Wordage

I still make the grade even when I'm being bad...

And that is very sad.

A little while ago, I joined an online writer's group to give me additional impetus to do some work on 'A Kookaburra's Laugh' (AKL). I was a little lost on how things were to operate, but I think I've figured things out. I'm never said I was the sharpest tool in the shed, or should that be sharpest pencil in the case?

Still, the rules state I need to write a minimum 1000 words a month on a declared project. My project is AKL (obviously), and this is my word count. I've only been tracking wordage since December 2008 where I wrote nearly 16,000 words, but I've been keeping a written tally since Feb 09.

Feb - 14135
Mar - 7848
Apr - 6147

And so far in May 09 - 1900. Notice a trend...anyone....?

How sad is that? Two days left in May to add to that miserable target, but at least I still got my minimum done. Yay for small victories. (a very small yay)

In other news:

Some links I couldn't resist sharing with you.

Every writer's friend, Mr JA Konrath, has listed some excellent advice to published writers, but I think getting these things right at any level, published or unpublished, should be a priority.

The irrepressible Janet Reid has a lovely post about the courage of some writers. To be perfectly honest, I couldn't do it.

And lastly, here's a post from Alan Rinzler about POV and a bit on the whole publishing process which I thought was a worthwhile read.

So this weekend, in among shopping for a new secondhand car, I need to seriously complete my second-to-last assignment for this semester, and aim for a couple of chapters drafted in AKL. Oh, and I need to read quite a lot as I'm falling behind (I should probably stop playing with my daughter's DS - it gets quite addictive battling with Pokemon).

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Worthwhile

On Monday I went into town. While there I had a follow up appointment with the back specialist - I need to seriously start an exercise regime - organise a student ID card - so I can get into Conjecture next month on the cheap - and visit a book shop for some research.

I was very proud of myself for not buying anything, even though I visited three book shops!

I needed to locate where my book, AKL, would sit on the shelf so I could pinpoint the type of book I'm writing in regards to genre, and to help me better describe it when talking about it with other interested parties - you know, agents, publishers, and the like ;c)

It was a bit of an eye-opener.

Is my book historical fiction? Yes. It takes place in colonial Australia back in 1839 with fictional characters in a real time and place, and with real events of the period happening around them.

Is it paranormal? Yes. It involves European superstitions of the time, Aboriginal Dreamtime legends, and a malevolent ghost.

Is it romance? Yes, but not so much. My protagonist falls for one man, who betrays her and later she falls for the right man, but this isn't the main focus of the plot or theme. There is a fair bit of underlying (and mildly graphic) sex and passion which breaches the surface on a regular basis to firmly place it in the adult reading sphere.

Is it literary? Yes. The plot centres around a young woman's struggle to survive in an inhospitable climate and against a male dominated society. So the quintessential coming of age/finding one's place type of story.

So I have a paranormal historical romance novel??? What???!!!

While at the book store, I took note of other historical novels. 'The Potato Factory' by Bryce Courtenay; 'A Kingdom for the Brave' by Tamara McKinley; 'Nindra' by Dianne Holding - just to name a few.

AKL is a little like all of these, but with more. In many instances, that more is the paranormal element. Currently, my story wouldn't have a final Act without the paranormal bits. The first two Acts were written pretty much without any paranormal input (I'm waiting to write the last bit so I can go back and do plants (layering). The first half works without it, but a story isn't a story without an ending (as Aaron has so neatly pointed out here). In other bits, my use of sex is more prominent (re: graphic) than many other historical novels.

So how to define my book succinctly? Carrie Harris, as part of the Query Ninja Project (if you haven't checked this out yet you definitely should), puts some great advice on the table to help with this. Unfortunately, my assignment, which started this round of thinking about query letters, asks me to name the genre my book fits into. Personally I like the idea of painting a picture of the book with enough detail that the genre is fairly obvious to any agent/publisher who reads it, but I can't side-step this assignment requirement.

In my real-world query, I'll paint the picture and let those in the industry, who should be better at it than I am, decide for themselves.

So that leaves me with the assignment. How do I nominate a genre for this book? A hard question as I haven't fully finished writing the first draft, and none of you have read any of it, but any suggestions on how I can narrow this down, at least for the assignment, would be appreciated.

Does anyone else have this difficulty?

Sick

Stepping down from my soapbox...

With thanks to JT and Cate for spreading the virus around to all bloggers. I've spent the last two days battling with disgusting things trying to escape from my body - and I think the major battles are still to come - joy.

Okay, so maybe my daughter had some influence with me becoming sick, but it sounds better to have been transmitted through cyberspace...don't you think?

I did manage to drag my sorry ass to the computer a couple of times and get some work done. Another assignment went out the door last night, and in an effort to find my 750 word piece for another assignment, I started reading the first draft of AKL. Some of this stuff I haven't read for over six months.

Result: I've written some bits quite passively, other bits are a little slow, but I quite like a lot of it. I know I still have to go back and add in the supernatural clues in the early bits, but that will happen once I finish the first draft. I'll then go back and do the layering.

I was able to do some additions as I read through today, but mainly I started a must remember to do list, like researching a type of wildlife, like renaming ships and characters, like finding loose plot points which need tying up that I'd forgotten about, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I managed to get through the first 11 chapters. Only 12 more to go. I've earmarked a couple of passages which may be useful for the assignment, but I still haven't gotten to the big action scenes I wrote earlier this year. If worse comes to worse and I start running out of time, I can revert to analysing another authors work - I've read some great stuff recently so this would be the easy option. Still, I'd like to be able to use my own.

Even if I wasn't sick, I'd be working from home tomorrow. I have a huge amount of project reading to do and initial plans to draw up for my real job. So some time of an evening is all I'm left to work with on my writing. I am not a morning person. If only I could win lotto - but lets not open up the writing full time argument again...

;c)

Regardless of when, how much, or what you write - I wish you all the very best in your writing endeavours.

AKL Update

I think I've posted enough today so this is just a quick one. I managed to do some work on AKL. Some of it is okay, some of it I can already see will need work, but that's fine. The bits requiring work are only narrative to move the story forward - all the really important other bits are there.
The result is another 1900 words added and another chapter completed. This is a bit of a cheat as I'd begun chapter 23 when I was last on my role with this project. Still, a finished chapter is a finished chapter. What's more, this chapter marks the end of my midpoint crisis. Things will just continue to escalate from here, and the supernatural influence will stop being subtle and start to seriously take over. Cool.

Highs & Lows

Today I received an assignment back from Kirsty Brooks, my lecturer for the module concerning my AKL manuscript. So far this year, every assignment (in both modules) has gathered a B grade. Today, my assignment reached an A.

It contained excerpts from AKL which got very positive feedback, so I was over the moon.

Time to get to work and knock off the remaining assignments for this semester.

In other news, I received a rejection back for Spoilt Rotten - but a nice rejection. Apparently the editor has had few in a similar vein. He did remark that it was well written, but I'm guessing it wasn't the best of a large bunch (my assumption, not his). With two months to go before deadline, I do have a lead on another story, but I'm guessing I won't be the only one with that lead either...and I don't want to write a new short right now.

I've finished plumbing the new vanity unit and the silicon has firmly attached the top to the carcass. Only some tiling and painting left to go in the bathroom - two jobs I don't particularly enjoy. Still, renovations are moving forward which is a good thing.

My day job has started to seriously ramp up. Two projects I've been after for years have been approved within a day of each other. Today I had the pleasure of spending tens of thousands of someone else's money. Next week begins probably a solid three months of work.

The bad point here is the influx of projects will completely kill my writing time at work. This will, in turn, increase my need for writing time at home, meaning less time for anything else. That won't fly, and I don't blame my wife or kids for not allowing it. I can be obsessive with my writing to the point of spending six hours a night, every night, at the keyboard.

So, there will be less writing done over the coming months as life gets in the way. That's okay. I know what's coming so I'm prepared for it.

I have no new stories currently under way. I do have a couple outlined and sitting on the sidelines waving at me, and there's the lead to replace Spoilt Rotten, but I refuse to commence work on them (currently). The Salisbury Writers Festival and associated competition is fast approaching as well, but it looks like I'll be missing it this year - the contest that is, not sure about the festival - have to wait and see what the program has in it.

I need to concentrate on assignments and AKL. My initial deadline for AKL was the end of next month - 7 weeks away. I'm approximately 48,000 words short of finishing it. It's NaNoWriMo over two months instead of one, but I know I won't make it - but I will get close.

Starting now...

Tired

I've spent many hours in the chair this weekend but I have a few things to show for it - no acceptances or anything (actually no rejections either), but lots of stuff done.

Today I finished a quick revision of chapter 20 of AKL and moved on to chapter 21, and then on to chapter 22. I worked chapter 23 into 22 so I've currently shortened the book to exactly 40 chapters. After taking some away, adding others and writing whole new swathes of words, I've ended up adding 2742 words to it. The other good point about this, is I'm starting to add heaps of footnotes. These are little reminders of things I have to go back and do once I've finished the first draft. Things which will add to the layers, foreshadowing and clues and plants and the like - very cool when the brain starts dropping those things in already - it's like weaving a more complex story on the side. Almost like I'm starting to see in more than the black letters on white screen dimension...it's really becoming alive.

Next thing off the start line was a draft version of my next assignment. This is the POV assignment I've mentioned some time ago. At 1000 words, I'm pretty happy with it, but I'll let it sit for a day, give it another once over and then fire it off - lets see if I can raise the average from the standard B I seem to be getting this year.

Then I had a break to watch Ferrari do woefully in the Chinese Grand Prix - although I was stoked to see Mark Webber get second. Finally he's in a good car and could get a good result this year. Wet weather + no driver aids + new drivers at the top of the standings = interesting race.

I then fired off an email to someone I'm doing a manuscript critique for, claiming the need for more time due to my run away session on AKL this morning. I'm halfway through and promised to at least get through a couple more chapters tonight. Well the roll-on bug hit me again and I managed to get a lot further than I first thought I would. It's looking good to be completed tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. Promise.

So with all the bits and pieces added together, I've come close to 5000 words today with over half of them being solely for AKL. I'm happy with that, and very tired.

My holiday is over so it's back to work tomorrow. That should be fun. No doubt I'll have a full morning going through mindless email, and then an afternoon of catching up on everything which went wrong while I was away--and has been held over to be fixed until I got back - hopefully not. A good day would be no hassles, a quick skim through email, and then plenty of time to work on my own little projects ;c)

Hope you had a good weekend. I apologise for not being a particularly good blog citizen lately. I've been a little under the pump - not a real excuse but it's the only one I've got. I'll try to do better.

Speak soon.

BT

A Saturday Post

This is a first for a while. Normally I have Saturday's off but the whole family was out doing other things and left all on my lonesome - so I got stuck in - to start with...

I managed to write chapter 21 of AKL bringing my weekly output to just under 3500. Way short of what I'd like but then added with the rest of what I've written, it actually surpasses my target for the week so I'm not going to bitch about it. Check it out - the bean man has finally hit 50% - it's all down hill from here! Woohoo...

I managed another 5 chapters critiqued in the manuscript I'm working on so that makes it halfway. I'm hoping to get another 10 or so done tomorrow.

I will also get two assignment drafts done, and hopefully get a chance to do a bit on the Xmas antho piece - we'll see.

I've started reading Aurealis issue 41 - the girls of horror edition. So far - it's good, very good.

Then I was interrupted by qualifying for the F1 and by my team playing in the AFL. Ferrari are going crap this year - so far - and my team got thumped.

Time for bed.

BT

Busy Day

I wrote up the two reviews of the books I read over Easter and posted them on GoodReads. Others have already posted reviews of them on HorrorScope so I figured I didn't need to add to them. If you haven't yet, you should all go and join GoodReads. You'll get cool widgets to display your book collections and be able to read heaps of reviews - by me and others.

I took my little one to see "Race to Witch Mountain" which was okay for a kids flick. My little one seemed to enjoy it and at least the lad from High School Musical wasn't in it.

Then I came home and started reading a YA manuscript for a friend. First thoughts have been sent back and I'll get to the line edits tomorrow. I probably won't be finished with it till some time over the weekend.

I did a revision on my Christmas antho piece (now titled Spoilt Rotten) and sent that out to the same friend so they could have the honour of ripping it apart first. When returned, I'll do a revision and then send to my other beta readers - stay tuned.

My sister dropped by to borrow another book from my growing collection and return Alex Sokoloff's "The Harrowing" - which she agreed was a very good book. I'll be posting my review of it on HorrorScope shortly so keep an eye out for that as well.

My back and legs are hurting a bit tonight, so I don't think I'll accomplish anymore on the writing front today. Chapters 21 to 24 encompass the midpoint climax in AKL and a ramping up of the pace which increases all the way to the end of the book, but 21 in particular is the main character's major turning point. It's here they realise the bigger importance of their inner desire as opposed to the external want. If, and it's a big if, I can get out of bed at a reasonable hour, I'll have a go at writing it tomorrow, before going over an assignment, and then resuming editorial work on the YA manuscript. Might even break all that up with a spot of reading...

Still no news from the market place :(

Here's hoping life is being good to you.

BT

A Quick Update

We're going to go see 'Race to Witch Mountain" tomorrow.

Tonight I received Aaron Polson's manuscript and will devote some time to that over the next few days.

I also wrote another 1312 words to complete chapter 20 of AKL - bean counter will be added at the bottom of the post.

I wrote a travel article of just under 1500 words and submitted it to market. First real freelance thing I've submitted on spec so I'm a bit nervous about this one - fingers crossed.

Transcribed all my ramblings over the Easter weekend from my Dictaphone into three new documents - lots of interesting stuff.

Will update my Good Reads widgets once I've finished posting here with my new acquisitions.

I need to update some areas of the website as well.

It seems I'm paying for my last two weeks of doing naff all by suddenly being inundated with stuff (sorry Aaron) needing to be done yesterday.

Oh, before I forget - pop on over to Alex's blog where she has been continuing with her series on the elements of writing. Some really good advice. Her link can be found in my sidebar if you haven't already subscribed to her feed - and if you haven't, make sure you do now.

I've had no rejections and no acceptances recently. Still no word from Devil's food and no update from Apex on the short listed Dreaming, and nothing from Anne Cecil on the PARSEC contest.

In fact the only news I have had is that my two erotic stories in the UK published anthology "Mammoth Book of Erotic Confessions" is finely going into print next month. Here's the link to buy it on Amazon, although it hasn't actually hit the stores yet as far as I know - I haven't been paid yet at any rate.

That's my quick update. Here's the Bean Counter

Speak soon

BT

A New Short & Another B

I had a few days of this week remaining to do some writing. I wanted to do some work on A Kookaburra's Laugh, but I also noticed that all my current stories are out in the wild. I had a choice. I could work on two stories I haven't retired or I could write something new.

I wrote something new. 3690 words of Christmas horror. Very much a family who slays together, sleighs together, type of thing. Fun. First draft is done. Time to let sit before revising, and then maybe going out to beta readers - I know who you are, as do you, so no need to throw up offers - it'll be winging your way in the not too distant future. It is currently untitled.

This is for the Inaugural Festive Fear Anthology to be released by Tasmaniac Publications. This first one is only open to Australian writers (sorry), but make sure you keep it in mind for next year (no doubt I'll be reminding you anyway). I expect the TOC to just get better each year. This year I expect quite a few AHWA members to get behind it. Danielle, David, Flick, and everyone else who is an AHWA member and reads this blog - get cracking. You've got until June to submit.

And to top things off, I got Module 2, assignment 4 back today. That's 6 straight B's for semester 1, 2009. At least I'm passing.

For the next couple of days, I'll be reading short stories in "The Book Of Shadows" which has waited patiently for me to get to it, and knocking out a few thousand words to my manuscript. A Kookaburra's Laugh is way too long to keep writing so I'll be calling it by its nickname AKL. Thought I'd better mention this before confusing everyone.

Okay, I'm rambling; time to go.

Speak soon.

BT

A Good Start To The Day

On firing up the laptop today, I was greeted with some good news. Dreaming has been shorted listed for the Blackness Within Anthology. Although this doesn't mean it will make the final cut, it's nice to know it's good enough for consideration.

I've also managed to write 737 new words for A Kookaburra's Laugh. I'm almost halfway through the expected length of the first draft now, having just breached the 45000 word milestone. The midpoint climax is fast approaching where everything gets turned on its head.

I'm going to spend some time with my little one before I come back and write up the review for MageSign.

So far, it's been a good day.

Here's the long awaited return of the Bean Counter:

A Quite Weekend

On Friday I received an assignment back and managed to continue my run of consistency - 5 returned assignments, 5 B grades. I never claimed to be a A student so I'm happy enough with my progress. One of my lecturers has stated outright they don't give out A's unless something is exceptional so I don't expect anything better than a B anyway.

I also made a discovery about my progress through one of the modules. I posted my fourth assignment on Thursday evening and had a look at recent activity on the site where I was amazed to see the time stamps for all the other students and when they commented in the forum or posted and assignment. It seems I'm currently two weeks ahead of the class so I need to slow down. Obviously my timetable for submissions isn't the same as everyone else.

Today I have some reading to do for a friend, I'd like to do some more reading on MageSign, and I need to finish and submit Dreaming. Obviously I don't need to do any assignment work this week, but I'll probably do a draft of the next assignment anyway. I may even find some time to do a chapter of "A Kookaburra's Laugh" - on a side note, I'm going to rename all the Newland labels to A Kookaburra's Laugh.

I hope your writing has been a great deal more productive than mine has been over the last three days.

Speak soon

BT

Newland Started Again

Managed to get a little done on Newland this evening. Not a lot: only 907 words to finish off the first draft of chapter 19.

I've also got a tentative title for it. Newland was only ever the working title. The same as all the character names need to be changed as they are currently named after the real life people who were once in the area back in the late 1830s. For obvious reasons that needs to change.

So I'm toying with "The Kookaburra's Laugh" which will mean nothing to you guys and girls, but let me let you in on the story of the Kookaburra's laugh. So, if you've read the story in the link, you may see how it can be a visual image for the herald, of a new day. Perhaps even the rebirth of the sun. That's what I'm going for, a rebirth, a finding of a new way. My MC's journey to find strength and independence in a harsh new world. I think it might work. I'll see if it grows on me.

So a weekend with no commitments has passed and I've managed 907 words and read 100 pages of Tainted. I updated all the books and covers I have at GoodReads, the place I got my widgets from to display what I've reviewed, am yet to read, and what I'm currently reading. You can see them way down on the sidebar - cute aren't they? And lastly updated my website and bibliography. Having a story published and putting up a new review tends to give me a push into updating things.

Well, I hope the review was useful (and I hope you're not too angry with me, Alan), and I hope everyone got something out of Winged Shepherd of Innocence.

Here's Mr Bean Counter to bring things up to date and then I'm off to bed.

Newland Update

Moving along nicely this week.

Added another 1351 words today, and read another two chapters of RealmShift. Just as well my real day job has been very quiet. Must get around to finishing a couple of assignments very soon though.

Hump Day

As in Wednesday, the middle of the week - sorry to disappoint.

Today I've managed to knock off another 3 chapters of RealmShift and added 1050 words to Newland. That's 4353 words so far this week--a bit better than last weeks paltry effort and still a couple of days to go! A good start to the month, me thinks.

I also got my first assignment back from Module 2. My lecturer likes my idea for Newland which is cool. My lecturer by the way is Kirsty Brooks. I'm so glad I didn't sign up for the internal class. Once my wife gets a look at my lecturer in a nurses uniform I'd have been banned from going anyway.

Anyhoo, she liked my idea, liked my assignment, but didn't grade it?? She also sent me some very interesting articles and a printed copy of an interview she did as way of introduction.

Another cool bit of information is her business Driftwood Manuscripts. This is somewhere I could see myself sending a manuscript for that final polish before submission - although it's not cheap. Still, I if I'm a good boy and show my work to be outstanding, who knows, maybe I'll get mates rates...student rates...a free coffee while I wait...

I noticed Aaron's name on the January Issue of NVF with the excellent 'The Eyes Have It' and I was informed my issue, April, containing Idolatry, is to be advertised at The Fangoria Weekend of Horrors. That can only be a possibly good thing - right?

So that's it for today - see I told you I was going to try and cut down on lengthy rambles and incoherent bullshit which whizzed off on barely connected tangents about lots of different stuff nobody rea...sorry.

And now for the Bean Update:

I'm Quite Chuffed With Myself

I've been kicking myself a bit about my lack of progress on Newland lately, so I've given up whinging about it and decided to do something about it instead.

Today, including a rewrite of Chapter 16, I've managed 3303 new words! Time for a reappearance of the Mr Bean Counter...

More good news - it's raining. For the first time in months, we have this strange stuff falling from the sky. This is good for two reasons: 1) rain = no cricket training = possibly more writing - although i may be doing some reading tonight instead. 2) We need the water. South Australia isn't known as the driest state on the driest continent for no reason.

The only way this news could get better is if the rain continues as the cold front crosses into Victoria and the precipitation manages to finally put out the last remaining fires.

Strange coincidence: When Idolatry got accepted, I asked if there was anything I need to sign, send, rework, or do a rain dance to - the response was I could do a rain dance if wanted as the water would be appreciated - result was me doing the snoopy dance.

So does the Snoopy dance equal a rain dance - you decide...

Null & Void

That's how my weekend went.

At unexpected moments, my tooth would play up causing varying amounts of pain. When not in agony, I was on pain killing drugs which had small but strange affects on me.

Saturday is always full with cricket, but due to the drugs, I didn't perform all that well, so I allowed the drugs to wear off before Saturday night and had a few drinks instead.

Sunday I slept in for obvious reasons. Woke up a little before midday and my toothache was miraculously gone (a temporary situation as it has since come back).

Having slept half the day away, I struggled to get through my normal chores and spend time on the computer. When I did sit down, I was reminded it was the first of the month - time for updates on the AHWA market database. That took a few hours by which time my legs were killing me from sitting for too long.

Then I got distracted by Australia playing South Africa in the cricket, Manchester City playing West Ham in the EPL, and Man Utd playing Tottenham in the Carling Cup Final. One thing bled into another and I finally turned the TV off a little after 4am with no writing done for the whole weekend. At least Utd won.

I will be endeavouring to reverse that bad start to the week shortly.

I've hit a bad situation with Newlands as well. I've thought about a couple of things which have happened in recent chapters and can't rationalise their occurrence with the underlying theme. That's not good. They will either need to be altered, written out, or new and different chapters written in. This should all happen on the second draft, but now it's stuck in my head, I'm not sure about moving forward. Revisions could change everything I write from now on, and I hate double handling for no good reason.

I know that sounds strange - we write, we revise. It's part of the process and I'm fine with that, but if I make the changes now, then any changes to future chapters will only occur over the course of a normal revision. It won't be a case of rewriting a chapter I already knew needed to be changed, and then having to completely change, or rewrite, everything after it. I can change the chapter now, and then continue to write the story from that point. Does that make sense?

The big problem though, is if I do rewrite now, then I can see myself getting stuck in a loop of changing things without ever actually finishing the first draft. That would be worse than having to rewrite a few chapters.

Time for some discipline, I think. And some realisation.

Unless I do some extraordinary work over my coming leave, I'm not going to reach my deadline. It's going to shift. I just need to keep working steadily so it doesn't shift too much.

This week I need to achieve three things:

1. I need to identify the bits which don't sit well with the theme of Newland, and revise them now - and only those bits. This includes finishing off the current chapter which falls into this category.
2. I need to finish off Dreaming and get it submitted. The market for it opened yesterday and I'm not ready. It's starting to stink of PARSEC 2008 when I rushed things and ended up not submitting my best work. Very unprofessional and it won't be happening again.
3. Read. I have one story to finish looking at for a friend, I have a couple of PDF novels in my inbox and a PDF chapbook. All need to be read, and I may need to write reviews on them as well.

There's only two weeks of the cricket season left and then my weekends are pretty much free, or at least they will be pain free. The lad still plays a winter sport - football. Not that poofy kind where they wear heaps of padding and helmets, Australian Rules Football - so I'll still have a few hours out here and there to watch that.

But there won't be any training interruptions during the week, no late Saturday nights, or sleep in Sunday mornings due to pain and tiredness. Winter, I think, is my writing season.

Time to get to work...

Chapter 16 Coming Together & A Contest

I read somewhere (I know I should have this link, trust me, I'm looking for it), if your story is dragging a little, then kill something.

Death has a big part in my book as I strip away my MC's support structure leaving them (that would be the singular use of 'them') to stand and find their own way in a harsh new world. In 15 and a half chapters I've managed to to remove a beloved sister, my MC's innocence, a would be partner, four natives, the lesser antagonist, and now the father.

To come is the death of two brothers, the crippling of a third, the death of a doctor, the demise of the mentor, and a few other characters both major and minor.

And yet this book has a happy ending. Of sorts.

Lots of interesting ways have been used to remove people. Spears, tree branches, a plough, a gunshot, strangulation, drowning, stabbing, poison, and few more surprising things I've thought up.

My doubts over chapter 16 have vanished.

Tonight I've managed to add 1098 words. After rereading chapter 15 and removing 9 words I could live without, I have a grand total of 1089 new words added.

So lets hear it: How many gruesome ways have you managed to kill off characters in your tales of twisted delight...

I'd love to have a prize for the most ingenious, but living in Australia would make the postage more expensive than any token of my esteem. So, along with your best, you can also name the most ingenious way you'd kill or seriously maim a character if you had a story set in the 1830's. This means no technology allowed. No SAW recreations unless you could pull it off in the Australian Outback.

Difficult - yep. Your prize: I'll use the winner's suggested method to remove a major character within the book I'm writing, and give you credit for it if the thing ever gets published.

What do you think?

Have at it...

Last Night

Last night - I did nothing!

I went home and acted very much like a potato and sat on the couch, and just ogled the box.

I didn't turn on the computer. I didn't check my email. I didn't read.

It was okay, but God I was bored.

I needed a day of boredom just to clean out the attic; clear some head space. I need to find a new ending for Dreaming, and I need to find a new chapter 16 for Newland.

Today I plan to redo my first assignment. It finally came back. It was a pass but 50% of the mark was based on the formatting and I got it more wrong than right, so it wasn't a great pass.

I also need to start work on the second assignment for Module 2.

Unfortunately I also have some real work to do in my day job. Things are busy.

Speak soon.

BT

Breaking News

It's official - Black magazine will no longer be seen in its previously beautiful print format. Follow the link to find out all about what's going on.

For those of you who don't know, I wrote book reviews for the publication. At this point in time, I'm not sure how things in that area are going to change, if at all. I'm still holding onto my reviews of The Harrowing. As soon as I know where they'll be posted, I'll let you know.

What else...

I am aching from playing in the top grade of cricket yesterday. I retired at the end of last year, and then offered to help out in the lower grades part way through this season. Toward the end of the season, they became desperate for one or two players to move up. Stupid me said, "Okay, no worries, play me wherever.' Very stupid comment. My head still thinks I can do all sorts of things I used to be able to do 20 years ago.

So my aches and pains has resulted in difficulty with sitting and typing. This has led to only 1758 words being added to Newland today, but some good stuff (I think/hope).

I've come across an issue with chapter 16. I'm not happy with my outline. I need to go over the whole thing and figure out how to bridge chapter 17 with chapter 15 a different way. I've got a couple of ideas so we'll see how they play out. I looked at my previous outline for 16 and just shook my head. "As if" was the clean version of the words which immediately came to mind. Lets turn a mentor for my MC into the exact opposite of what they've been teaching. Bloody idiot. So it's been scraped and left a hole four chapters before my MidPoint is begins. Things were becoming to smooth. Now I'm glad chaos has reasserted itself and caused a stop in the work as I figure out which way is up.

Hmm...

I'll quickly take this opportunity to thank everyone for their suggestions for different things with Newland on previous posts. All very helpful and if not used (although at least one of them was), they definitely led to other answers.

That's it from me for now.

Speak soon

BT