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I started writing the first incarnation of Banshee (now To Dream In Deep Water) in NaNoWriMo ‘09. Back then the book was a stand-alone novel. After that, it grew in my head into the overly-ambitious concoction of ideas Hellfire Heroes is. Needless to say, I am very excited for it.

I died out in NaNo ‘09 with just barely over 25K words, and a horribly timed bout of insomnia, which drained me of the energies I needed to actually finish the damn thing. It was sad, but I’d like to think (read: lie to myself) that it wasn’t entirely my fault my first NaNo failed.

On to the point. I haven’t actually written much of anything since I died out of NaNoWriMo last year. Yeah, it’s that bad. The why is a combination of two things: 1) world-builder’s/outliner’s disease. 2) going back and forth between main projects. You might have noticed most of my previous posts about projects jump between talking about work on Summeryear, The Odehren Fables, various graphic novels, and the Hellfire Heroes series. I wasn’t juggling all those at once, I just couldn’t (wouldn’t) make up my mind.

There is, thankfully a cure.
I’ve given myself the chance to think about it, and it comes down to this. I want Hellfire Heroes to be my break-in to the business. It’s what I want to write for my career (as well as I can judge that at this age, at least). It’s dark young adult; horror prodding at the line of fantasy with a very long shoe; sarcastic and somewhat sadistic humour; and chock full of excuses to pull out my criminal psychology text books and pretend I’m working on research while I’m really just having a giddy old time.

So…that means I need to actually finish the thing.
Here goes.

Cheers!

Tags: Banshee, Hellfire Heroes, novel, TDIDW, To Dream In Deep Water
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No, not that many. Feels like it, though.

Next year is going to be very, very busy. I’m always very busy, but this is a step up. Here’s what’s on the roster:

- Summeryear graphic novel (EDIT: Won’t have time, sticking to just one graphic novel at once)
- Starting The Art Academy on deviantART (http://theartacademy.deviantart.com/) with two of my best friends (Kieke-boe and TakaiWolf). If all goes well (we’re doing votes for the teaching positions to be fair) I’ll be posting weekly classes in at least one of our courses along with some administrative stuff as co-founder.
- Music project with another friend. Not much to say about it yet, in its early stages. We’re planning an album, only a vague idea of the sound and no idea if we’d continue it beyond the one project. We’ll see.
- Banshee (possibly, depending on if I decide the graphic novel is a much better medium for me. If so, I’ll put Banshee aside to redo as a comic like I’m doing now with Summeryear) (EDIT: replace ‘Summeryear’ with ‘Pastel Sun’ and it’s still only half true. Not possible this year, but someday.)
- Ashen (Another graphic novel idea. This one won’t be considered as a novel, the themes are too visual) (EDIT: Changed the name to Pastel Sun, this is the main project for the year…and the year after)
- Hoping to update here more frequently as well with short stories and thoughty gobbets.

I have less free time this year than I did during 2009 now with the new day job. Stepping away from the starving artist cliche, but that means slightly less time to work on what I’m passionate about. I plan on getting better at time management.

Speaking of time management, I’ll just note that the graphic novels mentioned will probably stretch into 2011 and I wouldn’t be all that surprised at finishing sometime in 2012. With my digital painting style instead of traditional comic art these are going to be enormously time consuming projects.

I think that’s it for the major schemes.

Cheers for now, and happy holidays.

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I’m young.  I’m still learning about myself and my creative impulses.  So, I’m going to try something.

I’ve always loved the idea of comics and graphic novels, although I never read any at all until recently.  It’s a brilliant mesh between written storytelling and visual art.  I want to be a writer and I want to be an artist.  I figure I’ll try doing both at once and see how it goes.

I expect this to be an enormous project — much bigger than the novel, maybe.  But hell, I can’t learn without trying, so here goes.  First order of business is writing out the script.  I’ll update again once I’ve finished that.

The plan is doing the whole graphic novel in my own digital painted style. Nothing cartoony if I can help it. A daunting project, but if I can pull it off I might find a life calling.

Cheers. (EDIT: Doing this with a new story called Pastel Sun instead)

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I’ve spent the last few nights trying to fall asleep and the last few days trying to stay awake. This isn’t anything new for me, insomnia is something I’ve dealt with most of my life. Every three or four months there’s a week where I just can’t seem to sleep. It’s never bothered me as much as it has this particular week.

If you have ever experienced insomnia — not for a single night or even two, but real, seemingly unending insomnia — then you’ll know what my life has been for this past week. Focus is out the window, creativity is dead in the water. My only thoughts are Oh God, please let me sleep tonight. Naps are a ticket straight to an even longer problem, I’m stuck in a half-wakefulness until it resolves itself.

Insomnia is a waiting game for me, it’s putting my life on hold and I can’t do a damn thing about it. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I honestly can’t say if I can finish NaNoWriMo at this point. I would be doing the last half in the final week, and it’s not out of line to say that’s simply too much.

It’s possible, sure. There’s a faint glimmer of hope for the possibility of my winning this but I would have to put other projects aside. Plus of course, that’s all assuming that I’ll be able to sleep tonight or the next night.

Alongside NaNo I’ve been working on a contest entry for deviantART. The theme is “Dreams”, and I’ve only got a few hours in on the painting so far. It’s due December eighth.

I don’t have time to do both. If I finish NaNoWriMo and reach 50K in time I’ll probably be too creatively exhausted to paint all hours of the day the week before the contest closes like I would need to to finish this in time.

I’m going to be running a week long sprint either way — that’s assuming I can run at all.

Tags: NaNoWriMo
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This has been an insane week.
Let’s just say funerals don’t inspire much creativity in me. So, sadly, I haven’t been working a whole lot. But starting monday I should have all the time in the world to myself again, so I can zoom through what needs to be done before November. By the looks of it Summeryear will be on hold until after NaNoWriMo, which has gotten me fairly peeved at myself. Wicked Words short story contest entry is coming along nicely enough, and I’ll probably need to binge outline a bit to catch up to where I’d like to be on Rusalka.

I have no idea how my schedule is going to work once I start at my new day job. Let’s just hope I can get some writing done alongside shifts.

Tags: update
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My aunt sent me a link to a writing contest today. I think it would be a fantastic smaller project for me.

Wicked Words

I think I might finish the rough draft of that story I started a couple of weeks ago and see how I like it to fit. It has to be under 1500 words, so I could whip up something else too if need be. Gonna give this story a shot first, though.

So I’ll be working on that for a while, as well as outlining Rusalka. If I don’t get enough time or inspiration to edit Summeryear before NaNoWriMo it might have to wait until December. Which, while it wouldn’t be the end of the world…I don’t particularly want that to happen.

Either way, I’m still making progress. I’m still working. Very nearly finished Suntamer, and I have another couple art projects in the works. Five hundred words into this short story right off the bat, and Rusalka is starting to really speak to me.

Tags: short story, wicked words writing contest
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Okay, posting Work This Week every week doesn’t seem to work as well as I’d thought, partly because…I’d end up repeating myself a whole lot because my projects take so long. But! This week I should actually be doing something new. Namely, finishing something.

Suntamer: Almost-ish finished. The painting will almost certainly be finished by Thursday or Friday, and then the tutorial will come next week. I’m getting very, very excited about this piece now.

Rusalka: On October 1st I will have officially started the intense outlining period before NaNoWriMo. It’s decided now, I’m writing the first half of Rusalka in November, then slowly working on that and Novem Ursus afterwards.

Summeryear: Sadly still in a slump. Alliteration alert. I’ve been trying to edit that, but it’s not going spectacularly. Like I’ve said, I’m a binge writer and a binge editor. The inspiration will come, and I can’t be too hard on myself because I have still been very productive, just on my other projects. Which is fine, because I had been neglecting them lately.

Novem Ursus: In a slow, relatively half-assed outlining phase. I can’t start writing this until December anyway, so I have plenty of time to work out an outline. Mostly on brainstorming for now, as well as rereading OotP, as that’s the book the fanfic takes place in.

Those are the highlights for the week as well as where I am in the projects overall. Things are going well.

Tags: work this week
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Contrary to what you might think when you look at my deviantART page, I have been painting a lot lately. I just haven’t been finishing things, because I’ve been trying to spend more time on each work. And thus, I have not posted something new in a while.

But now, because I wanted to damn well finish something, we have a portrait of Fiona Breens. I was trying out a new style, and I think it was a moderate success. It was a very quick piece, but altogether I think I’m happy with it.

http://amorebravekitten.deviantart.com/art/Fiona-Breens-137932907

For those interested, Fiona is a character from a Harry Potter fanfiction I am in the process of outlining.  I’m going to write the first half of Rusalka for NaNoWriMo, and then start writing this fanfic (titled Novem Ursus for the moment…I seem to like non-English titles) in December.

Tags: Art, digital, fanfic, fiona breens, harry potter, novem ursus, painting, portrait
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Been quiet for a while, oops!

Most of this week has been spent brainstorming on the potential of a graphic novel alongside my other projects as well as painting through the days.

I’ve been trying out a few cartoony styles, varying from not-quite-anime to not-quite-realism, and I haven’t really found one I’m comfortable with yet. I do want to tell this story (it’s one that’s been in my head for the last four or five years), but a graphic novel might just be outside my talent. Or else, I’ve just spent too much time working on realism that I need far more practice with comic styles before I can put it together. Maybe it’ll end up more like a heavily illustrated novel than a comic, only time will tell.

I’m going to be out of town Friday to Sunday(ish), so I’m trying to get the Suntamer painting finished before I leave. I think I’ve been working on this on and off for about a month now, with something like fifteen hours put in and probably about halfway complete.

Even if I do manage to finish the painting before I leave, I doubt I’ll have time to put together the tutorial. That’s a project for next week. I’m planning for the tutorial to mostly cover colour tips, detail, and textures, but that might change. I’m absolutely not qualified to discuss anatomy just yet, as I tend to spend half my time fiddling with my sketch until it looks at least almost properly proportioned. We all have our strengths.

I’m sad to say I haven’t been working on Summeryear much at all lately. My creativity tends to come in bursts for each of my projects, so once this Summeryear slump ends I’ll zoom through it. I suppose I’m a bit of a binge writer.

Just a quick update to show I am still alive and working.
Cheers.

Tags: Comic, graphic novel, painting, suntamer, update
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I like the idea of summarizing my projects every week and saying what I’ll be up to for the next little while. So here’s the first incarnation of that maybe-weekly-update. I imagine it’ll get more informative/interesting when I have more projects going on, but it’s a pretty clear Summeryear week coming up.

SUMMERYEAR
- Giving up the wait for two remaining beta readers. Kind of annoyed with them both. Won’t mention names.
- Going to start the second edit on Monday, and that’ll likely take me a week or two. After that, I’ll send a copy to one or two new (or old, if they want) beta readers for any final suggestions. Then, I’ll give it one more quick read through and edit and send it off into the world of agents and publishers and rejection letters. Which reminds me…I still need to research publishing houses and the like. Probably while the last beta readers have their copies.
- In case I forgot to mention, I have a deadline for myself on Halloween to have it ready to send out.

RUSALKA
- Outlining/writing is being put (mostly) on hold while I edit Summeryear. I’m going to try to isolate at least a half hour or so to brainstorm and keep the ideas fresh in my mind during that time.

SUNTAMER (painting/tutorial)
- Hoping to finish the painting within the week. I’m not entirely sure if that’ll happen, but we’ll see. This is the most time I’ve spent on one piece before, so I’m trying to make it as close to perfect as possible.
- After the painting is finished, I’m going to use the process screenshots to write a digital painting tutorial for deviantART and here. Never done that before, so we’ll see how it goes.

THOUGHTY GOBBETS
- I made a bit show of explaining what a thoughty gobbet was, and of course haven’t actually posted any yet. I’ll get to it. Didn’t have time because I was out of town this past week. That’s definitely on the to-do list for probably Monday or Tuesday. I’ve got a few topics I think would make interesting posts.

Until next week.

Cheers.

Tags: Art Tips, Hellfire Heroes, painting, Summeryear, this, Thoughty Gobbet, tutorial, week, work
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