Writing Like My Soul's On Fire and Other Sundry Musings
I don’t know what it was about last year, but something finally clicked when it came to my writing. Before I started to work on ‘Dark Inheritance’, it could take as much as three months or longer for me to write as little as 12,000 words.
Then suddenly, right out of the blue, I was able to polish off on the average 2,000 words or more a day. There were some days like today in which I would write as many as 6,000 words over the course of the entire day.
I don’t know what happened, but I am damn glad that it had. Now I feel like the author that I am always bragging to people I am.
Look at the past nine days. I finished my 5th short story called ‘Hunger’ on Friday the 20th. Since that day I wrote two more complete stories. In total ‘First Day’ and my latest ‘Best Friend’ total just shy of 23,000 words. Today alone I wrote nearly 5,000 words.
Yes I am very pleased about this.
Working on the stories were not the only thing that I accomplished this week. I also managed to get two issues of Wisdom from the Wasteland posted to Bookforge. I added Issue 9: High Tech Weapons 2 and Issue 11: Optional Combat Rules. Tomorrow I will start adding Issue 13: Medical Devices. I don’t know how many I can do a week, but I am aiming for at least two. This is still going to take quite some time for me to get all the issues posted, but once they are finished I can get to work on posting brand new material.
Some of my readers may be wondering where are all the short stories that I have been talking about nearly non-stop over the past few months.
The answer is simple. I have not posted them as of yet.
Why?
Well there are two main reasons.
First reason is that I am waiting for ‘Sword of Kos: Dark Inheritance’ to be edited and published. No I have no idea when that is going to happen. I had hoped that it might have been ready for Comicpalooza last month, but alas, poor Michael Varhola has been working himself ragged with so many different projects. So at this point in time I have absolutely no idea when it’s finally going to be published. But that is the industry after all! And Mike is but one man who has to wear so many different hats.
Second reason is that I want to have lots of artwork for the stories. Well, one for each story, and my artist Alfonso Maesa has been very busy with life and other issues. He is almost finished the work I commissioned from him for the novel, and it appears that I may have been able to find him additional work as well.
The young man is damned talented and I love his work, so it makes me feel great that I am able to find him people who want to purchase his work as well. Oh and I have linked his deviantart page to his name. If you haven’t had a chance to check out his work, I would recommend doing so.
So those are the reasons I have not posted any of the stories yet. Once I have word of when my novel is going to be published, then I will start to post the stories.
Speaking of artists, another young man I met while I was in Houston by the name of Isaiah Broussard has a kickstarter on the go. He has an overall goal of $2000 and is only a couple hundred shy of the goal. Please check out his campaign and support his work. He’s a great guy and has a wonderful sense of humor and it’s always great to support an independent artist like him.
And even though I officially ended the daily conversions last week, I still managed to post another six. I was going through the master list and found several that I missed, and even managed to write up two additional creatures.
As I stated, I may be finished with the project on a daily basis, but it will never end, not as long as I have tons of movies, books, comics and television to watch and enjoy. I am hoping to add a couple this week, at least one more from Mark Ellis’ ‘Outlanders’ series and maybe I might start to convert some of the zombies from ‘Left 4 Dead’.
I also managed to finish watching season one of ‘Arrow’. I am looking forward to picking up season 2 in the early fall. Right now I’m starting ‘The Pacific’. I’ve always preferred that particular theater of operation from World War Two.
Of course I can hardly wait to pick up Avatar: Legend of Korra Season 2 on Tuesday.
As for books, I finished off a couple this week. The first was ‘Star Carrier: Earth Strike’ by Ian Douglas. Not a bad novel, and I have enjoyed his other books. Very high-tech military Science Fiction.
The second novel was Joe Ledger: Special Ops by Jonathan Maberry. This one is a series of short stories written about Joe Ledger. Helps bridge several of the novels and if you’re a fan of the series as I am, it’s worth reading.
Lastly was a bit of a strange one, but I enjoyed it enough to ensure that I will be picking up the rest. It was called Area 51: The Nightstalkers by Bob Mayer. It was strange in the aspect of the ‘Fireflies’ and the team itself. I found that I liked the interaction of the individual team members.
And this is going to wrap up this blog. Typically I have more to say, or usually I like to voice my opinion about something, but nothing really came to mind this time around. Who knows, maybe things will change and I’ll have something to voice my personal views about next week.
Oh – there are two things. First I would like to wish my Canadian readers a happy 1st. It kind of sucks that it arrives on a Tuesday, but at least it breaks the week up a little bit, right?
And a happy Independence day to all my American friends and readers. At least you guys get to enjoy a nice long weekend!
Lastly, the image for this week's blog is the completed image depicting Isis, one of the two antagonists from my upcoming novel. And as always, done by the wonderfully talented Alfonso Maesa.
As always, please like my Authors Page on Facebook and maybe start following me on Twitter.
Until next week, peace!
Chris Van Deelen is the author of the Skirmisher Publishing LLC sourcebook Creatures of the Tropical Wastes sourcebook, co-author of its Wisdom from the Wastelands game supplement and contributor to the 'Sword of Kos: Hekaton' Anthology.
