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Status Report (9 January 2019)

Status Report (9 January 2019)

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Just a quick post today. I’ve been home from the office with a bit of intestinal crud for the past couple of days, which has not exactly been conducive to getting any writing done either. Still, I’ve managed to get another two or three kilowords down on Twice-Crowned since the weekend. I’m not at all happy with the text as it stands – I’ve got more loose plot threads lying on the floor than you can shake a stick at – but better to get the story roughed out in full, and then go back and start polishing and trimming. The overall shape of the story is working out fine.

I should call out a source that’s been remarkably useful, and will probably continue to be so: a book titled The Seer in Ancient Greece, by Michael Atiyah Flower, published 2008 by the University of California Press. Although my protagonist is not at all a typical Hellene of her time, it’s very good to have a solid understanding of what other manteis did in the real world, and how they interacted with the society and culture around them. Somewhat specialized, but highly recommended if you have an interest in classical Hellenic religious thought.

Watching this blog for the past few days has been a bit surprising. Today has been the busiest day the blog has seen since I reinstated it back in April, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. For some reason, I’ve suddenly been getting dozens of hits from Facebook, which is odd since I don’t cross-post and don’t even maintain an active account there. Haven’t a clue as to where the hits are coming from, either, and neither Google nor Facebook’s native search engine have been of any help. Not that I’m complaining, to be sure. Still, a small request to any readers who might be coming this way from Facebook: could you leave a comment on this post to indicate where the link is coming from? I’m kind of curious what’s up with that.

Tomorrow, with any luck, I’ll be back on an even keel health-wise and ready to get back to the office. The writing that needs to be done there is piling up too.

2019: Looking Forward

2019: Looking Forward

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So I’ve long since gotten out of the habit of making New Year’s resolutions. For one thing, life is too unpredictable to nail down that way, and for another, it takes more than a line on the calendar to change habits. Still, the first few days of the year is a good time to at least try and make a few plans.

I’ve got a fairly crowded agenda for my day job, where I have several course-development projects lined up for the coming calendar year. I’ll also be “on the platform” to lecture more than I was last year. So there’s one irony: out of all my writing output for the year, most of it won’t be fictional and isn’t likely to be mentioned here.

Meanwhile, I’m taking steps to improve my health in the coming year. I’m an overweight guy in my fifties, and a controlled diabetic as well, and that means I have to pay a certain amount of attention to personal maintenance. At least, I do if I want to live long enough to enjoy a few years of retirement, subject as always to the whims of our lords and masters downtown.

Recently I resumed my membership at a local gym, and while I’m never going to be slim and athletic again, I hope to build up a bit of strength in my legs and maybe lose a few pounds. Possibly more productive is a suggestion my podiatrist made, not long ago. Apparently there exist compact elliptical machines that are ideal for putting under a desk, so you can be working your legs and burning calories even while you sit at a computer. I’ve got one on order for my home office, and if that works out I may order a second one to take to work.

As far as creative writing goes:

  • First priority is going to be producing the first draft for the current novel-length project, a pseudo-Hellenic alternate-history fantasy with the working title of Twice-Crowned. As of this evening, I’ve got close to 11 kilowords down, which should finish one long chapter. The total length of the story will probably be about 120 kilowords in rough draft, and I’m hoping to have that finished by summer. Whether I’ll get the novel actually self-published this calendar year depends on how much revision it needs.
  • Second priority is going to be getting at least one Aminata Ndoye story out the door, and possibly another short piece as well.
  • Third priority is to get back to Architect of Worlds and push that project forward through another big section. I want to revisit some of the material I’ve already written – the model doesn’t seem to be handling “super-Earths” very well yet – but the main objective will be to write the section that describes individual planets in some detail. If I can get that finished and tested, the main “game mechanics” sections of the book will be done.
  • Fourth priority is to finish a couple of fan-fiction projects. In particular, I’ve got a Silmarillion fan-fiction piece that got started and looked promising, but which has been on hiatus for a while so I can work on those other bullet items. There’s also a Dragon Age story that I abandoned in 2018 but that won’t quite let go of my imagination, so I may go back to that at some point. Of course, all of this is subject to Zeigler’s Iron Law of Prioritization: “Any item that falls to fourth on the priority list will never be completed.” I can hope for an exception.
  • Fifth, any continued blogging I may find to do on worldbuilding, writing, or the state of my muse.

Another thing I’m considering is shutting down the Sharrukin’s Archive part of this site, in favor of just placing any “persistent” items in this WordPress framework as permanent pages. Honestly, the Archive as it’s structured is an enormous pain in the ass to maintain, and I’ve never managed to populate it as densely as I originally planned.

Honestly, that seems like enough to keep me busy for the next few months. Watch this space for progress reports.

“Published Work” Page Now Available

“Published Work” Page Now Available

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Long overdue, but I’ve created a “Published Work for Sale” page, which is linked from the sidebar to the right. At the moment that includes only the two novelettes I’ve self-published, but I’ll probably add links to some of the other work I’ve done that’s still in print. Also, as I release more work it will be added to that list. Links from there to the appropriate pages on Amazon. Hint, hint.

Status Report (23 April 2018)

Status Report (23 April 2018)

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Okay, having finished a rewrite of the first chunk of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, I’m going to spend a few days working on other items on the to-do list.

In particular, I have one fan-fiction project under way (The Voice of Silence, a Dragon Age piece) that hasn’t been updated in over a month. Once I’ve put down two or three chapters on that, I’ll probably come back to Architect of Worlds and start on the next section of the design sequence.

I also want to get some work done on the “Human Destiny” setting. I have two stories of novelette and novella length in that setting, more or less finished and ready for a final coat of polish and self-publication. I want to flesh out the background for those a bit, and then get them out the door finally. That may generate some new world-building material to be posted here and at the Archive.

Finally, I have an original fantasy setting coalescing in the back of my mind, associated with what’s likely to turn into at least one complete novel. That’s third or fourth on the priority list, though.

Feels good to be writing on a regular basis once more.

Reviving the Palace

Reviving the Palace

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In the fall of 2016, I was getting a bit discouraged over the lack of takeoff in my writing career. I had written a number of books for the tabletop gaming industry, I had published about a million words of successful fan-fiction, and I was getting a series of decent non-boilerplate rejection notes from mainstream publishers. I just didn’t seem to be able to get over that last potential-energy barrier to start seeing my work in print.

Then Tuesday, the eighth of November happened.

Suffice it to say that I was strongly motivated to withdraw from public engagement at that point. I shut down my blog, deleted my social-media accounts, and resolved to just concentrate on my family and my day job for a while. I even stopped writing entirely for several months.

Since then, some of the things I feared have come to pass, while others have not (at least not yet). Yet life seems to be going on, and I eventually found myself writing again.

Already, I had set up a new website for static content (Sharrukin’s Archive) although I never generated enough material to populate that. Unfortunately, by the time I thought about emerging from my cave again, the domain name I originally used for my online activity had been captured by a domain squatter. It was being used to advertise cars, I think. So, rather than negotiate with the squatter and possibly end up paying hundreds of dollars to get my domain back, I let the situation lie.

Then, early this year, on an impulse I checked the domain’s registration status. Apparently it had been permitted to lapse again, and would be available for recapture sometime early this year. So I watched, and when the domain was deleted from the Internet registries I grabbed it.

Sharrukin’s Palace is back in business.

My approach to writing has changed a bit over the past couple of years. I’m no longer trying to get short fiction published. Instead, I’m working on some large-scale world-building and developing a couple of full-length novels. When I have material ready, that will go to Amazon for self-publication.

Meanwhile, I plan to try to post some work here at least once a week: reviews of media I find interesting, essays and progress reports on my writing process, world-building material, short excerpts of stories destined for self-publication, and so on. Anything that seems worth preserving as a full-fledged article will also be copied over to the static Sharrukin’s Archive site.

You know the old saying: the devil laughs when we make plans. We’ll see how things go.