The week after the meeting had actually gone incredibly well. What a way to start a chapter! Bam! A week has passed. I hate both documenting every day and blithely jumping forward. That’s a bit of a conundrum. Right now, I’ve got 39 days in 26 chapters, which is pretty much every day. A lot,Continue reading “Totally Stealing This”
Category Archives: Writing
Structure Two
There’s always a two. The “one” is way back in January. I had good thoughts. I’ve made some decisions, since. At least book two is going to be continuing chapter numbers. The so-far unnamed and unranked army guy arriving in the first snowfall is going to end book one. Book two will pick up immediately.Continue reading “Structure Two”
Chapter 19 Has Fallen Before Me
Finally. What used to be the problematic Chapter 18 is now chapters 18, 19, and 20 – and they are all done. 21 and 22 were mostly done, already. A new chapter 23 got injected. It’s not done. Looking up the link, that took almost four months. Tempus has fugitted. I’m not in any particularContinue reading “Chapter 19 Has Fallen Before Me”
24 Cookies
I just put 24 cookies in the oven. (Ghirardelli Coffee Dark Chocolate Chip cookies.) Cookies are generally counted in dozens, so 24 is 2 dozen + 4 aka twenty eight. For those of you who don’t deal with non-base-10 number systems, this can be confusing. The digits work the same way base-10 digits do. TheContinue reading “24 Cookies”
Yeah, No Quests
Another book with System quests (called “tasks” here). I do not like them. They are too directly manipulative or too trivial. Our intrepid hero (from Proving Grounds: Annals of the Runeguard Book 1) is being targeted by a group of thieves. After some escalation, they kill the blacksmith (Gorman) making him armor and steal it.Continue reading “Yeah, No Quests”
Dystopias
Like them I do not. That’s my biggest issue with Dungeon Crawler Carl (once it gets going and stops info-dumping). I just tried to read Apocalypse Eater. It’s a bit unfair to the author, but I only made it to page 2. The universe is awful enough that I don’t want to know any moreContinue reading “Dystopias”
My Competition 4
This one is aspirational. Wormhole Mana is good (at least book one; I just started book two). In no particular order… It’s tight third person. There are internal monologues in first person of the character monologuing. It’s all very obvious. No weird point-of-view changes. There is incremental “what’s going on?” as the magic system isContinue reading “My Competition 4”
Who’s Responsible?
I really, really like black-and-white morality in my fiction. Unfortunately, that makes for unrealistic (and often dull) stories. A reasonable current events example is Iran. One of the problems with decapitation is that when you kill those responsible, who’s left to make decisions? Iran as a state cannot surrender because there is no one whoContinue reading “Who’s Responsible?”
Impulsive Anger
I’ve finally figured out what irritates me so much about Cultivation books: The cultivators spend so much time, effort, and pain doing all sorts of complicated techniques to grow stronger, but as soon they feel insulted – legitimately or not – all that discipline flies out the window and they fly into an impulsive rage.Continue reading “Impulsive Anger”
Justification
Humans are really good at justifying themselves – especially to their own self. We all do it. The one that drives me nuts is “if I don’t kill this guy, my kid will suffer.” That’s all well and good when “this guy” is a knife-wielding maniac attacking your kid. It’s more than a bit differentContinue reading “Justification”
