Upstream Updates: Winter 2021

Life Stuff

Whew! Here we are in 2021! I’ve decided to do these updates in a quasi-quarterly fashion because doing them monthly, as I did last year, worked only insofar as I wasn’t working for several months, so I could compile the post relatively quickly, and juggle multiple projects at a time. Now that I’m back at work, I no longer have that convenience! If you find this at all disappointing, feel free to comment or message me through my Facebook Author page for something a little more frequent than every three months or so!

Speaking of work... Things are quite a bit busier now that they’ve added all the elementary grade levels back! This ramps up my work schedule considerably, as I'm back to bouncing between grade levels every hour or half hour or so! But it's fun to see them all, and I don't really mind having more to do, it keeps me from getting bored at any rate!

I realize I missed the annual "birthday" post for this blog at the beginning of the year... Eight years, people! How have I been blogging for that long and I still have unfinished blog posts sitting on "draft"--while at the same time I'm still churning out more new stuff? Even I don't know the answer to that question... but as long as people keep coming back, I'll keep pushing forward!

In the middle of February, I took a week-long trip to Hawaii with my parents, in particular the island of Maui. Oh, it was exactly what I needed! We spent only one day actually at the beach, where I got slammed by massive waves one too many times, swallowed a bunch of seawater, got a little more sunburned than I anticipated, and ended up with a charley-horse that made my leg stiff for two days afterward... But it was worth it, and I had a fantastic time, got to read a bunch and write quite a bit, and best of all, we got out of dodge the day that "Snowpocalypse '21" hit, so we missed all the catastrophe of those high-snow days! I didn't even mind coming back to the cold-and-rainy all that much.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying watching my little nephew grow and explore, and getting in touch with more and more interviewers and people interested in my book--I'm gaining reviews, so that's a wonderful and exciting thing, while I work on busting out the next book in the series!
Meanwhile...

Winter Stats:
Words Written: 30K (January) and 27K (February)
Books Read: 10/40

Writing

Fugitive of Crossway

Oh, we are having fun now! Honestly, this first draft is looking pretty sloppy... I'm only on Chapter 4, but at the same time, I'm about 50 pages in--and that fourth chapter alone is like 14 pages, which is way too long! I think I had it easier with Princess of Undersea for several reasons, chief of which is that I had originally written it as a fanfiction, so already, the chapters were divided pretty consistently from the outset. Secondly, writing it was largely a matter of dividing the original plot arc into even "beats", which ended up more or less evenly spaced, so that the end of each chapter could either be a resolution to a previous problem, or a lead-in to the next one. Following the original story arc for the most part also ensured that I wasn't getting carried away with too many extra plot threads and details.
I don't have any of that luxury with Fugitive. I can't build a straight-up re-telling because I don't have a wooden-puppet character who wants to be a real boy! I have a young man, a rural farm boy who wants to get home, and needs to escape a carnival to do so, and also his mermaid friend who tags along, and is the whole reason he's being hunted down--the ringmaster wants his prize attraction back, after all.
The other aspect that complicates things for Fugitive is the secondary plot line. I thought if I wrote down the plots in tandem, I'd be able to divide my focus evenly between them... But as it turns out, I may have created scenarios for both "main characters" that results in time being divided up too much, or the outcome of different scenes winds up taking far longer than I anticipated... which I discovered in Chapter 4. A small note like "they meet a farmer who agrees to let them stay in his barn overnight" ends up being a drawn-out conversation between the boy and the mermaid, infinitely more detailed than even the way Collodi wrote Pinocchio's scenes in he original! But that's how I've styled it, right? So that's how I need to write it... but does it have to take so blamed long to do it??

In the meantime, I am getting more closely acquainted with the characters, by way of the third tie-in story I'm writing, called "Trade Secrets." Along the lines of "The Castaway and The Carnival," it's going to be fairly long, and deal with not so much continuing and leading into the next book in the series, but more like giving some "prequel insight" into the big crucial plot point at the center of the entire book, which really has very little to do with Simon at all--instead, it focuses on two new characters I introduced for this book, Nykkola the carnival fortune-teller who is actually a true clairvoyant, and Mellisande, the young woman whose job it is to "spread literacy from Crossway to Outwest and beyond" by carrying around a case full of books to exchange and give away. It's also going to include some very special insight that will have bearing on further events in the series, so you won't want to miss it!

In the vein of short stories, I also recently had a brilliant idea for a re-telling twist to bring Cinderella into The Undersea Saga--announcing "The Gilded Spurs", an upcoming short story that will be included with the other "Tales From Outwest": instead of fancy dresses, stuffy stepsisters, and a royal ball, there's going to be muddy boots, scruffy rodeo clowns, and a high-stakes rodeo! It was already inspired by an idea that I will be teasing at in "Trade Secrets", expanding the role of the fairies even further--but thinking about the lowly ranch hand who is gifted a pair of magical spurs got me so excited, I can hardly focus on finishing Fugitive of Crossway because I so badly want to start writing Fury of Outwest!

Clan of Outcasts

Boy, this series is turning out much more twisty and deep than I originally thought it was going to be! I'm having fun emphasizing Denahlia's tumultuous relationship with everybody, and highlighting the fact that it is now "canon" that she is not Gifted like everyone else. Meanwhile, trying to keep things interesting, while not giving away my whole plot is an especial challenge that I haven't had to face in this series too much! I feel like the first series arc, I could just condense the information and focus it on individual characters, starting with each flashback, and letting the action at each stage of development center on the character themselves, or the fallout from their choices, and how it affects the other characters.

This story started out pretty loose, with plenty of backstory to fill in and new characters to introduce, I feel like it's still pretty patchy and chaotic at this point... but it's about to make sense, I promise! I've got Beren, Denahlia, and Kaidan offshore with the pirates, and they're about to identify the key mastermind behind this new development, meanwhile Azelie has made contact with the new character Trev, while Lizeth has revealed that she and Nyella have been working on synthesized tinctures that can manifest as different Gifts (which will come in handy later on, I'm glad I established it now, instead of having to ret-con it later!) and Velora's about to figure out how the Elves fit into all this muddle... I keep having so much to write in each part that I'm no longer ahead, I'm lagging behind, only posting every couple weeks, instead of every week like I wanted to! The thing that's taking so long, I think, is all the little details, the conversations, and the foreshadowing that has to happen reaches far deeper than it ever had before. The first two "seasons", I could just leave things on a cliffhanger or be very vague about my details, since there was so little known, and I could just save all my big reveals for when everything gets connected and tied together at the end--but it's not like that this time! This time, there's so many character clusters in so many different locations, I have to keep track of who knows what, and how much information everybody has, who is aware of various characters and who is still in the dark... how long it's been since I've written about a particular character, whether or not any readers are wondering if the character they've been following from the beginning has somehow fallen off the face of the earth... (I see you, Damaris!) but I love this world and these characters too much to just pack it all in--you haven't seen the best new characters of all, yet!

Interviews Galore!

In a shocking turn of events since the release of my book, I've had multiple opportunities for author interviews on everything from blogs, to podcasts, to a local New Hampshire syndicated TV channel! If you're curious at all, I'm linking all the interviews that I can under the Princess of Undersea title in the Undersea Saga tab at the top of this page. So many of these hosts have been really fun to chat with, and I've gotten to answer some really interesting questions! Definitely check those out, to learn more about me and about my book, and especially my plans for continuing the series!

Reading

I am actually pretty surprised with how well I've been keeping up with my reading in these last few months! (Don't jinx it now, Leslie...) I haven't yet been to the library this year, because I'm still working through the several outliers from past book sales, and a few "new-to-me" books that we own but I haven't read... But I'm getting through those and keeping up with my challenge goal just fine! Last year, I set my goal at 50 and only made it through 43 titles. This year, I set it at 40, and I've already achieved 10 books (which is also a reason I felt it was fitting to publish this post today!)

In January, I finally finished Hercule Poirot's Casebook by Agatha Christie! Seriously, if there was ever a "quarantine book"... I started reading it in April of 2020, after all, and it wasn't till these last couple months that I figured out I could keep reading it and still count each individual short story collection it contained as a "finished title"! Hence, there was an extra title, The Underdog, that counted as a separate work. I still enjoyed it, and the book may now grace my shelf as one that I've read all the way through.

The other "library" book I read in January was Redemption, the next book in the Amos Decker series by David Baldacci. I'm very happy that he's continuing this series, instead of just making it a 5-book run like the Will Robie series. I just find Decker fascinating as a character, and I really like the dynamic he has with not only his superiors, but also his "companion" Jamison--the federal agent who tends to partner with him on his cases, and he starts getting involved with trouble from her past as well. These last couple books have dealt largely with Decker's past, with The Fallen looking into the town where he grew up, and Redemption taking a dive back into the seedy world of his first homicide case as a detective, and also the pain of revisiting the town where his wife and daughter were murdered.

January was the month I made it through two ebooks that were as different from each other as one could get! First was Adaline by Denise Kawaii, a future-dystopian cyberpunk adventure that was enthralling, intriguing, and poignant all at once, and Wolves and Daggers by Melanie Karsak, a steampunk re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood that I didn't mind in the least, although there was a heavy reliance on several tropes that I didn't much care for... But on the whole, not bad. You can read my full reviews of those two by clicking on the hyperlinked text.

In February, I took three books with me on my vacation to Hawaii, and managed to finish two of them: Micro by Michael Crichton (which happened to be set in Oahu, as it happened!), and One Good Deed by David Baldacci. The first was, of course, was about as creepy (if not more!) as I was expecting, very violent on an insect-sized scale, and frankly it left my head spinning more than a little once I finished it! The second was a bit of a departure from Baldacci's usual modern surveillance/forensics-type thrillers, as it was set in the mid-1950's... I did notice a character with the same surname as a main character from another series he wrote, of a man who dedicates his life to "perception management", and it tickled me to think that the two could be related... but I'd probably have to read that other book closely to confirm, so at this point, I think I can say "probably not." Anyway, it was quite interesting to read someone who is trying to investigate a bunch of murders and a string of crime, though without any of the modern conveniences like computers, digital files, or even cell phones! Baldacci, as always, pulls it off well and I rather enjoyed it.
On either end of the vacation, just before and just after, I read two other books: Beyond The Valley of Thorns by Patrick Carman is the second book in the Land of Elyon series. I get the feeling that it's probably a series I can appreciate more if I read the books in a row, since not only do they happen fairly close together (like one picks up where the last book left off), but I kind of lose the sense of plot and place when I wait so long between books! The other book I finished recently was The Ruby In The Smoke by Phillip Pullman. I had received it from a well-meaning aunt many many years ago (like, we're talking more than a decade, here, for sure!) and just never read it because I wasn't sure about it. Well, I still wasn't, but I read it anyway, just to make up for the fact that it was a gift and it has been just sitting there this whole time. What do you know? I tried to enjoy it, I really did, especially since Pullman is such a well-known and respected author... but it wasn't gripping, nor endearing, nor quaint.

The final book for February, bringing my total to 10 was the ebook Son of No One by Daryl J. Ball. No disappointments there! You can click the hyperlinked title to see my full Reader's Review on it.

Coming up, I have a few titles on the nightstand that I'm going to try and get through in the next couple months. Those would be The Ultimatum by T. Davis Bunn, A Minute To Midnight by David Baldacci, Oceans 11 by Dewey Gram (it's almost a novelization of the movie, but without the improv from Clooney and Damon and Pitt... and also, it's kind of reading like a heist novel so that's cool!), Unearthed by Amie Kaufman (a book I picked up at a school giveaway--no idea if it's any good, but I'll let you know!), and I've just started reading The Purple Door District by Erin Casey--one of my signed novels, because I decided it was time to take a break from ebooks for a bit!

There you have it! A short update from me and all my projects... How about you? Are you looking forward to spring? What have you read or written so far in 2021? Let me know in the comments!