The Messengers of Yesh Web Address

Friday, December 19, 2014

Judging

The Messengers books are based on the Bible as you can tell. :) I was thinking about something this week. Words have power. Proverbs 18:21(KJV) Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

What I was thinking about specifically was that demons can use the words we speak against us as a weapon. When Nathan confronted David over killing Uriah the Hittite, Nathan told him a parable. David judged the bad man in the parable but was really judging his own actions.

Luke 11:53-54(CJB)  53 As Yeshua left that place, the Torah-teachers and the P'rushim began to oppose him bitterly and to provoke him to express his views on all sorts of subjects, 54 laying traps to catch him in something he might say.

They were trying to trap him with his own words. I think we tend to trap ourselves by our words and release spiritual hindrances without knowing it. If we speak judgment against someone else, demons can use the verdict to lay traps for us. I try to speak only blessings into my life and no curses. It's a lot harder than I thought it would be. A lot of our common expressions are self-condemning.

So, how can I convey something like this in a book without being preachy? If you pay attention to what full Messengers say, you'll notice that none of them says something like, "I'm afraid that's not possible." or "I can't do that, I'm afraid." They never say, "That just kills me." Other characters use those kinds of self-cursing expressions but not Messengers. They don't invite fear spirits and spirits of violence into their lives. It's not an obvious or in-your-face kind of a thing, but it tries to be Biblically consistent.

Friday, December 12, 2014

Combined Edition

This is going to be short today. My 30 days of letting the sequel book rest ended yesterday. I started going through it last night. So far so good.

There's an intrepid reader who really, really wants a combined paperback edition of the series. While I was letting the sequel rest, I got most of the work done on that. It's like a thousand small steps. There's not much left except going through it and correcting formatting changes that had to be made to combine them into a single volume. The biggest thing is font size. In order to meet page count restrictions, I had to use a smaller font, which I applied globally that affected chapter title size. I have to manually change them all back. Easy but time consuming. Same thing with the beginning character of each chapter. After that it's little stuff. Except for the cover. I'd like to have better cover art.
A combined Kindle version is pretty much automatic.

I could always use prayer. The roadblocks seem endless. I need a breakthrough.

Words of wisdom: The journey of a thousand steps is less than a mile.

Friday, November 21, 2014

No Smoking

I need multiple miracles that I've been praying for. However, as I've mentioned before, not much seems to work in the desert. Mostly, it's been a lot of waiting while trying to do all the right things. It's very difficult and very discouraging. I was at church the other night, when I started thinking about when I smoked as a teenager, lo these many years ago. By the way, going to a service helps keep the devil off my back even if there's nothing special in the message for me. Spiritual attacks are diminished somehow. Watching something on TV isn't the same.

I smoked for several years as a teen before I quit at 20. I'd tried quitting various times before that last time. It took three months. During those three months, I craved a cigarette every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every fortnight of every month. I sure got a lot of reading done trying to distract myself from the constant struggle not to smoke. It's easy to say but almost impossible to describe how hard those three months were. It was a non-stop battle.

Then one day three months after I quit, it was like a switch was flipped. I no longer craved cigarettes. It was literally an overnight thing. Smoking wasn't part of my life any more. A few short years after that, I had to remember that I used to smoke. When people talked about smoking or needing a cigarette, I didn't relate to it anymore to the point where I actually had to remember smoking. At first I wouldn't even think about when I used to smoke. Why would I? It's the same way today. It's like, "Oh, yeah, I used to smoke."

So, while I was sitting in that service, I suddenly realized something I didn't consider when I was trying to quit smoking. That epic, three-month struggle was resisting the devil to get him to flee. It didn't happen overnight, but he did flee in the end. Today I have permanent victory over cigarettes if I want it. I'm sure I could somehow smoke again, but the victory is mine to maintain.

Maybe these miracles I've been praying and waiting for are like quitting smoking. Maybe there's some kind of satanic hindrance that I have to resist through to reach the victory. There seemed to be a set time period for quitting smoking. Maybe some of the hindrance today has a set time to end. If you've been struggling to get an answer, maybe it's the same for you.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Winning

I'm on a K.M. Weiland mailing list. Every month there's a drawing that I didn't notice in which four people on the mailing list win an ebook of their choice. I was one of the winners for November! I already had all her books except Jane Eyre: Writer's Digest Annotated Classics. I've wanted it in paperback, but Writer's Digest books always seem to be overpriced. I subscribe to their magazine and get their emails, so I know.

I responded to the notification email telling me I'd won and asked for the Jane Eyre book. It turned out that it's the only one she can't send an ebook for. Future winners will be notified of that. :) However, and this is the reason I even brought it up at all, she offered to send me a paperback edition instead. She even asked if that was ok. Of course, it was! That's the one I've been wanting/needing anyway, but she didn't know that. I offered to pay postage on it. She wouldn't let me. What an awesome thing to do and what a nice gal.

Another reason I bring this up is that I've been in this desert for several years where almost nothing seems to work. The spiritual attacks and hindrances seem endless. I've been needing a breakthrough in the worst way and massive amounts of prayer. This year especially has been awful. Winning this book so unexpectedly and having it work out to get the edition I preferred/needed is the biggest thing that's gone right in I don't know when. It's the complete opposite of how things have been going for so long. Right after that I won $10, no purchase necessary. I'm really hoping these are signposts that the end of the desert is near.

Book Stuff
I finished going through the rough draft again. It's resting for 30 days.
NaNoWriMo did not happen for me this year. I wanted to do it, but my outline wasn't in a good place yet, and I was still working on the rough draft. It took longer than I thought. There was no point in forcing it. I've already done two books this year. It's not something I felt that I absolutely had to do. Maybe next year.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Lake Stop


That's a Christmas tree topper I saw at Walmart. Sorry it's blurry. It was a quick cell phone pic at low res. Why does that look so familiar? I can't imagine who thought this was appropriate for Christmas or who authorized it for sale. Creeping sharia.

Below are pics of a local lake I took today. I'd never been on the back side before. In the second picture you can just make out the line of the road going by. They even have a small beach. I spent about ten minutes there and saw maybe 5 people.




Book Stuff
I'm still going through the rough draft, but I'm almost done with the latest pass.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Moles as Food?



I don't think eight adult moles would fit in a jar that small, do you? They're said to taste vile.
I see a lot of weird food at Walmart.

I could use a lot of prayer, if you want to pray for me. :) The hindrances and obstacles lately have been enormous.

I went through the rough draft on the first sequel book again fixing and polishing. I let it rest a few days and got some work done on the outline for the next two books in the series. As mentioned previously, I'm trying to focus on structure more instead of pantsing so much, not that it's wrong. It's just less efficient. The second paragraph of that article is the one that describes pantsing. It's not pulling people's pants down. I haven't read all the article btw, but I probably will.

I don't know if I'll work on the next book for NaNoWriMo or not. It depends on the obstacles. Once I get enough work done on the current one, I need to let it rest about a month. November might be good for getting a head start on book 2. The outline's going pretty well. I have all the major events in place(and settings) unless a great idea strikes that would change something. There's more work to be done, though. My goal is to go through the rough draft again before November and work on the outline on the side. If it sounds like I go through it a lot, it could be worse.

A lot of people listen to music when writing to set the right mood. Something I'm going to experiment with is an ambient sound program. I have one that has sounds for different locations like cafes, plains, various water environments, various city street settings, forests, etc. If I'm writing a scene in which someone's in a cafe, would having cafe sounds on in the background evoke more details in my mind making for richer text? Or would it just be a distraction? We'll see.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Maps, Dramatis Personæ and Wiki

An intrepid reader suggested the Messengers series needs a map or maps and a character list. I agree. To do either requires going through the entire series. Job one would be compiling a list of the names of every character. I don't know how many there are, but it's a lot. Job two would be making a note of where the story says the cities/nations are in relation to each other. The nations are easy, but I don't remember where every minor city is in relation to the others. However, right now getting the first book of the sequel done and out the door has to be a higher priority.
Something I've been wanting to do is make a study guide for the series, which would dig beneath the allegory and unearth the spiritual truths behind it. Some of it's pretty obvious, but some is more hidden. It makes sense to work on that at the same time as the maps and the character list and have it be one big project. I don't know when I'll get to those.

Wiki
Behind the scenes I have various writing projects planned. Messengers includes the sequel, the space era novel(and possible sequel), maybe a Calliope novel or novella if I can ever figure out a story for that that works, and maybe one other idea set about 300 years after Call to War. There's a request for something set in the Marhelan War. I also have the mystery/romance and maybe a followup book. I have a SciFi space trilogy set in our universe that may end up being a single book instead, because I only have a good story idea for book 3 so far. To keep up with all this, I've discovered I need a personal wiki on my PC rather than the scattered document files I have now. I've downloaded a couple to test, Wikipad and Zim. At this point Zim is the hands-down winner, but that's because it's so much easier to use. I want to give Wikipad a better chance, though I'm ready to tie it to a cotton ball and throw it through the window.
If I'm going to make a personal wiki, I may as well make a public wiki for readers, right? I've been looking into that and may have a solution. Once I get it going, I'll spring it on you one day.

Sequel Stuff
I've gone through the rough draft and fixed a lot of things. I had three sections that needed to be deleted and at least one that needed to be added. An example of a deleted section would be a scene in which a minor character reported to another minor character who went to a major character and summarized the report and gave his impression of the situation. The scene where the minor character talks to the major character is essential, but the other scene didn't add much. The information it contained was included in the summary to the major character. It detracted more than it added. On a smaller scale this is something I have to do with dialogue, too. Is something repeated or paraphrased a second time? It has to be fixed.
I had to add a scene and probably will add another, but I need to go through the rough draft again and make sure it's really necessary to the story. While I'm doing that, I'm going to have to change a character. I had a Messenger from Revolutionary War times early in the book who never appears again. A more important character makes an appearance near the end. He really should've been at the beginning, too. Fixing that is more than doing a find and replace on the name. Dialogue has to be altered. I also have to change the setting for two scenes. Both are for character reasons.

I know it's taking forever, but getting a rough draft ready involves a lot more than spelling and grammar and polishing things. Moving those two scenes will strengthen three different character portrayals and add variety to the series. There are numerous little things that have to be hammered out. It all takes time. Nevertheless, I'm hoping to get it out the door before the end of the year or January at the latest. It depends on whether something unexpected happens.



Thursday, September 25, 2014

Dear Brother Faith Seed

Dear Brother Faith Seed,

I saw you on Christian TV asking for a $1,000 "faith seed" to help further your ministry. You said if I sent you $1,000, I would receive a blessing of $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000 or, who knows, maybe even $10,000,000. There was just no telling. It sounded farfetched, but your testimony and the testimonials of other people that you presented about how God did it it for you were very impressive. By the end of the show, you had me convinced to send you a $1,000 faith seed. Unfortunately, I'm unable to do that at this time. However, I've figured out a way that would allow me to send you much more than a mere $1,000.

Since the testimony from your own mouth before so many witnesses clearly demonstrates you have the faith to make this work, I know you'll be able to take advantage of this opportunity. Instead of me sending you $1,000 and receiving at least $10,000 from God, you will send me the $10,000 blessing up front. I call this a "faith bush." Like a burning bush, your faith to send me $10,000 will shine like a light in a desert world as an example of faith to everyone.

Once I receive the $10,000, I will immediately tithe $1,000 to your ministry for which I would receive a blessing. I will also send you the $1,000 faith seed you requested in the first place! After receiving $10,000 from you, my faith would be extremely strong, and I would be ready to receive a blessing of $10,000, $100,000, $1,000,000 or, who knows, maybe $10,000,000. There's just no telling, is there? Once I receive the minimum $10,000 return on my faith seed, I will send you $9,000. Thus you would have the $10,000 back from me plus my $1,000 tithe plus whatever blessing you received for sending the faith bush in the first place. Because I'm much less fortunate than you financially, the $10,000 faith bush you send me will enable you to receive additional blessings on that merit alone. You could receive $100,000, $1,000,000, $10,000,000 or, who knows, maybe even $100,000,000. There's just no telling.

If I received even more money, I would tithe the extra blessing into your ministry and give even more faith seeds, which would cause me to receive even more blessings. This would start a blessing cycle that would allow me give untold amounts of money to your ministry. Think of what an exciting new outreach program this would be!

Knowing how strong your faith is in sowing financial seeds, I anticipate hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Matthew Jenkins

Friday, September 19, 2014

99 Luftballons

99 Luftballons by Nena was one of the songs I liked in the 80s, and it's aged well. (English version: 99 Red Balloons.) It made the "news" last weekend on Yahoo after someone did a cover of it using red balloons as instruments. I didn't particularly care for it but a tip of the cap for the work that went into it. The German version was always cooler by the way. Never let them tell you otherwise, because they're wrong!

Some things can only be written in certain time periods. That song was a Cold War song the same way WarGames was a Cold War movie. They captured the threat of nuclear holocaust that loomed over us all the time. How do you explain the zeitgeist of it to someone who didn't live through it? There's nothing like it in today's culture. Terrorism? Too local and limited. Climate change: too vague and debunkable. Global thermonuclear war was big and civilization ending. It could have happened overnight with no warning. We'll never wake up one morning and gasp in horror to find the glaciers melted and the beaches flooded. And if we did, would it end civilization? No.

One thing today and Cold War times have in common is conspiracies. Back then they were communist conspiracies. Today they're government conspiracies. Why can't Sept 11 simply be an attack by religious fanatics? Government incompetence explains it. Why all the alternative theories?
Isaiah 8:12 Do not speak of a cabal, for everything this people speaks of is a cabal; do not fear what they fear and do not be overwhelmed by it.
Later it would turn out the Cold War was largely propaganda. The Soviet Union was decades behind the U.S. technologically. Having the government lie to me about that creates instant skepticism about terrorism and climate change. Mmhmm. Been there, done that. And don't forget. Al Gore bought a building in San Francisco at sea level.

Anyway. One of the hard things about Messengers is capturing the zeitgeist of an era. King Afton's time has a different spirit than King Terfel's. Even the time after the return of the gifts should be different than the period immediately before it. That's one of the things I'm focusing on for the sequel. If it's another world with another culture, it should feel that way. There should be a touch of kulturkampf for the reader. I got to use zeitgeist and kulturkampf at the same time. What a beautiful day.

I'm also focusing on little things. Does Ceinwen have a hobby? She was a herb healer and later a seamstress, but what does she do on the weekends? When Joe builds the house, it's mentioned in passing that he needs north light for painting, but he never has time to do that. In the space novel, we'll see some of his paintings. Maybe we should see one now in the sequel.

What I'm Not Working On
Something I'm not working on is a parody about a man named Hairy Plodder. Hairy's a balding, middle-aged wizard who used to have adventures but now spends most of his time drinking. He's put on weight since his younger days, and his drinking has gotten him banned from setting foot on the campus of Swinecorns, his old wizarding school. With all the gold he inherited from his parents, he bought the house where he grew up. He gets drunk and passes out under the stairs where he used to sleep. Times were tough then, but it reminds him of when he was young and had so much potential. While not drinking, he runs around trying to rescue people who don't need rescuing, because he's convinced an evil wizard named Moldemart had a son who's out to destroy the people around him.
I bet it would be a best seller.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Trudging Forward


This is a pair of shorts I picked up earlier in the summer. The stitching for a buttonhole is there, but there's no hole for the button. Cutting one was easy. Then I found out the zipper was broken. This is kind of symbolic of how the whole year's been. I'm really looking forward to some kind of breakthrough.

Somewhere around June I changed prices on books 2, 3 and 4 to 99 cents for a while. I forgot to mention it the other day, but they're now back to normal price, $2.99. Amazon wanted me to go $3.99 for maximum profit. Interesting, but no. I'm starting to see a lot of books for $3.99. Still, no.

The mystery/romance is in a state of hibernation while I decide what to do with it based on a piece of negative feedback concerning an aspect of the story. At one point there's a bit of supernatural intervention to make sure the heroine chooses the right romantic interest. In so many words, a test reader didn't think marriage is important enough for God to do that, or people wouldn't be marrying the wrong person all the time. Personally, I think God intervenes all the time. It's just not as blatant as I portrayed it. I've been leaning toward making it less supernatural and more like what we see in real life.
I would've gotten more done if I hadn't broken a tooth and had to wait until I could get an appointment. Talk about tired. I felt worn out almost all the time. I'm feeling better but not 100%.
I follow this guy on twitter who has tons of money. One Sunday he tweeted that he broke a tooth. About five hours later he tweeted again that the dentist had fixed it. Dentists around here don't work on Fridays much less Sundays. Wouldn't it be nice to have that kind of money? :)

I've been working on the sequel, although the tooth interfered a lot. I'm trying to raise the quality of my work. Something I'm paying a lot of attention to is structure. Novels, plays and movies typically follow a standard 3-act structure, which can be broken down into minute details that I wasn't aware of until recently. Book 1 has two distinct storylines. I wasn't sure if the whole book should be in three acts or if each storyline should. I asked story structure guru, K.M. Weiland, who wrote a book on structure and was generous enough to answer my questions. There's more than one way to do it. I'm treating each storyline almost like it's its own book. Is hearing this like watching sausage being made? My approach was to make two extra copies of the rough draft and cut them up until each held one storyline. I've gone through one. I'm still going through the other.
It's been hard not to make corrections, so I've kept the master file open in the background. In one place a character is talking candidly about the past. There's a sentence that said, "I've evil done things" instead of "I've done evil things." How does that happen? That's probably the worst thing I've found. If it doesn't sound great, it's a rough draft sentence. It may not make it to the final draft. Literally every sentence has to be gone over.

Until next time.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Always

I don't listen to secular music, but I hear it at stores and restaurants sometimes. The other day I heard a song that sounded like it was about a man in love with a lawnmower. It was too noisy to hear most of the words, but the chorus was loud enough. It went something like this:
I'm loving you, mower, mower, mower.
I'm loving you, mower, mower, mower.
As someone who cuts a lot of grass, I'm curious as to which model he was singing about. Maybe Weird Al knows.

[I had a fun parody of Kristian Stanfill's Always here, which is where the blog title originated. It was about Bilbo's love of food and his scoring free food off Gandalf. However, someone was offended. If one person is offended, there's bound to be more. I'd like to get to the point where I make enough writing that I can do it full time. I won't get there by alienating potential readers.
Romans 14:21 What is good is not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
If parodies of Christian songs cause some people to stumble, it's better to remove it.]

Book Stuff
An intrepid test reader for the mystery/romance pointed out a sentence that was "borderline run-on". That happens when I try to cram multiple sentences that either don't flow together very well or would turn into a boring, lengthy paragraph into something that's shorter and hopefully sounds better.
The intrepid test reader(You know who you are!) pointed out the sentence at the end of a pile of corrections. I proofread. How could there still be errors? Shouldn't the book be Error Free(TM) by now?  By the time I got to the borderline run-on sentence, it was comical the number and types of fixes I had to do. The test reader's wording made me laugh. For fixes that are more than simple things like a missing comma, I email back what I've done to correct them. For that sentence I sent back what might be my new catchphrase: Borderline run-on. That's how I roll.
Too geeky? It made me laugh, although I never heard back on it.

I've been working on the Messengers sequel. I ran into a problem. Something was prophesied in Call to Selah that I tried to put in too early. I had two choices: alter CtS or alter the sequel. After talking to a couple of readers and praying, the solution was to alter the sequel. I just realized I forgot to tell you that the rough draft is finished. I finished it the other day. As I've been going through the finished rough draft, I've been fixing that prophesy problem. It's going to add an exra scene that still needs to be written. There's another unrelated scene that I probably need to add in. We'll see. I've also been removing some background characters that were redundant. Another character was already doing their job. I actually caught that during the writing. I think I'm past the point where I stopped referring to them. So, it's moving along. I'll let you know how it's going when there's more to tell.

Friday, August 8, 2014

It was like the 70s

Last night was like the 70s as I ran from store to store trying to find that one specific object before all the stores closed. Along the way I saw this:


Yesterday was Aug 7. Halloween is almost three months away. There was a whole section of Halloween candy. In August! Why?

I got an email from Walmart back in June for summer clearance items. It was barely summer, even in the south. And they were doing clearance? It was crazy. If I'd had money to burn, the canoe/kayaks did look pretty good, but that's not the point. Like the Halloween candy, it was far too soon.

Book Stuff
I have the mystery/romance in the hands of tester readers. I'm still not sure the book works, but we'll see what they say.
I just about had the rough draft of the first sequel book done when I ran into a problem that made me want to throw cotton balls at a window. I have this long storyline involving Etan that contradicts a prophecy about him from the original series. Aw, man. The choices are ugly. I could alter the original series. Argh! I could alter the storyline. Difficult. I could leave it and do an Author's Note explaining the change. Disgusting. I don't like any of the choices, but something must be done. I was talking to a reader(also a test reader for the mystery/romance) about it and got some helpful feedback to ponder. I was leaning toward altering the original series, but I need to think about different angles over the weekend.

Words of Wisdom
Getting upset about something you can't change is like throwing cotton balls at a window.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

80s Music

I was in Fred's a while back. If you have don't have Fred's where you live, they're kind of like a miniature department store. I haven't heard the term department store in a long time, but Google assures me they still exist in the current century. So, I was in Fred's, and their ambient music was 80s music. A Men at Work song came on that I recognized. I didn't have a lot of albums during the 80s, but that song was from one that I actually had. If you lived in the 80s, you know it was like every 5th song was a Michael Jackson song. A lot of songs never made it to radio. The Men at Work song was one of those. It was never played on air during the 80s. That made me wonder something. People today don't know what was on the radio back then. Since that song didn't make it to radio, is it really an authentic 80s song?

It was made during the 80s. It came out during the 80s. But is it authentic 80s? Nobody but people who bought the album ever heard it. Does it really count? The kids today listening to 80s music don't know the difference. It's all 80s music to them. I got to thinking about that.

Back in 2013 or maybe 2012 I was at Burger King. They were playing 80s music. A Duran Duran song that I hadn't heard since it was on the radio in the 80s came on. That was the first time that had happened to me. It's hard to describe the feeling I got. Burger King was a place I went during the 80s, so I was in an 80s-type setting. Music can trigger a lot of things in a person. Hearing that song again took me back to the point in time when I used to hear it. It was like I was seeing myself then and in the present. It was like the song put me in two time periods at once. It was extremely strange. I've had that happen a few times since but never as jarringly as that first time.

I've decided that the Men at Work song I heard at Fred's, even though it was never on the radio back in the day, is indeed an authentic 80s song. The kids today can listen to the old music and enjoy it. They're just doing it out of context. They don't have the 80s experience that goes with that music. The setting in which they're listening to it is out of context.
It makes me wonder if older people thought about things like that when I was listening to classic rock.

Book Stuff
I've gone through the proof copy of the mystery/romance and fixed things and ordered the updated version. It'll probably get here Monday. The plan is to mail it out right away to test readers and see what they think. I still have doubts about it. Ideally, I'd like to find an agent for it, if I can, though that might be very difficult.
I've been working on the Messengers sequel. I'm very close to the end. It's going to be a lot of work to get into shape, once the rough draft is done.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Seeing Some Progress

I read a book not long ago by William Woodall that was set in Texas. Somebody in the book made brisket, which I had to look up, because I'm from the south. I don't know what all people out west eat. I forget exactly what the definition was, but it's basically some kind of beef. So, I was at the store recently and noticed some pulled beef brisket in barbeque sauce. I had to get it to see what brisket is. Well, hmm, it isn't different than normal barbequed beef. I've been making barbeque sandwiches with it.
Here's the point. I had a barbeque sandwich with barbeque potato chips on the side. It made me wonder something. Is eating a barbeque sandwich with barbeque potato chips too southern?

Anyway, the forces of darkness have been fighting me tooth and nail on the writing front lately. I could use prayer for that and prayer in general. It seems like it's been one roadblock after another. I need a breakthrough in some area.

There's been some good news. A cold front from Canada has moved in bringing lower temperatures and lower humidity. It's July in Georgia, and it's been in the 70s and 80s without the oppressive humidity we normally have. (That's 21-26+ degrees in Celsius.) The high today is 73o(22.78C), and tomorrow is about the same. The nights have been blessedly cool. The weather feels miraculous.

I've been wrestling a bit with the ending for the first book in the Messengers sequel and decided to change it because the original idea didn't seem dramatic enough. I think I have it now. I just need to force some time to finish it.

And, I've finally gotten back to the mystery/romance and read it through making corrections along the way. I finished that last night but still need to transfer the changes to computer. I printed it out to read so I could work on it anywhere. Plus, there's something about going over a hard copy that's more real than doing it on the computer.
I still don't have a title for it, but I think it works. I wasn't sure it would. It seems to flow along once I get past the first few pages, which makes me worry about the first few pages. They set the stage for later. I'm just not sure that's enough to grab a reader's attention. The first bit of suspense doesn't happen until page 4. I need to make sure people get that far. I'll have to think about it more. Right now, the plan is to get the changes done then let someone else read it while I work on the sequel to Messengers.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Sequel 2

Blogspot got me again with the New Blog button. It wanted me to create a different blog. No!

If you haven't heard of NaNoWriMo, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's in November. People write a 50,000 word "novel" in a month. I've never done it, because it didn't fit what I was doing at the time. I wasn't going to stop Messengers to do a 50k book. I was thinking I might try it this year. Why? Because I got about 60k words done on the Messengers sequel in less than a month. I'm over 85% of the way toward the target word count of 80k words now, although it's slowed down quite a lot due to various things like dental problems, sleep problems and structure angst. Sci-Fi and fantasy novels run 80k to 120k words depending. I'd call 40k words a novella. That's why I put quotes around novel up above. Is 50k really a novel? Ask a publisher. ;)

Structure angst. When I was doing Messengers, I wrote the kind of book I wanted to read. I ignored a lot of rules like: not adding important characters at the end, putting in scenes that added atmosphere but didn't necessarily advance the plot, telling instead of showing, etc. If I came to something cool that I wished someone else would've done at least once if it wasn't against "the rules," I went ahead and did it if I thought it worked! If I'd followed the rules, everyone would've been healed at the end of book 4. Joe and Ceinwen would marry at the end of book 4. The rain would have been at the end of book 4. Etc.
Anyway, from here on out I'm paying more attention to the rules, especially structure. Novels have a certain structure to follow. The sequel may not exactly follow the structure. So, I'm having some angst about what to do about it. I guess I'm going to finish it up and then go back and see how it looks. It makes me tired thinking about it.
I have two main storylines. Marion and Etan are the main characters most of the time, and they're doing their own things. That reminds me. In the last blog I was talking about the prologue being long. Forget it. There was a lot more story there than I thought. The prologue turned into book 1. But. There's still going to have to be a division between this book and the next one because there's a time gap between the things that happen in this book and the beginning of the war. This book(which doesn't have a title right now) happens the same year that Messengers ended. The next book takes place about three years later based on everything going on now. So, back to the storylines. I have to make sure they follow the correct structure and that things are timed properly so it's not jarring to skip back and forth.

The mystery/romance. I haven't gotten back to it in any significant way. I think the structure is mostly okay. ;) I need to do a read through on it to see how it reads now and then fix anything that comes up. I already know I need to add a little in the ending chapters to make it flow better. I've been debating whether to take a break from the sequel to do that or keep going. So far I've kept going on the sequel.

I'm out of time. I'll let you know more later.


Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Sequel

Picking up where I left off the last time, I finished up the read through and editing pass for the Mystery/Romance on the 16th. I'm giving it a month's rest so I can look at it with fresh eyes.

I woke up one day and had an idea for a story set on a space station in the outer solar system. It would be a mystery/suspense type of thing, I think. I started doing research. There's enough of a timeline to do at least two books. The station has to be built. It probably needs a shakedown cruise to Mars to get the bugs worked out. I have multiple distinct time periods: construction, shakedown cruise, journey to the outer system(six years) and then what happens after it gets there. There's a lot to work with depending on what I want to do and think I can do. These would probably be short novels, but that brings up an idea about doing shorter books that needs a future post of its own.

However, instead of going straight to the space station books, I've somehow ended up working on the sequel to Messengers. The prologue begins within days of Call to War then jumps two or three months ahead to Afton wanting to sign a peace treaty with B'vellah. Maybe a few months later Etan and Kayley's wedding would take place. As mentioned in the last book, at some point a war breaks out.

I've already been writing the prologue the events of which seem pretty much set in stone. It's too big for a normal prologue. Maybe I'll divide it into something like Part I. I'm not sure of all the plot yet. Marion is one of the main characters. Afton's sons will play a larger role. The reason I barely mentioned them in Messengers is because I didn't think of them until the end then had to go back and add them in, but by then it was too late for them to be a real part of the series. Oops.
Some things will take place on earth, but I'm not sure how much. A future book about Calliope has events that take place on earth. I need to figure out how to keep that discrete from the sequel.

Anyway, I'm out of time. The next little while should be working on the sequel to Messengers.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Moving Right Along

I clicked the New Blog button and was presented with a screen for creating another blog. It wasn't what I expected. I wonder how many people need multiple blogs or have time to write for each of them. But anyway.

So far, this has been a hard year in a lot of ways, but I'm making progress. I'm 105.75% of the way through the rough draft of the current book. I went a little over the word count, but that's okay. It gives me flexibility in what to trim down. The rough draft is finished. Yay! This book is one I mentioned before that was a bit of a break from Messengers. It's a mystery/romance or a romantic mystery. It's set in a small, fictional town in South Carolina far from the beach but near a lake. There's a murder, but it's not really a whodunit type of murder mystery. It's a Christian inspirational cozy sort of thing, although I really need to look up the exact definition of what constitutes a Christian cozy book before I try to call it that.

I'd have been done sooner, but I had to do a lot of research into police procedures. That took longer than I thought and kind of dragged on. The vast majority of it never made it into the book. Actually, it's almost invisible in the sense that the actions of the police take place mostly off stage. I needed to know how the police interact with suspects and how they investigate and such in order to make the detective and the police department believable instead of ridiculous. That reminds me. Did you know the police department and sheriff's office are different entities and have different jobs? I didn't! That's what I get for never having pursued a life of crime. I've never been arrested, so I had a lot to learn about how a jail works and all that. The result of the research is that the police in the book do their jobs, but I don't explain why they do certain things.

The next step is to go over the rough draft and proofread and edit and knock it into shape. I'm not sure how long that will take, hopefully a week or two if I don't find any massive structural flaws. I did a certain amount of editing and proofreading along the way. After that I want to put it away for a month and let it grow stale so I can see it with "fresh" eyes and find all the hideously embarrassing things I missed during the first edit. However, there's some good news. Somebody on a writers forum I occasionally visit posted a link to a cheap, professional editor. I'm not rich, but I think I'll be able to try them out with this book. I'm excited about that. Part of my research aside from the police stuff was to read some books on the market today and get a general feel for what's out there. Too much of it needed more editing. It wasn't that the writing was bad. It was a polish thing. Some of it needed some major work, but there's one guy in particular who does a good job but needs that last little bit of polish to push him over the top. He's not the only one, of course, but he stood out because his stuff is good enough that I read more than one of his books. I don't want to put something out there that's "almost good enough" but falls short on silly little things.

I know I don't blog a lot. I try to wait until I have something to say instead of just slapping something up. Now that things are going faster, I should have more to say. Like what will I be doing in that month I'm letting this book rest? Working on the next one, but that'll have to wait for another day.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Catching Up 2

I did a little house cleaning and deleted some old posts that aren't relevant any more. Mostly it was announcements for free book giveaways.

Amazon doesn't auto-update books any more. I thought that once I made changes to a book it would be pushed to everyone who already purchased it in the past. I used to get book updates for other people's books. I guess it costs Amazon too much to do it. I may be able to get them to do it for me anyway. They will update my own copy of my own book on my own Kindle, but I have to request it. Once I'm ready, I'm going to ask about pushing the new versions for everyone who already has a book.

In the last blog I said that any corrections to Chronicles 2, 3 and 4 "should" be up by this week. Going through 1 took longer than I thought, and it seems everything is getting in the way. The revised edition is now live. I think 2 will go up this week, but 3 and 4 won't. I've found one text mistake and a couple of minor spacing mistakes so far. It would go faster, but I've done some polishing along the way. It's hard not to. :)

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Catching Up

Long time no blog. I see the last one was in Sept 2012. My dad had massive open heart surgery in Oct 2012. I helped take care of him. He recovered from it but passed away in Sept 2013 from euthanasia. There's a long story behind that. When he got to the hospital, all his test results were normal except for his CO2 count. The hospital didn't want to treat him, but they eventually did and and released him. He picked up a staph infection while there and had to go right back in. They didn't treat him that time. They used a legal maneuver to take away his food, keep him awake for long periods of time and pump him with steroids to kill him. Long story short: the death panels are already here. Think I'm paranoid? The hospital never billed for any of it. They took what insurance paid and never sent a bill for the rest. Enough of that for now. It's too depressing to go into.

Early in 2013 Linda A. that I dedicated the series to also passed away. The A stands for Alkire. She wanted to be anonymous, but she deserves a lot of credit that I can give her now. Besides my dad's surgery, 2012 was a very hard year on its own, and with the losses so was 2013.

What's going on now with the books? I just uploaded re-edited versions of Chronicles 2, 3 and 4. The revised Chronicle 1 should go up in a few days or maybe next week after I check the changes in it to make sure no new errors crept in. I need to go through the new live versions of 2, 3 and 4 and make sure they are as they should be. I have to check those before uploading 1 because it will cause an update on anyone's Kindle who has it, and a lot of people downloaded 1 for free. I want things to be right in case the people who didn't read it start reading and move on to the rest of the series.

There are no major changes. The original plan was to fix some "errors" where a couple of characters did or said things that didn't properly reflect the Way. I put them in to show that they weren't perfect and were still learning and growing. But I was never comfortable with it and finally said enough was enough. Since I haven't worked on the books in a while I was able to see all kinds of embarrassing things that needed polishing. It turned into a re-edit. Most of the changes are polishing type things like changing awkward verb tenses and smoothing things out for better readability. For instance, I dropped "he said" at the end of sentences that didn't need them or turned "Ceinwen said" into "she said" where it made more sense and was more readable. I deleted a sentence here and there and fixed some trivial continuity errors. Overall the books are more professional and read more smoothly.
The story is the same. Changing anything would take virtually forever. There are too many details for that. However, at some point I'd like to hire a professional editor.

What's next? I'm still at about the halfway point on the space novel rough draft. I think I've blogged about it. It's set in the future of the current series in the time of Calan Sterrit. I also am about halfway through the rough draft for an inspirational romance set in the present day. To pen name or not to pen name? That is the question. :) I was working on that as a break from Messengers and making extremely good progress until my dad had the CO2 problem. I'm going to try to work on the space novel and the romance at the same time. Finish the rough draft of one then switch and finish the other. Go back to the first one for an editing pass then do a pass on the other. I think it'll help keep my eyes fresh for things that need fixing. If nothing else terrible happens, I should get them both out the door this year. Unless I get an agent for the romance. I'm thinking about that. Maybe for both of them. I believe I'm at the point in my writing where it would make sense. We'll see.

What about the MMO? Back burner. Hero Engine changed the fee structure so I couldn't bring people on the project without paying even more money.With that and everything else there's just not enough time right now. However, the license is still active, and more success with the books should get things on track.