What to Write When You Have A Fever

I haven’t been intentionally slack around the internet lately, although I’ve got a big catch up session to do now, and I’m very sorry about taking so long to answer comments. I’ve been feeling mysteriously ill for a good few days now. Really urgh, and not having the energy to do much more than open an eyeball. I’m not overly keen on doctors, so of course I’ve just been waiting to see what happens, all the while trying to ignore the certainty that my days are numbered. Well. They are numbered – I was just pretty sure that it had suddenly become a rather small number. Today I’m feeling a bit better, not a lot, but better. So whatever it was is hopefully going away. It’s probably just a gluten thing. Or middle age growing pains or something. My internet has also been off colour, and yesterday started going on and off, and not being able to open any sites properly, but I’m not scared of computer doctors, and the technician has just left and promised it’s all fixed now. So off to blog I go.

I’m writing a short story to submit, and hopefully make the cut, for a sci-fi anthology with Zoo as its theme. I don’t generally enter my scribbles in competitions, but this one caught my eye because of the Zoo worlds in Shadow People. There is not a lot about them in book one, but they feature quite a lot in the second book to be published sometime this year (no more exact dates – I’m done with carved in stone deadlines now). It occurred to me that this could actually be a great learning curve for me as a writer, whether it gets accepted for the book or not. Writing a nine thousand word story that can be read as a part of the series, although not a key part of it, and also as a cohesive short story that can, hopefully, be enjoyed by someone who has never read Shadow People seemed like a pretty good exercise to me.

I made the mistake of trying to cram every character from the book into it, and I also tried to get all the history and settings squished in too. That turned into an epic fail that even confused me when I read over it. I’m sure all my scribbler friends already know this, but I haven’t been writing for very long, and I’m definitely learning all the time. I know what I want my sentences to sound like, but I’m buggered if I know what a pronoun or an adjective is. So, it was a real lightbulb moment for me when the voices in my head told me to use just a couple of the characters and only the history and settings needed to write a story that doesn’t come across as the ravings of a woman with a bad magic mushroom habit. Late to the party but I figured it out in the end.

I got so excited at the way that its coming along that I ended up having a large attack of AND NOW I’M GOING TO DO EVERYTHING!! I do have a problem with overloads of thoughts and ideas all happening to me at the same time. It’s not actually a fun tendency to have honestly, because I also tend to be disappointed in myself if I don’t do something about every one of my crazy ideas. Often, my thoughts zoom around so hecticly (my word) trying to decide on which to do first, that I just burn out and do none of them instead. This time though, I’m definitely going to have a go at some of my latest brain splodge dumps of ideas – written them down too.

I only realised that Shadow People had to be a series when I was almost finished writing it, so I had to start from scratch with recording all the scenes and little mysteries that I’ll need for reference in the rest of the books. I was planning on seven books for Shadow People, but they may either shrink or grow as I move along. One of my new ideas was to write a couple of books for children. All happy of course – but based on the world of Lapillus in the happy days before the Nefandus came. I haven’t decided whether I should have a go at doing the illustrations myself, or hire someone to do them, but I’m so well chuffed with this idea that I had to share – hence the long blog post.

I’ve always planned on writing a tongue in cheek recipe book “written by” Princess – the cook in African Me, and revisiting Suzette and her friends in future stand-alone novels. This could all be the result of whatever odd fever I’ve developed, but still, I’m loving the idea of branching my stories out in other shapes and forms, so I will definitely give it all a try. Anybody heard of self-published board games? Ha haaa!!! I really do have a fever by the way, so…….