Upstream Updates: Summer 2021

Life Stuff

Wow... Summer went fast. Did it feel fast to anyone else? I felt like I barely had time to think "Wow, the school year is over!" before I blinked and we were gearing up to go back to work again!

That's not to say that I had an uneventful summer, heat wave aside! I welcomed a new niece in July, and she's just the cutest little munchkin! She started out pretty tiny, but is quickly growing into a roly-poly, squishy baby with all sorts of coos and babbles to say!

As far as work goes, I admit I spent the month of August watching my inbox for any kind of sign as to what we might expect for the coming school year, and hoping fervently that it would be more akin to "normal" than it had been in the last... 3 years?? (1 extra year beyond the 2 years of pandemic, because before all of that, we were also dealing with a remodel that very much disrupted at least half, if not more, of the school building!) At this point, all I can say is it's not what anybody expected! 

We're required to mask up inside, but not outside--and on the one hand that means more fresh air, which is a good thing, but on the other hand, it means that at least three people are losing/dropping their mask at just about every single recess, so the school basically ran through their entire stock of on-hand "extra" masks in just the first couple weeks, and now has to resort to a stockpile of disposable masks.... which aren't always the right size for tiny kindergarten faces! In the cafeteria, the school invested in sheets of plexiglass dividing each table into 4 single-person sections, to prevent circulation of germs as students share a table and take their masks off to eat... but the plastic panes extend from the edge of each table by a couple inches, which makes it difficult to navigate a full cafeteria effectively, and the chatty kids are still ducking their heads underneath the panes to talk to one another, while the messy kids are flicking food and milk on the plexiglass panes... Staffing shortages are an issue too, as we've had several staff members who took jobs at other schools, or resigned, and so there are unfilled "holes" for which there may or may not be a substitute ready to jump in and work. We're trying our best to make the most of it, but man the stress level is high this year!

On a more positive note, I started a new Bible study with my mom and some ladies from her church, and I joined a church group with the church I'm attending, so my days are pretty full!

I did have a pretty eventful summer, if the totals below are any indication! I've kept right on writing nearly every day, adding another 100+ days to the total count, and on September 14th, I logged my 500th straight day of writing! You'd think I'd at least have something finished to show for it... but I suppose, in a way, I do: series like "Priscilla Sum", a whole draft of The Last Inkweaver, and all but the last little bit of "Clan of Outcasts" and the first draft of a brand-new book Fugitive of Crossway--so I suppose in a way there was lots that I accomplished! There's still more to do, though... so here's to another 100 days!

Words Written:
June—26,005
July—25,958
August—26,910

Books Read: 34/40

Now onto the nuts-and-bolts of the updates!

Writing

Current WIP: Fugitive of Crossway

This draft is shaping up nicely! I am working on the final chapter now, and I just have the epilogue to go. What a journey this has been! First developing a story entirely from scratch, then realizing that it was actually two stories--Mellisande's and Simon's--that I had to somehow weave together without losing momentum for either, and now as I'm looking back over how far I've come, I am pretty certain that I've managed to hit all the "high points" that I wanted to include in the story... and once it's finished, I'll be going back over it to do the same thing, but better!

I will definitely say that this story is going to have several more significant main characters than I had worked with in Princess of Undersea. In that first book, I could mainly focus on Ylaine, because everything was from her point of view, and Nathan, because his story was important to hers as well. Anyone who didn't have direct contact with either of those two wasn't really vital and so the story could stay fairly well condensed and focused on just the antics of a human and a Mermaid trying to navigate their prescribed social roles.
In Fugitive, I have at least four main characters: Simon, Yssandra, Mellisande, and Nykkola. Therefore the number of characters who have direct significance for each of those four is compounded, plus I needed a wider landscape to scatter them into.

More places, more events, more story... all of that added up to a much longer book than I could ever make Princess of Undersea into, and I've got to pare that down, figure out which scenes are useful to have all played out as the "key beats" of the story, and which are just brief stops along the way, and can be glossed over, or summarized in retrospect. There is something to be said for giving both sides of the story equal "page time", as it were, and not emphasizing one side more than another... Although, now that I'm thinking about it, I do kind of gloss over big chunks of Mellisande's story, and it still makes sense... Perhaps if I could simplify Simon's side in the same way, and kind of pick out the big moments for him, maybe it wouldn't take so long to get through both narratives.

Anyway, once I finish the draft, I think I'm going to go back and re-tool the two short stories that are going along with this one, namely the ones I wrote a while back for the A-to-Z Challenge, "Yet You Are Young" and possibly "Unlucky Urcellus" as well. The reasoning is that first of all, there is more that I wanted to add to "Yet You are Young" which I didn't at the time, and second... I couldn't help noticing how the third Undersea story I wrote back then, "Gondu's Gamble", seemed to confuse a lot of readers, since I really left a lot of the wording the same, so it really comes across as a rather slapdash, shoe-horned narrative than an actual short story. I won't make that same mistake again!

Also, if you're reading this, but you haven't followed me on social media yet, I should let you know that you're probably missing out! All month long (September), on a whim, I decided to create a post for every day this last month, to share different fun facts and sneak-peeks at both Princess of Undersea and the forthcoming Fugitive of Crossway. Fourteen fun facts plus an interactive game from each, making a total of 30 posts! I have to say, it's a neat marketing tool to have on hand now.

All in all, I've had a lot of fun with re-tooling Pinocchio, but it'll be even more fun to get on with the last two books and get back to actually re-telling a fairy tale again! Wish me luck for the rewrites and editing--I can already tell the job is going to be a doozy!

Blog serial: Clan of Outcasts Season 3

Speaking of a doozy... I'm calling it. This "season" of this never-ending tale is nothing short of a behemoth! I am well over 150K, and I have only just now reached the penultimate moment in the story! By comparison, the previous "seasons" combined clocked in at less than 100K. Basically, I'm almost doubling the word count.

Again, I think it speaks to the way I tend to start out with a story focusing intently on a handful of characters and limiting my world-building to "just the basics", such as the way I limited the realm to just the four "cardinal" locations: Wilderness, Castle, Harbor, and Forest. 

For Season 3, I added a pirate ship as a location, a ruined city and a secluded mansion both situated on a faraway island, I turned the Wilderness into an actual settlement called "Wildhaven".... and just like I was explaining above with Fugitive, I also had the audacity to add to this story with its already-loaded cast a host of new characters, introducing some of them in flashbacks of the last 3 years between the end of last "season" and the start of this one, and bringing aboard others in fresh and exciting ways.

I think that's been my favorite part of this serial story, is revisiting old characters in new ways, exploring their development even farther than before, expanding the world beyond the boundaries of The Realm... It's been so much fun, but I'm excited to see it end. And I mean it this time! After this, I don't think I have another loose end, another way to drag everybody into some kind of peril all over again. (Of course, I'm just going to leave this here for posterity in case I've just jinxed myself and I come back in three years with an even BIGGER caper!) At this point, the way things are planned out, the characters reach a healthy conclusion, the resolution doesn't leave anything very much undone, and I am pretty sure I'll be able to finish it over the month of October, which is great because after October, of course, comes...

NANOWRIMO (or as the laypeople call it, November)

Yep, yours truly is a glutton for writing projects, it would seem.

You would think I'd have learned. Last year I used NaNo as a launch-pad to get me rolling on Fugitive and it carried me through fairly well, I might add. I could have passed it by this year, too, since I've got other projects and things, and I didn't actually want to start Book 3 yet until I had a better handle on Book 2, which would definitely not be enough to warrant my 50K goal.

Made by me on Canva!

Instead, after I wrap on "Clan of Outcasts", I'm going to start plotting out an older story that I've been meaning to go back and rewrite. In fact, it was the first non-fanfiction story I ever attempted in earnest. I've actually excerpted it a few times already on this blog... now it's getting a re-boot: Fairies Under Glass! I even made a mock cover for it! 

I decided that I might have an easier time refining the story if I wrote it more like a blog serial, so that's what I'll be doing! Here's hoping I can get planning on it, so that when the time comes, I'll be able to present it in a consistent manner. Who knows how much things will change (I'm most definitely changing some character names!) when I start making notes and whatnot? I am excited to go back to this story that was really foundational in letting my imagination run wild, and applying all that I've learned about character development, pacing, and plot in the years since then!

So yeah, there's heaps of motivation to get things cracking over the rest of this month! As for what I'm going to be posting over the month of November... well, that just depends on what stage I'm at, I suppose.

Special Announcement: Return of the Blog Hops!

I suppose now is a good time to let you all know that starting in November, I'll be participating in a blog hop that will hopefully run one week a month, with the same group I've done hops with before--it's going to be lots of fun participating in these hops again! Look for those posts in a couple weeks!

Reading

Whew!! Going from 20 books to 34 in a single summer is quite the feat! I think it helped that a couple of the titles were a short story and a novelette... and I should qualify that to say that it was more like 11, because 3 of the titles in that count were from the month of September--but still! Not too shabby!

Starting in June, after the last update, I did indeed manage to finish One Word Kill by Mark Lawrence and found it fantastic! Definitely some good Stranger Things vibes, time travel, these things like "prophecies" or "predictions"... good times! A change of pace from his usual grimdark fantasy fare, but still magnificent nonetheless!

Through July and August, I managed an average of 5 books a month, which was cool. I even made a few trips to the library, as you can see by the pictures of my nightstand! It was nice to browse the bookshelves again, and that was how I was able to pick up books from series I've already started, such as Dead Beat by Jim Butcher (Yay, reanimated zombie T-Rex!!), Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman (give me ALL the dragons!!), and U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton (Only 4 books left in the ABC Mystery series!). 

Not only that, but I also picked up books from new (to me) authors such as Ruth Ware's The Death of Mrs. Westaway (recommended by a friend who loves whodunnits, and I have concluded that we have similar tastes, although our reading habits might differ!), and R. L. LaFever's Theodosia and The Serpents of Chaos (It's Dresden Files for kids!!). Rounding that off with Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater, the first book in a new trilogy that focuses on the three Lynch brothers from her best-selling Raven Boys Cycle--such an awesome summer of reading, I must say!

I also read four different indie titles, for which I posted Reader's Reviews. I've hyperlinked each of the following titles, so if you want to read my review, in case any of them sound interesting, you can definitely do that! First off was Speaker of Words by E. G. Stone, an author and book blogger who was kind enough to review Princess of Undersea on her blog, so I took this opportunity to return the favor! The next book I read to review was Find Me If You Can by Kelly Blanchard. I've officially started "Phase 3" of The Chronicles of Lorrek, and I honestly can't believe what's happening right now! You'll just have to read the review to know more.
The final books I read to review were the really short ones I mentioned earlier. Gutshot: The Catastrophe and Vulnerable serve as prequels of sorts to the Red Dog Conspiracy series by Patricia Loofbourrow, with the former giving the backstory all the way back to the cataclysm that made the world the way it is in her "alternate history future" that is the setting for the series, and the latter telling of one very important character's arrival in the future-noir city. Very cool to read, especially after a reader is immersed in the fantastic world of the series, and already familiar with a lot of the characters and world-building details.

As you can see from the picture, I still have a few books more waiting on my nightstand: Pendragon by D. J. MacHale (which I meant to read sooner, but didn't...), The Hollow by Agatha Christie (a Poirot book I haven't read yet? le gasp!!), and Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (and I had no idea there was yet another Cormoran Strike novel!). The others I've already read or started (as in the case of Conjuror by John and Carole Barrowman, after the whole mess of confusion I went through trying to start the Orion Chronicles last year...) and I'll tell you what I think of them in my next Upstream Update!

That's all for now, and until next time--

Catch You Further Upstream!