Featured Page

Geography

Customizable Maps of Racciman's World.

Racciman's World News

Still Myself.

So being able to do things didn’t last very long.

But I, being me, can be counted on to have a brain full of stories no matter what. If I am too sick to read books, and I end up watching tv instead, then I will end up with a head full of tv show inspired stories. So, for example, after having been zombiefied by my husband’s attempt to kill off a colony of termites that he found under our shower, as soon as I felt even a little bit better, I ended up writing down a 6000 word outline for a contemporary action/romance series that had popped into my head in the mean time.

Having thus discovered that writing plot outlines scratches my “must write stories” itch, in between working on the overhaul of my worldbuilding database and not feeling up to working on anything at all, another couple outlines were written: another contemporary action/romance (25 000 words — I kept forgetting that I was supposedly writing an outline, and adding dialog), and a fantasy adventure (8000 words) set in a brand new setting where everyone can do magic.

I also came up with another story similar to the script I was working on last year. That script (I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I took a break from it at the halfway point, having already reached a novel worth of words), is set in one of the kingdoms that later became part of the Changali Empire, where Chunru from Across A Jade Sea is from. The new story, Pavilion, is set not too long after the formation of the empire, and features the third emperor. I didn’t try write an outline for Pavilion, because, being set in between those two existing stories (both having significant scope), I want to have the new database up and running first, because I’m going to have to be very careful to make sure all my details align.

So I guess technically some things have been getting done. It’s just that nothing is being finished. But if I just sort of write off 2020 as a null year as far as getting things finished goes, and start all over again with the exact same goals in 2021, nobody will blame me… right?

If I do that, I’m ahead instead of behind. 🙂

But didn’t I do almost exactly that same thing last year? Wah!

Totally guilty of work avoidance…

At least, I avoided the part of work that feels like work. My copyeditor sent back Eyes of Infistar when I was on vacation last week, and this morning I did not start going through her suggested changes.

Instead I diddled around online for a couple hours while trying to convince myself to do the edits, and finally said “I think it’s not happening, why don’t I just write?”

So, a full day’s quota of words were written.

But I do need to get to those copy edits eventually. 🙁

That Was Quick

Eyes of Infistar is at my copyeditor. (She reported that she was enjoying it and that it was nice to be working on something that is “actually good” which gives me a glow of accomplishment, but also makes me think that there might be some drawbacks to being a freelance editor-for-hire.
Sails of Everwind has been edited according to editorial demand and is ready to be reread and hopefully approved to go off to the copy editors next.
Lioness is being read by readers…

I just ran out of editing projects to work on. Looks like I get to start writing the next book already. Only a few weeks after finishing the last one. Awesome!

Fencing With Waves, it is your turn!

Number 13… or maybe 14.

I have finished the first draft of a historical pirate romance set on the same world as Across a Jade Sea. It took me about a year to write. I don’t know exactly how long it is, because I wrote it out by hand, but at 281 pages, with my average page of longhand being somewhere between 150-200 words, it is clearly a full novel in length. That makes it my 13th completed novel.

Unless Lioness ends up getting split into a duology. Which is very possible.

Either way, 13th or 14th, it’s still a milestone, and I still get to celebrate. 🙂

I started working on it because I wasn’t feeling very well, and I was having trouble putting in a regular work day (especially since my computer had been moved out of my bedroom due to family computer-shortage issues). But I really wanted to be writing something, so I said: ‘Why don’t I write longhand? That way I can take it to bed with me, and I can tell myself, ‘it doesn’t matter how good it is, because I can fix it when I type it up later’. Also, I can just work on one of the random shorter things in my head that isn’t in the regular queue, so that if I start feeling better I won’t mind abandoning it for something else.” (I thought it would be ‘shorter’. I don’t always guess right when it comes to length.)

By the time I felt better — several months later — I had at least 50 000 words, and I didn’t want to abandon it. I wanted to get it written.

But now it is written, and I can finally get back to my ‘regularly scheduled’ work. Yay!
Which means: getting the two Bambi books ready to go off to my copy editor; finishing my first pass edits on Lioness, so I can get reader feedback; and then writing Book Four of Song of Asolde, Fencing With Waves.

I’m kind of eager to get to Fencing With Waves, because while in the middle of the rush to the end with the Pirate thingy, I took a week off to get the previous Song of Asolde book into a state where I could send it to my oldest daughter as a birthday present — she has been eagerly awaiting the next installment in that series for a few years now. So now I have that story in my head, but I really need to finish off some of my other projects first. Sigh.

Another One Done


…It doesn’t seem real yet, but maybe if I post about it, that will help.

Song of Asolde, Book 3: Dancing With Stones (~90 000 words)
First draft: COMPLETED.

It’s going to feel really strange, but my kids are on their spring break, so I think I’m going to officially declare myself “on vacation” for the rest of the week.

Halfway, More or Less

Yesterday I passed the 50% mark on my current WIP.

Of course, that 50% is based on a guesstimated length of 100K words, because I don’t know how many words it will be until I get there. So I may have actually not have gotten to halfway yet, or I might have passed it a while back.

But fifty thousand words is worth celebrating in any case. So, Yay!

The progress bar… it MOVES!

My writing progress bar finally advanced today, after sitting at the same spot for more time than I really like to contemplate. Not that I wasn’t writing, in all that time, you understand. I actually wrote an entire trilogy while my progress bar remained stuck, because I wrote it longhand, and therefore did not track my daily wordage. And after that I was doing revisions, which I don’t track on a progress bar either. (But I would love to figure out how to track revision progress, so if anyone has any brilliant ideas about that, please share them!)

But I finally came back to the story I was working on when the attack trilogy attacked me. Yay! Here’s to hoping that I can keep at it until it’s done and that nothing interrupts it this time. I don’t like leaving partially finished stories lying around all over the place… they nag at me.

Dusty cats, or real work?

Started playing with a “document processor” called Lyx, in my free time, ended up importing and marking up The Raven and The Veil, and then while I was reading through I decided the ending wasn’t as strong as it could be, so I rewrote it. It is now 4000 words longer. Hopefully that’s a good thing.

The cover artwork for Dicing with Flames isn’t done yet. I’m having trouble with the rock textures… and since the scene I’m doing is underground, it’s almost all rock. I put a Black Flag page together today anyway.

Author's Note on Racciman's World

I'm going to blame it all on a guy named Tracy Hickman. He was at my first ever science fiction convention, and he did a panel on worldbuilding. I was a dedicated worldbuilder already, but my worlds had always been built alongside of the story that I was telling in them. Before Tracy explained how he approached worldbuilding, it had never occurd to me to build the world first, and find stories to tell in it afterward. So I thought I'd give it a try.

But what to base the world on? Well, they say 'write what you know', and as one of eight siblings, (and later the mother of six,) one of the things I knew was large family dynamics. So I decided to base a fantasy world on that. What would happen, I asked myself, if the gods of a fantasy world, were actually children? A family of children, with all their squabbles and shifting alliegences reflected in the world they created?

Keywords: Fantasy, Racciman, secondary world,


 
Hexblurb for Dark Moon Light
 
Moonlit battle:
street rat
versus
goddess.

 
 
Copyright © Michelle Bottorff

Email mbottorff at lshelby period com