Browsing Tag

vengeance of the hunter

Bone Walker, Mirror's Gate, Short Pieces, Vengeance of the Hunter

Word count metrics update

I’ve been in another prolonged writing funk, which has been frustrating–so tonight I tried another round of throwing tiny bits of words at stuff. Got up to just over 200 by throwing small words at four different things, so I’ll take that!

So we’ve got 51 words into Chapter 4 of Shadow of the Rook, which is currently in the middle of an Enverly scene–his first since the events at the end of Lament of the Dove. Let’s just say Father Enverly has had his first actual religious experience, shall we?

Mirror’s Gate is still in Chapter 2, with Yevanya going to have a friendly little chat with her dead husband’s former teacher and colleague, which should set her up nicely to learn some disturbing things about what’s going on in the city of Istra. 57 words to that, and I gotta say, I rather like this fragment:

Genrek was a great hulk of a man, towering over her by many inches, and yet she had never found him anything but amiable in his gruff fashion. She always supposed it was not because he found her fragile and dainty; next to Genrek many things were, such as carriages, hills, and the smaller varieties of bear.

Over in Bone Walker, I’m still in Chapter 11, with Kendis and Christopher about to get hugely distracted from the question of whether Christopher can, in fact, cross Lake Washington. ‘Cause something is about to give them a disturbing little phone call. 52 words there.

And last but not least, in the still untitled Warder-universe story of Elizabeth and Ross, Elizabeth is realizing that she has no business snarking on a man who’s just told her his dead sister was the magical defender of the city. Not when she is, herself, a psychic. 67 words here.

So yeah. 227 words total. Not much overall, but something!

Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Mirror's Gate, Shards of Recollection, Short Pieces, Vengeance of the Hunter

Yesterday's writing metrics

I’ve hit another dry spell lately, which is annoying, so yesterday I decided to try to do something about that. Throwing small chunks of words at everything I have in progress seemed to help. I did at least over my usual desired target quota of 500, even if those 500 words were scattered across six works in progress. 😉

It all means no real major progress in any of it, but at least there was small pointer advancement! We’ll see what I can do today.

Written on Mirror’s Gate, Chapter 2: 157
Written on Bone Walker, Chapter 11: 174
Written on Shards of Recollection, Chapter 1: 150
Written on Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: 26
Written on Shadow of the Rook: 30
Written on Untitled story about Elizabeth, psychic chick of size, and Ross, brother of a dead Warder: 34
Total words written yesterday: 571

Vengeance of the Hunter

Maynowrimo status check

Shadow of the Rook grabbed me by the throat sometime last night and said “Okay, you? You’re writing about Faanshi today.” So I did a couple hundred words last night, and several hundred more across the rest of today and tonight, particularly after surprise Tivo death meant my household didn’t get to watch the series finale of Lost (sniff).

And oh hey look, I’ve finished a scene, and now Faanshi and her elven companions are fleeing an abbey with a distinctly wobbly Julian hanging onto Faanshi for dear life as they ride. I’m about fifteen hundred words in on this chapter, and feeling like I’ve finally started this book in earnest.

Written today and tonight: 778
Chapter 3 total: 1,521
Shadow of the Rook total (first draft): 15,481

Bone Walker, Drollerie Press, Mirror's Gate, Vengeance of the Hunter

More CoyoteCon and status update-y type things

Today’s Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction panel went swimmingly if I do say so myself, and as soon as I have a link to the transcript, I shall post it here! There was quite the turnout, not only of Drollerie authors but of one non-Drollerie author as well, Lucy Snyder, whose urban fantasy Spellbent I think I’ll have to be reading now.

Meanwhile, tonight’s Maynowrimo performance was not quite as awesome as yesterday’s. But I did throw words nonetheless at three total books!

Bone Walker: 238 words into Chapter 10, just enough to push me up over the 27K mark for the book. 30K is possibly doable by the end of the week.

Shadow of the Rook: 277 words into Chapter 3. A Faanshi chapter, the first in this story so far. And now I’m all “oh RIGHT Faanshi and Julian and Kestar! I really like these characters! And their story isn’t done yet either!” Shadow is hovering around 14K at the moment.

Mirror’s Gate: Only 79 words here, on Chapter 2. Mostly I was too distracted by the other two books, even though I’d also opened this file. Book’s now around 4K.

All told that’s 594 words, which is still above my old quota of 500 a day, so it’s all good!

P.S. I picked up a couple new followers on Twitter today, so if you folks clicked through to see this post, hi there! Hope you’ll hang around for more.

Bone Walker, Drollerie Press, Mirror's Gate, Shards of Recollection, Vengeance of the Hunter

CoyoteCon reminder, and status update

Do y’all know how weird it is to be able to actually say “I’m on a PANEL”? ‘Cause, y’know, it is!

I’m sure it’d be weirder if it were a big-time physical face to face type convention, but you know what? A virtual convention is still pretty damned awesome. And tomorrow–okay, today, since it’s after midnight now and that does technically make it today–I will be participating in the awesome! I’m in on the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction panel at 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern, along with several of my fellow Drollerie authors and Spellbent author Lucy Snyder! Come by and say hi and listen in. Details on how can be found over at CoyoteCon’s site.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having great fun participating in the CoyoteCon word wars. Like those run by , they’ve been doing wonders at making me get used to throwing words out onto the page on a regular basis again. Today I was feeling particularly ambitious, and managed to add words to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of the works in progress! Go me!

Bone Walker now stands at nine complete chapters, and those of you who are fond of Elessir may find yourselves going WHA WHA WHA? at the reveal about him I drop at the end of Chapter 9. Muaha. No, I won’t be posting it.

Mirror’s Gate started Chapter 2 as Yevanya reacts–badly–to seeing someone she thinks is her dead husband Aleksandr, and over in Shadow of the Rook‘s shiny new Chapter 3, Faanshi reacts to realizing OH HEY she did something severely, hugely game-changing, about which I will not be elaborating because it’s spoiler-rific for the end of Lament of the Dove. Trust me on that ‘un.

And, I threw another hundred words or so into Shards of Recollection, which is still sitting in Chapter 1, but every little bit of progress counts!

All in all? This has been a good day.

Bone Walker, Mirror's Gate, Short Pieces, Vengeance of the Hunter

Finally, some more words

I’ve been frustrated enough with my months-long block on regular writing that I figured tonight I should try the multi-novelling trick. That’s helped in the past, and I felt it was long past time to try it again, just for the sake of advancing some pointers on various works on progress. I’ve mentioned before how it’s often helpful for me to just try to do little chunks at a time–and tonight, I was pleased to note that it worked again.

So yeah, a small number of words for Bone Walker, Mirror’s Gate, and Shadow of the Rook out of the novels in progress–and a few more for the as of yet untitled story about my Psychic Chick of Size. Whose name is, by the way, Elizabeth Breckenridge. Her male lead is Ross Taggart, and so far what I know about him is that he’s actually too heavy himself (because if there’s anything as rare as a fat heroine in a fantasy story, it’s an overweight hero) by thirty or forty pounds, and that he’s either a private investigator or a reporter or maybe a blogger. I’m not sure which yet. Waiting to see if anything pops out of my head as I throw words at the story.

And we’ll have to see if I finish it in time to submit it to and for their anthology.

Meanwhile, the word stats:

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 109
Chapter 7 total: 1,613
Bone Walker total (first draft): 18,347

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 104
Chapter 1 total: 1,302
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,302

Shadow of the Rook:
Written tonight: 112
Chapter 2 total: 3,950
Shadow of the Rook total (first draft): 13,378

Untitled short story:
Written tonight: 266
Untitled short story total: 500