Scott King's Blog, page 4

Creators Cast: T.S. Paul!

Best Selling Author T.S. Paul joins to show to talk about how over the course of eighteen or so months he went from being unpublished to having 31 books published! To learn more about T.S. Paul visit his site: https://tspaul.blogspot.com/

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Creators Cast: Justin Sloan!

Author Justin Sloan joins the show to talk about writing video games, screenplays, and novel. To learn more about Justin, visit his site at: http://www.justinsloanauthor.com/

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Creators Cast: Juston Sloan!

Author Just Sloan joins the show to talk about writing video games, screenplays, and novel. To learn more about Justin, visit his site at: http://www.justinsloanauthor.com/

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Creators Cast: Rob Daviau!

Game designer Rob Daviau joins the show to talk about food, how he created the legacy genre of board games, and Pandemic Legacy: Season 2! To learn more about Rob visit his site at: http://www.robdaviau.com

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Creators Cast: Girls Guts Glory!

Erika & Rachel of “Girls Guts Glory” join the show to talk about how their love for D&D evolved into a hit web series that was recently picked up by Wizards of the Coast! To learn more about GGG check out their site at: https://www.girlsgutsgloryrpg.com/

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ROAD TRIP!

We are driving to Florida and then South Carolina! We will be home in a few weeks.

The next two days are going to be spent mostly in the car, but once we reach Charleston, I’ll have lots of pictures to post, so make sure you watch my Twitter & Facebook feeds for those!

The Silmarillion!

Last month I decided I was going to re-read Lord of the Rings. Mostly I was curious about how often random names and references were made to stuff that doesn’t happen in LotR. Plus I have ALWAYS skipped the poems and this time I wanted to read them.

I got four chapters into LotR and started seeing weird names I didn’t know. I looked up one of the names and learned it was an old god’s name, which reminded me that for like twenty years I have intended to read the Silmarillion.



For those who don’t know, The Silmarillion is like a history textbook of Arda (the world where Middle Earth is located). Parts of The Silmarillion are written like creation myths, parts of it are like excerpts from The Bible, some parts are pure story, and other parts are like an actual history book.

Well I did it! It took me like three weeks, but I finally finished The Silmarillion! It took so long because in the middle I stopped and read Beren & Lúthien, The Children of Hurin, and snippets from The History of Middle Earth.



I won’t lie, it was grueling hard work. That being said, I really enjoyed it. The Hobbit is still my favorite, but I might like The Silmarillion more than Lord of the Rings. I’m going to have to go back to re-reading LotR now to decide which I think is better.

Creators Cast: Anthony Ryan!

Best selling fantasy author Anthony Ryan joins to the show to talk about world building, being a hybrid author, and his new hit series The Draconis Memoria. To learn more about Anthony, check out his site: https://anthonyryan.net/

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Thirty in 30!

30in30 is DONE.

This month for 30in30 I…

– Finished 30 short stories.

– Wrote a total of 79,564 words.

– Outlined an additional 37 short stories.

– Wrote the rough drafts for 5.5 other short stories.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting into when I decided for sure to do 30in30. I new it would be hard. I knew it would be a lot of work. I did not realize that 30in30 was going to be way harder then doing The 5 Day Novel, and it was!

The 5 Day Novel in a way was easy. I put my life on pause for five days and basically did nothing but sleep and write with a few breaks for walking and eating. It was hard work, but easy because doing it was the priority. One of the main things that intrigued me about 30in30 was that it would be about balance. To achieve success in 30in30 I’d have to NOT put everything else in my life on pause and yet still get the challenge done.

July is historically a busy month for me because for the past five years I’ve done a Kickstarter. This year I had to prep it, launch it, and keep tabs on it. Although it sounds super simple, running a Kickstarter is not easy and is super time consuming. July is also when all the big board games come out, right before Gen Con so I have lots of freelance photography work. Because July is so busy for me I usually do less writing then, and I was excited about 30in30 because it was a way for me to try and find balance so that I could still write.

Although I finished and managed to do the thirty stories in thirty days, I do think I could have done better. For starters I was not ready at the start of the month. I was too busy prepping for the Kickstarter and so I didn’t plan out and outline all the stories till a few days into starting the challenge. The challenge would have gone much smoother if I had done it before the start.

I also did something a bit crazy in that all my short stories are set in the same universe as my upcoming fantasy series. They cover about a five thousand year time span and not only are the POVs drastically different throughout all thirty, but the style of the stories shift. A few of the stories are creation myths and they are written as such with an omniscient storybook style view. Other stories were more fairy tale romance, or historical text, or in-world fiction.

Of the thirty only about a third were written in the same third person point of view as my fantasy series and the writing process would have gone smoother if the style of the stories was more consistent. I apparently have a mental block and cannot easily transition from one style to another. I needed at break between the different styles and instead of powering through a bunch of short stories on a single day I needed breaks between them to get into the right head spaces of the different styles.

I am also a bit disappointed because maybe twenty-five of the stories are not stand alone in the sense that the main book in the series should be read first to avoid spoilers or some of the stories were specifically written to be put inside of the books in the main series. I really wish I had manage to get more fully stand alone stories done. As is I think there are still ten or eleven stories I HAVE to write because I got too distracted with the world building and different story styles and I need those additional stories for reader magnets, email sign-ups and all that jazz.

Although I wish I had done better, I am proud of myself. It was an interesting challenge and I’m super glad I did it. However I wasn’t the only one who did it. After announcing that I was going to do 30in30 I had a bunch of other authors jump on board. I made a Facebook group and we spent the last thirty days cheering each other on.

I was a bit hesitant in inviting others to join the challenge. For starters it made me the de-facto leader and I hate being in charge. I also knew how hard it was going to be and that a bunch of people would feel bad when they didn’t finish. I don’t like to make people feel bad. However one of my main teaching philosophies with my non-fiction is about empowering writers to figure out who they are and I figured even if someone did the challenge but quit after five to ten stories, they were still ending at a better place then where they started.

What I didn’t expect was the bonding with the group members. They were all so awesome and they all made the challenge their own. I did my best to cheer them on, but at the same time they pushed me to work harder and that was a cool feeling. From what I know at least two others, and maybe three also completed 30in30.

I’m super proud of all the writers who attempted 30in30 and I really hope that those who didn’t finish don’t feel bad or like they failed. So much of 30in30 was about learning balance and making time. Fingers crossed, even those who didn’t end the month with thirty finished stories still had a few take aways about themselves and their process.

Would I do 30in30 again? I think so, but it would have to be at a time when it wouldn’t distract me from writing a novel or one of my non-fiction books. So maybe next July when I have another Kickstarter and am to distracted to write a full novel? I also think next time I’d make sure all the stories were the same style and type of POV. It would also be nice to switch up the genre so they didn’t have to be so heavily world-builded and fit into a pre-established continuity.

That was my July. How did your July go?

Creators Cast: Brian D. Meeks!

Data guru Brian D. Meeks joins the show to talk about the art of analyzing data, and more specifically the secrets to running Amazon Ads! To learn more about Brian make sure you check out his site: http://extremelyaverage.com/

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