As NaNoWriMo 2015 draws to a close

NaNoWriMo 2015 is officially over for me. I validated last night with a whopping 61,514 words. The story is only halfway done. I'm on chapter 17 of 34 (plus a prologue and an epilogue), so I still have quite a ways to go.

On the plus side, I got the intimidating part out of the way: starting the novel. That's always where I'm the most leery. I sit and stare and wonder how on page 1, a blank page of nothing, I can ever start a work of any length. But then once I do, I go at it like a dog with a bone. I worry at the words, pouring what's in my head out onto paper, and just do my best to get it all out.

Installing drivers takes the longest time imaginable . . ..

Now that I've gotten NaNo out of the way, I can ease off the throttle some, take the rest of Comedy of Rain in swings as I work to finish final edits and revisions on "Comeuppance", and get its coverart ready to go.

Speaking of coverart: I lost my reference photos. I have no idea what I did with them. So I had to surf around this past week, finding new ones and forming a collection. On the upside, I found some better reference photos than the ones I originally had, and I'm hoping to pull off the smoke in art nouveau style. *fingers crossed*

But at least I'm getting things sorted with my new laptop. I had to update everything to do with my Intuos4 tablet to get everything to work right, and now that I've gotten it settled, the only thing left to do will be to transfer my colour pallets from my old computer to my new one. Not looking forward to that, since the last time I did such a transfer, I ended up having to go in and rename each colour individually. *sigh*

Anyway, my goal now is to get the coverart for "Comeuppance" completed by January 1st, and that's doable, or at least I think so. I still haven't set an official date for the release in February, but I'll get there eventually. Perhaps I'll have all my revisions done by January 1st, too, and I can announce everything all at once. We'll see.

Until then, I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season. I haven't exactly gotten into the full swing of things (I blame NaNo for that lol), but at least I had a four-day weekend to enjoy. Tomorrow is my return to the "real world", but at least I feel like I accomplished some things this weekend.

Cheers!

Hi. I'm Ash, and I'm a NaNo-holic

I made it . . . 4 days into November before I relapsed and fell off the wagon.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo, writing the sequel to Tragedy of Ice. My original outline for Comedy of Rain wasn't very actiony. It had me worried. It's definitely different in regards to the pacing that Tragedy of Ice has. But I've had some things surprise me. A fight scene I didn't originally plan. A subplot with the other colonists that I didn't expect (I'm looking at you now, Suresh).

Kadiza's in a mostly good place this time (until people start screwing things up for her). Franklin is questioning everything (because he has no idea where he stands anymore). Hipólito has secrets—and a POV—for once (and he's going to snap if people keep after him the way they are).

As of last night, I have 33,749 words written. I'm only on chapter 7 of a planned 36 (prologue and epilogue included in that count). I'm sure most everything in the first few chapters is unnecessary NaNo wordiness (who am I kidding, it's all wordiness – I read a sentence I wrote last night that's 26 words, and it should only be 5), so once Comedy of Rain is confirmed as a NaNo winner, I'm going to go back and cut the superfluous writing to get a better balance.

The real follow-up problem I'm going to have with Comedy of Rain is figuring out how much recap of Tragedy of Ice needs to actually be there. There are obviously strong references to events that took place in the first book, so those will have to stay to make sense, but then there's so much of it I included as infodump (because it was easy) that will have to go because it's inflated the opening chapters unnecessarily.

Oh, well, back to the grind. The sooner I get the 50,0000 words, the sooner I can get back to the other many things on my to-do list.

Lazy Sunday, or why I decided to opt out of NaNo and worry about what's already in progress

You're probably surprised to see that I'm here updating instead of writing in a frenzy to meet/surpass NaNoWriMo's Day 1 goal. Well, it's because I've written three books this year already, and it'd exceed my abilities to do a fourth.

'Cause really, three's already too much.

So I am doing the responsible thing today. The adult thing today. And that's settle in to use November to leisurely work on editing the novels I've already got on my plate. I'd love to publish Tragedy of Ice next year. I think it's to that point, editing-wise, where there's not much else I can do with it aside from set it free.

It'll be in publishing waters soon....

First I have to do the cover art and promotional posters for it, though. The closer I get to finishing those, the better chance I have of hammering down a solid date for you folks.

In the middle of all that, however, I have the cover art for "Comeuppance" that I need to do, so I can start doing promo work for it, too. I'm looking to keep with February for its release, since that's when I've been publishing the other Appalachian Dream Tales, and it makes sense to keep those on a steady schedule.

Scratch out that "24th". I'll have a date closer to the others, trust me.

But amidst all that, I have some friends I owe edits to, so that's my other major concern this month. I got behind on those, so this is my public apology that I'll be giving them my undivided attention.

Even if real life tries to distract me.

For now, I'll leave you with the reminder that the Bowman's Inn Autumn collection is out, and that the first two anthologies are still on sale to celebrate. :)

Laters, folks!