Ian S. Bott's Blog, page 23
July 31, 2016
Weekend Writing Warriors July 31
Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image below.
Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. Shayla asked about the fire and Randall described an impossibly pure bight lilac.
Note - a Sword is a class of battleship, the largest in existence.
=====
Despite the warmth in the room, goosebumps raced up and down Shayla’s body. The table in front of her swam in and out of focus. She pushed herself upright, steadying herself against waves of vertigo, ignoring angry protests as she stumbled from table to table towards the door.
Outside, the night air restored a measure of balance. She gathered herself and, with an effort, walked around the corner to the shelter of a dark alley. There she doubled up and was violently sick.
There were no immigration records of this man because he hadn’t arrived and dropped off grid as Brin supposed. No, he had always been here.
Shayla and a few hundred others had escaped the Cleansing, taking flight while the Imperial navy closed in, but this man had lived through it. He had just described perfectly the flash from an exawatt plasma cannon, the signature weapon of Imperial Swords.
=====
Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. Shayla asked about the fire and Randall described an impossibly pure bight lilac.
Note - a Sword is a class of battleship, the largest in existence.
=====
Despite the warmth in the room, goosebumps raced up and down Shayla’s body. The table in front of her swam in and out of focus. She pushed herself upright, steadying herself against waves of vertigo, ignoring angry protests as she stumbled from table to table towards the door.
Outside, the night air restored a measure of balance. She gathered herself and, with an effort, walked around the corner to the shelter of a dark alley. There she doubled up and was violently sick.
There were no immigration records of this man because he hadn’t arrived and dropped off grid as Brin supposed. No, he had always been here.
Shayla and a few hundred others had escaped the Cleansing, taking flight while the Imperial navy closed in, but this man had lived through it. He had just described perfectly the flash from an exawatt plasma cannon, the signature weapon of Imperial Swords.
=====
July 23, 2016
Weekend Writing Warriors July 24
Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image below.
Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. Skipping ahead a few paragraphs from last week’s snippet, the ‘audience’ has been goading Randall on with questions about his visions. Shayla pitches in with a question of her own...
=====
“What color is the fire?” Shayla called.
She ignored the puzzled stares nearby.
Sightless eyes turned towards her, then lifted to the ceiling. Randall raised his arms, hands outstretched like a priest before the altar of Unity. His voice was hushed. “It is the purest, cleanest, palest lilac. Too bright. Too bright. No mortal eyes should look upon that light.”
=====
Hmmm...what will Shayla make of his answer? See her reaction next week.
Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. Skipping ahead a few paragraphs from last week’s snippet, the ‘audience’ has been goading Randall on with questions about his visions. Shayla pitches in with a question of her own...
=====
“What color is the fire?” Shayla called.
She ignored the puzzled stares nearby.
Sightless eyes turned towards her, then lifted to the ceiling. Randall raised his arms, hands outstretched like a priest before the altar of Unity. His voice was hushed. “It is the purest, cleanest, palest lilac. Too bright. Too bright. No mortal eyes should look upon that light.”
=====
Hmmm...what will Shayla make of his answer? See her reaction next week.
July 16, 2016
Weekend Writing Warriors July 17
Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image below.
Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. He’s so far described scenes of terrifying destruction. This snippet opens with Randall speaking.
=====
“It is Judgment Day. We harbored snakes in our midst and the punishment is swift and terrible.”
The rant sounded insane yet curiously convincing. It had the sounds of religious zeal yet Shayla puzzled. In her undercover assignments she’d studied the Book of Unity and many other holy works. She knew the Pillars of Duty inside out and could quote sermons wholesale from a dozen mainstream religions. This was nothing she recognized. Besides, the details were too precise. This man had seen something. And it had driven him mad.
=====
Just a reminder, The Critique Survival Guide is still available as a **free** e-book packed with tips for writers to get the best out of the (sometimes harsh and intimidating) process of being critiqued.
See the links in the side bar...
Continuing a scene from my current WIP, The Ashes of Home, Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky. He’s so far described scenes of terrifying destruction. This snippet opens with Randall speaking.
=====
“It is Judgment Day. We harbored snakes in our midst and the punishment is swift and terrible.”
The rant sounded insane yet curiously convincing. It had the sounds of religious zeal yet Shayla puzzled. In her undercover assignments she’d studied the Book of Unity and many other holy works. She knew the Pillars of Duty inside out and could quote sermons wholesale from a dozen mainstream religions. This was nothing she recognized. Besides, the details were too precise. This man had seen something. And it had driven him mad.
=====
Just a reminder, The Critique Survival Guide is still available as a **free** e-book packed with tips for writers to get the best out of the (sometimes harsh and intimidating) process of being critiqued.
See the links in the side bar...
July 14, 2016
Writing progress
Just a quick writing update because this evening I passed the 75k mark drafting The Ashes of Home. That’s worth a celebratory glass of wine because it represents roughly 3/4 of the likely final novel.
Knocking out a first draft is a big task and can get overwhelming, and sometimes it’s hard to see how far you’ve come. When I’m in full-on writing mode I find it helps to set a word count target, and to graph the results week by week. This picture helps motivate me, giving me a kick up the pants when I’m struggling. It draws me back when I don’t feel like writing, even if it’s just to add a couple of hundred words. And when things are going well it reminds me to celebrate progress and milestones like this.
Back in February I picked up the smattering of rough scenes I’d written a few years ago, and set myself the goal of hitting 90k by the end of August. That works out at a little over 400 words a day. Not much by many writers’ standards, but with other commitments it’s a stretch for me to sustain day on day.
As you can see from the graph (blue = target, red = actual word count) I’ve been doing well, tracking just ahead of target. You can clearly see the slump when I hit a sticky patch last month. But with such a clear depiction of the slump (something it’s impossible to get just looking at a list of figures) I gritted my teeth and sorted out the root of the problem. There will be more slumps to come, especially as I try to bring all the story threads to a conclusion, but I hope to blast through them in the same way. Right now, words on the page is the name of the game. Kicking it into shape will come later, but you can’t edit an empty page.
Incidentally, the traffic light colors at the top of the page illustrate my fractal planner/pantser writing approach. Each column represents a separate Word document (I like to split the manuscript into manageable chunks) and the colors show state of readiness, with red for raw work in progress, and green for a section in good shape. You can see how I tend to leap ahead in the story and draft later scenes while I’m still polishing up earlier ones.
Knocking out a first draft is a big task and can get overwhelming, and sometimes it’s hard to see how far you’ve come. When I’m in full-on writing mode I find it helps to set a word count target, and to graph the results week by week. This picture helps motivate me, giving me a kick up the pants when I’m struggling. It draws me back when I don’t feel like writing, even if it’s just to add a couple of hundred words. And when things are going well it reminds me to celebrate progress and milestones like this.
Back in February I picked up the smattering of rough scenes I’d written a few years ago, and set myself the goal of hitting 90k by the end of August. That works out at a little over 400 words a day. Not much by many writers’ standards, but with other commitments it’s a stretch for me to sustain day on day.
As you can see from the graph (blue = target, red = actual word count) I’ve been doing well, tracking just ahead of target. You can clearly see the slump when I hit a sticky patch last month. But with such a clear depiction of the slump (something it’s impossible to get just looking at a list of figures) I gritted my teeth and sorted out the root of the problem. There will be more slumps to come, especially as I try to bring all the story threads to a conclusion, but I hope to blast through them in the same way. Right now, words on the page is the name of the game. Kicking it into shape will come later, but you can’t edit an empty page.
Incidentally, the traffic light colors at the top of the page illustrate my fractal planner/pantser writing approach. Each column represents a separate Word document (I like to split the manuscript into manageable chunks) and the colors show state of readiness, with red for raw work in progress, and green for a section in good shape. You can see how I tend to leap ahead in the story and draft later scenes while I’m still polishing up earlier ones.
July 9, 2016
Weekend Writing Warriors July 10
Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image below.
Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky.
=====
“The earth melts; it opens up before me.” Tears glistened on ruddy cheeks. “Buildings gone. Trees like torches. People are matchsticks in the wind.”
“Yeah, the wind,” someone near the back of the room called. He made a farting sound and collapsed, laughing.
“Fear the wind,” Randall bellowed. “It roars like a lion and sweeps all before it. It levels whole streets at a single breath, turns them to glass.”
=====
Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink, and he rewards them with an insane rant about fire falling from the sky.
=====
“The earth melts; it opens up before me.” Tears glistened on ruddy cheeks. “Buildings gone. Trees like torches. People are matchsticks in the wind.”
“Yeah, the wind,” someone near the back of the room called. He made a farting sound and collapsed, laughing.
“Fear the wind,” Randall bellowed. “It roars like a lion and sweeps all before it. It levels whole streets at a single breath, turns them to glass.”
=====
July 5, 2016
This is what happens when a husky decides summer has arrived
After the sunshine last week, Gypsy finally decided to start shedding her winter coat. Yes, that is a full carrier bag of fluff I combed out in a couple of ten-minute sittings, and there's more to come out yet!
July 3, 2016
Weekend Writing Warriors July 3
Weekend Writing Warriors is a weekly blog hop where participants post eight to ten sentences of their writing. You can find out more about it by clicking on the image below.
Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink in anticipation of some entertainment.
=====
“Hey, Randall,” someone jeered from the back of the room. “Tell us a story.”
For the first time, Randall seemed to react to another person. His eyes swiveled in the direction of the cry, then lost their focus again. “Hellfire,” he roared.
People cheered and clapped.
“Fire from the sky!”
More cheers. This is what the crowd had come to see.
=====
A reminder, the SIA Free & Bargain Books event is still on until the end of July 4. Lots of free or discounted e-books to pick up from the event website.
Shayla has tracked a mysterious madman, Randall, to a makeshift bar in a forestry work camp. The patrons have been plying him with drink in anticipation of some entertainment.
=====
“Hey, Randall,” someone jeered from the back of the room. “Tell us a story.”
For the first time, Randall seemed to react to another person. His eyes swiveled in the direction of the cry, then lost their focus again. “Hellfire,” he roared.
People cheered and clapped.
“Fire from the sky!”
More cheers. This is what the crowd had come to see.
=====
A reminder, the SIA Free & Bargain Books event is still on until the end of July 4. Lots of free or discounted e-books to pick up from the event website.
July 1, 2016
Yes, the SIA Free and Bargain Books event is on!
See all the details on the event website.
Among the large number of bargain books on offer, Ghosts of Innocence and Tiamat's Nest are down to $0.99.
June 30, 2016
Alone with a good book
I’m getting to the age when I’m more and more often thinking ahead to the prospect of retirement. The last decade has zipped by and I’m sure the next will go just as fast, so best be ready for it.
It’s not something that worries me. As a profound introvert I’ve always liked my own company and always feel I have way more that I want to accomplish outside of work than I ever have time for, so endless days of free time should be a blessing, right?
Well, I’ve got the chance to put that to the test this week. Ali has taken the kids over to the UK for her father’s 80th so I’m holding the fort and caring for the animals. As we are unlikely to be taking a camping trip this summer I decided it was a great chance to take a bit of vacation and have some serious alone time.
Things I’ve learned:
The freedom is great. Being able to do what I want, when I want, without having to constantly factor in other people’s plans. Being able to plan a menu and pick up groceries based on my tastes, without worrying about whether anyone else will like it. Recalling the simple pleasure of roaming the house naked, which we used to do before the kids grew up too much.
I do miss having the family around. Not to the point of loneliness, but I will be glad when they’re back. Meanwhile, thank goodness for Skype!
But the biggest thing I’ve discovered, which I suspected might be the case, is that I don’t have half the energy to do stuff as I need. You’d think with a whole day ahead I’d be able to write thousands of words. Not so. Writing is darned hard work at times. And having concentrated blocks of time doesn’t help so much when you need to mull over things in the subconscious to get past a blockage. I don’t think I’d cut it as a full time writer. I need other things to do to break up the day. Luckily I started the week with a long list of odd jobs to deal with.
And there’s always reading. Chewing my way through a good book helps recharge the batteries.
And a reminder - tomorrow is July 1, the start of the weekend-long “Free and Bargain Books” event. The list of books on offer will be posted to the SIA website here at midnight tonight.
It’s not something that worries me. As a profound introvert I’ve always liked my own company and always feel I have way more that I want to accomplish outside of work than I ever have time for, so endless days of free time should be a blessing, right?
Well, I’ve got the chance to put that to the test this week. Ali has taken the kids over to the UK for her father’s 80th so I’m holding the fort and caring for the animals. As we are unlikely to be taking a camping trip this summer I decided it was a great chance to take a bit of vacation and have some serious alone time.
Things I’ve learned:
The freedom is great. Being able to do what I want, when I want, without having to constantly factor in other people’s plans. Being able to plan a menu and pick up groceries based on my tastes, without worrying about whether anyone else will like it. Recalling the simple pleasure of roaming the house naked, which we used to do before the kids grew up too much.
I do miss having the family around. Not to the point of loneliness, but I will be glad when they’re back. Meanwhile, thank goodness for Skype!
But the biggest thing I’ve discovered, which I suspected might be the case, is that I don’t have half the energy to do stuff as I need. You’d think with a whole day ahead I’d be able to write thousands of words. Not so. Writing is darned hard work at times. And having concentrated blocks of time doesn’t help so much when you need to mull over things in the subconscious to get past a blockage. I don’t think I’d cut it as a full time writer. I need other things to do to break up the day. Luckily I started the week with a long list of odd jobs to deal with.
And there’s always reading. Chewing my way through a good book helps recharge the batteries.
And a reminder - tomorrow is July 1, the start of the weekend-long “Free and Bargain Books” event. The list of books on offer will be posted to the SIA website here at midnight tonight.
June 27, 2016
Escape the News with some free and bargain books
I saw the results of the Brexit vote last week, and a part of me wanted to cheer and say “At last!” (and not just because something finally gained more headlines than the US presidential race!) while a part of me looks to the future with some anxiety.
Living in Britain through the formation of the Common Market, its evolution into the European Union and the birth of the Euro, the whole EU thing often left me feeling more frustrated than anything.
Yes, being in the Union gave people the freedom to live and work where they pleased. The single currency presumably gave people and businesses in member states a lot easier time of managing their money. But I would say that Britain’s heart was never really in it. I think the writing’s been on the wall for years now since Britain chose to stay out of the Euro.
Any plus sides to the arrangement were probably felt more by politicians, big business, and the City than by ordinary folk in Britain. On the downsides, new stories popped up regularly of the latest bureaucratic nonsense to emerge from Brussels. We were drowning in floods of news rules of breathtaking absurdity from regulating the permitted curvature of bananas to the recycling of teabags. And bureaucrats were being paid outlandish salaries on an obscene gravy train to come up with this nonsense.
And while the British instinctively believe in “playing fair” some countries always seemed happy to flout the rules while grabbing as much as they could from the Union. Dang it all, that’s just not cricket old chap, what?
I honestly don’t know if, given the choice, I’d have voted Remain or Leave. The frustration was clearly boiling over, but the effects of the vote will be far-reaching. Trouble is, there’s a lot of noise and speculation out there but precious little useful information.
I’m not going to make any predictions. Leaving the EU may be good for Britain, it may be disastrous. The UK may stay whole, it may fragment. The same goes for the EU. The knock-on effects around the world are incalculable.
All we can do is hang on for the ride.
And what better way to distract yourself than with a good book? The Goodreads group Support for Indie Authors is holding another “Free and Bargain Books” event this weekend, from July 1 through to July 4. Lots of authors and e-books of all genres to enjoy, either for free or priced at 99 cents.
I’ve already discounted Ghosts of Innocence and Tiamat’s Nest to 99 cents ahead of the event to give time for the reduced price to filter its way to all the outlets.
Living in Britain through the formation of the Common Market, its evolution into the European Union and the birth of the Euro, the whole EU thing often left me feeling more frustrated than anything.
Yes, being in the Union gave people the freedom to live and work where they pleased. The single currency presumably gave people and businesses in member states a lot easier time of managing their money. But I would say that Britain’s heart was never really in it. I think the writing’s been on the wall for years now since Britain chose to stay out of the Euro.
Any plus sides to the arrangement were probably felt more by politicians, big business, and the City than by ordinary folk in Britain. On the downsides, new stories popped up regularly of the latest bureaucratic nonsense to emerge from Brussels. We were drowning in floods of news rules of breathtaking absurdity from regulating the permitted curvature of bananas to the recycling of teabags. And bureaucrats were being paid outlandish salaries on an obscene gravy train to come up with this nonsense.
And while the British instinctively believe in “playing fair” some countries always seemed happy to flout the rules while grabbing as much as they could from the Union. Dang it all, that’s just not cricket old chap, what?
I honestly don’t know if, given the choice, I’d have voted Remain or Leave. The frustration was clearly boiling over, but the effects of the vote will be far-reaching. Trouble is, there’s a lot of noise and speculation out there but precious little useful information.
I’m not going to make any predictions. Leaving the EU may be good for Britain, it may be disastrous. The UK may stay whole, it may fragment. The same goes for the EU. The knock-on effects around the world are incalculable.
All we can do is hang on for the ride.
And what better way to distract yourself than with a good book? The Goodreads group Support for Indie Authors is holding another “Free and Bargain Books” event this weekend, from July 1 through to July 4. Lots of authors and e-books of all genres to enjoy, either for free or priced at 99 cents.
I’ve already discounted Ghosts of Innocence and Tiamat’s Nest to 99 cents ahead of the event to give time for the reduced price to filter its way to all the outlets.
