How I imagine the next step to be...

#writing #dbza

The first draft was so simple...

Last week I edited 200 pages in just under 100 hours (14hrs a day) - of a book that was supposed to be ready for a final touch-up.  I took a week off work to 'get it done'.  But it's not done.

With 245 pages left to revise and fix, never mind incorporating feedback and spelling fixes from my dedicated pre-release readers, I am wondering if it would be easier at this point to stop writing, log into Warcraft and level up a Blood Elf Hunter on an almost exclusively Alliance PVP server.  I think it might be less frustrating.

On Sunday afternoon, with bloodshot eyes, my unkempt hair pulled back in a pony-tail, on my 43rd cup of tea for the day and still in my pajamas, I rage-quit this book and slept for two hours.

Then, because one of the themes of this damn book is 'there's always a way', I put a Half-life 2 run-through on Youtube as company and went back to work.

I'm only halfway through, but at least I'm still going.  New deadline - I'm giving myself another 4 weeks to complete it.  Then it goes out.  I'm hoping my readership (are you out there yet, readership?) will go kindly on this first piece of work, and keep in mind that the plots of most major (yet awesome) movies are fairly illogical.  If cool things happened in real life all the time, we wouldn't need fiction now, would we?

Wearily yours,

Kaia.

Days turn into months...

So, I booked leave to get this damn book's final edit done and dusted and what have I done? Inspired by the good people over at DEF CON, put some of my recent research to use to try and write something for their short story comp.  I'd love to attend the conference but that ain't gonna happen - I'll be in Vegas in all likelihood at the end of the year, but I can't make the trip twice.

That was a 29 page short story btw, which should have been called 'Procrastin Nation'.  It was actually a slightly derailed (re-railed?) version of a book idea that started mid-last year, originally titled The Turquoise Door, which was more robotics-themed.  I may come back to that, now that the comp has spurred me to take action on that story, but working on two other projects concurrently, it may not see light until next year.

Meanwhile, the original book I intend to release this year - working title 'What Can I Call This That No One Else Has Already Used?', should be finished by the end of this week.  There's science (totally solidly, unquestionable science), vampires (well, kinda), lots of tasty conspiracy (who doesn't love that?) and a poke at anti-vaxxers (because VACCINATE!).

Also in the works is a werewolf-themed book, working-title 'First Blood'. Before you start with the Rocky quips, I picked up that term from Black Beauty (1877), used in the context of fox hunting. From Wikipedia: "Social rituals are important to hunts, although many have fallen into disuse. One of the most notable was the act of blooding. This is a very old ceremony in which the master or huntsman would smear the blood of the fox or coyote onto the cheeks or forehead of a newly initiated hunt follower, often a young child". *

If you want to see how that connects, keep an eye on this blog for the release of First Blood (which will probably be under a unique title at that time), likely in the later half of this year.

Meanwhile 'WCICTTNOEHAU' should be released to Kobo by the end of April, under a slightly catchier title.

Hopefully the guys over at DEF CON won't giggle too much over my attempt to portray the lives and values of hackers at odds with a creature from a 23 dimensional universe, used as a form of mind control.

* For the record, I absolutely loathe fox hunting or any form of blood sport.