Posts tagged friends
Fantasy Football, new books, and new friends
Sep 22nd
Sometimes you dig in, give it all you got, and still come up short. The Killer Bees, my Fantasy Football team in its sixth year, lost the second game in a row – despite recording the second highest point total in the league. The upside is I gained a spot in the rankings even with the loss, the downside is I’ve got to find a way to stop the slide if I plan to get to the playoffs.
The Carolina Panthers, my favorite professional football team, also finds themselves in a 0-2 situation. I’ve noticed that when I have a good season, they have a good season, and when I have a bad season so do they. Maybe we mimic each other due to the fact that I own one of their players (Steve Smith), or maybe it’s some weird coincidence. Even so, last year I had a dominating regular season (like them) and lost in the first round of the playoffs (again, like them). It’s a little freaky.
Dreams
Mar 6th
An idea came to me last night in a dream. It was a story idea, of course, as I’m struck with them at almost any given moment without rhyme or reason. Usually I hunt out a pad and pen to scribble down whatever line of dialog or narrative hits me – but this time I thought about it for a while before I wrote it in my idea book.
I thought about how personal of a connection this one was. It deals with the thought I often have of finding my Father or visiting with him even though the last time I saw him was almost 7 years ago.
This isn’t the first time an idea struck me in this manner – on the contrary it happens quite often. I think it’s something that happens to a great many writers. I know that the popular story from Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame is that she awoke from a dream about the first book and set out to write it. That dream has certainly done well for her.
On Co-authoring
Feb 9th
I know my posts have been slow coming lately, and I thought I should give you some insight as to why. Simply put, I’ve been working on something.
Of course by working I mean writing, so it’s not that I haven’t written anything in the last four weeks, just that I haven’t written anything here. The fact of the matter is I was chatting with a writing friend about a simm we were both enjoying in our spare time, and an idea hit us that was just so strong we felt we should pursue it. Four weeks later, we have about about 25,000 words of a novel down and we’re not slowing down anytime soon. The words have come easily and quickly, and the whole process has really worked well.
So what is this new venture you ask? Well I’m co-authoring a sci-fi romance with established e-book author Mina Carter. Yes, you read that correctly, a romance. Although I will validate it by saying there is a science fiction type space war going on in the background, the primary focus are the main characters and the chemistry between them. Is that such a bad thing? Although some spear-chucking, chilli-shovelling men might think so, I disagree. I think it represents a great opportunity for trying out a new medium, not to mention the very real possibility of placing work in a market that I can possibly expand in (e-book).
The Importance of Simming
Jan 15th
Today I want to reflect on something that is a fairly large part of my daily life, something that both fosters strong writing techniques and principles but resides in relative obscurity from the writing world’s radar. That something is known as simming, an activity that has been around (according to wikipedia) for over 20 years but has yet to make a large enough impact on the web world to be a well known phenomenon, like social networking sites or internet dating.
Simming, which most likely grew out of off-line role playing games that date further back, is really just a game played via chat, forum, or e-mail where players collectively write a story from their respective character’s point of view. In other words, the organizer (GM or Game Master/Manager) sets a story in motion with their character and other players develop a character or characters to tell a certain part of the story as it would happen to them. Usually, simming is based on an established television or movie series (think Star Trek or Star Wars) and as such is regarded as fan fiction – a general dislike of the writing community.
Free Read Available
Dec 8th
So I spent this weekend working on the story for the free read my friend Mina Carter is offering and I’m happy to say the book is out on her website and ready for download. On the tail end is a short story from yours truly, my first romantically inclined work. I’m happy with the story and think it fits well with Mina’s novella. If you would like to download the book absolutely free, you can do so by visiting this page on her website. Please be advised that Mina’s work contains sensual scenes that are not appropriate for young readers.
Special thanks to Mina for the opportunity!
News and updates
Nov 18th
I feel terrible for the downfall in posting lately, but I promise as soon as we’re on the other side of November we’ll be good to go and back to normal.
As for the title, a few things to share with you. First of all, I’m taking time from blogging to work on my NaNoWriMo novel so I think you deserve an update. By today I should be at about 30,000 words, and I’ve managed about half of that. The problem is not that I’m not writing everyday, just that I’m not writing enough everyday. I’ve set goals for myself to meet everyday and, if I can do it, I’ll catch up in time to finish. If not, I should make it to 25k – which is respectable in a month. So far the plotting experiment has worked well, but I’ll let you know how it holds up when I get in to the meat of the piece.
In other news, my good friend Mina Carter has released another e-book and I would encourage you to head on over to her website and buy it if you’re a fan of the romance genre. In that same vein, I’ve been invited to write a story that will appear in a free read Mina will be releasing on her website during the holidays. Stay tuned for more updates, and special thanks to Mina for the opportunity!
A plotting experiment
Oct 27th
Although I’ve touched on this notion before, I’ve decided to come back to it due to some thought provoked by my friend Mina Carter’s newest blog entry. She talks about the method of her composition, like my post about being thrown out of a car. As I mentioned in the aforementioned post, I don’t normally plot out my stories. And as I also mentioned in that post, it may or may not be the reason that my longer works have fizzled out.
On a hunch sparked from reading over that post of hers, where she lays out very linearly the path from begin to end of her work, I’ve decided to go out to the internets and see if I could track down a plot outline worksheet. What I’m looking at now is a very simple document that lists out the major elements of plot (in question form) for you to fill out.
I’ve decided that for my NaNoWriMo novel, I’ll attempt to use this formalized worksheet. Maybe I’ll stray from it, but maybe I won’t. It could help me get to the destination rather than get lost wandering around in some woods I got caught up in along the way. At this point I’m not even positive I can fill it out.
Ideas, and the method of my composition
Oct 8th
I’ve told many people about how I like to write, and I think now is a good time to share it with you. I know some people, actually both of my close writing friends, that are ‘plotters.’ Before Talravan responds to this post and denies this fact, maybe I’ll say that he is an inadvertent plotter. I say this because he has one attribute that plotters have: he knows where he’s going. He’s holding the road map. Maybe the trails will get different from point A to B, maybe he’ll make some new ones and check out some undiscovered forests, but he usually makes it to his intended destination.
Me? Not quite.
If I were to use the analogy I mentioned above, I write as if I were kicked out of a moving car somewhere in the wilderness. I don’t really know where I am or where I’m going. I certainly don’t have a map. I just wander through whatever I see, I go wherever the path looks the most interesting. Most of the time there’s not even a path.
I’m the opposite of a plotter, I fly completely by the seat of my pants.
Bees Dominate Division Foe, Snap Streak
Oct 7th
I guess my motivational speech from last week worked, because the Bees defeated the #4 team in the league to snap their losing streak 124-55. The outing, helped mostly by the stellar performance of Carolina Panthers Running Back DeAngelo Williams, was the highest score the Bees have posted this year and broke the team record of 115. This record was then broken again by the Bees 135 pts in the concurrent yahoo league). Over all, a fantastic week to be the Bees’ GM.
Distances, links and sub-pages oh my!
Oct 1st
While I attempt to survive the never-ending avalanche of work-orders for this development cycle at work, I thought I’d squeeze out this post and let you guys know how everything is going.
First of all, my wife and I’s exercise plan (which I spoke on earlier this week) is in full swing. We ran again last night for the third time and this time we drove the car around when we were done. Turns out the distance we’re running every night is exactly one mile, so that should help a great deal with keeping in shape!
Secondly, another link has been added to the blogroll on the right that you guys should definitely check out. Known by his unique moniker ‘Talravan’, this person is a fellow writer and a good friend of mine that I have written with a great deal. In fact, the joint novel listed on the works page is actually being written with Talravan. While our styles are quite different, I consider him one of my closest friends – writing and otherwise. He is also the creator of my swanky header image up above.
Finally, as I mentioned in my last post I gave sub-pages a shot and it turned out beautifully! The excerpt from my novel Scythe is now available for your viewing pleasure, and I promise to get others up and running soon.
Stay tuned for more updates.
