S.M. Pace's Blog, page 11

Friday Progress and Word Count

Didn’t get as much done yesterday as I wanted to.  I’m still only at 5000 words with Cry of the Hawk, not because of writer’s block, more because other stuff got in the way.

However the other stuff is actually pretty exciting, for me at least

I’m starting a Patreon!

Again, that may just be exciting for me.  I have no idea if anyone would be willing to donate money in exchange for my short stories, or anything that I do.  So, for now I’ll just think of it as an incentive to get my writing done, and a chance to try some new things.  I’m thinking of making videos, because stepping outside my comfort zone is my new goal this year.

Cheers!

Sound off in the comments, and share how your goals are coming along and maybe what you do to step outside your comfort zone.  

Saint Patrick’s Day and Flash Fiction

First things first, Feliz Dia de San Patricio!

Here’s a picture of a baby without a drop of Irish blood!  Sorry the pic is sideways

 

I’ve always written stories about children.  But ever since becoming a mother, I feel a stronger pull to write those stories.  As I watch my son grow up and explore the world, I see it through his eyes.  His joy and wonder at so many things I take for granted.  Splashing in the bathtub.  Watching snow fall.  Listening to a children’s song.  He smiles and claps, and finds so much happiness in such small things.

I hope he can always find that happiness.

For my own entertainment, I write what I call Twists, what ifs of my own stories.

Here’s a Twist from one of my novels, about a little boy finding happiness.

 

Untitled

Yaurk circled the edges of the pack territory, determined to clear his painful thoughts.  Another baby lost, his wife heart-broken and miserable, his son confused.  Why, Rhua, if you intend us to have only Kyat, only one child, do you keep sending us babies, then taking them away?

He had made the same appeal to Rhua many times, and always, she had no answer.  He supposed that was answer enough.

A sharp wail broke the calm of the night.  Yaurk crouched, alert.  Another wail, the sound of a baby crying.  He hurried toward the source, heart beating fast.  Closer and closer to the perimeter.

There.  A bundle of blankets, and nestled inside, crying steadily.  A baby.  Perhaps old enough to be walking, but a baby nonetheless.  Yaurk approached slowly.  The child struggled in the wrappings, and pale blue eyes spotted Yaurk.  The baby stopped crying and stared.  Yaurk walked closer and scooped the little one up.  The baby trembled in his arms, but made no other protest.

Yaurk stared at the perimeter, the line of trees that separated Yurha territory from the kingdom of Yois.  Why would someone abandon their baby, in the werewolf forest?

He ran back to settlement, the child clinging to his arms.

He knew he had a duty to report what he’d found to the Alpha.  But other instincts won out.  He took the baby to his family’s longhouse.

He young nieces and their husbands sat around the fire pit, their children clamoring around them.  His sister and mother sat a few feet away, dithering over some clay bowls.  They all turned to stare.

Mother stood, and gaped at what he held.  “Where?  How?”

“In the woods, right at the edge of the perimeter.”

She studied his eyes, and knew what he intended.  She watched him carry the still quiet baby to the back of the longhouse, the bed where his wife lay.

Kyat sat in front of his mother, as if guarding her.  Barely ten winters old, and he carried himself more like a man than a boy.  His eyes widened in surprise as Yaurk rested a hand on his shoulder.

Yana stirred on the bed, and turned over.  She blinked at Yaurk, tried to smile.  Then she frowned, and gasped to see what he held.

The baby had had enough.  It wriggled free, and forced Yaurk to lower it to the floor.  Naked, the discovered it was a boy.  The little one looked around in wonder, blue eyes wide.  He stared at Yaurk, Yana and Kyat in turn, then cast suspicious eyes at the rest of the family who had gathered a few feet behind to watch.

Yaurk answered the question in Yana’s eyes, where the child came from.  “Someone abandoned him.”

Yana climbed out of the bed, and knelt beside the little one.  “Why?

Kyat, accustomed to little ones with his several cousins, had retrieved a wooden shaker.  He rattled it and the baby crowed with excitement.  Warmth bloomed, and the shaker jumped from Kyat’s hands, to the boy’s shock.  The baby caught it, and laughed again.

“Magic.”  Yaurk’s mother shook her head.  “His mother abandoned him to our forest, because she did not want him.”

Yaurk’s niece held one of her twins close and shook her head.  “Maybe she did it to protect him from what others might do.”

The little boy grinned, and flung himself at Yana, throwing his chubby arms around her neck.  She returned his embrace, tears brightening her eyes.  She met Yaurk’s eyes, and smiled, truly smiled, for the first time in so many months.

He found himself thinking that perhaps Rhua had answered him after all.

Cry of the Hawk – 4,800 words

Victory!

If I was better at photo shop, he’d be holding up a laptop, or a book or something.  C’est la vie.  But he definitely looks triumphant.

I’m now almost 5000 words in the second draft of Cry of the Hawk.  I’m not super thrilled with it yet, but I like where the story is going, and I can’t wait to get there.

Wish me luck.

Cheers.

Book 3 – Something Clicked

I spent yesterday out with my son.  We drove to a local historical park, and just had a fun day.  He got to run around, ripping up grass and chase squirrels, and I was able to clear my head.

And something clicked for book 3.

I realized I was foggy on how I wanted the final book of the Threads series to end.  I had lost track of my character arcs.

Something about driving, chasing after my sun, and touring historical sites jarred loose the block in my head.  I know how I want the novel to end.  I’ve figured out what each character needs to do in the final book, and by extension, what they need to accomplish in the third book to get there.

Of course, there’s still the major task of writing the book.

I gotta do what, Ma!

Wish me luck.

Cheers,

Excerpt – Al in Android Land

For some reason, the story of Alice in Wonderland has always, to me, lended itself well to a steampunk-future setting.  Which was where my brain went immediatly when I started writing to a prompt using the first paragraph of the novel.

Here’s an excerpt from the rough draft of my newest short story, tentatively titled Al in Cyborg Land.  It still needs a lot of work

“Allison, would you kindly pay attention.” 

Al sighed and shifted her head to meet her sister’s stern gaze. 

Margaret sat on the soft silk grass, legs primly folded under her, a tablet settled in her lap.  Al had peeked at the e-text, and having determined it had no pictures or conversations, she immediately lost interest.  However, she supposed she ought to make a show of listening, for her sister’s sake. 

“You were on the Great Android uprising, Margie.”  Al dredged the sentence up from memory.

Margaret scowled.  “And who led that uprising?”

A trickier challenge.  Al thought for a moment.  Cyborg class Y, number 487.  One of the earliest prototypes of his kind, an almost fully organic product, with nearly human-like capacity for intelligence.  He went on to develop a system upgrade for all androids, to aid in his uprising.” 

With a prim face, Margaret went back to reading aloud.  Al went back to her daydreaming.

From there it’s white rabbits in leather jackets, whacky android logic and a crazy queen who wants Al’s head for her new prototype.  It will definitely be longer than I intended, but I think I’m going to have fun with it.

Word Counts and Confidence

I’ve gotten about a third of the way (1000 words) into a short story I’m planning to a submit to a writing contest.  So far, I’m almost certain about half those words will be cut.  We shall see

I’m on chapter 16 of Shadow.  I’m finding parts that I like again, but still also finding spots that are cringe worthy.  I’ve changed so much since writing that book, it really is bizarre.  Yet I still love the characters, and it’s nice going back and getting to know them again.

Cheers!

Sound off in the comments, and let me know how your projects are going.

 

Progress, Slow but Steady

I made through chapter 10 of Shadow yesterday.  I’m actually hoping to finish it today, if I can get some extra reading time in tonight.

I’ve revised the first half of Chalice!  Finally I’m getting somewhere with it, and I’ll be able to publish it soon.  I also revised another short story, and I have some awesome plans for those.  Stay tuned.

Good luck in all you do.

Cheers.

Revisiting the Past

After struggling with my WIP for two weeks, I made a decision.  In part thanks to the many helpful comments from readers, so thank you all again.

I decided I was too far removed from books 1 and 2 to be able write book 3.  It’s been two years since I read Wings, and even longer since I read Shadow.  I needed to dive back into what I had already established in the Threads world to move forward.

I started reading book 1 yesterday.  It’s harder than I thought it would be.

Being my first ever completed novel, I knew it wasn’t perfect.  But, I didn’t expect to feel quite so strange about it.  It’s bizarre to read my own words, as part of a novel that is now published and set in stone.  I can’t revise it, and my state of mind right now is not to glean and learn from my mistakes.  My focus is on where the story’s been, so I can figure out where to go next.

Page 10 so far, and hopefully will finish before the end of the week.  Wish me luck.

Cheers.

Weekend Writing Warriors – Threads of Magic Book 3

Welcome to my Weekend Writing Warriors Post.  For those interested in joining WeWriWa, click here or the image above.  Check out the rules and sign up to share a snippet of your writing every weekend.

Some background on this excerpt.  This novel has been beating me up for a while.  It’s the third book in my self-published fantasy series, Threads of Magic, and I’ve been wrestling with it since 2014.  At the moment, I’m hating just about everything I write.  It feels like the magic is gone.  Hopefully, I can get that magic back, as my goal is to finish the first draft this month.  Wish me luck, and let me know in the comments how this snippet moves you.

From Threads of Magic Book 3

Bodies littered the ground, some dressed in the yellows of Yois soldiers, others dressed in furs and leather.  Tears stung Ora’s eyes at the sight.  She hated it.  All of it. 

The ground rumbled again and something like a wave carried through the earth.  It threw Ora and Cor backward, and sent them tumbling to the ground.  Cor cursed fluidly, this time unable to stop himself from landing on his injured side. 

Ora cracked her shoulder against the ground, and her vision swam.  When she sat up, she thought she must have been imaging things.  Because the earth was rising. 

Map Making Blunders

Like any world builder, I love drawing maps.  Like a lot of things I love to do, I’ve had next to no training in cartography (incidentally, if you know where one goes to get such training, please let me know).

I try to do as much research as I can, so that what come out with is at least baseline realistic.  And of course, I’ve made mistakes.  I joined a con-cartography forum a while back, and finally got up the courage to post one of my maps.  In the very first comment, I was bluntly told my rivers were wrong.

It stung.

But he was right.  I had the basic understanding that rivers came from mountains.  I believed rivers split and branched off according to the lay of the land.  They actually do, but the process is more complex than what I understood, or what my map indicated.

Basically, I had massive rivers flowing out of my mountain ranges, and branching off into three or four different rivers.  Backwards design.  I took the critique, and I fixed the problem.  Despite how much it hurts to be corrected, I’d rather that than keep making the same mistake and looking like a fool.

So, here’s my new and improved map, corrected rivers and all.  Let me know what you think.  I promise, I won’t get upset

How do critiques make you feel?  Do you prefer blunt and to the point, or carefully worded?