Well, here it is. The first proper BS&K post. Always great to start something new.
And there’s no better place to start than a brief look at what I’m working on.
Well, OK, maybe I’ll give you all a (very condensed) look at what I’ve done so far. Up to this point, I’ve either finished or nearly finished seven novels. The first four are absolute trash: three of them were written while I was in high school (with the last of these three having been finished just after leaving HS), and the fourth was written between 2015 and 2016. Well, OK, the fourth one isn’t as bad as the first three. That one’s called Mecha: it’s about a guy who gets kidnapped to the future by robots. I may rewrite it someday, but don’t hold your breath. As it stands, it’s a deeply flawed book at best.
Following that, there was a bit of a gap when it came to novel-writing. My short story Join was published during that gap, still the only success I’ve had in publishing up to now. Then, in late 2017, an idea fell into my lap, which eventually became Kosan. I’ve mentioned Kosan in a post on my other blog: for those of you who might not see that post, Kosan is basically my baby. It’s the novel I’ve spent the most time working on, by a significant margin; it’s perhaps my most ambitious story; and it’s the only one a professional editor has seen. After my talk with the editor, I eventually came to the conclusion that Kosan needed to be rewritten from the ground-up. It’s on my to-do list.
Anyway, another idea kind of fell into my lap soon after that, and it became Nightmares Inc., more of a horror/urban fantasy. In some ways, Nightmares Inc. might be my strongest novel, although like any book it’s needed a lot of revision, and I’ve been stuck on the ending for years. I think I finally made a breakthrough when it comes to that ending, though: I plan to rewrite it soon, and then hopefully start showing it to peer readers.
After that, there was another multi-year gap between novels. This was thanks to getting royally stuck on Kosan II: it again took me years to work through all the brambles and briars and hack my way to the end on that one. Eventually, though, I did find my way to the finish line, although with Kosan needing a rewrite, it’s left Kosan II in a bit of a limbo.
And…yeah. Those are all the novels I’ve finished since I got serious about my novelist dream at age 14. That’s the keyword here, though: finished. Because I have a whole load of novels that I haven’t quite finished, but have made progress on. These include the following:
Keepers of Eternity, a thriller based around a family joining a cult. I started working on this one in the fall of 2021, got about halfway through, then stopped when I realized the book was getting too long. I think I’ve figured out how I want to restructure this one, and I do plan on going back and rewriting it eventually, although I’m not sure when I’ll get to it.
Room 161, sort of a supernatural thriller that I’ve had wandering around in my head for quite some time. The first few scenes are especially vivid in my mind. I’ve tried a few times to get going on it, but each time, something just hasn’t clicked.
Speaking of books that haven’t quite clicked, Esther is one that I think has gone through five or six different versions, all of which have rammed into dead ends. It’s another thriller, this time about a woman whose family gets targeted out of nowhere by a terrorist organization. Unless I have a random breakthrough (and I do get those sometimes), this one won’t get dragged out of purgatory for a long, long time…if ever.
Kosan III, which I got about 2/3 of the way through before getting the feedback from my editor that threw me into an existential crisis last winter. (In case said editor ever reads this, don’t worry: I needed it!) After deciding Kosan needed a full rewrite, Kosan III got shelved.
Dante’s Inferno, a thriller about a woman who gets the chance to host a documentary about a reclusive pop star. This one I worked on last summer: again, I got about 2/3 of the way through, before deciding I’d come back later and patch up the parts I skipped over (with this one, I wrote approximately the first 3/5, then skipped ahead and wrote the ending).
The 2nd Realm, more of an urban fantasy/thriller. This is the one I’m working on now: I’m getting close to 90,000 words, but am only maybe a bit more than halfway done. It’s going to be a long one (although eventual editing will surely lead to cuts). It’ll be the first in a trilogy, or maybe a quadrilogy: I had the original idea a few years ago, and began writing it I think during the first year of COVID, but eventually realized what I was writing (then titled The 8th Realm) was mostly better suited as a sequel.
Of course, I’ve got ideas for plenty of novels besides these. The next first draft I plan to write once I’m done The 2nd Realm will be the first book in a planned fantasy trilogy, whose main character has been pestering me to get to her story already for a while now (I’m only half kidding when I say that). I keep telling her to be patient, and that I’ll get to her eventually, but that I need to finish getting The 2nd Realm onto paper first. She’s never pleased when I tell her that: perhaps I’ll have to make it up to her by getting her book done faster than I’ve gotten through The 2nd Realm.
So there you go. That’s a glimpse of the tales I’ve had gnawing at me, longing to escape the confines of my mind. Alas, I’m only one person, and though I can write quickly, I was cursed from a young age with a chronic lack of focus. That means I can only usually spend an hour a day writing – two if I’m really into it – although with how fast I type, I can usually hammer out a decent chunk of words per day.
It takes time to get all those ideas out. But over the years, I’ve managed to slowly but surely increase my pace. Putting aside my high school years, where I averaged about a book per year, I only wrote one novel between 2013 and 2017, and then just one more between 2017 and 2019. That level of production was unacceptable to me: and so, starting in 2019, and really ramping up over this last year or two, I’ve tried to focus more on just getting a draft out, and waiting until the editing process to worry about whether that draft is coherent or not.
This culminated in a resolution last New Year’s: I made it my goal to write four books in 2022. An ambitious goal, but one I thought I could achieve, long as I could maintain my usual pace. Well, as it turned out, that goal was a little too ambitious: Kosan III only got 2/3 of the way done, Dante’s Inferno suffered a similar fate, and my latest attempt on Room 161 didn’t even get halfway. Progress on The 2nd Realm has been good so far, though, and I’m optimistic I can finish the first draft before Christmas holidays, or at least come close.
Before this year, the most books I’d ever written in a year were two. My logic was that instead of trying to meet that number this year, or even outdo it by one, I’d try and outdo it by two: that way, even if I failed, I’d still have made good progress. And that’s exactly what happened: you add 2/3 of one manuscript, 2/3 of another, and maybe ¼ to 1/3 of another, and that gives you almost two full manuscripts’ worth of writing. Add The 2nd Realm on top of that, and that’s almost three full manuscripts: far more than I’ve ever managed to write in a year before.
For 2023, I’m thinking I’ll set that same goal: finish four fresh new manuscripts. In addition, I’d like to at least get the Kosan rewrite and one other rewrite/completion done (I’m thinking either Keepers of Eternity or Dante’s Inferno). Those other ideas I mentioned before will have to wait for a while: if they ever get edited/polished, it won’t be until 2024 at the earliest (although Nightmares Inc. is an exception: I’d like to write the new ending for that ASAP). And so there you have it. That’s more or less what I’ve been working on (and continue to work on). In between, of course, I used to write short stories: I got out of the habit after a while, but have been thinking of getting back into it again, just so I have something to send around and potentially publish while I’m working on my novels. Next week, I think I’ll get more into everything I’ve learned so far about the industry, and my limited experience with it. And then, from there, once the foundation has been fully laid, we can move forward with what will eventually become the “regular” postings here, with writing updates, updates on my efforts to publish/market my work, and perhaps some random reading- and writing-related musings tossed in.
