It's Officially Done or I Read Till My Eyes Bled

It is official!  I have finished my first edit of “Shadow of the Western Moon”.  That’s right, you heard me.  I finished the FIRST edit…  Now the book is going to my faithful proof reader to tell me where, how and why it sucks…  But enough negativity, I finished the first edit and that is all that matters.  Reading through the novel I found numerous errors that I am rather ashamed of , but, when you take into consideration that I wrote this whole book in 25 days, I think the errors can be excused to a point.  The most common error that I have is using then instead of than.  Yay!  Grammer Nazis attack that foul mistake pronto! 

Anyway, on a more serious note, I ended with 53,903 words in my word count.  That is 16,097 words shy of the minimum that I want the final edit of this book to be.  Once my proof reader gets done with it and hands it back with all the red lines and red ink corrections, we will see what I can do about adding those 16,097 words. 

All in all, I actually deleted about 4,000 words in the editing process, but added around 7,000 words to it while editing.  So an extra 3,000ish words added to the original word count is not bad by my standing. 

I am still wondering if I should add the chapter titles like I mentioned in the last blog post.  I would like to hear some feedback from the people who read my blogs on what they think.

Anyway, I know you all want to have another excerpt from the book so I guess I can leave you with one more just to tease and tantalize you.  Enjoy.

Alissa leaned over and kissed him deeply  when Jonah settled down beside where she had taken a prone position in order to get the most stability for the rifle.  Feeling her tongue swirl gently in his mouth he gave in and kissed her in return.  Quickly she broke the kiss and looked into Jonah’s eyes.

          “Just in case,” she started.  “You know, if things go bad...”  She trailed off from what she was saying then dropped her right eye to the scope before squeezing off the first round.

          The explosion from the shot caused Jonah’s ears to ring smartly as the rifle recoiled violently against Alissa's shoulder.  She took the recoil with ease as if this were a common practice for her.  She quickly ejected the shell and had a new round chambered, ready to fire again. 

          Jonah turned his attention back to the followers that appeared as a shapeless mass at the center of the cloud of dust that followed them.  Just as he turned his attention back he saw a twisted, formless shape flip into the air from the mass right before another shot rang out into the air, seconds later another shape flew into the air. 

          Looking back to Alissa he could clearly see that she was enjoying herself as she fired round after round into the mass, though the mass did not seem to slow despite her efforts, if anything it was steadily drawing closer.  Once again Jonah checked his gun before looking back to the front of the cart. 

          Rasheed worked the controls of the clockwork horses like a madman, throwing the levers wildly as he tried to push them faster than seemed possible, Lilly had a small pistol out in her right hand while her left arm was wrapped protectively around Basheer.  She was looking to the rear of the cart and updating Rasheed on the progress that was made by the followers.  She saw Jonah watching and smiled reassuringly, despite the worry that was etched into her brow. 

          Off to the distance Jonah could see the churning waters of the river Thane, but as fast as the clockwork horses could carry the cart, he knew that they would not reach the river in time.  He turned back to rear of the cat and now realized he could see the creatures that followed.  He could now see that it was the same type of creatures that had attacked the farmlands and killed his parents while taking Father Mallory's leg when he was a child.  Jonah had never seen the creatures for himself before, but he had heard enough stories over the course of his life that he knew them by sight. 

          There seemed to be hundreds of them following behind, striding impossibly fast on impossibly long legs in an effort to catch the cart.  Their writhing skin and morphing bodies caused him to shudder in revulsion.  The creatures came at them moving quicker than Jonah could have ever imagined that they could move and soon they were nearly upon the wagon. 

          Jonah stood up, took aim with his revolver and pulled the trigger for the first time.  The recoil was much stronger than he anticipated and it knocked him backward onto his ass as the creature he shot seemed to disappear in a spray of blood, bone and gore.  Alissa paused in her shooting long enough to look at Jonah's gun in amazement before going back to work picking at the mass of creatures as fast as she could. 

          Struggling back to his feet Jonah heard a small crack from behind him and knew Lilly had joined in the fray, firing her small pistol at the creatures nearest to her.  Soon as he was back upright, he braced himself as best as he could and squeezed off another round, this time he rocked back with the recoil as the creature he had been aiming at exploded.  Quickly he brought the barrel back down to fire again taking another out in a spray of gore.  Jonah soon got into a rhythm, allowing him to fire shot after shot with surprising speed that was broken only when he needed to reload as the revolver auto ejected the spent rounds as they still smoked.  Jonah struggled to reload the gun the first time, his hands shaking from adrenalin and the sheer power of the weapon in his hand but soon he mastered the process and found it came to him with ease.

          One of the creatures was now close enough to reach into the cart, going for Alissa with an elongated arm that, instead of a hand, had a large spike made of bone, which it thrust forward, seeking her flesh.  Jonah pushed Alissa to the side roughly with his left foot causing the spike to catch him in the calf, shredding through both muscle and bone.  With a gasp of pain Jonah fired on the creature at point blank range as it started to attach itself to his left leg.  Its upper torso vanished as the round hit its flesh causing the now detached spike to wither and fall to the ground. 

I Am Who I Am

No teasers of the novel today, sorry, but I do have an update on it.  I just finished editing Chapter 17 and have started on Chapter 18 which I hope to have done by the end of tonight.  I have thought about giving the individual chapters titles (something that I absolutely adore in other books such as the Parasol Protectorate novels) but I am not sure if I should or not.  I would like to have witty and lighthearted chapter titles but that might not work since the book isn’t that lighthearted.  After all one of the characters is perhaps one of the most unfortunate characters I have ever met.  The things that this woman has been through in her many years of existence would shatter and break the minds of most, yet she perseveres.  She is actually one of the more optimistic characters in the story, yet I think somewhere deep inside there is battered and broken individual who is putting a brave face forward.  But this is me speculating, I haven’t gotten to know her very well due to the small role she has in this book. 

The second book on the other hand should be interesting since I will get a lot more time to spend in her head.  Not that I have started on the second book yet, just saying.  Speaking of the second book, I am going to have four main characters in it.  Two of them I have given you, my dear readers a glimpse of… That would be Jonah and the previously mentioned woman (See previous paragraph), Sephira. The other two are Alissa (she is a big player in the first novel) and the mysterious Doctor Sliss, an Ibian who joins the three main characters at the end of book one, but what is her true purpose?  Anyways, here is the real reason I posted… Enjoy.

I am who I am.  That will never change.  I don’t like what I am.  That will never change.  Very few people know the struggle that I live with every day of my life, even fewer know about the real me.  I want to be free to be me, but I know that that will never happen.  I want to shout from the rooftops, tell the world who I am inside, shatter the illusion I maintain for the sake of society.  I want to tell the world so that I don’t have to pretend anymore.  I want to be able to be who I am not who people think I should be.  I want to break these chains that I have placed on myself to hold me in, shatter them and scatter them to the corners of the earth, but that will never happen.

The world is a dangerous place for people like me.  We have no place that we belong, no place to retreat to when the world is out to get us.  Once the world finds out who we are then it is only a matter of time before we find ourselves beaten and bloody, sometimes physically, sometimes mentally and sometimes spiritually.  The places that we once could go to escape, places that are supposed to be filled with family and love, are shut off.   There is no escape at that point, no way to get away, no place to retreat too.  We are truly alone.

I have to hide myself, tuck my true self into a corner, not letting the world see me for what I truly am.  I do this partially out of fear and partially out of shame.  I’m afraid of what people will think I’m afraid of how they will treat me if only they knew.  I am ashamed of the fear that plagues me.  It causes me to be miserable in my life.  Maybe one day I will revel myself to the world, but that is going to be no time soon.  For now I just sit in this shell and wait, living the lie I live.  No one suspects, no one knows, no one sees, the real me.

The Reflection of Me

I know how much all of you who read my blog are looking forward to more info on my novel, but unfortunately for you that is not what you are getting today.  Sorry to disappoint but just trust me when I say, the editing process is still moving along, though at a slower pace.  When I get done with this edit I am going to let some proof readers at it before I start the second edit... so there, now you at least have a little novel update.

The reflection of me that I see in the mirror is not a reflection on you, Mother.  There is no sense in blaming yourself for the way I turned out.  You couldn’t help the fact that I have felt the way that I have felt throughout the years.  I’m broken and scared of the way I feel but there is nothing I can do to change.  How I wish I had been able to articulate my desires and feelings to you and Dad so that maybe something would have been done to change the way things turned out.  Would you have listened?  Would you have taken me seriously?  Or would you have just hoped that I would grow out of it, saying that it was just a phase that I was going through?  I don’t know, but I do know that it is my fault for not telling you when I should have.  Due to these faults of my own, depression weighs in, burdening my soul. 

The reflection of me I see in the mirror is a reflection of how you, God, made me.  I look to you for answers yet you are silent.  I want to know why, why me?  Why did you do this to me?  Why am I so weak that I could not be honest with my parents about who I am inside?  Was there reason for me to fear their reaction the way that I did?  If so, then why couldn’t you put me with someone who would have been more approachable?  I hate you sometimes for what you have done to me and I want to make you feel the pain that I feel for what you have done to me.  I feel like the cosmic joke that exists only for your amusement and I despise you for it.  Say something damn it!  Tell me why!  I hate you so much I could cry but I won’t give you the satisfaction of seeing my tears.  It’s not my parents fault I who I am today, the fault lies with you and me. 

The reflection I see when I look in the mirror is not a reflection of me instead it is a stranger I see.

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. 

The Fire

As the fire consumes my soul again,

Why do I feel so cold?

I want to feel your warmth once more

I reach out, for you, to hold.

But I feel that there is only emptiness,

no warmth upon my soul.

I miss your feel, I miss your touch,

I ache to feel whole.

In the end all I feel is loneliness, despair,

as this fire consumes my soul.