Kyra Halland's Blog, page 55
March 20, 2013
And So It Goes: Day -10
Pre-camp challenge, days -11 and -10. 655 words yesterday, and 1161 words today. Evil conspiracies, a fight, and some serious smooching. :D Why I love writing.
This project might not even get to novella length; it might end up in the neighborhood of very long short story. But this story has been waiting a long time to get told, so I don't think it minds how long or short it is. And there are no length requirements in self-publishing as there are in conventional publishing. Stories can be as short or long as they need to be. An awkward length no longer needs to be a reason for a story to not get written and published, and stories no longer need to be cut down or padded out to meet some arbitrary length guideline.
This is a good thing.
This project might not even get to novella length; it might end up in the neighborhood of very long short story. But this story has been waiting a long time to get told, so I don't think it minds how long or short it is. And there are no length requirements in self-publishing as there are in conventional publishing. Stories can be as short or long as they need to be. An awkward length no longer needs to be a reason for a story to not get written and published, and stories no longer need to be cut down or padded out to meet some arbitrary length guideline.
This is a good thing.
March 18, 2013
Pre-Camp Challenge Day -12, and Some Stuff I'm Reading
Good writing day today. I finished phase 1 of the Chosen of Azara revision and started phase 2, and wrote 1594 words on the Estelend novella. Also, yesterday, one of my test readers for
Lost Book of Anggird
reported that his cat was mad at him because he was so engrossed in the story that he wasn't paying enough attention to her. Words to warm a writer's heart - though I did convey my apologies and a virtual belly-rub to the cat.
I want to mention a few things I've been reading and enjoying lately by other independent authors. I'm thoroughly enjoying A Fistful of Divas , a western-mystery serial by Camille LaGuire, featuring her young gunslinger couple Mick and Casey McKee. Give it a try; if you like it, there are also a couple of other short stories, a novella, and a full-length novel about Mick and Casey available. Ms. LaGuire has also written a number of other mystery and adventure novels and stories.
I've also been going through Lindsay Buroker's steampunk/fantasy Emperor's Edge novels (and related novellas and short stories) like chocolate. Adventure, action, suspense, engaging characters, magic, amazing technology, and a touch of romance make this series addicting. Ms. Buroker also has a steampunk series set in the Yukon Gold Rush.
Finally, I just started reading Child of the Ghosts by Jonathan Moeller, and am finding it hard to put down. I'm only a quarter of the way through the first book in a six-book series, but so far the story is compelling and, like the other stories I've mention here, keeping me up waaaay too late at night. Mr. Moeller also has a number of other fantasy and science fiction series available.
If you're looking for something new and different to read, something outside of the ordinary, consider giving one of these independent authors a try.
I want to mention a few things I've been reading and enjoying lately by other independent authors. I'm thoroughly enjoying A Fistful of Divas , a western-mystery serial by Camille LaGuire, featuring her young gunslinger couple Mick and Casey McKee. Give it a try; if you like it, there are also a couple of other short stories, a novella, and a full-length novel about Mick and Casey available. Ms. LaGuire has also written a number of other mystery and adventure novels and stories.
I've also been going through Lindsay Buroker's steampunk/fantasy Emperor's Edge novels (and related novellas and short stories) like chocolate. Adventure, action, suspense, engaging characters, magic, amazing technology, and a touch of romance make this series addicting. Ms. Buroker also has a steampunk series set in the Yukon Gold Rush.
Finally, I just started reading Child of the Ghosts by Jonathan Moeller, and am finding it hard to put down. I'm only a quarter of the way through the first book in a six-book series, but so far the story is compelling and, like the other stories I've mention here, keeping me up waaaay too late at night. Mr. Moeller also has a number of other fantasy and science fiction series available.
If you're looking for something new and different to read, something outside of the ordinary, consider giving one of these independent authors a try.
March 16, 2013
Day -13, and a Gift From my Muse
Wrote 1486 words today, to replace what I lost last night and finish up that chapter. While I was thinking through this chapter today, my muse bopped me on the head with a realization: One of the characters in this story is also a character from another unfinished story. I had started that story and then realized I had no idea where it was going or what would happen to the main character. Well, now I know - she ends up in this story. So now I can write that other story as a prequel to this one. I love it when things just fall into place like that.
Day -14: Foiled by a Missing Boot Manager
Today I got most of the next section of the thing I'm writing (note to self: think of a working title, at least) and then my computer crashed. Froze up completely, said there's been an error, then went black and came up with a very ominous sounding message: BOOTMGR MISSING.
Ok, even *I* know that a missing boot manager probably is not a good thing. So first I panicked, then I got on the phone with my son the computer guy, who walked me through figuring out what to Google on my Kindle Fire *huggles Kindle Fire* and started taking me through the steps. Normally I'm good at figuring out what to Google on my own and following directions, but I was still kind of panicking and my brain wasn't functioning right. We got to where it says press the F8 key, which I did, and nothing happened. Repeatedly. To make a long and stupid story short, he had my husband burn a system repair disk on his laptop, and after several go-rounds and errors and false starts and restarts and stuff, my computer is finally restored and working again. And everything's peachy.
Except I lost the 1000 words or so that I wrote right before the crash.
But it could have been much, much worse. Everything else important is backed up to SugarSync, Dropbox, and an external hard drive. Last summer when my old computer died, I was afraid it was my media storage internal hard drive that had gone belly-up and that I had lost my music and videos. I also had photos on that drive, but I back up my photos to online storage. It still would have been a pain to get them all back onto my computer. Fortunately (I guess), it turned out the problem was with the motherboard, which was about to blow, and all my data was safe. Still, I went out and bought a portable external hard drive, which now stores backups of everything. Music, photos, videos, documents, ebooks, everything.
So, a couple of lessons here. First of all, make yourself a system repair disk for your computer now, before you need it. I was lucky that there are two other working computers with the same OS as mine in the house, and one was not being used for video games at the time, so I was able to get a system repair disk made. Go in the control panel, poke around until you find stuff about system repair and maintenance, and follow the directions. Or, if you don't feel computer-savvy enough to do that, have a more knowledgable relative or acquaintance help you. Or, shoot, get the guys at your friendly local computer repair shop to do it for you.
The other thing is, backup BACKUP BACKUP!!!!!!! In at least 2 places, online and external drive, even on a thumb drive if you must, though those aren't really intended for backup but for toting files around and can give out without warning. I use Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) for my writing files, and also back up my writing files and other important files to SugarSync and Dropbox. If you don't have one or the other, sign up, it's free. And if you sign up through one of my referral links, we each get a bonus chunk of free storage:
SugarSync
Dropbox
And it's late, and I'm too tired to re-write those thousand words. I'll try again tomorrow.
Ok, even *I* know that a missing boot manager probably is not a good thing. So first I panicked, then I got on the phone with my son the computer guy, who walked me through figuring out what to Google on my Kindle Fire *huggles Kindle Fire* and started taking me through the steps. Normally I'm good at figuring out what to Google on my own and following directions, but I was still kind of panicking and my brain wasn't functioning right. We got to where it says press the F8 key, which I did, and nothing happened. Repeatedly. To make a long and stupid story short, he had my husband burn a system repair disk on his laptop, and after several go-rounds and errors and false starts and restarts and stuff, my computer is finally restored and working again. And everything's peachy.
Except I lost the 1000 words or so that I wrote right before the crash.
But it could have been much, much worse. Everything else important is backed up to SugarSync, Dropbox, and an external hard drive. Last summer when my old computer died, I was afraid it was my media storage internal hard drive that had gone belly-up and that I had lost my music and videos. I also had photos on that drive, but I back up my photos to online storage. It still would have been a pain to get them all back onto my computer. Fortunately (I guess), it turned out the problem was with the motherboard, which was about to blow, and all my data was safe. Still, I went out and bought a portable external hard drive, which now stores backups of everything. Music, photos, videos, documents, ebooks, everything.
So, a couple of lessons here. First of all, make yourself a system repair disk for your computer now, before you need it. I was lucky that there are two other working computers with the same OS as mine in the house, and one was not being used for video games at the time, so I was able to get a system repair disk made. Go in the control panel, poke around until you find stuff about system repair and maintenance, and follow the directions. Or, if you don't feel computer-savvy enough to do that, have a more knowledgable relative or acquaintance help you. Or, shoot, get the guys at your friendly local computer repair shop to do it for you.
The other thing is, backup BACKUP BACKUP!!!!!!! In at least 2 places, online and external drive, even on a thumb drive if you must, though those aren't really intended for backup but for toting files around and can give out without warning. I use Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) for my writing files, and also back up my writing files and other important files to SugarSync and Dropbox. If you don't have one or the other, sign up, it's free. And if you sign up through one of my referral links, we each get a bonus chunk of free storage:
SugarSync
Dropbox
And it's late, and I'm too tired to re-write those thousand words. I'll try again tomorrow.
March 14, 2013
Pre-Camp Challenge, Day -15
First chapter of the novella written, 1161 words. Still no title, because I'm not very good at titles. Hopefully one will come to me as I write, so I'll have something to refer to this project as. A quick summary: it's about a scholar in possession of a very sensitive document who has been ordered to bring that document to the capital, and the unconventional guard who's been assigned to him. Danger ensues.
As I mentioned before, I got the idea for this story from a small fragment of an old project. I started writing 23 years ago, and I think I have every story fragment, finished and unfinished novel, and half-baked idea I ever came up with. Some of those ideas have been around since my very first DOS computer, which my dad gave me as a present for my Master's Degree graduation/first Mother's Day in 1989. They've migrated over six (or maybe more) computers, from DOS to Windows ME (ugh), XP, and 7, through a succession of hard drives, and from 5" floppies to 3" floppies, Zip disks, and now to assorted external drives and cloud backup. There's even a handwritten novel chunk, which I'm working on typing in. So I've saved all these novels and half-novels and idea fragments all this time, thinking maybe I'd get back to them someday. As I look back on them, there's some pretty good ideas in there. The writing makes my eyes bleed - I think I've improved in the last 23 years - but the ideas are good. A lot of those abandoned ideas aren't enough for a full-size novel, but the rise of independent e-book publishing has also seen a return in popluarity of the novella and novelette. No more discarding ideas because they don't fit into the arbitrary word counts required by conventional publishing.
I also still have the first novel I ever wrote, and a completed sequel which I had totally forgotten I had finished. I remembered the idea, but not that I had actually written it all the way to the end. These are on my list to evaluate for possible rewriting, revision and eventual release.
The point of this rambling, I guess, is to say, keep all your old ideas. Even if they don't seem like they're going to go anywhere, you never know what you might do with them in the future.
(Though I'll admit I threw away the original handwritten version of The Lost Book of Anggird once I completed the first draft of the new version because it was so bad.)
As I mentioned before, I got the idea for this story from a small fragment of an old project. I started writing 23 years ago, and I think I have every story fragment, finished and unfinished novel, and half-baked idea I ever came up with. Some of those ideas have been around since my very first DOS computer, which my dad gave me as a present for my Master's Degree graduation/first Mother's Day in 1989. They've migrated over six (or maybe more) computers, from DOS to Windows ME (ugh), XP, and 7, through a succession of hard drives, and from 5" floppies to 3" floppies, Zip disks, and now to assorted external drives and cloud backup. There's even a handwritten novel chunk, which I'm working on typing in. So I've saved all these novels and half-novels and idea fragments all this time, thinking maybe I'd get back to them someday. As I look back on them, there's some pretty good ideas in there. The writing makes my eyes bleed - I think I've improved in the last 23 years - but the ideas are good. A lot of those abandoned ideas aren't enough for a full-size novel, but the rise of independent e-book publishing has also seen a return in popluarity of the novella and novelette. No more discarding ideas because they don't fit into the arbitrary word counts required by conventional publishing.
I also still have the first novel I ever wrote, and a completed sequel which I had totally forgotten I had finished. I remembered the idea, but not that I had actually written it all the way to the end. These are on my list to evaluate for possible rewriting, revision and eventual release.
The point of this rambling, I guess, is to say, keep all your old ideas. Even if they don't seem like they're going to go anywhere, you never know what you might do with them in the future.
(Though I'll admit I threw away the original handwritten version of The Lost Book of Anggird once I completed the first draft of the new version because it was so bad.)
March 13, 2013
Pre-Camp Challenge, Day -16
Wrote the third of three weird-fantasy-ish shorts tonight. "Mistress of the Mirror," coming in at 1,061 words. This one didn't weird me out as much as last night's story did, but it's still pretty strange.
Watch for all three shorts from this challenge to be posted here on the site, probably sometime next week. In the meantime, tomorrow I'll start the Estelend novella (set in the same world as Chosen of Azara ). Target word count: 22,500, or 1500 words a day.
Watch for all three shorts from this challenge to be posted here on the site, probably sometime next week. In the meantime, tomorrow I'll start the Estelend novella (set in the same world as Chosen of Azara ). Target word count: 22,500, or 1500 words a day.
March 12, 2013
Pre-Camp Challenge Progress, Day -17
I set myself a challenge last night to write three flash fictions* and a novella before Camp NaNoWriMo starts on April 1. It seems like kind of a lot, considering that I'm also deeply into the revision process with
Chosen of Azara
and planning my Camp project, Book 3 of
Daughter of the Wildings
. But Dean Wesley Smith, one of my indie writing gurus, encourages writers to produce new words each day, to stay in practice and improve their skills, and to have more stuff to release. I figure he knows what he's talking about and he's got a point, so I'm doing it. Having smaller things to release in between the big novels will keep my writing and book-production skills sharp and getting sharper, and it can only raise my visibility.
So, anyway, how's the challenge going? Good so far. Last night I wrote flash fiction #1, "The Midnight's Brilliance," which clocks in at 1,524 words, and today I wrote "A Familiar Face," short and sweet at 828 words. I've got one more planned, which I'll write tomorrow. Then I'll take a day or two to de-suckify (yes that's a word, I'm a writer and I used it so that means it's a word) all three and then post them here on the site for a while. Eventually they'll go into another collection, but in the meantime they'll be here for free and you can get a peek into how my mind works when I'm writing on a weird prompt in a hurry.
In the meantime, I anticipate finishing Stage 1 of the Chosen of Azara revision next week, and hope to have Stage 2 done by the end of March. I use a four-stage revision process, which I've adapted (or am still adapting, it kind of evolves as I go) from Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course (which, I'm telling you, if you write and want to publish your writing, either independently or with a publisher, is the best $250--for a 22-week course--you can ever spend). Stage 1 is assessing what I have right now, identifying the problems with the story; Stage 2 is planning the revision based on my notes from Stage 1, Stage 3 is actually marking up the changes in the manuscript, and Stage 4 is typing it all in. This process saves me a lot of revision passes, and gets me a lot deeper into the novel problems with plot, structure, conflict, character development, world-building, etc., than anything else I've tried. Anyway, still hoping for a May release of Chosen, but not ready to make any promises yet.
Now to go do some planning for Book 3 and the Estelend novella. Onward!
*If you're not familiar with the idea behind flash fiction, basically it's very short stories written quickly with a minimum of planning. Just like it sounds.
So, anyway, how's the challenge going? Good so far. Last night I wrote flash fiction #1, "The Midnight's Brilliance," which clocks in at 1,524 words, and today I wrote "A Familiar Face," short and sweet at 828 words. I've got one more planned, which I'll write tomorrow. Then I'll take a day or two to de-suckify (yes that's a word, I'm a writer and I used it so that means it's a word) all three and then post them here on the site for a while. Eventually they'll go into another collection, but in the meantime they'll be here for free and you can get a peek into how my mind works when I'm writing on a weird prompt in a hurry.
In the meantime, I anticipate finishing Stage 1 of the Chosen of Azara revision next week, and hope to have Stage 2 done by the end of March. I use a four-stage revision process, which I've adapted (or am still adapting, it kind of evolves as I go) from Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel course (which, I'm telling you, if you write and want to publish your writing, either independently or with a publisher, is the best $250--for a 22-week course--you can ever spend). Stage 1 is assessing what I have right now, identifying the problems with the story; Stage 2 is planning the revision based on my notes from Stage 1, Stage 3 is actually marking up the changes in the manuscript, and Stage 4 is typing it all in. This process saves me a lot of revision passes, and gets me a lot deeper into the novel problems with plot, structure, conflict, character development, world-building, etc., than anything else I've tried. Anyway, still hoping for a May release of Chosen, but not ready to make any promises yet.
Now to go do some planning for Book 3 and the Estelend novella. Onward!
*If you're not familiar with the idea behind flash fiction, basically it's very short stories written quickly with a minimum of planning. Just like it sounds.
March 11, 2013
What to Write?
I'm looking at three weeks between now and the start of Camp NaNoWriMo, and taking Dean Wesley Smith's advice to produce new words every day more to heart, and wanting to produce more short stories to post for free here and then later to package into collections and sell. So I've got ideas for some weird (fantasy/fantasy-ish) super-short/flash fiction, and I'm looking through old notes and story fragments, and what happens? One fragment, just a couple of paragraphs and a few lines of dialogue, decides to morph into a novella set in my Estelend world and loosely connected to Chosen of Azara.And now I'm going, AAAHHH! what to write! what to write!! There are eighteen days from today to the start of Camp NaNo (excluding Sundays, which I take off from writing) and including today and March 25th, my jury duty day (hopefully I can get some writing done while I'm hanging out in the jury waiting room, and hopefully I don't get rescheduled to sometime in April). At a minimum of a thousand words a day, that's eighteen thousand words. Figure an average of 1500 words for each of my super-short stories, so that's 4500 words, leaves 13,500 words for the novella. Not sure that's quite enough, but if I up my word count to 1500 a day (also very doable) that'll leave me with 22,500 words for the novella, to write before April.
Can I do it?
March 8, 2013
Inspiration Strikes for Camp NaNoWriMo
So I was talking with some people over on the National Novel Writing Month boards about doing Camp NaNoWriMo in April. National Novel Writing Month in November is one of my favoritest things ever, and Camp, usually held in the summer, is an easier-going version. I didn't do Camp last year because I was busy with the How To Revise Your Novel course and with revisions on
Urdaisunia
. But my schedule's a little more open and flexible right now, with time for both revisions and writing new stuff, so I decided to go for it. Since I just finished the draft of Book 2 of
Daughter of the Wildings
, I wasn't sure I was ready to start on Book 3 yet, so I was thinking maybe I'd tackle a bunch of short stories or possibly write a fanfic. (In another identity, I'm also a fanfic writer. But that's another post for another time.) Then, right after that, while I was eating lunch and perusing the self-publishing blogs, the back cover blurb for Book 3 of DoW just came to me, all at once. It's really cool, with a great western-type scenario that's very adaptable for fantasy, and builds on where Book 2 leaves off, and gets Silas and Lainie to the next place in the overall series story arc. I have a beginning, and know where I want it to end, and a few ideas for the middle, so I'll be writing Book 3 for Camp NaNoWriMo in April! Maybe this one will be easier than Books 1 and 2 were. I hope.As I've said before, I wrote Book 1, Beneath the Canyons, back in the summer of 2011. As soon as I finished the book and realized it was going to be a series, Silas and Lainie started bugging me to write more of their story. I've had the very ending of the series in mind ever since then, but there were too many other projects in line ahead of it. So it's really exciting to finally be able to work on it, and to finally be getting some cooperation from my muse (if not always from the characters *gives Silas the Evil Eye*).
In the meantime, I'm still developing some short story ideas, with a goal to write one a week for the next three weeks, and to post them here once they're fit for human consumption.
In other news, through tomorrow (March 9) you can get some great deals from Smashwords on ebooks for Read an EBook Week - including a coupon for 50% off Urdaisunia!
March 5, 2013
DoW and Chosen of Azara Progress Updates, What's Next, and Smashwords Library Distribution
I finished the (very) rough draft of Daughter of the Wildings Book 2 today (three weeks ahead of schedule), and now it's in the revision queue. It was a tough one to write, but there were some very interesting developments, and the plot has thickened for the beginning of Book 3. Silas finally settled down and decided to cooperate. I think he was mad that I wouldn't write the sex scene that he wanted. You may (or may not) have noticed that I'll write an occasional sex scene when it's appropriate to the plot and character development, and nothing too explicit. But what Silas was asking for did not fall into these guidelines.
Silas: Oh, come on, it'll be fun.
Me: No. What do you think this is, 50 Shades of Wizard Bounty Hunters?
Silas: *sulk*
But we eventually came to an understanding, and finished off this adventure on a successful note.
(In contrast, Roric, from The Lost Book of Anggird , gives me The Look and says, "I beg your pardon, you want me to do what?" when it's time for one of those scenes. *Sigh* characters, can't live with them, can't knock them over the head and bury them in the back yard. Or... I'm the author, maybe I can *evil laugh*)
Anyway. The major revision of Chosen of Azara is coming right along, and I'll also be done with that ahead of schedule. I'm hoping for a May release but not making any promises yet.
The rest of March is going to be kind of disrupted, with doctor and dentist appointments and jury duty during the last week (unless I get postponed or excused). Instead of jumping right into DoW 3, I'm going to work on some short stories, shooting for one per week. I'll post them here as I write them, and then, a while after that, bundle them into another collection.
In other news, Urdaisunia is now available in the Kobo and iTunes stores. Still waiting on the Sony ebook store, but it should go live there eventually.
Finally, did you know Smashwords distributes to libraries? From the Smashwords FAQ:
Silas: Oh, come on, it'll be fun.
Me: No. What do you think this is, 50 Shades of Wizard Bounty Hunters?
Silas: *sulk*
But we eventually came to an understanding, and finished off this adventure on a successful note.
(In contrast, Roric, from The Lost Book of Anggird , gives me The Look and says, "I beg your pardon, you want me to do what?" when it's time for one of those scenes. *Sigh* characters, can't live with them, can't knock them over the head and bury them in the back yard. Or... I'm the author, maybe I can *evil laugh*)
Anyway. The major revision of Chosen of Azara is coming right along, and I'll also be done with that ahead of schedule. I'm hoping for a May release but not making any promises yet.
The rest of March is going to be kind of disrupted, with doctor and dentist appointments and jury duty during the last week (unless I get postponed or excused). Instead of jumping right into DoW 3, I'm going to work on some short stories, shooting for one per week. I'll post them here as I write them, and then, a while after that, bundle them into another collection.
In other news, Urdaisunia is now available in the Kobo and iTunes stores. Still waiting on the Sony ebook store, but it should go live there eventually.
Finally, did you know Smashwords distributes to libraries? From the Smashwords FAQ:
Does Smashwords distribute to libraries?At a time when a lot of the major publishers are price-gouging or outright refusing to sell ebooks to libraries, Smashwords offers a large selection of titles at reasonable prices (most Smashwords authors set their library prices at or below retail price, and some even donate their books). If you work or volunteer at a library, you might look into if your acquisitions department is aware of this option.
Yes! We have two methods of distributing to libraries: 1. Via library aggregators. Library aggregators, such as Baker & Taylor's Axis360 service, allow libraries to purchase books. Smashwords is working with multiple library aggregators, and is in the process of signing up additional aggregators. 2. On August 7, 2012, Smashwords announced Library Direct. This distribution option allows libraries and library networks to acquire and host Smashwords ebooks on their own servers. This option is only available to libraries who place large "opening collection" orders, typically in the range of $20,000-$50,000, and the libraries must have the ability to host and manage the books, and apply industry-standard DRM to manage one-checkout-at-a-time borrows.
