Re-establishing my routine

As things start to settle down a little here, I'm looking to get back into a routine of writing at least ten hours a week - mostly so that I have things to post after the last chapter of Elevated goes up on February 14.

Today I put in about three hours and wrote the first seven pages of They Move Slowly in Winter and it's starting to look like a real story. I also have the first six pages of The First Saturnalia (which almost certainly won't be called that,) but it's not feeling like a story yet. I know how it starts and how I want it to end, but not the middle bit.

Right now, my best-laid plans are to write short stories to release for a month or so while I kick around longer pieces to see which one will keep me engaged for the six months or so it takes me to write a full novel. Right now, the most likely contender is Operation Timestitch, which is also probably not going to be the final title of the story, but it's a do-over story with enough genre-breaking twists to make it interesting. If I can get five solid chapters, I'll probably commit to finishing it and start posting.

Right now, my plan is to post either Folded Too Long or They Move Slowly in Winter on February 21. The former, about a pop star who slips her handlers shortly after her eighteenth birthday, is already in draft, but I think the latter is a stronger story. It's a retelling of Vulgar Argot's Second Billing and Eve, Eventide, but with zombies. If it works out well, I'm going to look at picking up the unfinished Treaty Troops.

Elevated Chapter 20 is going to be huge

I just finished the last batch of edits chapter 20 of Elevated needed in order to go to press on storiesonline.net tonight. Aside from all the story content, I should also mention that it is enormous - 46 pages in PDF form. I probably could have split it into two chapters and might on the rewrite, but it's all coming out tonight.

Mandrake and Dreadflower are doing a phenomenal job catching not only typos, but weird and awkward bits that detract from the overall quality of the story. They deserve a huge amount of credit for the smoothness of Elevated as a read.

I still haven't written much new since finishing and next week's conclusion of Elevated is the only piece left in the publishing backlog. On the plus side, it appears like my career hiccup is more or less resolved, so hopefully I'll be writing again soon.

UPDATE: Chapter 20 is posted as of 9:30 PM. It should be available soon.

Dusting off my keyboard

For the first time since I finished writing Elevated, I've done some new writing today. I'm working on a story putatively called The First Saturnalia, which spells out a lot of the details of how New Rome got its start. I've been sort of coy with the details because the founding has such a different tone than the events in Elevated. I hope I telegraphed well enough the nature of Briannus Metallicus and Caesar Mauritius's "genius" and why they were able to alter history so much, but maybe I was too subtle.

I've always found that finishing a novel as a writer is a little bit devastating. It's like ending a relationship or losing a friend. All of a sudden, something that took up a big portion of your days is gone and you're left scrambling to find something to fill those hours. New stories you're just not as invested in don't give the same high that drawing a well-written story to a satisfying conclusion does. It's hard to get back into the rhythm of it.

On top of that, I've had a professional interruption, which means that the other thing that took up big chunks of my day has been missing. Between the two, I've been a bit adrift for the last two weeks, but writing felt pretty good today.

Elevated Chapter 19 is posted on SOL.

Last week, I needed to get some sleep and posted chapter 18 of Elevated at 10 PM on Thursday instead of after midnight on Friday as I have been and, for some reason, it got a ton of reads - more than twice as many as other new chapters have been in previous weeks.

I don't know if the timing was relevant, but I'm perfectly happy to repeat the inadvertent experiment by posting chapter 19 now. It's up and live. I hope you enjoy it.

100,000!

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Elevated Chapter 18 is posted

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I wonder what I was thinking

Combing through the files in my hopper, I came across a number of unstoried titles - story stubs that are nothing but a title and maybe a couple of notes jotted down or an opening paragraph. Some of them I have no idea even what I meant to write and some are really quite evocative. Here are my ten favorite (in no particular order):

A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

Attractive Nuisance

Care and Feeding of the Wild Party Girl

Frenemy Mine

Hypotenuse Screamed

Love on the Installment Plan

Our Sins Like Ghosts

Shade-Tree Fixing Man

They Move Slowly in Winter

Nor Custom Stale

Maybe I'll take some time this weekend to play with a few of them.