Getting Back to Work: Dominant Race Progresses, New Fate Stalls

Christmas was wonderful. I got a lot of jewelry as well as a 3DS, complete with Pokemon Black. All is well in the world, especially since that 3DS is nice and red and shiny. My husband also did well on Christmas. He got the new Halo game as well as two Wii games and a whole bunch of TV show stuff (Battlestar Galactica and the first season of The Walking Dead specifically). We felt really blessed, we spent a lot of time together, and it’s been great. Today we’re making (belated) Christmas cookies and almond biscotti. Pictures will definitely be posted tomorrow.

In terms of writing, Dominant Race is out to beta readers and nearly done. I’ve gotten great feedback so far, especially from the ever-wonderful Natasha, and I’m excited to go forward with the final touch-ups within the next two weeks. The cover art for both Dominant Race and New Fate is nearly complete, too. I hired a wonderful artist from Russia, via deviantART, who charged me $230 for both, making it around $115 per cover. I don’t want to argue price here, but given the quality of the pieces, I’d say it was money well spent.

New Fate isn’t cooperating with me, unfortunately. It’s a lot shorter than its predecessor, at around 22,000ish words at the moment and nearing the finale. I’m betting it won’t be over 25,000 words for this draft, and the final draft might be a little more than that, or it might be a little less. Dominant Race surprised me by being around 34,000 words, and it looks like New Fate surprised me by being around 10,000 words less than that. Still they’re novellas, not novels, and their length is just right for that category. I’m hoping they do well as ebooks.

The other project I’m working on is a short story collection, temporarily (or permanently, depending) titled Beings of Myth and Fancy. All of the stories are about mythological creatures, and you’ll see some posts around here dedicated to interesting finds that might or might not wind up in the collection. We’ll see.

Anyway, how was your Christmas? Got any plans for New Years?

NaNoWriMo: Day 8

Today was confusing because of my funky schedule. Stayed up really late, slept in late, but tonight I’m going to bed early because my body’s mad at me, haha. Anyway, sorry again for not being around much.

A new character sort of inserted himself into New Fate. His name is Kulaj Sokolov, and he is my only European character. Dominant Race and its sequel are set in a post-US North America in which most of the population that isn’t genetically modified with some sort of animal DNA lives in one of the Greater Cities, ruled by the Great General. These people don’t have contact with anyone outside of their sphere of influence — they’re completely isolated by choice, so anyone from, say, Canada or Mexico would be rare. Even rarer would be someone from Europe or Asia or Africa.

Kulaj is from Russia (or at least the Russia that exists in the Dominant Race universe), and he’s easily one of my favorite characters. His creation also allowed me to expand the universe a bit and allow a glimpse of the outside setting beyond the Cities. That made me happy.

How about you? How’s NaNo going? Give me your word count, tell me about a fun moment. Anything.

Total words written today: 1,740

Total word count: 9,271

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Edwin never stopped looking forward. “I’d heard rumors of your relationship with Katherine, but nothing was substantiated.”

It took a moment for Marcus to recognize Edwin was talking about the Ninth; as per custom, their original name was returned to them in death, which was considered the highest honor for a General.

“She knew Maya, you know.” Kulaj tossed a casual glance back at Samuel. “They went to the same military academy. One exceled in politics while the other decided to become a surgeon. Both achieved their dreams, until one disappeared almost twenty-eight years ago. It hurt Katherine to hear that her friend ran away.” He chuckled. “That was the official story, anyway.”

Your Novel’s World: How Do You Create It?

So this is partially inspired by Amanda Rudd’s awesome world-building post (and her Bheidien). When I asked her how she creates her worlds, she said this:

I wouldn’t say I specifically go out and research anything in particular, BUT I have a long-standing deeply-ingrained fascination with culture, religion, and anthropology. I’ve taken art history classes, anthropology classes, philsophy classes, comparative religion classes, (I ended up minoring in Theology), and watch Discovery Channel and NatGeo religiously, and I read history books a lot. All of that just sort of coalesces in a variety of ways as I try to think about what would be more or less plausible for certain cultures.

There’s more to the comment, but that part made me smile and want to write a blog post (haha). See, that’s how Dominant Race came about. I was watching National Geographic and the issue of climate change (or is it global warming? I forget what they’re calling it these days) mixed with my own idea for a dystopian-type story. But before all of that, I watched a documentary about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the crops in the US. Fast forward to when I was watching National Geographic and bing! Like the little timer in my head went off and told my brain my novel idea was finished preheating; now I needed to mix all the world and setting ingredients and put it in the oven along with the plot and all that.

Half Life was also like that. I love history, especially the Tudor period (not just because of Henry VIII’s wives), and I wanted to create an aristocracy that mimicked that but other aspects of certain fantasy worlds I enjoyed. The main question I wrapped all of this around was this: What if the elves weren’t the holy beings they’re typically portrayed as? Of course, I got sidetracked by other things, especially their mythology. Do they have a monotheistic or a polytheistic religion? Do they even have a religion at all? Stuff like that. It’s why Half Life is my baby — quite a big baby.

What about you? How do you create your worlds? Tell me — I’m excited to find out!

Dominant Race’s First Rewrite: Complete!

Yep, I finally finished this rewrite of my novella last night. This version seems to have a decent pace, way less romantic focus (because I beat my inner romantic until she stopped throwing up on my subplots), and, of course, is still riddled with holes and inconsistencies. But the structure is what I’m proud of — and what took me so long.

Okay, that was a teeny tiny lie. Procrastination sucked most of my time away, but I learned a lot about my own writing quirks with DR. That in itself has made all of this so worth it.

The plan now is to do some basic edits this weekend, send it out to beta-readers, and get straight to work on New Fate.

Why? Because these are novellas; it shouldn’t take me a whole year to finish a 30,000 word story. I mean, at first, sure. That’s the learning curve.

But I don’t want to be one of those slow-moving writers — for now. I have the time available, but it won’t last forever. In fact, it’ll only last two more months, haha, so I need to get going.

NaNoWriMo will be great for me. My word count isn’t 50,000 but 30,000, and I’m confident I can do that in a month. Let’s see!

So pat me on the back and then kick me right back to work. There’s a lot to do and I totally feel like it’s all within reach.