Tuesday 3 December 2019

Writing Update 2019

Hello readers! I'm here to bring updates on my writing as of 2019.

This year has been only somewhat productive as it has been extremely busy. I have however, managed to jump onto a number of disparate projects as well as deciding on a few main projects. I'll be giving a short list of each project and listing them from primary to secondary.

Firstly, my novella Integration remains in the queue for the Tor novella pile from summer 2018, and so there it shall remain until I get feedback. Depending on the feedback, I will be shopping it around again after some editing. I will post any new updates as they come.

My goals from last year slipped by unfortunately. But I did make progress on a few works.

The first is, what I hope to be have finished by New Years, my first draft of the story Priests of the White God a nautical, fantasy, horror story which I'm hoping to self publish in 2020. Following that is another untitled horror story estimated to be around 7-10k words for publication hopefully in October 2020.

Another project, Finiphobia, unfortunately stalled out completely. The premise of two aspiring authors in a zombie apocalypse appeals to me, but managing the story has been a difficult task. I may come back to it, but for now it is firmly on hiatus.

Alongside those, I have two novella length works in the offing.

The first is a novella project I have been nipping at for a few years which I hope to polish off and complete. It is a science fiction project called The Virtue of Battle. Based somewhat on the events of the Chilean Civil War in space, it is meant to be a short military sci-fi piece to get some practice in at expanding characters and works up to novel length. Meant to be 50k words.

Another piece I'm working on is an alternate history novella, hesitantly titled A Road Not Taken. This work is based around the historical 1866 Battle of Ridgeway. The battle came about as the leader of the Canadian force, Colonel Booker, was meant to take one road to meet with another column coming down from Chippawa. However, he did not, and ended up meeting a Fenian party along Ridge Road and enduring a humiliating defeat. What if he went the way he was supposed to though? How would that have changed things? Also aimed at being 50k words, this one is slightly easier to write as it will be using a cast of historical characters and will be my first attempted foray into published alternate history.

In addition, I am still plugging away at my first full length fantasy novel with a current word count of 11,872, or roughly 10% towards its projected 100k word count. It's pretty well fleshed out, and I'm mostly happy with the story so far, but we will see how the year goes. This one has no set premier date, but is on the back burner.

Now, my goals for 2019 were very modest compared to these. In total, I'm working towards writing something like 120,000 words this coming year, and I'm hoping to have a decent amount of time to devote to it. First over Christmas, and then over the summer, with a personal goal of at least 500 words a day, working towards 1,000. It's an ambitious goal, but it is something to strive for in the new decade. 

I fully intend to keep people posted as this develops! Until next time!

2 comments:

  1. PRIESTS OF THE WHITE GOD sounds pretty cool. Definitely let me know when it's available.

    FINIPHOBIA could be a good place for some commentary on being a writer, the publishing industry, etc. Perhaps New York gets overwhelmed by zombies while a decentralized anti-zombie movement facilitated by Amazon saves the day? :)

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    1. Thank you! PRIESTS is going to be my main focus for 2020, followed by the two novellas. I'll definitely let you know how that progresses.

      FINIPHOBIA is an idea I really like, but getting the dynamic between the two men down isn't working as well as I had hoped, and as a serious horror piece might not work. Maybe something a little sillier would be better for that one.

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