Upstream Updates 2020: October

Life Stuff

Okay, I'm saying it: furlough sucks. Shutdown sucks. I wear my mask. I stay healthy. For what? Libraries are closed, and there's a chance I might lose my job because the school administration doesn't think it's worthwhile to let employees like me continue to work if everybody's staying home... Even though we sure found plenty to do while the teachers were online for those first couple weeks! If they don't let us back in at some point, this will be the latest in the long litany of jobs I held till they "quit" me... Yeah, you heard that right. I've never actually left a job before. In-home tutoring, after-school tutoring... I kept clocking in and doing whatever was asked of me until the employer said "We're sorry, but this job is being discontinued. Good bye, see you never."

The one bright spot in this month is the fact that the day before my birthday, I officially announced Princess of Undersea and launched The Undersea Saga. You'll notice at the top of this page, where I've changed the name of the page tab, too--and now I've got all four books listed. You can still see the links to all the times it was mentioned and the rough-draft excerpts, like before... but now I'll be adding the cover art, any interviews and blog features linked to the specific books, and listing out the individual short stories attached to each book! Haven't made any sales yet, but I'm collecting names to place an order for anyone who wants signed copies--Respond to this post on my Facebook Page to reserve a copy for yourself!

Unfortunately.... Reading didn't quite make as much progress as I would have liked... I'm almost up to my 20 "Reader's Review" books... but still only managed about 3 books in this month! Hopefully, even with the added writing "workload" next month, I'll still find time to get all my writing done and be "awake" enough to read in the evenings, just to get everything rolling again! I blame the unsettling nature of the times... It's hard to focus on reading when you're mentally and emotionally drained from constantly worrying about things that you never had to worry about before!

Monthly Stats:
Words Written: 33K+
Books Read: 3/4

Writing

Coming Up: National Novel-Writing Month!

Speaking of The Undersea Saga, I decided early this month what project I'll be working on for NaNoWriMo this year (also known as "The month of November" in most circles) and I'll just go ahead and announce it now: Fugitive of Crossway, the sequel to Princess of Undersea! This cover is only a mockup, made by me, with whatever simple (and free) pre-made vectors I could find--which is why it's weirdly dark and stuff. The artwork for the actual cover is going to be much brighter, it's going to include at least one or maybe two characters--most notably Simon, the main character, and Mellisande, another POV character who's going to have a bigger role to play as the series develops!
It's not going to be a sequel in the conventional sense, in that it's not sticking with the main characters from the first book, but it's definitely connected in some very surprising ways, and you'll just have to wait and see what ways those are! The fairy tale inspiration for it is the story of Pinocchio--you know, the silly wooden puppet who makes immature and selfish decisions until he hears that his father was swallowed by a whale and he goes to rescue him, he's got a quest to become a real boy, and there's a Blue Fairy who helps him, and even after all the rigamarole of bad decisions reaping negative consequences, Pinocchio still gets roped into blowing off school in favor of going along with bad-mannered and devious boys to a "pleasure island" where boys who keep making these bad choices slowly turn into donkeys... Yeah, great story, right? My reasoning was that there aren't a whole lot of well-known fairy tales that feature males in the lead role--most of the time when one thinks "fairy tale" one also thinks "innocent damsel/well-loved princess, unjustly treated"; besides, this kind of fit the story I wanted to tell (a boy on a mission and on the run from an unscrupulous carnival ringmaster). I'm expanding the worlds, going outside Overcliff and onto the mainland, where we'll have places like Willemstone, Logosfold, Outwest, and Port-Town... and those who are familiar with the tie-in stories I wrote during the A to Z Suggestion Box Challenge will get to see more of Urcellus the "unlucky fisherman" (and yes, that is a reference to the Disney villain Ursula... but I "masculinized" the name and gave him more of a "comedic side character" role, rather than a villain!) and the mermaid he "accidentally" catches... so stay tuned for that!
The thing is, this story itself is probably not going to be the whole 50K, so I'll very likely be writing other things along with it... such as The Last Inkweaver (which I haven't touched in a while, I know!) and Clan of Outcasts, Season 3!

Priscilla Sum

I'll tell you what I won't be writing, come November, though: Priscilla Sum! Yes, it's been a long time coming, but we're finally closing in on the last scenes! There's just some final exposition, the denouement, that I have to get all the information so that I can tie things off while keeping it natural, not seeming forced at all!

That final battle against Egamad went really well, I have to say! Much better than the flash-fiction scene I wrote a year ago! I tried looking at it to see if I could segue into the way I'd written it before and then just copy-paste, but as it turns out, the characters and the order of things changed so much from when I'd written that scene, and everything was in a much different place than I anticipated, so I couldn't really use much of it!
This has really been a fun series, and I'm glad I did it--even the head-casting! The main roles were obvious, since the whole thing was inspired by the idea of Jason Momoa and Gal Gadot in the roles of Aurelia and Patrick, gods in hiding as mortals, and their adopted daughter, as "played by" Emelia Clarke-- but Charlie Rowe as her best friend Tony, Austin Butler as Kayce, Anthony Ramos as Alexandros, Rachel Nichols as Stephanie, and a few others that I found who I either forget the names or I just swiped a random photo from a Google Search and I don't know their names... But anyway, having a head-cast was pretty awesome! It's fun to look up the descriptions you came up with for a random side character, only to find actual actors with those same features... especially when you find The One that makes you go "Yes, I could totally see this person taking this role!" Fun times!

Clan of Outcasts: Gearing up to Full Steam!

With the ending of Priscilla Sum, I can transfer all of my "blog serial writing" energy toward Clan of Outcasts! I've finally pieced together mostly what I'm planning on doing, haven't quite settled on exactly what the ending is looking like--this series is definitely more spread-out and scattered than the first two! I think I've got just about as many new characters as old ones--and that's a lot of people to handle! The other thing I'm finding out is that in setting it "three years later", there's a whole lot more room for "flashbacks"... but so far a lot of my flashbacks have been pretty detailed! Very much not like the flashbacks I was writing when I first started this series--but I'm glad to know that Elves totally fit into my canon now! And pirates. And magic articulated clay "golems." Interesting, too, exploring the concept of Abnormals further as well: Shadows and Angels were introduced in Season 2 as the celestial beings tasked with regulating the supernatural Gifts among mortals, and at the same time the characters had to deal with a noble Angel trying to stop and evil Shadow... Well in Season 3, they're going to encounter a noble Shadow, and the villain is somebody who wanted to misuse the power of a Shadow and an Angel together, to be able to force a Gift into someone who wasn't Gifted originally... and thereby rendering the villain unstoppable by anything short of sheer Abnormal power.... But more on that to come! You'll just have to wait and see--and I really hope the payoff is worth it for all of you readers!

Wattpad

Over on Wattpad, I have some continuing projects and some that could use some extra views!
Poor Unfortunate Soul is not attracting as much attention as I would have thought, based on the responses I'm still getting on fanfics I posted years ago! Some fun facts about it: I really regard this fanfic as "draft zero" of Princess of Undersea. I wrote it as a fun way of introducing Ariel and Prince Eric in the style of the first two seasons of Once Upon A Time--and also as a means of explaining how Rumplestiltskin got ahold of the magical squid ink that was such an important part of his spells later in Season 2, but got no reasonable explanation. (Granted, perhaps they retroactively "explained" it much much later, as with just about everything else mentioned in the show... it was the constant "retrograde continuity" that really got on my nerves and prompted me to stop watching it, in the first place! When the show becomes more about "rehashing" old seasons and less about producing new content and moving stories forward... you've got to wonder if it isn't just an easy cash-grab for the writers, rather than actual creative productive work...) So instead of a sea witch being the key to Ariel's problems, it's a deal she makes with Rumplestiltskin, which unwittingly makes Ariel a pawn in his schemes of hindering Evil Queen Regina in whatever she wants to do... and as Ariel finds herself the focus of the Queen's ire, she becomes desperate enough to be willing to trade Rumplestiltskin what he really wanted from the beginning: the ink from the magical squid (named Ursula--see what I did there??), who had been basically trained to only respond to a song only Ariel can sing.
On the Storybrooke side of things, Ariel is "Hillary", a young girl with a fantastic voice who dreams of attending Julliard, but she's "trapped" working for her family while unscrupulous bureaucrats are "fees and license"-ing her family out of their business which is their only way to make money... but if Henry Mills can find a way to connect Hillary with Prince Eric's counterpart, a theater owner named Rick Royal, then perhaps the music of her voice will convince him to sponsor her, so she can fulfill her dreams!

I also recently decided to start posting Priscilla Sum from all the way back at the beginning--so if you're interested in reading it all the way through, but trying to hunt it down on my blog seems daunting, you could always look it up there, and get it at a speed that you can keep up with!

Finally, I want to drop a mention for Clan of Outcasts again--it's not new, I realize that, but it hasn't been receiving a whole lot of visibility, so if you're interested in reading it, you might check it out on Wattpad, where I have all the pieces and parts in order--maybe even "upvote" your favorite characters, so I know which ones are more popular with people! The whole first "season" (the first 12 or so chapters) are the ones with the flashbacks to introduce the characters that become the main cast in Season 2, so if you come across one that you like and you'd be interested to see them come more to the forefront, all it takes is a simple click! I submitted it for the Watty's award, and I'm really curious to find out if something like this would be interesting enough to win, or at least become as popular as some of my other stories--I really think it's on-par with the fanfictions I've written, for sure!

Reading

Which brings us to the reading updates!

I managed to finish up at least one book by the end of last month, Deception by Katika Schneider--and I definitely had a better time with that one than its predecessor! Check out the Reader's Review (hyperlinked above) to find out why I'm a "new believer" in the Tales of the Fallen series! Then at the same time, I was reading Ace of Clubs by Patricia Loofbourrow--always a glorious steampunky, Victorian crime thriller pleasure! That one definitely kept me up late.

Currently I'm reading Song from Jesse Teller's Manhunters trilogy--the first sentence in the Foreword was "Marvel superheroes in a fantasy setting" and I immediately thought "SOLD!!" I haven't gotten very far into it, but I have high hopes, what I've read so far! Kind of a grimdark take on the whole superhero genre (more "Avengers 4" and less "Avengers 1"), but not too shabby! We'll see if the "timeline hopping" gets to me...

I'm trucking my way through Blood Rites by Jim Butcher--and I gotta say, "HARRY DRESDEN YOU ABSOLUTE HOBGOBLIN!" The central mystery/crime is most mysterious indeed, and the extra surrounding goings-on just make it that much more interesting and make the whole story pass by faster as I keep right on reading without feeling like anything is dragging! After Dresden comes Masked City by Genevieve Cogman, and it's about dang time! Once I've finished these, it'll be the last of my library checkouts, so that means it's back to "reading all of the unread books on my shelf!" Including a Reader's Review signed copy, Behind the Mask by J. D. Cunegan--his Jill Andersen series gives me all the good Castle vibes, and that's something I really need right now, since I am all out of current TV shows to watch, guys!!

I got a new book for my birthday, the second book in the Land of Elyon series by Patrick Carman--that'll be one that I'm reading, for sure! I also went to a book sale on Monday (the first one I've been to since the libraries closed!! It was glorious!) and picked up a Michael Crichton book, the novelization of Ocean's Eleven (which is kind of like the movie in narrative form, but also has some of those "extra details" that are so difficult to portray in movies!), and a Simon Tolkien novel! (I got really into his Inspector Trave series, but haven't really found any of his other books in the library system, so it was really fun to be at a book store and see his name!) So I have plenty of fun to look forward to in November! Tally ho!

Get ready for bigger numbers in writing, and hopefully I'll actually be able to read all the books I've mentioned as "to read" in this post! Thanks for stopping by, and as always....

Catch You Further Upstream!