Hello, US people.
A quick break into your winter festivities to tell you that I’m running a Goodreads givesaway of my upcoming flintlock fantasy book, Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II.
You have the chance to win 1 of 100 copies of the Kindle edition and be amongst the first to read it.
You can enter here. (US-based people only, unfortunately)
The giveaway runs until 16 January 2023.
Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II is released on 19 January 2023.
Last night, I finally reached the end of the first draft of The Vasini Chronicles III. Woo’hoo.
It’s taken some time to get here. A year and a half, I believe (I should really keep a better record of when I start writing a first draft). But after 157,0000 words (some of which will hopefully be good) it’s done.
It will now sit in a virtual draw for a while before I start editing it to try to put some more good words in there and take the less good words out.
Next up is a non-Vasini related novella. But I won’t be starting on that until the New Year. Well, maybe a little bit before then, if I happen to have a spare moment.
Anyway, woo’hoo.
I’m in the depths of editing Tales From Vasini III. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the condition the novellas are in. They still need work, but its heartening that they are in as good a shape as they are at this point in the process.
Of course that will all be swept away when I next make a pass through them and despair at what I’ve written.
Don’t forget that Beasts of the Wildlands: Tales From Vasini II is out on 19 January 2023. You can pre-order it on Kindle here:
Please check your local Amazon store if your location isn’t listed above.
If you’re on Goodreads you can find details and add it to your To Read list here.
In celebration of Beasts of the Wildlands, the second book of the Tales From Vasini series, coming out in 9 weeks away, I’m running a Goodreads giveaway of A Divided River: Tales From Vasini I.
You have a chance to win one of 100 Kindle editions of A Divided River.
You can enter here.
You have until 7 December.
Beasts of the Wildlands is out on 19 January 2023. Pre-orders for the Kindle edition are open and can be found here:
Please check your local Amazon store if your location isn’t listed above.
The Theatre of Shadows, the second part of The Vasini Chronicles, will be available on Apple Books from 18 April, you can pre-order it now. You can find it here if you’re in the UK or on your local Apple Books store.
Whilst I’m here, a very quick update on some of the things I’m working on.
I’m now 94k words into writing The Vasini Chronicles III. I’m past half way on the first draft, but it’s looking more and more like it’s going to be longer than I originally thought it would be. I should know by now that everything ends up longer than I expect it to be.
Beasts of the Wildlands – Tales From Vasini II – is being edited. It needs a little bit more work than I hoped it would, but I’m getting closer to being able to put it out into the world.
A little late, but Happy New Year, all. I hope 2022 hasn’t already destroyed the spark of hope that can come with the change in year.
So, 2021 happened, and I finally managed to publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.
On that note:
UK folks, The Theatre of Shadows will be available for £1.99 on Kindle until 12am 20 January GMT – you can find it here.
US folks, it’s currently $2.99 on Kindle until 12am 20 January PST – you can find it here.
So, what’s coming up for me this year?…Who knows. But here’s what I’m currently working on.
I’m 75k words into writing The Vasini Chronicles III, which means I’m hopefully past half way done on the first draft.
Beasts of the Wildlands – Tales From Vasini II – will soon be taken out of the draw for another edit and after that I should know how much work is left before it can go out into the world.
I’ve managed a first edit of Tales From Vasini III, but it will likely be sitting in the virtual draw until Beasts of the Wildlands is close to publication.
As a bit of a break from all the Vasini-related stuff, I’ve also been looking at my supernatural noir that has been sitting in the draw for the past few years. Still like it (very much), still (very much) want to see it published one day, still not quite sure how.
Back in August I posted about editing Tales From Vasini II: Beasts of the Wildlands.
I recently finished another draft and this one is now with someone to have a little look at.
While I wait to hear what they think, I’m having a look at Tales From Vasini III – the first time since I finished the first draft.
So, what can I tell you about it apart from it involving some murders around the Vasini docklands (and its working title is Murders in the Docklands)?
Well:
And that’s about all I should tell you for now. After all, there’s a whole Tales From Vasini to come before it.
It’s that time of year when I take a look back at what I thought I was going to do in 2019 and say “Well, that didn’t happen.”
Looking back at what I intended to do is frustrating. On the surface it looks like I’ve done little to nothing. In truth, though I may not have ticked off much from the “To Do List”, I need to remind myself what I said on 1 January:
…plans never work. Plans can be too binding, make you think you have to do things in a particular way and to a particular timetable, and make what you have achieved seem like a failure just because it wasn’t in the plan. Better to have a direction of travel, something that allows for changes and for detours, for side quests and unexpected challenges. So let’s say this is the direction I’m heading in, and I’ll get there given the right amount of time.
And although I may not have finished much on the list, I have moved in the right direction and the time left to when it will be completed is shorter.
Well, part of that happened. I’ve edited it. But, I’m continuing to edit it – I’m on the fifth draft. As I said here:
The good news is that it’s a lot closer to being out in the world, to the point where I’m so tempted to turnaround and say it will definitely be out next year. The problem is that I’ve been burnt by my own expectations twice now, so all I’m going to do is keep it vague and say it’s ‘coming soon’ with no clear definition of what soon really means.
I hate doing it (not being able to get this out into the world as quickly as I want and not being able to say when it will actually appear).
It sucks.
It [INSERT MORE SWEAR WORDS OF CHOICE] sucks.
I’m not sure I’ve got anything more to add at this time, other than to say it’s closer still. I’m enjoying it (which makes working on it fun and worthwhile and keeps me motivated to finish it, even if the amount of time it is taking is a source of frustration). Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it too when you have the chance to read it. When that will be though, I’m still not quite in a place to commit without the risk of getting burnt again.
There’re some scenes from the novel that I’ve excised, at least one of which I may well post to my blog at some point. It’s inconsequential to the story – hence it getting cut – but there’s a little anecdote in the scene about the Ranters and their attempts to secure a chance to vote that I want to share.
Aka The Signal (working title), the sequel to the novelette The City Between the Books.
In the gaps between rounds of editing The Theatre of Shadows (ToS), I’ve been working on this. Given that it’s a quarter of the length of ToS, despite being lower on the priority scale, it could find itself finished and ready to publish before ToS.
The two stories that will make up Tales From Vasini II have a (current) combined length of about 64,000 words and I haven’t touched a word of them thanks to editing ToS and The Signal, which have a (current) combined length of around 230,000 words.
Given that ToS needs to see the light of day before these, then editing Tales From Vasini II is low down on my priority list and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Pity, as I want to get stuck back into them. They’re somewhat different to the other Vasini-based stories as they take place entirely outside of the confines of the city and it was great exploring the wider world of the setting and see what happens beyond Vasini’s rain-drenched streets.
The Vasini Chronicles III has actually been outlined in rough, as mentioned here and here. It won’t get written for a while.
This will be three novellas set in the lead up to The Vasini Chronicles III. They’re all outlined. I started writing the first of the novellas back in March. I’m coming up to being about half way through the first draft, as I’m only getting to write scraps around editing ToS.
And writing this post is now getting me down with the simple scale of the backlog that has formed. I so want to be moving forward with all of these stories, I want to be telling them to myself and then putting them out in the world for you and others to read, but…but I only have the time to work on one thing and that one thing, now, has to be ToS. I need to keep reminding myself what I said at the start: things are moving, I’m heading in the right direction and it will get done, every page, every paragraph, every word written or edited takes me one step closer to the end. In time it will appear and then everything else will follow. It will happen…It will.
I was working on this at the beginning of the year. It still needs work. It will continue to need work until ToS is off my plate.
Well, I managed to do this. Kind of. 50 books read, although a lot of them were short and/or graphic novels. I finally got round to reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman, almost certainly my favourite of the books I read this year.
My backlog of unread books, though, sits at 286. That’s, admittedly, 28 books less than at the start of the year, but that means I broke my self-imposed rule of only buying three new books by some margin.
I did manage to do another review on Goodreads, doubling the total number of reviews I’ve written to two.
Technically, I succeeded. I only wrote six blog posts in 2018, this year I managed a grant total of 11 (including this one). Granted, several of them were holding messages rather than proper blogs, but, given the general lack of completing other things, lets call this a success and quickly move on.
And in terms of moving on, in 11 days time it will be 2020. My annual To Do List will look very much like the one for this year, almost identical in fact. But, despite appearances to the contrary, I do need to remind myself that things have moved on. Even if the big final goals have not been achieved, I’ve moved in the right direction along the path – I’ve taken a lot of the tiny steps that need to be taken to get to the end. Just not all of them quite yet.
Here’s hoping that 2020 will bring some closure to some of the above and maybe the chance to start on some new paths.
Best wishes for the holidays to all of you. May the end of the year bring you rest, goodwill and good times with those you want to be with. And may the New Year take you further along your own paths towards where you want or need to be.
We’re now over three months in to 2019, so time to check how far along I am with my To Do List.
Edit and publish The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.
Back when I made my To Do List, The Theatre of Shadows was sitting in a virtual draw while others took a look at it, with the thought that I might start work on the next draft in February. In actuality I’ve only just started on the latest draft. I’m a little way in, but what I’ve gone through so far is looking better than I thought it would, which is promising. More importantly, I’m enjoying it.
Assuming there aren’t any surprises on the way, The Silver Mask should have it’s sequel out in the world by the end of the year.
Given that I may refer to it a bit, I’m just going to call The Theatre of Shadows ToS for the rest of the post. Hope you don’t mind.
Edit a novella.
I had thought that I’d get round to editing The Signal (working title) at some point before I got to ToS. That didn’t happen. It’ll sit in the virtual draw a little longer — until I’ve finished the next draft of ToS at least — based on feedback I’ve received, hopefully there shouldn’t be too much to get it into shape for publishing.
Edit Tales From Vasini II.
According to my To Do List, I was planning on editing this at the same time as ToS, but that’s been put on hold. I don’t want to distract myself from work on ToS and I know there’ll be a lot of wok to do on the two novellas that make up Tales From Vasini II, so they can wait for a bit.
Write The Vasini Chronicles III.
I’ve outlined the third Vasini Chronicles novel. There’s still some more in-depth outlining (and maybe a bit more research to do). Given that I need to work on ToS and that I need to write Tales From Vasini III first, I won’t be getting to this anytime soon.
Write Tales From Vasini III.
I’ve started writing it. I’m only a few thousands words into the first of the three novellas that will make up the book, but I’m already enjoying being with the main character and writing something new about Vasini, which makes the writing easier. (You could ask why the hell you’d write something you didn’t enjoy writing, but that doesn’t seem to be the way the writing compulsion works at times — there’s a difference between wanting to tell and enjoying a story and the process of actually writing it.)
Edit and try to work out how to publish a long novel.
This was what was delaying work on ToS.
The draft is done. It’ll go to someone to look and sense check some of the changes I made, then it’ll have to wait in line for its next draft.
I’m missing it already.
Read at least 48 books and cut down my backlog of unread books to less than 270.
According to Goodreads, I’ve read 18 out 48 books, which isn’t bad going. Unfortunately my backlog is still at 306 books. It should be down to 296, but between presents and me buying more books, I seem to be maintaining the status quo with the size of my To Be Read pile.
One thing that may help is that I’m planning to read/play my collection of Lone Wolf adventure game books over the next few months (you can read about my attempts to complete the set over the past twenty years here – as an update to that blog, I’ve managed to get my hands on Book Seventeen, so I’ll be reading Books One to Eighteen). That alone will drop my backlog to 289 books.
Blog more.
With this post I’ve managed to exceed the six blog posts I made last year. I had intended to blog at least once a fortnight. Based on that, I’ve missed two posts. But, much like everything else, although I may not be quite as far along as I would hope (we are, as species, always far too optimistic with what we think we can achieve with the time we have, that’s why all those public infrastructure projects run late and go over budget), I am at least going in the right directions. In another few months I’ll be a few more steps along, a few months after that a few more steps, and I’ll keep on going until I get to where I need to be.
Phew. I managed to blog this time. It was kind of inevitable that I was going to miss a blog after setting myself a blogging schedule, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t be so early in the year and only after four posts.
Oh dear.
Anyway…where was I…
Ah, yes…I was editing a supernatural noir and outlining The Vasini Chronicles III and Tales From Vasini III.
I still am, although very close to finishing both.
On the supernatural noir side, I should finish editing the latest draft in the next week or two. I had thought I was a lot further in to the edit, but in the past couple of days, I’ve admitted to myself that I really need to cut back one character’s presence in the story. It’s going to be painful. I really like the character and in many ways they bring a great additional perspective on the story. The problem is they’re not who the story is about and as interesting as that perspective can be, it isn’t essential and just gets in the way at a vital part of the story. They won’t disappear completely, but they won’t be playing quite as prominent role in the later stages of the novel. Once I’ve recovered from that I’ll be switching my attention to editing The Theatre of Shadows: The Vasini Chronicles II.
The rough outlines for all three of the Tales From Vasini III novellas and The Vasini Chronicles III are done. I’m mostly finished with the more in-depth outlining of the first novella in an attempt to avoid any notes that just say ‘They find a clue’. Once that’s done, I’ll start writing. The outlines for the other novellas and The Vasini Chronicles III will get a little more work on them as I write and get a better grasp on the first novella.
Until next time.
It’s 31 January, the date by which if I’d made resolutions they’d have fallen by the wayside and if I’d made plans I’d already be down on myself for failing to reach some arbitrary deadline. Instead, as stated here, I’m trying to think more in terms of a direction of travel, giving myself the opportunity to celebrate what I’ve achieved rather than berating myself for what’s been left undone.
And, though I may not be far along (after all, we’re less than 9% of the way through the year), there has been progress:
All in all, a reasonable start to the year.
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