Brains

I’ve wasted an entire day worrying over a tiny blip of a technical hiccup out of my control. Basically, I have a generic title for an uploaded book, something that several other writers have used. It’s a common phrase, so I’m not worried about it being dinged, but because of the similarities, they have to go through a review process that I found out late today will take up to another five business days. All fine! I get why they have to do that.

But my brain, for whatever reason, decided, ah ha, rather than getting any work done on other projects, we’re going to sit and worry and not get anything done besides refreshing a page. Seriously, I wrote maybe four hundred words today. I write more on days when my eyes are dilated, for God’s sakes.

I hate a problem that’s out of my control. Even if it’s a tiny one, I want to be able to work at it myself.

The beach

I used to wonder when I was a kid if I couldn’t swim out far enough in the ocean to see the continental shelf. I don’t know why this just occurred to me except that I’m writing a beach scene. I still sometimes look at rushing waters and wonder if I could beat it at my best – which, don’t worry, I fully recognize as being very far behind me.

Still… I used to be good in the water. And walking. I loved walking. Weird how we break, hm?

Tickling the Ivories on Deviant Earth

I’ve been tapping away at some early scenes in Deviant Earth’s first book (formerly Excision, currently titled Scrap Parts) This is a book I wrote damn near 90k words in a few years back and barely left the first third of the plot I’d written down. It was bloated, but this feels leaner and meaner.

That said, I think I’m going to immediately jump in and tweak a few things. I kinda want it to be a blend of magic and cyberpunk, when it was originally just post-zombie-outbreak fiction with some mutations and different kinds of zombies, like flying ones. I’m going to keep what I’ve written in a backup folder because I think it’s pretty good. It has the spirit of the original Rankin Flats novels, but it’s going to be much more action packed.

As for what direction the series will take, I think each book will center on a different part of the universe, similar to what I had in mind for Journey of the Caged. It’s still super early yet in the writing phase, but that’s what I’ve plotted out.

If you’re still reading this, sound off. What do you think? Post-apoc magic/cyberpunk, or post-apoc straight adventure?

Break the Castle update

I made some serious progress tonight with Break the Castle by finally deciding screw it, this thing needs to be written. The big problem is its middle third. It is both at once bloated and not bloated enough. In the hands of a better writer, it would be a full-blown novel, but it doesn’t feel right that way.

I hit a real snag when I realized I was introducing an important scene far too soon. I had it plotted out as happening in the 70k range, when it looks like it’ll be happening around the 50k mark. This leaves the last third of the novel to fill up an absolutely stupid amount of the 100k mark I hoped to hit (that’s usually my mark for most my novels – GAHB and Smyle are noticeably larger, while For All the SIns is far shorter).

But in all honesty, maybe this will work better as a shorter length novel. Maybe I can find a way to punch up the fight scenes and fill them out, or do more character dialogue. There’s also the mater of a subplot I abandoned and which might make a return at some point. I’m not sure.

In any case, 6k tonight on it isn’t bad at all. To date, the first book in the series has two or three reviews and about as many buys, which I still don’t understand in a way that kind of broke my spirits for a year or so. But I want to see this story through to its fourth book, at least. And with a second, I can start to do advertising for the first in a more aggressive way, so maybe there’s hope left.

RIP Dusty Hill

Gutted today over Dusty Hill’s passing. I love ZZ Top in just about any era, but especially their seventies and early eighties work. Their cover of Sixteen Tons is and always will be my mental “theme song” of the Seven Heroes series. So much of their music influenced the Rankin Flats stuff too – Just Got Paid, Sleeping Bag, Sharp Dressed Man…

Absolute legend. RIP, sir.

Small wins

I’ll make this one quick, but I wanted to share two things that make me happy this week. First, my pseudonym writing has netted me a small cash prize, something I celebrated over the weekend by buying – in typical Cam fashion – cheese popcorn and cherry Danish-style things from Winco. I’ve also been seeing a sharp uptick in KU numbers this month, which will be nice.

Second, Beast was called “real old-school horror” in a positive review on Amazon, which I particularly loved since that’s exactly what I was going for. Been a while since I had a text review on one of my books, so I had to share that.

Hope everybody’s doing well. Getting a lot written, not much to talk about.

Goodbye to Ariama

I have unpublished Journey of the Caged, and that breaks my heart. But it’s not up to the standards I want.

To Nao, Gavrien, Lennox, and all the rest, I love you so much. You rode in the back of my mind for a decade and change, and I’m thankful I finally got a chance to tell your story. I’m sorry it wasn’t as good as you deserve.

Today sucks.