10,000 or so words still to go on Elf Princes’ Quest. With six scenes left and a scene length of somewhere around 1,500-2,000 words, that sounds about right. If I can manage to keep up the 3,000 word days I did last week, that means I can get the first draft finished next week.
To keep up the motivation, I’ve told myself I can have a reward for finishing, and in the spirit of all my Avengers excitement at the moment, I think I’m going to go for this:
It’s a bit more subtle than a big picture of Dr. Doom. I was also tempted by this one http://forbiddenplanet.com/62400-marvel-t-shirt-stark-industries/ but Iron Man does not need any more adulation. (Also, I’ll have to write something else first if I’m going to get that one too.)
I’m somewhat annoyed at the fact that out of hundreds of choices of Marvel t-shirts, there are about three choices cut for female bodies (and two of those are Punisher t-shirts in black or pink.) You’d have thought they would have realized they were overlooking the fangirls by now. I guess I’ll have to hope that the presence of hoards of young women outside The Avengers wearing home made “Loki’s army” t-shirts should clue them in that they are missing a large chunk of their market. But I think I’m happier to support a different green-cloaked, metal-clad mad-man for a change. Stealth fanning is more my style 😉
Fingers crossed that I am not jumping the gun with this post. I probably am, aren’t I? I’ll post this and then spend the next three months with no movement in both hands, or something. I had better leave with the disclaimer that while this is my hope for next week, I in no way expect the universe to deliver on that. I’ll see what happens when I get to it.
Actually I’m not sleeping either, but I’m having the usual reaction that comes from blogging a lot – the desire never to go on the computer ever again. I think I am one of the most introverted people who ever inted because I clearly have strict limits on how much I can interact with people even by text.
We’ve also switched to a new ‘how to get everyone out of the house in the morning’ routine which gives me extra writing time before lunch and means I can do three sessions instead of two a day. This means I’m now doing about 3,000 words a day instead of 1,000. The plan being to get the first draft of Elf Princes’ Quest finished by the end of May, so that when Eldest gets out of school at the end of May and is hanging around the house all day, I can edit both that and Pilgrims’ Tale. I need deep concentration to do a first draft – the sort of deep concentration I can only manage if I know I’m alone – but editing is much more left brain, and I can do that with other stuff going on around me.
The new 3,000 word day is, however, eating ALL my free time, so I suspect blogging is going to have to go on the back burner in future. This would not be a bad thing except for the feeling that I’m completely losing any social life that doesn’t revolve around morris dancing. I like morris dancing, don’t get me wrong, but the imagination cannot live on “Room for the Cuckolds” alone.
I don’t know how my aim to write 200,000 words this year will survive four months of editing, but (help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, my maths skills are not up to this) I hope I can get 100,000 done by the end of May and then do another 100,000 between September and the new year. I strongly suspect that I will not achieve this aim, but that isn’t going to stop me trying.
Part of the reason why my word count is so low may be my typing speed, which is apparently 48 words per minute according to this test:
Visit the Typing Test and try!
Though frankly I don’t think my brain works any faster than that anyway, and there’s no point in being able to type faster than I can think.
This concludes this ‘state of the Croft’ broadcast.
Bonus irrelevant factoid below:
Did you know in Anglo-Saxon times we had birds a metre tall in Britain? European Cranes. Try hunting that with a falcon!
Well, I’m pretty blogged out about my own novels but that’s OK because today I have Kay Berrisford aboard, talking about her Greenwood series instead. Darker and sexier than mine, if you’re fond of m/m fantasy with a bit of sizzle these may be just your cup of tea.
Over to you Kay:
What upcoming project of your own are you most excited about?
Right now, I’m pretty excited to get going on my third Greenwood novel. I’m going for an Iron Age winter setting this time, and want it to have a darker, grittier (and colder!) feel from the first two novels. The dynamic between my two protagonists is going to be very different. I’m having fun brainstorming the characters right now and have a feeling these two are going to be less willing to get down to the romance side of things than Brien and Scarlet, or Tam and Herne, although I’m hoping they’re going to oblige on the mansexing front 😉 Like ‘Bound to the Beast’ and ‘Bound for the Forest,’ it will be set in the same universe but be completely stand-alone.
While doing research have you ever done anything really exciting or
strange?
I’m very lucky, in that my whole life has been a project of historical research, which I constantly feed into my writing. I used to work for the National Trust and go behind the scenes at a lot of beautiful properties. I once spent the night in one of the best bedrooms in a stately home, on a sleeping bag on the four poster bed and gazing at a rather stunning portrait of Admiral Lord Nelson! I’ve also uncovered a Roman meat cleaver on an archaeological dig. Imagining the kind of person who held it last was rather special. These, and many other wonderful experiences, have triggered story ideas (I haven’t got around to writing them all yet.)
More directly related to the Greenwood novels, I spend a lot of time taking pictures of gargoyles and trees!
Who is your own favourite character?
Right now, definitely Herne the Hunter. I’ve had great fun creating my own version of his legend for ‘Bound to the Beast.’ My Herne was a tribal leader toppled from power at the time of the Roman conquest of Britain, and gifted immortality and his crown of antlers by the Mother Goddess. Ultimately, he’s a good guy, but by the time we get to 1588, the age in which the rest of the novel is set, he’s brooding upon a very dark past as the leader of the Wild Hunt. He’s the ultimate tortured hero.
How long have you been writing? What made you start?
I’ve written most of my life, apart from when demands of university and work have got in the way. I took up writing seriously again about six years ago, and wrote fanfic vociferously until I finally took the plunge back into my own original fiction.
What was your first book and what was it about?
My first book was about a creature called Ogog, who lived in a cave. I wrote it when I was four. The illustrations were quite, uh, blobby, but the narrative structure of Ogog’s tale was sound. Honest.
What are you enjoying reading at the moment?
I’ve just started ‘Game of Thrones,’ by George R.R.Martin. I’m enjoying the setting and world building so far – and it’s certainly getting me in the mood to write some gritty sword and sorcery fantasy of my own.
Do you do anything to summon up inspiration – write to music, have a special writing hat etc?
I wish I had a good answer to this one, but I can’t write to music. I need silence. When I get stuck, I kind of bash my head against the wall till I get through, as it were! I use ‘muses’, I guess – pics of people who have inspired characters, my favourite band members, actors etc. Looking at pretty pics doesn’t always help, but it usually cheers me up!
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I love travelling, and partially thanks to my husband’s job, we get to see some amazing places. Over the past few years, we’ve spent time in Melbourne and Milan, and later this year we’re off to Montreal and Dubrovnik. I write a bit when I’m on my travels, but I also like to take time to absorb the feel of new places and refresh my imagination. I tell my husband it’s *all* work, because writers have to have interesting experiences to draw upon, right?
When we’re at home, we love walking in the New Forest and visiting castles and other sites of historical interest. Once again, it’s all work really. Honest.
What works in progress have you got on the go at the moment?
I’m just polishing up my first contemporary supernatural story, a novella about an elf who busks on the London underground. In this universe, elves are persecuted beings – but Kit, my elf, is hardly a defenseless, retiring violet, and is about to give the elf catchers as good as he gets, and a little bit more.
Have you seen those ‘author’s cave’ photos that show the office/study/corner of the table where famous writers work? What does yours look like?
Actually, I’ve not seen many, but I’d like to. My study is a mess. There’s books all over the desk, notebooks on the floor, scraps of paper covered in my illegible handwriting, a dirty coffee cup. It ought to be censored, but I’ve attached a pic!
~*~*~*~
Bound to the Beast, a Greenwood novel, is out 10th April, published by Loose Id.
Genres: m/m, paranormal, historical, fantasy, BDSM. Novel, 67,000 words.
Short blurb: The Greenwood, 1588. When a ritual goes wrong, Tam is bonded to legendary warrior, Herne the Hunter. As Herne’s mastery awakens Tam’s darkest sexual fantasies, will Tam beg for his freedom or to be bound to the beast forever?
Blurb: England, 1588. When a fairy betrothal ritual goes wrong, village lad Tam is bonded to Herne the Hunter. Warrior, legend, and Greenwood spirit, Herne once led the terrifying Wild Hunt, an army of the undead who rode as harbingers of doom. When his passions are stirred and his blood is up, Herne sports the antlers of a mighty stag.
Herne could be the lover Tam secretly craves, but Herne’s past makes him fear the brooding warrior will enslave or kill him. While Herne admires Tam’s toughness and humor, he has rejected love—as he has sworn off leading the Wild Hunt—and wishes only for solitude. To break their betrothal, they must travel into the Greenwood, a realm of magic and bondage where their desires for each other grow dangerously irresistible, and the Wild Hunt bays for their blood.
As the threat rises, Herne’s mastery and compassion realize Tam’s darkest sexual fantasies. Soon he’s no longer fighting for his freedom, wishing to be bound to the beast forever. But can Herne’s tortured heart be reawakened? And if so, will their love destroy them both, or prove Herne the Hunter’s greatest weapon?
Bio: Kay is a historian who realized it was even more entertaining to make stories up and add a ton of fantasy, sex, and BDSM fun. She loves writing stories set in any time and place where she can indulge her love for research, while imagining two hot guys getting it on, but has a particular passion for English folklore.
She lives in Hampshire, UK, with her beloved ‘other half’ Chris. When they aren’t both madly working, they enjoy drinking wine, visiting castles and gorgeous countryside, and stalking cats and greenfinches.
Her first novel, Bound for the Forest, was published in September 2011 by Loose Id.
More info and links to amazon etc.: http://kayberrisford.com/bound-to-the-beast/
Buy it now link: http://www.loose-id.com/The-Greenwood-Bound-to-the-Beast.aspx
For more about me, visit: http://kayberrisford.com
I’m sorry! I know you must be even more bored of me going on about UtH: Bomber’s Moon than I am, but I did mention something on Tuesday about a giveaway. So I thought you might like to know that I’m running a “give away a copy to a random commenter” thingy over here on the Coffee and Porn in the Morning blog where I’m also waffling on about my love of rural England, Wallace and Grommit, and Dogrose Morris’s Beer-tray dance.
I hate it when people hard sell stuff to me, so I’ll just say ‘come if you want to, stay away if you want to, it’s all good :)’
I’m so relieved – that gap between first publication and first review is always so full of angst. Will anyone like it, or will I have to change my name and tattoo someone else’s face on top of mine just to show myself in public again?
But mega thanks to Leslie S for a review that made me squee repeatedly. (Yay, so delighted that Mr. Smith gets a shout out. He was a favourite of mine too.)
It’s too long and detailed a review to sum up here. I’ll just link you to it
http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/2012/04/04/bombers-moon/
and quote the conclusion:
“This is quite simply a perfect story—no slow moments, no ‘meh’ characters, gorgeous writing, a complex and coherent plot. I cannot wait to read the second part, Dogfighters, which is released in May and which I’ll be reviewing later this month. Fantasy fans absolutely must pick up this book—and if you’re not a fantasy fan, I urge you to get it anyway—you won’t be disappointed.”
Thank you so much, Leslie!
~
And to celebrate both the review and the heroism of Mr. Smith, here is that excerpt I promised you yesterday.
A bit of background – Ben knows the elves are trying to kidnap him. He’s been given an amulet to protect him, which is basically a teaspoon of holy water in a BPAL imp. With this on him, the elves do not seem to be able to touch him directly. However, they are clever creatures and are slowly figuring out ways to get around that.
At half past one, Ben went back to work after lunch, spent a good couple of hours doing filing in the haunted basement. He’s just come out to the bank proper again, and discovered that it is still half past one. And that’s only the start of the creepiness:
EXCERPT
Read the rest of this entry »
LOL! Well, perhaps that was slightly exaggerated for effect. But hurray! UtH: Bomber’s Moon is out today, *and* it’s available at a reduced price on the Samhain store. Down from $5 ish to $3 ish, which strikes me as a bargain.
However, and this is the sort of thing I’ve come to expect on a release day, because the universe likes you not to get too much of a swelled head, this apparently coincides with Samhain’s entire site being down.
I believe that the buy link for UtH: Bomber’s Moon is http://store.samhainpublishing.com/under-hill-bombers-moon-p-6712.html
(I hope so, because that’s what I’ve put on my links on my website and sidebar.) But I can’t actually check at the moment. I hope it comes back up while the bargain price is still available, because that was a good deal and it would be annoying not to be able to take advantage of it.
Of course, I could conclude that the site crashed because so many people all rushed to buy the book at once… But then I think the universe would have to humble me some more, and I’d rather not go there.
Anyone fancy an excerpt and a give-away, once I’ve come back from taking my youngest around town?
I may have mentioned before that I’m not the kind of writer who sees a movie in their head and writes down what happens from that. I’m the kind who has a head full of grey fog above a dark and unseen lake of words. I don’t have pictures of anything. If I want to know what something in the book looks like, I have to stop writing, make a concerted effort to visualise and then reach for the words.
And I can do that fine for scenery. Houses, reed beds, dust bowls, Elven spaceports? No problem. But I don’t seem to be able to do it for people.
This is why I now go out and find photos of people who look relatively right for my characters, gather them together in a folder on my computer, and periodically revisit them so I can hold their faces in my mind. Previously I’ve only bothered to cast my two heroes this way, but for Under the Hill I did all of the main cast.
Having done it, I thought I might as well share them. If you don’t like having someone else’s picture of what a character looks like thrust upon your imagination, look away now 🙂
Read the rest of this entry »
So apparently the idea is that on a Sunday, you post six sentences out of whatever book you please, and then link to it in a central place at http://www.sixsunday.com/
I’m not sure I’m doing it right. Partly because it’s only Saturday (but if I tried to do it on Sunday, I think I’d fail due to time zone differences,) and partly because I’m not sure I understand the instructions for putting your link on the SSS site. Still, we’ll see.
Here are six sentences from Under the Hill: Bomber’s Moon, in which Flynn trades fifty years of his life for the chance to go home. This turns out to involve some very unpleasant surgery:
~
His eyes snapped open at the squirm about his wrist, the saw-edged slide of something hard and dirty into his flesh, and so he was in time to see her needle-pointed nails lengthen, slick out from her fingertips and drive through his skin, up the veins of his arm, parting the muscle, winding about the bone. Augh! No. No, no no! He screamed, tried to wrench himself away, but it held him fast, the barbed tips of the nails sinking into the joint of his elbow.
Exquisite pain—the kind of pain that shredded reason and left him howling, nothing behind his eyes but the enormity of agony. Then it eased and he found himself human again, collapsed onto his knees, one arm curled about his head, the other still held in that obscene grasp.
Bonus background factoid: the description of the pain is highly influenced by my experience of what it’s like incautiously jogging your arm when you are in the painful ‘freezing up’ stage of frozen shoulder. Fellow frozen shoulder sufferers? You do not get enough sympathy in this world, but you have mine.
