldn’t be able to happen until late 2014 / early 2015 at the earliest.

Words and Wifi

After nothing more than dribs and drabs of writing -- the ideas are all there, the time to put them down isn’t -- I was pleased to get a productive weekend of writing done on my out-of-genre work. Of course, things can’t be as easy as that, and so I fought to make time around my sport, the kids’ sport, chasing around after the kids, cooking (mmm, lovely pork and vegetable soup / stew, and melt-off-your-fork slow roasted lamb and roast vegetables), and the other duties associated with keeping the household from devolving into complete chaos (managed chaos is okay, though).

I did get the time in front of the keyboard, only for our internet connection to fall over. Normally this isn’t too much of an issue, as I have all the research I need offline / in real book form / on my computer / in my mind for my erotica writing, but in this case I needed access to some definite information. With its setting in the real world, the actions and reactions of my characters need to fit in with what their particular activities demand. These activities are some which I have very little prior experience with, even if I have had plenty of prior exposure (environmental) to them. Getting the right terminology is also a bit difficult as, with many things Australian, a unique slang has evolved to support it.

Since I haven’t made things difficult enough with that, I have a number of characters who are immigrants -- their background actually plays a big part of how the story evolves, and their actions and reactions at various times. Working off pre-conceived notions of how I think they would act / react isn’t enough. As with my normal erotica writings, I am aiming for a believable, realistic fiction where the reader is able to relate to the characters and the world which they inhabit.

Losing access to the internet in the midst of a good writing session didn’t help, but I managed to get enough research material downloaded before the internet broke that it didn’t affect the session.

The book has to be finished by the end of May, so there’s a no-later-than date for going back to my Erotica. I have been getting some good ideas for moving some of my Erotica drafts forward, and what otherwise would have been short stories are looking like they will transition to novellas quite nicely.