Tag: writing

Bad, Bad Week

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

I just got through one of the heaviest work weeks I can remember in quite some time. One of our developers is leaving, so his projects are being transitioned over to other people, and I’m one of the lucky ones. But as it turned out, this guy’s work is, to put it mildly, appallingly bad. Having worked on this project for more than six months, the thing still wasn’t working—and it was supposed to have been rolled out to production the week before last.

So I was drafted in to try to get it into shape. And after four very tough days, including late night finishes, we’re almost there. One last bug to be nailed (which will probably be dealt with Monday morning) and it can go for final testing.

All of which has meant that there’s been no time for anything else. Work on GB2 has got no further than it was this time last week. The Voyage of Valerie McGrath (the short story that’s going into Xchyler Publishing’s Around The World In 80 Days anthology) is still to be edited (but I’ve had no word from my editor on that, so there’s little I could have done anyway). I’ve had no time even to relax with a bit of gaming.

Today, then, is going to be all about relaxation. I want to spend an hour working on the GB2 timeline (I have some ideas to get that ending sorted out), and I think I could do worse than have a read through McGrath to spot any mistakes I missed earlier. And I do want to have a little game time. (World of Warcraft? Diablo III? Not sure yet.)

And so, it’s time to get moving on that. Tea, then get on with it. Until next time, gentle reader . . .

Eleven Hour Shift

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Yesterday was horrible. Not the working-at-home-because-of-snow part—I have no problems staying focussed on the day job, it’s quieter than working at the office, and coffee and snacks are close to hand. In fact, it was all just fine until knocking-off time. I had an errand to run as soon as the work day was over, and I was clearing half a foot of snow off the car when my phone rang. It turned out that a new release of a web application, that had been installed at 3pm, was having problems. It turned out to be some weirdness in the database server, and somewhere along the line it cleared itself and everything started working. But by that time I’d been working for eleven hours pretty much straight. I missed a Facebook release party (too busy arranging some dinner) and then slept heavy for something like ten hours. It’s mid-day and I still feel like I’m barely awake.

Anyway, on to the important stuff. The sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia (which in future I’ll refer to here as GB2) is coming along quite nicely. The first draft of the timeline was sent to my editor last week. The ending still isn’t set in stone—there’s a section that describes where all the characters are and what needs to be resolved, and I have a couple of ideas on how to wrap things up. And my editor will no doubt spot many scenes that need work.

But that’s on hold for a little while. I think I mentioned, a few posts back, that a steampunk short story I wrote for Xchyler Publishing‘s Around The World In 80 Days anthology contest made the cut; it’s scheduled for release at the end of May, I think, but the deadline for copy editing is just a few short weeks away. I should be getting something from my editor in a couple of days, and as soon as that happens I’ll be getting busy with getting that story into shape.

For now, I’ve decided to take a weekend off writing. I finally broke down and went back to playing World of Warcraft, after an absence of, I think, well over a year. At that time I gave up on it for a number of reasons: that I don’t like doing dungeons with people I don’t know (because, to be honest, even with a group as small as five players, you can guarantee at least one will be some twit who forgets that it’s a game and takes it way too seriously—it’s supposed to be fun, guys, not a chore); that even creating new characters, exploring the same areas and going through the same quests was getting somewhat old; that they seemed to be dumbing the game down; and that the Mists Of Pandaria expansion appeared to pander (har!) to kids, paving the way for a Hello Kitty Island Adventure expansion. But the thing is, it’s still by far the best MMORPG I’m aware of, and after such a long time away from it I’m seeing some things afresh. It’s still loads of fun.

So, I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and go play for a little while, then maybe park myself with a book for a bit. If you’re a WoW player and you happen to be on the Shu’halo realm, and you see a level 19 Alliance Pandaran hunter running around Redridge Mountains or Duskwood with a pet fox, just /yell the magic word “Gunn”. If I yell back “Bohemia”, you found me <grin>.

Until next time, gentle reader . . .

Aftermath

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Thanksgiving took precedence over just about everything else the last few days—since last Saturday, I think, when Kate and I started getting things rolling for the holiday. I haven’t had time for anything else—in fact, today is the first time I’ve fired up my laptop since Tuesday. So I haven’t had time to give Gunn & Bohemia II more than a passing glance, and as a result I’ve made almost no progress at all on it.

That changes now that Thanksgiving is past. Today the plan is: (1) clear up yesterday’s mess—specifically, doing dishes, dumping food waste, and wiping things down (aftermath of five adults and two children); (2) get back to the work I was doing on the timeline; (3) try to get back to some of the promotional stuff I need to do on Gunn & Bohemia.

It’s not going to be easy . . . here is today’s morning face:

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. . . all I can say is, thank goodness for coffee.

Unfortunately I’m one of those people who has a problem with doing writing work when I have other things hanging over me—so I’m not going to be able to focus on G&B II until the kitchen looks less like a bomb hit it. So I’d better get back to it. Until next time . . .

Exit Manoeuvre

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At this moment I’m in my office, waiting for my work laptop to finish installing updates so I can shut it down and head for the homestead. I have a few minutes, so . . .

The story for the sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia comes on apace, but I’m stalled at the moment. My protagonists are in one place; I need to get them into two groups, in two different places, in the build-up to the Big Finish. And right now I have only an inkling of how I can make that happen in a way that seems natural to the flow of the story, and keeps those protagonists true to their individual characters. It’s a puzzle. So I’ll be thinking about that on the drive home. With luck, I’ll have a solution by the time I get there.

Laptop has finished updating. Time to shut it down, then I’ll be initiating the “getting the hell out of here” manoeuvre. Until next time, gentle reader . . .

Timeline

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The timeline for the sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia is coming along, slowly but steadily. I have about fifty scenes down so far. It’s surprisingly hard work. Each of the story elements in my rough outline gets broken down into a sequence of scenes in my head, and I start writing them in. But then there’s quite a bit of shuffling things around—deciding which character’s point of view is going to be shown for any given scene can be tough, and sometimes it’s easier to break a scene in two, so that part of the action is shown for a different character. And all the time I’ve got the side-plots buzzing in my head, and I have to think about how I’m going to slot those in. I’ve been at this for something like four hours, on and off, and to be honest I think I need to take a break and watch a movie, or something, and do a bit more later.

On the subject of movies, I had an urge to watch all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back. In the end I watched them in chunks of an hour or so at a time over the last few days. I reached the end of Return of the King last night (fast forwarding over that sappy part where Bilbo and Frodo leave with the elves—the only part of the trilogy that I find unbearably yawn-inducing). What next? I thought. And I already knew the answer: dig out the Oblivion DVD. So I hunted high and low through our DVD collection. Couldn’t find it. Which just made things worse—the more I couldn’t find it, the more I wanted to watch it. And I still want to watch it, so when I’m done with this post I’m going to search again. This time I’ll hunt low and high; maybe that’ll make a difference.

Since I’m here, a quick update on Gunn & Bohemia: I have to say I’m a bit disappointed on the review front. The reviews it’s had so far have been very good—One five-star, one four-star, and a couple of five-star ratings—but I’d expected to see a few more come in over the last few days, and there’s been nothing. I’m probably just being impatient. The book’s only been out a month. Calm down. Breathe.

I also found a local independent bookstore that will put a few print copies of the book on their shelves. It’s something they do for local authors only—northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, and that’s it. Next step on that front is to get some print copies (which I was hoping to have organised already, but, well, circumstances beyond my control and all that . . . I should have it sorted by around the middle of next week). They also do signing events for local authors (same constraints on the area) but they’re booked solid on that for something like the next three months, so I won’t be able to arrange anything until at least February. Oh, well.

[That’s weird, now that I think about it. A few months ago I’d have have been all knotted up inside at the prospect of being on display in a bookshop, and relieved at there being a delay. Now I’m actually disappointed that I can’t do it right now, damn it. Strange how things change.]

That’s enough for today. I really want to watch Oblivion. Time to go on the great DVD hunt. Until next time . . .

This Is A Drill

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. . . well, sort of. I’ll come back to that.

While I’m here, a quick update. The sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia is in the works; at this moment I have an overall story and I’ve been getting down into the details on on a scene-by-scene basis. Getting through that part will probably take another week or two.

Now, to the real reason for this post: WordPress finally got talking to Google+. So when I publish this, it should appear on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Here goes . . .

[Update: It worked!]

Some Progress

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Things are still busy on the day-job front—I’m still playing catch-up with the work that didn’t get done during the government shutdown. But the worst seems to be over. Today I got the code I’ve been working on to a point where I can’t really test it any more by my lonesome; that’s now in the hands of another guy who’s writing the code that will send data in for processing.

So, I’ve finally been able to spend more than a few minutes on some writing work. I was able to finish a short story and submit it. And I have to report that Smoke & Mirrors—the novel I was working on before Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia—has been put back on indefinite hold. It’s like this, you see . . . I was working on it, going through the scenes I’d already written, polishing them and in some cases tearing them out completely, and making notes of new scenes to be slotted in. But as I was doing that, I was also thinking about ideas for Gunn & Bohemia II. And the more I thought about that, the more obvious it became that I would have to stop work on Smoke to get those ideas written down before I forgot them. Those few notes became the beginnings of a timeline, and so on.

The upshot of all that is that I’m now working on G & B II pretty much exclusively. I have the backbone of the main story, and the beginnings of some side plots. I’ve met my characters, and although some can be considered old friends there are some new faces I have to get to know. And I even did something I don’t usually do at such an early stage: I’ve written a scene. I couldn’t help myself. This one scene has been rattling around in my head for a week or more. It wanted to be written. No; it demanded to be written, and it wasn’t going to let me rest until it was done. So I wrote it. Now, it can sit quietly until its time comes, and then it can be edited and slotted into place. Or torn down and rewritten, or torn out completely, if it doesn’t fit in by the time the rest is ready to be written.

And so, work continues, not rushed but steady, as I figure out the various threads of the story and get them down in note form. It’s going to be a while before I’m ready to begin the real writing; based on the time it took me with my other full-length stories, it could be anything from six to twelve weeks, depending on how much time I get during lunchtimes, evenings and weekends. It’s times like this that make me wish I could pack in the day-job and write full time. Perhaps one day, eh?

Which brings me to a few words about Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia. It’s had a couple of good reviews, and I expect to see more over the next couple of weeks; press releases have gone out, which—fingers crossed—will spur a lot of interest. Sell sheets are out in a handful of places, and I’m planning on hitting up a few more. And one thing happened that was pretty big from my perspective: I actually signed my first paperback copies! Two of them, in fact, within a few minutes of each other. The feeling that invokes is difficult to describe.

And so . . . it’s 9:30pm on a Monday night, and I have a 5:15am start in the morning, so I’m going to wrap this up and watch some TV. I was working to the sounds of Pandora earlier today, and The Lord of the Rings soundtrack was quite heavily featured. To the point that I now have an irresistible urge to watch all three movies, special edition length. Without further ado then, it’s time for The Fellowship of the Ring.

Until next time . . .

Busy, busy, busy . . .

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Time for a few updates on where I am right now . . .

Day Job Stuff

When I got back to work from the shutdown, I expected my project deadlines to have been pushed back a bit. Wrong! The project I was working on when everything stopped had an end date of last Wednesday—and that didn’t change. Which meant I had about four days to complete a job that was originally scoped for three weeks. It was a tough few days but, thank goodness, I hit no serious roadblocks (apart from one technical problem, which was quickly sorted out thanks to a colleague who’d been down that same road before). Effort estimates usually include some wiggle room in case of problems, and this one was no different, but everything came together on the last day. It made for a pretty stressful start to the week, but I was able to put that behind me on Thursday.

Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia

The book seems to be doing well. I know I’ve made some sales (I won’t know precisely how many for a while), and I’ve seen a couple of reviews on Amazon (one on the US site, and one from the UK). So far, people are saying good things. And I haven’t even got into any real promotion yet. I’m barely started into arranging some things to get the word out—a blog tour is a strong possibility, as well as a signing or two locally. I’m hoping to get some progress in those directions this afternoon.

Around The World In 80 Days

The short story I wrote for Xchyler Publishing’s Around The World In 80 Days anthology contest is complete, as of a few days ago, and in shape to be submitted, as of about an hour ago (I started an editing pass last night, and finished up this morning). It is good. Without wishing to sound all conceited about it, I have to say it’s definitely one of my better short stories. I just hope it’s good enough—each of Xchyler’s contests seems to get more and better submissions.

Smoke & Mirrors

The next full-length story is coming along apace. This is the one I put to one side in February or March, and now Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia is out there I’ve been able to get back to it. I’ve redone the timeline somewhat, and I’ve been editing the scenes I’d already written, working forward to the point where I’d had to stop. I’ve recovered the momentum, and the voices and personalities of my characters, so when I reach that point (which won’t be long now—I’m almost there), I should be able to carry on and pound through to the end. My plan is to have a first draft no later than the end of November, and get it into shape to submit sometime in December. Fingers crossed.

Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia II

Yes, a sequel is in the works. I have the basics of a storyline, but I’m still thrashing out details. That’s about all I can say at the moment.

That about wraps it up for now. I have my weekly online chat with the family coming up in a few minutes, so I’d better grab a coffee and get settled. Until next time . . .

The Tension is Palpable

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So much going on right now. First and foremost, of course, is that Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia is being released this Saturday! We’re having a Facebook release party on the day, and I’ll be there to answer questions and throw a few trivia questions around. Only three days to go! This is my first professionally published book, and I’m very excited. After Saturday can call myself Published Author.

In other news, the government shutdown is biting harder. Last week I was able to work on documents, so long as the work wasn’t related to any of our government projects; this week, I’m on an enforced vacation. I hope this gets sorted out soon.

Still, it has its good side—that being that I’m on vacation during the best possible weather (not too hot, but the snows haven’t started yet), so Kate and I can do some restful, relaxing things. Yesterday we took a ride up to Fort Collins and spent a little while looking around an independent bookstore (Old Firehouse Books on Walnut), went for a walk over by Devil’s Backbone, and treated ourselves to dinner at Golden Corral.

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Devil’s Backbone, Colorado

Interesting thing about Devil’s Backbone: apparently the neighbours are hazardous:

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Where The Hazardous Things Are

Makes you wonder what the hazards are. Active volcanoes? Minefields? Pools of acid? Or are the people like those whackjob doomsday preppers on TV?

Today, we’d planned to drive up to Laramie, Wyoming, for a day trip—it’s only a couple of hours from here, and it looks like a nice place to look round. But that plan went down the toilet. Long story, I won’t go into it here. We might get out there tomorrow. If so, tweets will ensue.

On the writing front, I’ve been focussed on the Steampunk short story for Xchyler Publishing’s Around The World in 80 Days anthology contest. I’ve marked up the ‘script with comment markers to remind myself of the points that need work. Among other things, the pacing’s a bit off—the last couple of scenes seem terribly rushed, and something’s needed in there to slow things down and increase the suspense and tension a bit. I’m leaving it to sit for a few days before I get back on to it.

Enough on the blog for now. I need tea, and I think we’ll be getting out for a walk around the sculpture park while the weather’s good. Until next time . . .

Seven Days and Counting; Shutdown Shenanigans

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GunnBohemiaTwitterHeader

Yes, gentle reader: a week today, Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia will be released, woo hoo! This is of course a big thing for me, personally; my first professionally published book. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been worth every moment and I’ve learned a lot along the road.

We’re having a release party on Facebook (sign up by clicking here) – Trivia quiz! Prizes! It’s going to be fun, so come along and join in! I’m working on some trivia quiz questions, and I’ll be there to answer questions about the book and other things I’m working on.

The Shutdown . . .

If you’ve read my bio, you know that my day job involves working for the government (I’m not a fed, though—I work for a commercial company that does work on contract). So, Monday was business as usual, then Tuesday it was all stop. I’ve been able to work on some documents unrelated to the government projects, and that’s all. Starting this Monday, that stops, too—it looks like I have to start burning up my vacation hours until this is all over. Here’s hoping it gets sorted out soon.

Of course, since I’ll be on vacation, that means . . .

Writing!

Two projects are front and centre right now. First is a short story for Xchyler Publishing’s Steampunk anthology contest. I’ve got about 2,500 words down so far, and I’ll be getting back to that after posting this and getting coffee. The plan is to have the first draft finished no later than Monday night, but we’ll see how that goes.

As soon as that’s done, I’ll be getting back to work on Smoke and Mirrors (that’s just the working title), which must, must, must! be finished before December 31 if it’s to be in time for the submission deadline.

So I’d better get on with it. Coffee, come to daddy.

Until next time . . .