Or at least it seems that way to me. You see, I've finally reached 200,000 words on Battle For Earth. Which is, well, pretty dang long and I'm not even finished yet. And considering that it's about 2.5 times as long as destiny which was previously my longest story to date that seems pretty darn impressive to my demented mind. Anyway now that I've gotten that out in the open it's time for me to drift off to sleep and venture into the lands of dreams and make believe...
A quick note to anyone who is a fan of my stories or flash fiction. If you haven't noticed already I've been contributing to Hutcho's monthly anthology. So be sure to check it out if you haven't already and note that I have (until now) been quietly adding links to each of my contributions on my Author Page.
Hope I'm not overstepping any bounds here, but I just thought I'd pop in and mention this since it might be of a lot of interest to folks here. I recently got the privelege to beta test a piece of online novel writing software known as Novlr. It allows you to rearrange and organize chapters as seperate documents in a manner similar to Scrivener, but has a much simpler interface. Currently, it's not very feature rich, but new features have been promised.
So here and there I've been working on an as yet untitled superhero tale. I must have rewritten the beginning close to half a dozen times, and I think I've finally settled on a starting I actually like. The main problem is that I'm worried that the protagonist may be a bit too offensive. Everett is a racist, sexist, and a homophobic old man... now I know what you're thinking.. BUT I'm none of those things and by the end of the story 'Everett' won't be either.
Well, it looks like the anniversary of joining the site passed me by without me noticing. I've now been a member for three years and six days and let me just say I'm glad I did wind up joining the site as is often the first place I visit when I first sit down at my computer. The community is welcome and inviting and the atmosphere is unparalleled. I'd just like to add Kudos to Erin and crew for their continued work in keeping the site up and running and for maintaining said atmosphere! :D
In my daily foray into the 'interwebs' I ran across a rather helpful blog post listing 22 apps for writers which I thought I'd share here for those interested. I only personally use two of those mentioned, Scrivener and Evernote, but the others definitely seem to be worth a look.
I went a little hog-wild whilst writing my latest work, Battle for Earth and in addition to the usual cover images I went a bit further and created 16 character portraits to accompany the story. These aren't something that I've hand-drawn, but rather composite photos which have been extensively edited to create unique images that resemble cut out portraits. Some of them, particularly the ones I made of Duvak, Vakrexid, and Velspatt (the alien characters) were quite difficult to produce, but some of the others took less than an hour each to produce.
I've heard of jewelry and bracelets made from human hair before, but I have no actual experience with them. I know they were popular during the 18th (maybe 19th) century, but a lot of people have never even heard of them in these modern times. I don't ever intend to make such a thing or wear one, but I'm thinking of using one in my story. The tale itself is set in a dystopian future Earth where most of humanity has been enslaved by a malevolent race of aliens.
On an impulse I decided to make a change and set a small portion of my latest work Battle for Earth in the region surrounding the Canadian Rockies specifically the particular stretch in the south-western corner of Alberta. Although I'm somewhat well traveled within the United States, my journeys have not yet taken me outside of our borders. So, I'm hoping someone here could help me with that particular deficiency.
So, today I wound up doing something I reaaaaallly hate doing... I cut a rather sizable chunk of my story. In fact, I can honestly say this is the largest single consecutive piece of a story I've ever cut totaling a whopping 15,000+ words which sets me back to a little over 100,000 words. Ouch. It's rather depressing, but unfortunately it had to be done. The story was headed in a direction I did not like and the only way to back out was to take this rather significant hit. There are parts I may be able to reuse, but most of it is a complete wash.
This has been driving me slightly mad on and off since I first made mention of this race of aliens in my latest story Battle for Earth and since I've been unable to find the right spelling myself I thought perhaps I would turn to the folks here for the solution. The name of the race is the 'Ferlesh'. The main issue I've having is with the spelling of the name itself. I actually like how it sounds, but I loath the way I've spelt it. I've tried every variation I can think of and this is sadly the most tolerable of the lot.
Like many people here I'm on a quest... Not really a quest for gold or fabulous treasure, but I think perhaps a more mundane one. I'm looking to improve my writing skills. Every story I write I learn something new and I'd like to keep this trend going, but I've hit a bit of a snag. One of my biggest weaknesses is that I lack a complete grasp on grammar. Virtually Twisted was my first foray into the world of TG and also the first yarn I'd written in quite a while. Something I think was painfully obvious when I first posted it.
I seem to have a knack for placing (sometimes not-so) subtle tributes in my stories especially my latest work, Battle for Earth. I have several characters named after actors/characters from The Simpons, Stargate SG-1, and Star Trek along with a not so subtle reference to Dirty Harry, and much more illusive one to Star Wars. For any of you that have read my story Incompatible there's a pretty sizable dream sequence (for lack of a better word) which is a tribute to the movie die hard.
For anyone that is interested I've uploaded updated versions of the eBook (in pdf and epub format) for the final book in my Ragnarok Rising trilogy, Destiny: Legacy of a Spellbinder. The changes are not major, but they are there. The text is now identical to the previous minor revisions already made here on the web version and I've made some changes to the formatting.
I've updated the links on all the affected organizer pages.
First off I'd like to start off this blog by taking a bit of a poll... I know I'm likely to get a broad range of answers, but I'm wondering what is your preferred length for a serial? I will try chose the more natural breaking points, but really its not that difficult with my writing style to find a good break points. Right now I'm leaning towards breaking things up into pieces ranging from about 3000 to 6000 words, but I was wondering what you guys and gals all thought.
So... I know some people aren't going to understand this, but I'm rather happy I've finally figured this out and I need to share. (I'll post a story update below so that the whole blog isn't a complete waste). I've been driving myself up the wall trying to figure out a discrepancy in word count between Scrivener and a compiled document when loaded in MS Word or Libre Writer. Scrivener, is a word processor geared toward writers and is probably the best the purchase I've ever made. It let's you organize your story into sub-documents which can be dragged and dropped anywhere you like.
So, it's time for another update! I told myself that I would post an update once I reached 40,000 words and what do you know last night I did just that. So as a result here I am posting an update. ^_^
I took a look at my profile today and as of right now I've been a member for two years and four hours. I'd like to thank everyone for making me feel welcome and most of all Erin, Saphrina, Piper, Cat and the volunteers who help keep this wonderful site running. It's been a pleasure to be a part of this community.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
