Progress report

I'm still working on the second draft of Mind Games, the second book of Wheel of Fire.  I'm on page 167 of a 208-page file.  (Those are OpenOffice pages, not book pages.  The finished product will have a much larger page count.)  I've run into a delay, though, because I've decided to re-write a portion of a battle scene.  I still hope to get this draft done within the next week.

After that, I'd really like to start on the first draft of the next book.  That would give me some time away from book 2--which is good for objectivity--and then I could return to it after the new year and make the final revisions and proofreading and whatnot.  I'd like to get Mind Games published before January is over with.

Of course, these plans are very optimistic, and life has a way of interfering.  So no promises.

Alasdair Shaw's November Round-up

New science fiction releases.  Hostile Planet is among them.

Check it out:

CLICK HERE

The Guardian is now live

My short story The Lattice is one of eleven stories featured in Alasdair Shaw's anthology The Guardian.

It's available at a number of retailers, and it's only 99 cents.

CLICK HERE

 OR HERE

If you decide to give it a try, then I hope you enjoy it.  Thanks for supporting the work of independent authors.

Life imitates art

I've only just recently written and published The Lattice.  In the short story, the main character travels into space via a homemade spaceplane.  The craft was assembled by hand from parts made on 3D printers. 

Today, I happened to come across an article about a man doing something similar:

Hughes is a 61-year-old limo driver who’s spent the last few years building a steam-powered rocket out of salvage parts in his garage.

On the one hand, I think this is a terrible idea that is fraught with all sorts of danger, not to mention the various legal risks.  On the other hand, I'm a bit envious.  Good luck, Mr. Hughes.  :D

R.I.P., Malcolm Young

The rhythm guitarist for AC/DC has passed on.  :(

For those about to rock... but also for those who, like Mr. Young, have rocked in the past but shall rock no more... we salute you.

Updates galore!

Not from me.  From Microsoft and Mozilla.

First came the Fall Creator's Update from Microsoft.  So far, so good.  I got a notice saying some audio-related thing had been disabled since it no longer worked with the new windows, but my speakers still work, so I don't know what that's all about. 

Next came the Mozilla update, the dreaded Firefox 57.  I knew this thing was going to break some non-zero number of my addons, but I didn't know how extensive the damage would be.  Luckily, it's not so bad.  Ghostery, uBlock, and AdBlockPlus still work, and those are the important ones since they keep out a lot of the malware from third-party ads.  Thumbnail Zoom broke, but I've found a suitable replacement.  Same for Flagfox.  I'm still not quite sold on the replacements for Context Search and gtranslate.  All in all, though, this update wasn't nearly as destructive as I feared.

So it looks like I'm still in business.  Yay, me.  Now, back to Mind Games...

The Lattice will be appearing in an anthology

Alasdair Shaw has accepted my short story The Lattice for inclusion in his upcoming science fiction anthology, The Guardian.  It goes live at the end of the month, but one can pre-order it now.

Click here to pre-order The Guardian

Here's the cover:

Pretty cool, huh?  Yeah, I like it, too.

Here's the blurb on the product page, just to give you an idea of the common theme of the stories:

Guardians are defenders, carers and guides. Some look after individual people, others whole planets or universes, but all share a strong belief in their responsibility to protect their charges.

The anthology includes the following stories:

Awakening, by Alasdair Shaw

The Lattice, by Jeff Tanyard

Biting Shadow, by C. Gold

Gate of Dreams, by Rick Partlow

The Following Star, by Elizabeth Baxter

The Renewal, by Zen DiPietro

Stowaway, by Benjamin Douglas

Baptism of Fire, by Cora Buhlert

Sleeping Giant, by Andrew Vaillencourt

We Have the Stars, by J.J. Green

Warning Signs, by Edward M. Grant

Here's the link again:

Click here to pre-order The Guardian

Only $0.99.  Enjoy!

Maybe a diagram would help

I'm still working on the second draft of Mind Games.  I've just sent Lieutenant Gray's Wolf Platoon towards the river.  All hell broke loose, the convoy was scattered, and now I'm trying to keep track of everybody.

This is one of those things that's really easy to screw up.  The "scene" is several different miniature locations, and the platoon's squads have been separated.  I've got a bunch of sergeants and corporals to keep track of, as well as their locations, and I'll have to keep a close eye on things to make sure I don't accidentally use the wrong name.

So I'm thinking about making a diagram in MS Paint.

By the way: the word count of this book is currently just over 89k.  That's about 10k more than the first draft, which I expected, since I always end up adding more material during revision.  I'm hoping to break 100k by the time I'm done with this draft, and I think I should easily accomplish that.

Progress Report

I'm about half-way through the second draft of Mind Games.  It's slow going because I've had to stop and think about some things.  I've decided to beef up the first chapter, and basically re-write it from another character's POV.  This character wasn't planned to be in the book at all--he was scheduled to first appear in book 3--but I figured it wouldn't hurt to introduce him here, even though there's not much for him to actually do.  He'll get the first chapter and then a wrap-up scene at the end, I guess.  Like I said, I'm still working on that.

Struggling with tone.  What seemed the way to go in draft 1 is not looking good in draft 2, so I'm altering the tone a bit.  It's frustrating, because I feel like I'm hanging on to this story by my fingernails.  Hopefully it will all snap together in the end.

I've got a rudimentary outline for an urban fantasy novel.  :o  I have no idea when I'll actually get around to writing it, if ever.  Depends on how sales of the Wheel of Fire go, I guess.  If the series doesn't sell well after I've got three or four books out, then I might abandon it.  But that's looking way too far ahead.  The series might take off after book 3 like Timothy Ellis's series did.  There's simply no telling.  But I'm committed to Wheel of Fire at least through book 3.