Nethermore

My Nethermore progress bar has been stuck for a while now at around 40% done on the first draft of the novel. I’ve spent many a night staring at the ceiling while I tried to figure out what exactly has stopped me in my tracks.

Several ideas have come to mind, and I’m not sure if I’m addressing the real issues or am only seeing symptoms of a bigger problem. I think I’ve started the story incorrectly, or at least started some of the viewpoints in the wrong way. The book has been largely unfocused as far as what the characters are doing and what they want. This makes for bad fiction. Who wants to read about someone with no drive, or no discernable goals, or so many goals that the character can’t decide what to do? That’s way too much like real life.

I spent all my writing time this weekend–yes, I did find some!–reworking some plot points and the beginnings for two of the three main viewpoint characters. The outline that I’ve come up with will hopefully cure some of the problems that were holding me back. The beginnings are snappier now, and get into the meat of the conflicts that the characters are dealing with. One of the biggest changes I’m making is combining two major characters and one minor character into just one character. That’s change the plot considerably, but it’s trimmed it down and made the remaining character more interesting to me. This change will also make for a shorter book (meaning, I’ll probably hit the 200k mark instead of going considerably over that).

Man, this novel business is hard work.

In other news, take a look at our Ninja pictures from World Con. I’m on the far left, followed by Bryce, Dan, and Kimball. We had just arrived back from the Nippon 2007 party and were probably suffering from the effects of having eaten squid-sicles.

Arrived from California around 2:00 am this morning. It’s been a crazy week and a great convention. California was a wonderful place to hold WorldCon, what with the temperate weather and cool attractions. Some of my favorite things weren’t even at the Convention. For example, Downtown Disney has the Lego Store that I went to twice. The second time, I spent an hour building rockets from their bins of Legos that you can buy. It was like being a kid again. I almost took off on Saturday to find the Legoland attraction that is somewhere around there.

The convention was fun too. There was a nice variety of people and panels. I’ll post more about the happenings of this when I’m actually able to unpack everything.

Brandon invited me to sign books with him for his book signings in Pocatello and Idaho Falls this last weekend. So I took Friday off from work and spent the day at the Pocatello Waldenbooks, where Ryan (the manager) and his staff were very friendly and accommodating.

It was a ton of fun to get to talk to Brandon’s fans and have them ask me to sign their maps. Having two people at the signing was nice, too, because while one of us was talking, the other could snag interested people and hold their attention long enough sometimes to get them to buy books.

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Idaho Falls Barnes and Noble. Julie, the marketing manager, rolled out the red carpet and got us drinks, kept the display stocked, and even called three local television stations in to do interviews.

Both signings were very successful from a book-selling standpoint, and what’s more, I’m recharged and motivated to finish my own book to get me closer to the day when it won’t be just the artwork that I’m signing, but the book as well.

Cory Doctorow, proponent for free media and the internet (and a talented science fiction author) has written an interesting commentary called Science Fiction is the Only Literature People Care Enough About to Steal on the Internet for Locus Magazine.

In other news, I’ve got my mind cleared up on some things that were crowding out the novel. That happens to me sometimes, but usually not for very long. And after this week, the insane holidays and busy-ness will be at an end for a little while. I’m housesitting for some friends and will have their place to retreat to for the next week, and I’m hoping to get back on track with Nethermore starting then.

I’ll also try get some more interesting blog posts up, too, in order to make up for the past few weeks.

Yesterday was the first time I’ve missed posting during a weekday. Sure, it was a holiday, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t working on the website. I finally got one of the galleries up and going!

Just click on the Portfolio link at the top of the page and go from there.

Check back! I’ll be updating and adding to the galleries as I often as I get a chance to.

I’m tired of the fry sauce color of the blog, so expect an updated design by Monday. I hope to have some of the galleries up and working by that time as well. I’m changing to a left-side sidebar format with a little more open space for the actual writing. The site will thereafter be based upon the Fluidity WordPress theme by Kaushal Sheth.

Spent some time with a friend last night who is into astral projection, metaphysics, and lucid dreaming. The conversation got my mind to racing about how to solidify some of the dream interactions that take place in Nethermore.

It’s been quite the busy week what with the deadline for Writers of the Future being today and all the other stuff that’s been going on. Guess I should hold my breath a little longer. An even busier week is coming up.

—”Stewart!”