Upstream Updates: August Edition!

Welcome to another lovely update session! After making July my most productive month ever, succeeding in writing 25,000 words, 3 Reader's Reviews, and completing The Dragon's Mark, I admit I'm already not starting August off too strongly, having missed a few days of writing and getting way behind--but Summer Break is still in effect, so here is hoping that I can maintain my current course!

Writing Updates

The Last Inkweaver

We are up to Chapter 16, people! Callista is still in Aberon, but she is about to leave, in spite of how much certain people would want her to stay... The only problem is, they want her to stay because they think she's a Wordspinner... which she still doesn't believe, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that she might be, and that alone scares her... Fun times! What really fascinates me about this project (and irks me at the same time, if I'm being honest) is that I'm 65K words in, I'm about 3 chapter numbers ahead of where I would have been in the original plan... and yet these characters are just taking their own sweet time about things! Some of the pieces that I referenced in my plan have taken a lot more discussion and have a lot more consequences than I originally anticipated. Not that it's a bad thing... My goal, now that I have less "extra projects" that I'm writing, is to be able to focus on Inkweaver enough until it is done! Will I finish by the end of the month, or by November? Only time will tell!

Flash Fiction Series

Just so everybody knows, I wanted to put in a few words about the current Friday series, "Flashes of Inspiration." For example, last Friday, being the 10th post in the series, I decided to include hyperlinks to the previous installments, in case you wanted to go back and read one that you missed, or if you're joining later in the series. I won't do the "retro-linking" on any of the others, so at least if you're checking in every ten weeks or so, you'll be able to access more than just the one flash piece, without hunting all over the blog for it. (not that I mind if you do that... but it might be convenient!)

The thing I really love about doing this is it's like a "Choose Your Own Suggestion Box", but I can treat it more like a comment, responding on the ones that interest me right away, and getting near-instant feedback, which is all I've ever wanted on the stuff I write! So the "Flashes of Inspiration" will continue, as long as I can try and respond to whatever pops up!

Return of "A Writer's Tale"

In light of the fact that Inkweaver is my sole focus--well, let's just say I cope better with "writer's blockage" when I can periodically "get away" from a main project with another side project. I recently decided to start posting the "A Writer's Tale" series on Wattpad (more on that later), partially as a gauge to see whether anyone would find the concept interesting, and also as sort of motivation to get back into it... Anyhow, I'm getting near the end of Book 1... and, back when I was "working on it" (as a matter of fact, those who were following me last year might remember the "WIP-of-The-Month experiment that did... marginally okay...) I didn't really finish Book 2 entirely, but I got close... Maybe this is just the push I need to get through to the end!

New and improved cover
for Book 2! What do y'all
think?

For those who never heard of "A Writer's Tale", let me give you a brief introduction to it: Back in 2012, I had successfully completed my first-ever National Novel Writing Month challenge (50K words in the 30 days of November... So what if I only made 36K words? It was more than I had ever dedicated to one story, and in far less time than I ever thought possible!) so I was all too excited to go at it again the next year. Round about August, me and a few other online acquaintances began the discussion of what we might work on, and I had a few ideas, but nothing solid, while someone else lamented that they couldn't decide what to work on. I had just been reading 1,001 Arabian Nights for the first time, and so when the person expressed that they could not decide which genre, I immediately responded with, "Why not write them all?" In the vein of Arabian Nights, my idea was to write a story about a writer who cannot think of a story, so he or she starts daydreaming of themselves in various generic genre situations, one leading into the next, just until one has achieved the required word count for the November challenge. The more I thought about it, the more I kind of took a fancy to the idea, myself. The way I saw it, all I needed was a set of various genres I was comfortable writing in, a generic sort of challenge/adventure/plot that fit within each context, and a group of 4-5 characters that I could just reuse for each scenario. That way, all I needed was basically a short story for each genre, and I could write any of those genres until it finished, or if I got stumped in the middle of one scenario, I could whittle away at whatever genre fit my mood, until it was all done. As November drew closer, I became more and more intrigued by the idea, until finally, at the end of September, I decided to just try introducing the writer character, just as an "idea test" to see if my idea would even be plausible. Of course, once I started, I couldn't stop, and one thing led to another, and I finished the whole thing by the end of October, leaving me with nothing to write for November.

That version of "A Writer's Tale" is the one I have posted on my blog. A couple years later, I returned to the serial novel with the intention to turn one truncated book into a series of novellas--hence the "Extended Edition" which I've excerpted a few times (you can find links to that on "The Shelf"), and now you know the history of "A Writer's Tale", I hope that at some point you might wander over to Wattpad to read a more complete version than the excerpts I have here.

-Wattpad Updates

Wattpad continues to do well! There was a minor scare for a bit, as a glitch in the "servers" (or whatever) caused several stories across the board to disappear... ended up being TWO of mine, and one of them was a story I already nominated for the #Wattys! But they were back up by the next day, so it's all good!

In case you were interested in reading them, here are the links:

THE CLAN OF OUTCASTS--Yep, a former blog series qualified for the Wattys! If you remember it and enjoyed it, please consider voting for it on Wattpad!

SINCE WE FOUND SERENITY--By far the most popular of the three, this piece of Firefly fanfiction was one of the unfortunate casualties of the glitch! But as you can see, it's back, and no harm done!

ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN STORYBROOKE--In case you've never heard of it, this is my answer to the rather botched attempt at crossing Once Upon A Time In Wonderland over with the parent show. This is how it should have been done, if I do say so myself!

As mentioned before, the first book in my "A Writer's Tale" series, THE DRAGON'S QUEST, is nearly finished (actually, the last chapter is going up Wednesday this week!) and then we make the transition from high fantasy to cyberpunk with, Part 2, THE COMMANDER'S COURAGE (Check out the new cover above!). If you think that's strange... Well, you'll be able to see what other genres I have and in which order if you have already checked out the "Serial Saturdays" version.

Speaking of "returning to old projects with the intention of finishing them"... What are anybody's thoughts on THE AMAZON TRIANGLE? More than likely, I could also consider going back and finishing that one, while I'm in the mode of "finishing things"--that is, if anybody's interested to find out how it all turns out. Let me know!

Meanwhile, in the realm of fanfiction, I've got READ BETWEEN THE LINES nearly finished, and up next will be the sequel to it, FAIR TRADE. (Just cooked up a fresh cover for that one... Stay tuned or follow me on Wattpad to see it sooner than next month!) It being a Grimm fanfiction, I'm actually quite enjoying the opportunity to revisit that fandom. Ah, the memories!

Currently Reading

Reading this month is going to be so much fun! After finishing Herald of Autumn at the end of last month, I could finally start breezing my way through Behind The Badge by J. D. Cunegan. It's the third book in his Jill Andersen series, and it's just like rewatching unaired episodes of Castle, with a dash of Marvel thrown in, since his main character has some cyborg upgrades. Super fun, and I'm loving it so far!

In the realm of physical books (typically ones from the library), I had just been to the library and picked up a couple books, namely The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova (which I hoped was more like The Historian and less like Swan Thieves--and it was!) and The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (because I had seen a Facebook friend raving about them, and I liked the premise--and holy mackerel did the book deliver on EVERY LEVEL!!) when I happened to be stopping by the library on the day they had their Used Book Sale... Nothing over a dollar! I ended up getting 6 books total for $3.50 and out of the remaining 5 (one was for my brother), only ONE had I read before! (The Thief Lord, a magical tale by Cornelia Funke!) 

As of now, I've completed two of them: Myst, which is based on a computer game I grew up watching my sister play over and over again, and The Dark Hills Divide, which I picked up because a coworker practically swears by this author, and raves about everything he writes. (I know how it feels, because I do the same thing...) Both books were suitably enthralling and left me feeling supremely satisfied with my purchases! The one I'm not entirely sure about is The Sword of Shannara. I got it because I wanted to see how it compared to the show The Shannara Chronicles, which was fascinating in its premise, if a bit lackluster on the execution... The problem is that, although Sword is the first book in the series, the show itself is based on Book 2, The Elfstones of Shannara, so I'm basically reading the prequel to the show... so I really can't compare, I'm not really connecting with any of the characters at this point, and it's really rather dry and dull... I might just soldier through on principle, in the hopes that it gets better eventually, but that's about where I'm at on that one.

That's all for now! I hope you've enjoyed this little tour through what I'm working on. Feel free to drop encouragement, feedback on any of the projects that sound interesting, or let me know what you're up to for this month! What have you read recently? If you're a writer, what is your latest project? As always...

Catch You Further Upstream!