To Interlude
I am home from my trip to New York City, where I visited with many friends at the NY Comic Con—all in book publishing. It was my first time to the Big Apple and I had a great time. Pictures will be forthcoming.
Two things:
1) I didn't meet with Ralph, the agent who has my pages. He took the weekend off to be with family outside of the city. He also received two big manuscripts from clients—the new Terry Pratchett book and the new Robert Sawyer book—so he is going to read those first before getting to my four chapters. Of course, I'm happy with that; he should spend his time with clients who actually make him money.
2) I'll be redesigning the website for Naomi Novik, the fabulous writer of His Majesty's Dragon. She has been meaning to do so for quite some time and now that we have met officially she asked if I'd be interested. I am. I also met artist Stephen Youll, one of my long-time clients, and he wants me to redesign the website that is now posted. Since I love designing website, and I pick and choose who I want to work with, I'm looking forward to these two projects.
But the great thing about flying across country is the amount of time one spends in an airplane. For most, that comment would have been the very definition of sarcasm, but for me I found a great opportunity to actually get some writing done. I wrote 3/4 of my novel's first Interlude, and on the way back I mostly finished it. It turned out exactly as I had hoped, and now the stage is set for the second part of the novel. It was from the point of view of Philip Plantagenet, the Dagda King. It also includes Arawn, Philip's second in command, as well as references to Celtic personages like Gwawl son of Clud, Goronwy the Houndmaster, and the deadly hag named simple the Cailleach. The fantasy elements are beginning to broaden in scope now that Bran has been brought into the real story, and I know the next few weeks are going to be great fun for me to write.
The Interlude is a bit larger than I had hoped for. It is 2372 words. Perhaps after editing I'll be able to get it below 2000. Time will tell.
The word count as it stands is now:
Prologue: 3045
Chapter 1: 4075
Chapter 2: 2973
Chapter 3: 3241
Chapter 4: 4144
Chapter 5: 4547
Chapter 6: 2793
Chapter 7: 3598
Chapter 8: 4939
Chapter 9: 4257
Interlude: 2372
Anyway, I am shipping out hundreds of books signed by Terry Brooks over the course of the next few days, so no writing really. But I hope to begin outlining Chapter 10 tomorrow night after I've spent 15 hours shipping books.
I hope you all are well. Can't believe why you keep reading this...
Two things:
1) I didn't meet with Ralph, the agent who has my pages. He took the weekend off to be with family outside of the city. He also received two big manuscripts from clients—the new Terry Pratchett book and the new Robert Sawyer book—so he is going to read those first before getting to my four chapters. Of course, I'm happy with that; he should spend his time with clients who actually make him money.
2) I'll be redesigning the website for Naomi Novik, the fabulous writer of His Majesty's Dragon. She has been meaning to do so for quite some time and now that we have met officially she asked if I'd be interested. I am. I also met artist Stephen Youll, one of my long-time clients, and he wants me to redesign the website that is now posted. Since I love designing website, and I pick and choose who I want to work with, I'm looking forward to these two projects.
But the great thing about flying across country is the amount of time one spends in an airplane. For most, that comment would have been the very definition of sarcasm, but for me I found a great opportunity to actually get some writing done. I wrote 3/4 of my novel's first Interlude, and on the way back I mostly finished it. It turned out exactly as I had hoped, and now the stage is set for the second part of the novel. It was from the point of view of Philip Plantagenet, the Dagda King. It also includes Arawn, Philip's second in command, as well as references to Celtic personages like Gwawl son of Clud, Goronwy the Houndmaster, and the deadly hag named simple the Cailleach. The fantasy elements are beginning to broaden in scope now that Bran has been brought into the real story, and I know the next few weeks are going to be great fun for me to write.
The Interlude is a bit larger than I had hoped for. It is 2372 words. Perhaps after editing I'll be able to get it below 2000. Time will tell.
The word count as it stands is now:
Prologue: 3045
Chapter 1: 4075
Chapter 2: 2973
Chapter 3: 3241
Chapter 4: 4144
Chapter 5: 4547
Chapter 6: 2793
Chapter 7: 3598
Chapter 8: 4939
Chapter 9: 4257
Interlude: 2372
Anyway, I am shipping out hundreds of books signed by Terry Brooks over the course of the next few days, so no writing really. But I hope to begin outlining Chapter 10 tomorrow night after I've spent 15 hours shipping books.
I hope you all are well. Can't believe why you keep reading this...
Labels: The Dagda King
posted by Shawn C. Speakman | 8:48 PM
12 Comments:
We keep reading it because we want you to keep writing. We want you to know that we are patiently waiting. We want you to have a reason to keep going. We want you to stay motivated. We want you to know there is a purpose for all this. Keep it up!
We want to kill another 15 mins on a slow friday at work :)
How was the meeting with Patrick Rothfuss, is he as delightfully eccentric and clever in person as pretends to be on his blog.?
Sean
Don: Thank you for the kind words of encouragement. Writing a book is a long process, one many people fail to see to the end for many, many reasons. In a way, you guys are my anchor. I've had a super busy week of 15 hour days packing books, but at the end of the day when I must get dinner, I took my laptop with me to write something, to feel like I was still moving forward.
As much for my benefit as for you all! So thanks for keeping me honest.
Sean: Looks like we have a jokester in our midst. I hope your 15 minutes yesterday were fruitful as opposed to coming here. -grins-
Seeing Patrick again was great fun. The man is super intelligent but is fairly eccentric in a fun way. It's the second time we've hung out and both times he brought out a sense of humor I didn't know I had -- Jim Butcher, it turns out, does the same thing. Odd. Anyway, I highly suggest meeting either of them whenever you get the chance; they both are top rate people as well as top rate writers.
Okay, back to Chapter 10. The hardest part of any chapter for me is the first page and now that that's out of the way the rest should be easy. Bran is in store for hell and I can't wait to put him there.
Heh,
I still chuckle when I see that your "short" chapters are nearly as long as the longer chapters in Through Bended Grass.
Looks like you've passed me on the Chapter count. I'm still working away on Chapter Nine, though I do already have Chapter 16 half-done, ironically.
I've finished editing the first 3 chapters of Through Bended Grass, so I'll package them up in a nice PDF and send them your way for perusal. I'm eager to hear what you think.
Glad to hear the Novik web site worked out, I can't wait to see where you go with it. I just received an ARC of her latest novel and am wondering if it's not time that I gave her first novel a gander.
Hope all's going well,
~Aidan
Mightier than the Sword
Aidan: Not sure if I'll be redesigning Naomi's website or not. She happens to really like the site she has but she is looking for better ability to upgrade it herself -- and of course I have no such training to build her a content systems network. So I probably won't be working on her website, although I'd love the opportunity to redesign it from the bottom up; I think she could have a better website that did more for her in publicity and marketing than the one that is up now.
I'm looking forward to reading your first three chapters. I'll be blatantly honest but as usual take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm still learning my way through all of this myself!
Shawn,
Check out Druple. It's a great (flexible and easy) CMS that works wonders for people who want to easily manage the content on their websites.
I've experience in building CMS's, so feel free to shoot me any questions you have.
~Aidan
Mightier than the Sword
Aidan: Thanks for the offer. I really do appreciate it. But I simply don't have the time right now to learn something new -- too many signings, too much work to be done on the book, too many relationships to juggle. I wrote Naomi and let her know my thoughts, but I'm not the kind of web guy she needs, I think. So we'll see.
Tomorrow and Tuesday, the international Terry Brooks books will be gone from me, leaving me with nothing to do but write for a month or so. I can't wait to get back to that. I need to get up to at least Chapter 16 by the end of May to stay on track -- six chapters in four weeks. Let's see if I can do it.
Are you the same author that I just read about on Drew C. Bowling's website. He mentions a book entitled "Song of the Fell Hammer", but I cannot locate it anywhere. Could you please provide some insight?
Sean
"I love the smell of a brand new book."
We always come back and read it because we can't imagine that you're still writing on it. ;)
Sounds like you had a good trip to NY - way cool. I can feel your resistance to the website gig, I'm in website hell right now, my boss wants a site with integrated authentication so our clients can sign in and upload studies to share with each other.
I have no idea how to do the authentication. Yet.
Looking forward to the pics!
mark
Sean
That was Shawns first book was the Song of Fell hammer
Shawn
Good work on your chapter improvments sounds like your moving right along with your work on you second novel.
By the way where can i get the digital form of your first novel didn't you say you are selling it for like $15 in pdf format?
My book has not gone well at all I lost my outline and now I am forced to start over. That is what i get for poor planing and not backing up :(
No real loss i only had through about half of chapter one outlined
Anonymous: Yeah, you probably read about me on Drew Bowling's website. Drew read my first effort, Song of the Fell Hammer about a year ago now. The book hasn't been published and nor will it be without significant work done to it. So you can't find it anywhere. The book I am writing right now is the one I think will be published, and I want to focus on it. But thank you for your interest; I am still shocked people are even interested in that book!
IncubusJax: Good luck with the authentication process. I had to do that once upon a time back in college for the Art History department at the University of Washington. We had to keep copyright safe while giving a certain amount of students the ability to log in to get their work done. It worked out well and if I remember wasn't too hard, but things might be different now -- in fact I know they are! I'm sure you'll figure something out.
AJamison: I think I'd cry if I lost my outline. I'd weep. Then I'd get angry. Then I'd get right back on the horse and recreate the stupid thing. For the hell it takes to create the outline, it is really worth it in the long run and I can't imagine writing my book without it. I'm sure you can rewrite that one chapter's worth of outline and get going again -- if you want it bad enough!
As for downloading Fell Hammer, I've finally decided against it. It is the first 1/3 of a total story and the other 2/3 of course haven't been written. You'd get to the end of Fell Hammer and say, "Wow, great climax, now what happens next?!" And right now there is only about six chapters of "what happens next," those six chapters the first chapters in The Winter Scion. Oh well. Live and learn. Perhaps if I am published with The Dagda King that a publisher will then be interested in the standard quest story of Fell Hammer.
Shawn
Well the teaser chapter you had up a few months back of Fell Hammer was great so I am sure the Dagda King will be just as good. Hope you get published Shawn as you have alot of talent and I would love to see you become the next Terry Brooks ;)
As for my book I am definately going after it again luckily i had not started writting the actual chapter. I was going to outline through chapter 3 prior to starting even the introduction. I feel that would give me enough of a plan toward the future chapters that it can flow better. Anyway learned from my mistake I am going to have the outline synced with 2 web servers and copied to disk once a month just to make sure i have at least some of it left.
Not sure what I am even calling the book yet again was going for outlining it then let the title come from the content. Not sure that is the best stradegy but it works for me.
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