The Words, They Fly From My Fingertips

Yay!  I have finally buckled down and continued the editing process on my book (Shadow of the Western Moon).  Today I got through all of chapter 14 and much to my surprise had very little correcting to do.  I had a few dropped words here and there as well as some that I had double typed, but other than that, not much to do in the corrections department this time around.  Usually I have numerous corrections to make due to poor sentence structure that confuses the wording.  I personally find this annoying because the most common cause of this is my brain gets ahead of my fingers while typing, thus, I end up with multiple thoughts trying to fit into one sentence… doesn’t work that well.  Luckily, I know what I was thinking at the time and can go back, break the sentence apart and make it understandable to anyone that isn’t me. 

I hope to have the whole first edit of the book done by the end of the first week of January so that I can then have someone come behind me and read it to see what I missed and/or need to add clarity to.  Just to give you an idea of the amount of material that had been added since I finished writing the book and started my first edit…  I finished the book with a 50,156 word total.  My current word count is 52,296 words.  My (hopeful) goal by the time I complete all edits on the book and get it to the point that I think it would be ready to try to sell it is a minimum of 70,000 words.  Don’t know if I will get there but that is my goal.  I just am afraid of pushing too hard to get there because I don’t want it to sound forced.  The first 50,156 words all came natural as have the 2,140 words I have added since starting the edit.

Anyways, I know you don’t care about my rambling, so without further delay here is the next little snippet.  This is a rather important character to the story and this is third time you meet her in the book, yet she is not formally introduced till later in the book.  Enjoy.

She awoke with a start.  All around her the darkness swirled uneasily.  Looking around she saw a pinprick of light on the horizon.  Hope filled her heart as she watched the light, thinking that Cain had come for her at last. 

          The light grew brighter and larger at an alarming rate.  Raising her hand and calling out his name, she was certain that it was Cain, here for her at long last. 

She barely had time to flinch as the light pierced her belly, ripping into her flesh as her vision was filled with white light and pain racked her being.  She found that she could not move as a sensation of weightlessness filled her body. 

Forcing her eyes to focus, she saw that she was surrounded by a thick for that mostly obscured sight of her surroundings.  From the best that she could tell, she was in a large well lit room that was round in shape though she could not see a light source or what materials the room was made out of.  Before she could focus on what was holding her immobile in the foggy room, darkness swirled across her vision and the weightless sensation vanished as she collapsed onto the blackened floor of her prison once more. 

The darkness swirling around her once more, she found herself able to move.  She curled into a ball on the floor, clutching her hands to her belly where the light had struck her.  The pain that racked her form was brilliantly intense and where her hands touched she felt a warm wetness.  Looking down she saw a jagged hole torn into her flesh that was bleeding profusely.

Gasping in shock, she stared at the hole, not knowing what to do.  As she watched the bleeding slowed and the pain eased down to a dull throb.  There was something familiar about the wound though, try as she might she could not quite summon the memory to fill in the gap for her.

Regret

No postings about my book today, sorry, I have been lazy this week when it comes to editing.  I do however have a little piece I wrote to share with you.  Sorry if it is a downer but that is the way things are sometimes.

Regret.  That is all that there seems to be in life sometimes, regret.  Should have, could have, would have.  I find myself saying those phrases over and over when looking back at the life that I have lived, a life of regret.  Oh the things I would have done differently if I knew the things I knew now.  All those times that I froze up when instead I should have spoken up to let people know how I truly feel.  Now all there is regret.  Regret at times long gone, that will never be returned to me.  Regret for never being able to be who I want to be due to my choices in life.  Regret for all the opportunities I wasted to become what I have always desired yet never had the courage to make happen. 

My life is regret.  Time is too late now to change a thing.  Sometimes I pray to God that he will take me home just so I won’t have to suffer with these feelings anymore.  It’s not that I have a bad life; I actually have a rather good life considering all the things in my past that I regret.  But in looking back I also see the fact that if I had done those things I regret not doing when I had the chance, I would not be who I am today.  Am I doomed to forever feel regret for my past that will forever prevent me from being who I always wished to be?  Or will I, one day be content with what I have now due to those past choices that have led me to where I am in my life? 

Time for a new look...

It is time for a new look to this blog.  Why?  Because I say so, that’s why.  I haven't been focusing on poetry as much recently as I would have liked to and what I have written I have not been satisfied with enough to actually publish on this blog.  I know I am not a good poet by far but the experiments that I performed by writing the poems for this blog have been good for me I think.  Now to let you know what I have been up too…

In November, I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and as it was such, I wrote a novel (Novel in this case is defined as 50,000 words of more).  I was able to complete my novel in by November the 25^th and because of the stress of writing that much that fast, I decided to take some time off from writing afterward.  I am not a professional writer, nor have I ever taken any writing classes, so the novel was an attempt to see if I could do it and if I enjoyed it.  Turns out I enjoyed it quite a bit, plus I think the novel isn’t half bad. 

Since that is the case once December rolled around I started the editing process on my novel.  So far I am about three quarters of the way through the first edit.  I have added about 2,000 words to the original body of work as well as correcting a lot of the grammar mistakes I have made in the initial writing of the story.  My ultimate goal by the time I finish all of the editing for the book is to have between 70,000 and 100,000 words.  I don’t know how to accomplish this, but hey, I will let the story go where the story goes.

Because of this I am going to start to use this blog as a place where I can update my readers (You) about the progress of my book as I take it through the editing process.  I may also place excerpts from the book in here from time to time.  In fact I am going to give a little run down of the story at the end of this post and maybe even a small excerpt to tantalize your tastes.

I am not dropping my poetry, for those of you who may have actually found it interesting, I am just adding more to the format than what was there before.  Pretty much, this blog is going to cover all of my nonpolitical material.  If you want to read my political material you can do so at “Political Discourse”.  Just be warned, I have my views that I openly express there and if you don’t like them, you don’t have to read it.  If you want to have an intelligent discussion about any of my posts, feel free to comment, but keep in mind, I delete offensive comments.

Ok back to the matters of the book.  Here was my original synopsis of my story before I ever started to actually write it…

“The novel is a bit of a fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk-ish story. It is set on a mostly desert world and follows a thief who steals an important artifact that is the key to bringing life back to a dying world. Soon he has all sorts of assassins and government officials looking for him to reclaim the artifact. The problem is nobody really knows what the artifact really does, all they know is the legend that behind the artifact and, unfortunately, that doesn't say how the artifact is supposed to be used. The thief steals the artifact not knowing that it is the artifact from the legend and once he learns what it is, he sets out to learn how to use it; little does he know what the secret it unlocks will change his life forever.”

Little did I know that the book once I started it would take a completely different turn story wise.  Turns out that the world isn’t quite a desert world and the main character, Jonah, while he is a thief, does very little thieving in the book.  He was supposed to be the only main character of the story, yet I have multiple characters that were in throwaway roles that stepped up and became very important to the story.  One of those throwaways even became a second main character by marrying Jonah.  The artifact that Jonah was supposed to steal ended up coming to him through legal means and in a form that was very unexpected. 

But that is enough about the story for now.  I will leave you with the excerpt I posted to the NaNoWriMo site. 

Beyond the city walls Jonah could see farm lands where the peasants toiled attempting to grow what fruits and vegetables they could in the harsh environment on the edge of the wasteland.  The wastelands formed a natural barrier several miles to the west, protecting the city from too much contact with its closest neighbor, Ib. 

          Ib was a city shrouded in mystery, because so few people are brave enough to make the journey across the wasteland, though the tales that come from the few merchants that do take their trade that way are fascinating.  They tell of a city made of metal that is filled with mutants that resembled a cross between a man and lizard, known as Ibians.  The merchants speak of the strange backward speech of the Ibian people and the odd customs that they have, including one involving a giant monolithic statue made of a strange black metal at the center of the city.  The merchants say that around the night of the twin full moons, the citizens of Ib gather in the massive square that surround the statue and dance the night away while getting drunk on the a vile black sludge that smells of sewage.  While Jonah found the descriptions of the customs interesting, the part of this story that interested Jonah the most was in the description of the monolith itself.

          The statue, while made out of a strange black metal, is engraved on all four sides with many images of strange animals and plants, the likes of which, no one has ever seen before.  The Ibian claim that they are memories of a time long past when the planet was lush and thrived with life while hinting that maybe, one day the planet will thrive once more.  There is one particular image, that of a young human female that had once walked the earth, spreading joy and life everywhere she traveled. This female, the Ibians claim, is the one who will restore the world to its former glory, bringing life out of a desolate planet and giving hope to all. 

In the image of the girl there is a large sparkling stone unlike anyone has seen anywhere else that is embedded into the center of her stomach.  That, the Ibians say, is the key to awakening her.  This stone is the prize Jonah had decided would be the focus of his next big heist.  If he could retrieve that precious stone successfully he would have pulled off a one of a kind job that no one has ever achieved before and never would be able to pull off again. 

          Casting an eye toward the sky, Jonah saw it was beginning to get dark, so he turned and made his way down the stairs that led from the bell tower into the body of the church. 

          As he neared the door leading into the sanctuary area, he stopped to listen and, not hearing anything, he cracked the door open while stepping through.  As soon as he got the door shut behind himself as silently as possible, something hit him hard on the back of the head causing stars to swim across his vision.

Hope you enjoyed that little snippet.