I've been able to keep working bit by bit through writing in the down time between classes and homework assignments, though I haven't been able to actually write anything while not on campus due how much is going on right now. Unfortunately, it appears that the business will continue at least through February, and likely for the whole of March, too.
There's the additional issue that I've begun giving serious consideration to grad school again, and I have to start making decisions about that somewhat soon. There are three different ways I could end my B.S.--cram it into two semester of horrific workloads, spread it out to four semesters (meaning I would graduate in the "usual" four-year span of time), or keep with my three semester plan and just take a semester off before starting grad school. A lot of schools don't accept any students for the spring semester, so I'd really have no choice but to apply for the fall semester and wait. Beyond that, I'd need to start planning out taking the GRE and the subject GRE for physics, since both are required by almost all schools, and I'd need to figure out recommendation letters, and actually start picking schools to look at...
This is a kind of nightmare for me. It doesn't help with the combination of classes I'm in right now, either. But, I will do my best to keep up with the writing. I want to churn something out this year, and the more I get done now, the less chance there is that I'll be setting daily word quotas during the summer.
Any of you in school, I hope your semester is going well, and if not, I hope it turns.
Later.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Time Away
I know I haven't put anything out on this blog in a long while now--I believe it's been nearly five months--and that's likely because last semester I really got caught up in classes and, for the most part, stopped writing as much. It wasn't that I didn't have time; it was that I couldn't motivate myself to work on anything. I hashed out plenty of concepts, I guess you could say, just due to the very nature of the process of coming up with an idea.
Over the winter break, though, I got back into writing more, and began really hacking away at a few stories that I think deserve to be finished. I can't say long it will take me to finish them, but I do intend to complete them. The one I've focused on for the moment is a sweet little tale, which should come out to be a novella, I think.
In other exciting news, there's going to be a sequel to Over My Shoulder. It's likely a long ways out, but before the break I had only very vague thoughts about what may be involved in a sequel for Reeve and Kem, and now I have a majority of the important concepts and events planned out. It should tie up the loose ends left by the first novel and answer questions, possibly even questions you didn't remember existed.
Other works-in-progress include a chronicle of a boy's journey through his four years of high school--but of course, there's more to it than that--and a story of a prince and a strange man on a mountain.
My ability to work on things is mainly determined by my class workload, which for this semester could be bad. I'm not taking many hours, but my classes are more intensive than they were last semester, and three of my classes are in my major area (including a debatably awful lab) , and one of the others is PDE (partial differential equations), which is already proving to be rough. I also have a research obligation that I'm going to have to be working on soon, though in theory that should only last until the end of March.
I'll do my best to get back into the hang of updating weekly.
Later skaters.
Over the winter break, though, I got back into writing more, and began really hacking away at a few stories that I think deserve to be finished. I can't say long it will take me to finish them, but I do intend to complete them. The one I've focused on for the moment is a sweet little tale, which should come out to be a novella, I think.
In other exciting news, there's going to be a sequel to Over My Shoulder. It's likely a long ways out, but before the break I had only very vague thoughts about what may be involved in a sequel for Reeve and Kem, and now I have a majority of the important concepts and events planned out. It should tie up the loose ends left by the first novel and answer questions, possibly even questions you didn't remember existed.
Other works-in-progress include a chronicle of a boy's journey through his four years of high school--but of course, there's more to it than that--and a story of a prince and a strange man on a mountain.
My ability to work on things is mainly determined by my class workload, which for this semester could be bad. I'm not taking many hours, but my classes are more intensive than they were last semester, and three of my classes are in my major area (including a debatably awful lab) , and one of the others is PDE (partial differential equations), which is already proving to be rough. I also have a research obligation that I'm going to have to be working on soon, though in theory that should only last until the end of March.
I'll do my best to get back into the hang of updating weekly.
Later skaters.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
A Word about Ellery
Alright, so this post is to make something in one of my books absolutely clear, so if you haven't read And Is This What You Dream, don't read any further than this. There's going to be spoilers, and it also just won't make any sense if you haven't read the book.
In And Is This What You Dream, Ellery can come off as an asshole--let's just get that out in the open. He's gruff, he's mean, and he gets angry pretty easily. Anyone can get this from reading the book. What I feel isn't as readily evident is that the Ellery we see during this particular journey to the Terminus is not the "true" Ellery.
For each of these characters going through this journey over and over again, being taken out of and replaced in stasis time after time, there is the original or "true" personality of this character from before the loop ever began, and then there is the current personality of the character which we are experiencing. Each time a journey to the Terminus is attempted and failed and the characters are returned to stasis, losing memories along the way, the characters also both lose parts of themselves, and have different parts of their personalities exaggerated due to lingering subconscious (or conscious) memories of the last attempt to reach the Terminus. Each time a character goes into stasis and then comes out of it once more, they're a different person. From journey to journey, the change is not large, but over time, certain shifts in personality become increasingly evident.
Ellery, the "true" Ellery, could be angry, and a little pugnacious, and yes, he did get into quite a few physical confrontations as both a child and young adult, but he knew where to draw the line. He also was very considerate of how he behaved around those he loved and their loved ones, including Rafferty and Rafferty's friends and family. There were people he didn't like or get along with among those close to Rafferty, but he had enough maturity and sense to not be a total asshole to them. The "true" Ellery is not like the one we see in And Is This What You Dream during most of the story--he's much kinder, much more toned-down, and much calmer.
I wanted to make sure this was clear due to the fact that I don't feel it was exceedingly obvious from the novel. There are a lot of things that I hinted at or otherwise alluded to in the book, but this is one of those things that after hearing from people who have read it, I don't think people are picking up on very well, and I'll take the blame for that.
I really like Ellery as a character, so I wanted to try to clear his record just a little bit since I didn't write his original character as a complete asshole.
Hope your week is going well, and if not, that things will get better for you.
Tschüs!
In And Is This What You Dream, Ellery can come off as an asshole--let's just get that out in the open. He's gruff, he's mean, and he gets angry pretty easily. Anyone can get this from reading the book. What I feel isn't as readily evident is that the Ellery we see during this particular journey to the Terminus is not the "true" Ellery.
For each of these characters going through this journey over and over again, being taken out of and replaced in stasis time after time, there is the original or "true" personality of this character from before the loop ever began, and then there is the current personality of the character which we are experiencing. Each time a journey to the Terminus is attempted and failed and the characters are returned to stasis, losing memories along the way, the characters also both lose parts of themselves, and have different parts of their personalities exaggerated due to lingering subconscious (or conscious) memories of the last attempt to reach the Terminus. Each time a character goes into stasis and then comes out of it once more, they're a different person. From journey to journey, the change is not large, but over time, certain shifts in personality become increasingly evident.
Ellery, the "true" Ellery, could be angry, and a little pugnacious, and yes, he did get into quite a few physical confrontations as both a child and young adult, but he knew where to draw the line. He also was very considerate of how he behaved around those he loved and their loved ones, including Rafferty and Rafferty's friends and family. There were people he didn't like or get along with among those close to Rafferty, but he had enough maturity and sense to not be a total asshole to them. The "true" Ellery is not like the one we see in And Is This What You Dream during most of the story--he's much kinder, much more toned-down, and much calmer.
I wanted to make sure this was clear due to the fact that I don't feel it was exceedingly obvious from the novel. There are a lot of things that I hinted at or otherwise alluded to in the book, but this is one of those things that after hearing from people who have read it, I don't think people are picking up on very well, and I'll take the blame for that.
I really like Ellery as a character, so I wanted to try to clear his record just a little bit since I didn't write his original character as a complete asshole.
Hope your week is going well, and if not, that things will get better for you.
Tschüs!
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
The Seventh Book Hath Been Released Unto the World
You read that right. My seventh book, a collection of short stories and poems, is finally out on Amazon. It's been out as an ebook for a few days now, but I didn't want to post anything here until the paperback was out.
I'm pretty happy with how most of the shorts turned out in the end. Some of them are a bit older, so I'm more iffy on precisely how I feel towards them, but I thought they deserved the light of day.
Yep. That was it. Class is starting soon. Going to be living four hours away from home again soon. Have a lot of ideas right now and I'm going to have very little time to work on them soon. Been questioning my career path and education again and expect questions to increase in proximity to an academic institution soon. You're probably sick of the word 'soon' now. I'll stop.
I hope you all had a good summer, and will have a good fall, and if you're heading back to school, best of luck, and if you're not, best of luck. The world is wacky.
Tschüs!
I'm pretty happy with how most of the shorts turned out in the end. Some of them are a bit older, so I'm more iffy on precisely how I feel towards them, but I thought they deserved the light of day.
Yep. That was it. Class is starting soon. Going to be living four hours away from home again soon. Have a lot of ideas right now and I'm going to have very little time to work on them soon. Been questioning my career path and education again and expect questions to increase in proximity to an academic institution soon. You're probably sick of the word 'soon' now. I'll stop.
I hope you all had a good summer, and will have a good fall, and if you're heading back to school, best of luck, and if you're not, best of luck. The world is wacky.
Tschüs!
Sunday, April 12, 2015
DONE
Just finished the last story for the collection. And earlier today wrote another poem for it. Now everything's done for the next book, which means I can sit back, relax, and wait to see what all my editor has to say about this crap. I'm so happy right now. So happy.
Tschüs!
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Gettin' Real Close Now
The last short story for the next book is divided into ten mini-chapters, and I've only got two of them left to write. The beginning's done, the ending's done, most of the middle bits are done, and I know what I want to happen in each mini-chapter. I don't have any exams this week, so hopefully I'll be able to focus enough to crank out these last two.
As to the collection itself, it's got a title, a dedication, possibly even the image for the cover, and I believe it's currently being edited (I use the word 'believe' because it's hard to say with my editor). Anyway, the title of the collection is Intentions, which I'm not sure if I've mentioned before, and the cover image that I have planned--though I'm not sure I'll stick with it--has to do with the short story I'm working on right now. It's going to be a collection of quite a few poems, some of which are pretty old and almost all of which have never been published before, and a decent number of short stories. I actually wrote another poem for it the other day based on the really bad funk I was in earlier this week.
Anyway, that's the update.
As to the collection itself, it's got a title, a dedication, possibly even the image for the cover, and I believe it's currently being edited (I use the word 'believe' because it's hard to say with my editor). Anyway, the title of the collection is Intentions, which I'm not sure if I've mentioned before, and the cover image that I have planned--though I'm not sure I'll stick with it--has to do with the short story I'm working on right now. It's going to be a collection of quite a few poems, some of which are pretty old and almost all of which have never been published before, and a decent number of short stories. I actually wrote another poem for it the other day based on the really bad funk I was in earlier this week.
Anyway, that's the update.
Tschüs.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Quick Middle of the Week Update
I finished that short story. Just now. Only minutes ago. I'm doing the update because I'm probably going to be busy all weekend--and by weekend I mean starting tomorrow at three--and also because I'm excited about finishing this story. Still has to be proofread and things, but the writing is done. I am very close to having all the content I want for my next book. There's only one story left, and I think I can hash it out by the beginning of the summer. I hope.
The only thing that stands in my way is school, tests, and crochet. Yes, crochet is an obstacle. There are so many things I want to make. It's an addiction.
Anyway, that's it. A thing has been accomplished, and I should really be getting to sleep now.
Tschüs!
The only thing that stands in my way is school, tests, and crochet. Yes, crochet is an obstacle. There are so many things I want to make. It's an addiction.
Anyway, that's it. A thing has been accomplished, and I should really be getting to sleep now.
Tschüs!
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