Things are finally calming down around here. This means part 3 of Adventures Through the Window got finished up for a new podcast episode tomorrow! Huzzah! I’m happy to get back into writing. My other Summer project is to get a lot done of the rewrite of The Forest Awakens. I’m excited about this new take on the book. I’ve figured out places to add much richer descriptions, and more insight into the childrens’ reactions to the events unfolding around them. Multiple agents pointed out these changes to me, making me confident the effort will make the story that much more appealing to future agents, and the kiddos who will hopefully one day enjoy it.

Be sure to stop by tomorrow to listen to the first podcast in over a month!

Late-night post update. I’ve been sickly the last 3 days or so. It’s never fun being sick and my mind is moving very slowly. I said I wanted to give everyone a recap of where we left on in Adventures Through The Window. It’s been 3-4 weeks since we’ve had the podcast with sickness, family problems, and so on.

In part one, James suspected his substitute teacher was up to something when he saw the man fleeing from his Vice Principal! James followed him into a world like nothing he’d ever seen. Part two continued with James’ adventure in this strange new land by leading him to a mysterious floating staircase. When James finally found his way down, he’s in the clearing of a colorful, strange forest, no staircase in sight. There were three paths that James could take, and eventually he decided on one.

If you’d like to read the first 2 parts, you can do so here. The story starts again with part 3 next Tuesday, as we see where his choice of paths takes him.

Samantha made this from scratch!

Well I attempted to write this yesterday, you know, on my birthday, but things kept coming up. It was a great day! For me, birthdays are what New Years is to others. It’s a time to look at what you’ve accomplished this year, and using what you’ve learned to make the next year better. This year, it was mostly about writing for me.

I realized that I haven’t done a writing update in awhile while I was thinking about what this coming year will mean to me as a writer. I’ve gotten behind on it. First of all, The Forest Awakens jumped up to 100% on my editing goal. It’s pretty good, grammatically speaking. The rejections I’ve gotten from agents have made me look at it under a new microscope though. They all like my writing, they all like the story idea, but they all also said they didn’t connect with the main character enough.

I’ve more or less come to the inevitable question that most writers probably go through. My assassin book has been sitting at about 20% completed on the backburner while I edited TFA, and now I have to decide if I want to work on the changes to my YA novel that agents have suggested, or if I want to put it aside for now and finish my new book?

Currently I’m leaning toward another draft of The Forest Awakens. It would be a big draft, basically rewriting many parts of it, although most of the current material doesn’t need to be cut, just have more added to it. We shall see over the next couple days, while I have a podcast to finish anyway.

Happy (now late) Birthday to meeeee!

I mentioned yesterday that I thought TNS might be postponed until tomorrow. Considering the time, it’s best to assume that it has been. I can say that it is completely finished and reviewed. It is, at least, partly recorded as well.

I think this next scene demonstrates how much I’ve grown as a writer. While it did take me too long to write it, that is something I can practice and improve with time. What is impressive to me is the level of depth that comes into the story just by introducing one new character. I knew the sort of man I wanted him to be, but you can’t create truly in depth characters on a whim, and wise characters doubly so. There has be a lot of history there, a lot of things that made this person wise.

I do not want to reveal anything of course, so perhaps I will talk more about it after this story is through. I do believe it is one of the most interesting characters I’ve written so far. That is why these podcasts are so fascinating to me. Books take a long time to write, and an even longer time to edit (in my rather minor experience). But the stories for the podcast are pretty short, and they let me explore so many worlds and characters. Being able to share them with you guys is just icing on the cake.

I tend to like “what would you do?” scenarios. That concept is what inspired my latest Tuesday Night Story, Deposed. If you checked out part one, you know that Anald was overthrown by Sildon as King of the realm. What would you do in that situation? Surely a king has to plan in advance for situations like this. That is the overwhelming flaw of feudalism I imagine. You are constantly at risk of being invaded, poisoned, or executed by someone who wants your power.

If you didn’t catch part one check out Tuesday’s post. It should be the post directly under this one. Deposed will be the tale of what a king might do when he finds himself replaced. Would he stand by and give up, or would he fight back? Join me every Tuesday to find out!

In other writing news. My assassin novel is inching its way forward on the progress bar. It is up to 20% now. I’m really loving this story, but I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I would like. The Forest Awakens is also moving up slower than I wanted. I’m updating the edits as soon as I receive them, but Samantha has been rather wrapped up in her own work lately. Hopefully she’ll have some more time for it again soon. For anyone interested, she’s currently holding a giveaway on her blog. You can win a piece of jewelry from her Etsy shop for you or for someone special. Entering is very easy!

So I have a lot online friends participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. Not many people I know that live in my area are writers, so it’s fun to actually have some support from buddies this year. I’ve met quite a few on Twitter through the use of the #NaNoWriMo hashtag. Of course, a lot I’ve met via other hashtags are participating as well. Such as #wordathon or #amwriting.

What does NaNoWriMo mean to me? Probably not what it does to some other people. I’ve participated for a few years. Only the first year did I feel I needed to attempt exactly what they suggested. For anyone who doesn’t know, the idea is to write a novel in November. 50,000 words in 30 days. I did it, I proved that I could make myself write.

Since then, I’ve had other goals and objectives surrounding NaNoWriMo. I always try for 50,000 words still, but I care less about what exactly they go toward. I write every day. In November I’m already working on whatever latest novel I’m writing. This year it happens to be my assassin novel. That basically means I don’t ever want to start a new project just because it’s November. Instead, I pretend I’m a big-shot author and I try for more words every day than I would otherwise. I always try to write 750 words a day. Often times I go over that, but that’s my daily goal. NaNoWriMo just gives me the opportunity to try for more.

What are your NaNo goals? Are you one of those crazy types that scoffs at 50K words and tries to go for 100K? Or do you barely get away with the roughly 1700 words a day?

I haven’t given you guys a writing update in awhile. I’m still plugging away at the assassin novel. The percentage bar is up to 15%. It has been going a bit slower than my initial estimation. Mostly because after some agent rejections my wife and I began a 5th draft of my YA novel. Hey, it never hurts to do more work. It’s almost finished (again) and I’ll soon be sending it off to more agents. Then I’ll get back into working on the assassin book full time again.

Episode 8 of Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities comes out tomorrow. It will be the second to last part of the story, since we don’t want to get up to 10 parts on any given story. In all it looks like the story will end up about 11,500 words. Does that still stand within short story limitations? *gives an evil little laugh* I love this story a lot, easily one of my best works so far. Things are about to turn a lot darker, so look forward to that.

Some people have been asking me about my projects listed on the front page. Everywhere on the site they are only hinted and “coming soon.” I thought I would go ahead and fill people in about what I’ve been doing since finishing The Forest Awakens at the end of July.

Assassin’s Tale, Adult Fantasy

That is not the title I’ll use for the book, but it sums up what I’m going for. When I have a title I’ll let you guys know. I have always loved to read both fantasy and espionage, so it makes sense for my third book to be a fun mix of the genre’s. It will be mostly fantasy, so no guns or advanced government spy organizations, more back to the basics. Knives will be a popular weapon choice among thieves.

The book will track the protagonist while his life is, to some degree, falling apart. Once an honored soldier turned merchant’s guard, he finds himself on a downward spiral that leads him to become an assassin with the fate of two kingdoms caught in his schemes of revenge.

The novel will really be about the protagonist. I wanted to tell a detailed story of what it takes to break an honorable man and turn him into a deadly adversary. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

I’m estimating 100,000 words for this book. It’s plotted out at 38 chapters, using 2500 words/chapter as my rough estimate. I have about 12,000 completed. This project began in the middle of July.

Tuesday Night Story #3, Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities

I can hardly believe that we’re already on the 3rd TNS! This has been so much more fun than I expected when it began. To those that haven’t been keeping up, every Tuesday night I post roughly 1100 words of a continuing story. When story #2 began, my good friend David Carroll offered to record the stories each week. So TNS got an upgrade and became a podcast as well! You can find it on iTunes if you’re interested. See the mp3 player on the front page to listen to recent episodes.

Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities is a new style of writing for me. It is my first attempt at such a young voice. This one is a children’s tale about a strange new circus that has come to young Peter’s street. The circus is run by old Mr. Snaggle and it all seems just a bit too good to be true.

*****

That’s what I’ve been up to lately. Feel free to tell me about your latest projects in the comments. And make sure to check back tomorrow for the beginning of Mr. Snaggle’s Oddities! It may be one of my favorite story ideas yet.