I did something naughty this morning. I wrote something that wasn't THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE. I wrote the first 700 words or so on THE TRIAD SOCIETY. There are a couple reasons for this. First, after fixing chapters 4 and 5, I saw how much work chapter 8 needed and I think my first foray with THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE is a false start. I need to dump ( Read more... )

Taking into consideration my wife's repeated suggestions that I take things a little slower until after we've moved, I've been writing more casually this week. Not too difficult to do since my allergies have been terrible and I've been fighting off the plague that's going around at work. I have made repeated attempts to fix chapters 4 and 5. When I ( Read more... )

Yesterday? Maybe the day before, I started pondering whether THE SEVENTH SACRIFICE was too large for one novel. There were a few motivating factors for this line of reasoning. First, it's a true epic fantasy. That means its word count is going to be big (I'm budgeting 250k). Few new authors get that kind of word count (I can think of Patrick ( Read more... )

So when Cheshire and Albrecht arrived at Donne's Stable, I had no idea what I was going to do. They needed supplies, and I didn't just want to skip to their arrival in Bath. They had just agreed to work together, they couldn't then just arrive at the next leg of the quest. I need time to build character and relationship. So they go to Donne's ( Read more... )

I don't normally post excerpts out of order, but I had so much fun writing chapter six yesterday, that I wanted to share. Really, I enjoyed writing Puck (not sure if I'm going to keep that name, as it brings to mind too much literary baggage, but it's a good working name). Originally I thought of writing his voice like Pikey, but I knew I'd fail at ( Read more... )

So last night I watched "Pierrepoint: the Last Hangman." Timothy Spall (Wormtail from Harry Potter) plays real-life Albert Pierrepoint, England's premier executioner following WW2. It's a wonderfully dark movie and all that stress I've been feeling drained out of me in a cathartic experience. This was the perfect movie at the perfect moment. I ( Read more... )

A couple of things to mention today but not a lot of time to do so. Lunch break ends shortly, and I have a half-hour to finish my own work before training one of the new people. Perhaps I should wait until tomorrow? NO! For this morning was a great morning. Not in terms of word count, but in terms of revelation ( Read more... )

WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING is away to its readers. I am anxious for their responses. I'm very pleased with how this story turned out, and I'm anxious to start querying agents (though I have the usual fears that my query is not good enough--and the combined fear of agents dismissing the work solely on word count. Fantasy novels are, by genre, ( Read more... )