Author In Progress

[prophet224]

Hey all!

My name is Matt.  I'm a software developer and long-time fan of sci-fi and fantasy.  I used to write quite a bit when I was much younger, but I've returned to it in the last year or so.  I have a ton of ideas, certainly, but I'm focused on one novel at this time.  Progress is slow thanks to life interfering, but the wife is very supportive, thank goodness!

This is intended to be the first book in a mid-future sci-fi series, sort of in the vein of Ringo or Weber.  I'm about 46k words in, with a goal of 100-110k.

I thought forum rules said no story ideas, but I see a lot here.  I almost went ahead and put mine, but let's do this instead:
http://www.novusimperia.net/LightReborn.html

Thanks and have a good one!
-Matt

[The Grinning Psychopath]

I'm still alive & Kicking guys! despite my near overdose on caffeine. and, i am in need of help. i'm still concentrating too much, on TC, and not enough on Karrin. any suggestions, for how i can focus a bit more on her? PS i still can't think of a name, for Karrin's series, some help there would be nice as well.

[prophet224]

Hey there Psycho!  I'll have to go back through the thread to catch up... may I suggest starting a new thread (with your previous info included) down below?  That will probably generate more help, too!

[Romantic Heretic]

Oops. Wrong thread.   

[Lurline]

Hi!

This forum seems to be a great place for authors; I'm glad I found it (of course I also love Jim's books!).

Right now I'm working on my first novel, though I have tons of ideas; it's tentatively called The Ozma Confessions. It's a retelling of the Oz books through the perspective of Princess Ozma. My main fear with this book is that I'll be perceived as ripping off Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West; my book is also a slightly darker political thriller, slash-romance-slash-adventure-slash-self-discovery story, set in the backdrop of Oz, but that is where any similarity ends.

I adhere much more closely to the original Buamian canon then McGuire, though I do make a few diversions and pick and choose which set of Oz rules I'm following.

The book is written through a limited third person voice.

I started on the novel during last NaNo and while I failed the challenge I'm still plucking away at it.

I'll probably drill you guys for some ideas on handling an interesting PoV problem near the books finale a bit later.

Anyway, hiya!  

Edit: I hope this isn't too specific on my Novel, from a legal standpoint... after all I didn't mention any of my original ideas; everything I discussed about my book is from the public domain source.

[belial.1980]

Hey Lurline!

Your WIP sounds very cool. Just keep at it and don't give up. This is definitely the place to come for good advice and tips on writing. Welcome!

[Thrythlind]

hmm, mentioned some of this in my intro, but here goes:

I'm currently a self-published author with four books out (not including my mammoth list of fan fiction stories) and another on the way with a few other ideas.

I'm trying to find an agent or publisher currently, so that I that have some help in publishing my works and don't feel like a louse for mentioning them pretty much everywhere online.

I have a level of popularity in some fanfiction circles, being regarded as having written some of the classics of Ranma fanfiction (boggles my mind, really).  I mostly did fanfiction as a way of getting practice in characterization and planning, experimenting with a particular concept specifically while everything else is set and in reading and reacting to reader comment and criticism.  Last month I had 13,000 hits across all 48 of my stories, from I think about 5,500 visitors. 

I just wish that popularity was easily translated to my original works.....

Anyway, my stories

Greenwater Novels: a serial story (going to go to part 3 and 4 when I finish this current novel) in a high fantasy setting.  The main character is a Ffolk(no, that's not a misspelling) "skinner" from a swamp on the edge of civilized land who leaves home after a scandal when his two closest friends were killed by a rogue animal and people start to suspect him of setting it up.  He volunteers as a scout for military and ends up in the "Greenwater" which is an inland sea roughly the size of Texas out of which grow trees the size of some mountains.  As he arrives, strange things start to happen.  An assassin tries to kill an old man in the company he travels with, a snake-woman holy warrior brings word of some sort of prophecy and madness-causing snakes swarm over several villages.

Greenwater Art: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#Art-related-to-the-Greenwater-Novels
Links to the books: http://stores.lulu.com/thrythlind

Zodiacs: a gaming project actually, a campaign setting geared to no specific setting that provides information on the cultures, races and magic systems of a continent in the world setting.  Sort of a mish mash of Wu Xia, Samurai and Old West stories.  There's a short-story book that includes my idea of how the first adventure of the example campaign might go for the pre-written characters.

Zodiac Art: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#Zodiacs

Bystander: Bystander is the series I most want to finish, and the one that is going to be most difficult to get completely out...if I could make a living on writing and write everyday 10+ hours a day, I could get two or three Bystander books done a year, maybe more, but as it stands, I've been developing the main character for more than fifteen years and I'm about 10k words away from finishing the first book.  I don't have the time I'd like to focus on this story. 

Anyway, Bystander is sort of an urban fantasy, on the superhero side of things, most "peaks" live pretty much normal lives and work as lawyers, waiters, construction workers and so forth like any other person.  The main character is Lucretia, no surname, an ex-con peak working as a librarian.  She has the dubious distinction of so far being the world's only(or at least first) "official" supervillain since she had the bad luck to get drunk and see if she was strong enough to break a bank vault one night and the Government wanted to make an example to show that they could handle peaks fine (there was a counter example of a heroic "wereshark" who worked for the navy as a rescue diver...though she's not mentioned first book). 

Lucretia is a quirky sort of character.  She's got the Superman suite, but she's a lousy fighter unable to put much of her strength to good use and her extra visual senses get in the way of her favorite past time: reading history books and spy novels (yes, despite having very real troubles reading, it is her favorite thing).  She's flirty, but is always wearing concealing dresses (granted, they tend to be very tight-fitting) and rarely if ever touches people.  She's a street rat with lots of skill as a lock pick and pick pocket and going unnoticed in crowds and she has a immense talent with reading and manipulating people, but hasn't honed it much yet so she makes mistakes.  She has much more power than she's aware of, but tends to succeed on her skills more than her powers.

The first book involves Lu interrupting a bank robbery (by sabotaging the bad guy's guns) and then several flashbacks showing her 3 years of parole leading up to that incident as the bank robbers turn out to be not your average criminals and decide for a bit of revenge.  That's going to be the catalyst for people deciding that she's not just another "bystander" (superhuman not involved with any of the underground espionage Factions and not trying to do anything on their own) and start having various organizations try to acquire her for research.  As the story progresses, I start getting into the "magical" background of the world setting (there are magicians and such, they just know what causes the superpowers to develop and work and are able to develop more versatile sets of abilities since they're consciously guiding the practice) and on to the eventual end game.

Here's the first chapter: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d1g8iz0
And some art (including some old, old, old versions when Lu had a tail and cat's eyes instead of being what she is now): http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#Bystander-Art

my favorite picture of her isn't up yet, but some key favorites are here:
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143vaj
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143s41
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143rwy
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143r9h

[Breandan]

My name is Breandán and I am... well, to be frank, I am somewhat of a reluctant writer. While not entirely sure whether I qualify as an aspiring author or not due to that reluctance, I am hoping to publish at least one of the novels I have been working on so that I can get my family and friends off of my back. Seriously, I have the equivalent of a torch-and-pitchfork-bearing mob pushing me to publish books that I wrote merely to get them out of my head. Has that ever happened to anyone else?

Anyway, I write sci-fi with a military/space opera angle to it, though I try not to fall short on character development in the process. I made the mistake of letting a friend read what I had written a while back and- with a maniacal gleam in his eye- he grabbed me by the collar and demanded more. Then he shared it with another friend, and my younger brother read it, then my wife, and on and on... pretty soon it snowballed until I had two dozen people demanding that I write more, and a short story has since exploded into a trilogy of novels. I often find myself writing and asking myself "How the HELL did I get into this mess?" 

Despite the enthusiastic support from friends and family, however, I have yet to submit any of my work to the draconian crucible of literary review by other authors or editors, and while I hope for a positive reaction, I need candid opinions, for good or ill. To that end, this is the prologue and first few chapters of the first book. It is very rough, so be forewarned that this is anything but polished work.

[KCK_Sparks]

Kansas City Author and Painter here.

My work is Thriller-paced Horror/Fantasy. I believe the story is strong and I must say, I have yet to find a better resource for the nuts-n-bolts of storycraft than Jim's own here.

Would be interested in knowing if anyone is aware of writing groups for people like us in the Kansas City metro area?

I look forward to getting to know you all better,

Jeff in Kansas City

[meg_evonne]

Shoot, that would have been a good question to ask of the folks at the signing in Independence.  Hopefully someone will respond!  Welcome Jeff in Kansas City.

[Ren]

Well this sounds like a good place to say hello and ask a question;

Hello! Like everyon else here I aspire to be a writer though I have nothing, not even a short story that has been completed enough to be a short story; no wait there is one I sent into a contest somehwere. Sadly I am easily distracted and have TOO many ideas to write myself but here are some highlights:

A science fiction series set in an alternate universe where startships are made of wood, swashbuckling is the norm and the lead character is a Zombie. It has inadvertantly become a vehicle for a large mportion of sci/fi, fantasy and internet memes (zombies, Pirates, Nonjas, Robots, psychics etc...). Its not very devloped but I have a rough outline.
And its not all about the memes, has intrigue, action, some romance and lots of dirty little secrets.

A near future Multi-generation Superhero story with a Unique (as far as I know) origin story for the super-heroic gifts and a fair mix of intrigues and politics and of course love. This story/setting has been in development of one form or another for close on fufteen years now and I think I've got it down to where I want it to be...but I haven't touched it in some time now.

A modern-day fairy-tale story (of the original brothers Grimm variety) of a group of high-school kids and some fo their teachers stumbling into the a secret haven for strange creatures and beings. All of the characters have a reason for being there and the story ranges across a multitude of mythologies and again more horror, intrigue and politics etc...It's one of my newest and more original ideas.

As an added bonus, for amusement sake, I have a short idea about what would happen if the Greek/Roman, Norse and other Old Gods were reborn in new bodies; the short scene I wrote had Thor and Ares sitting in a beach-bar run by Balor one-eye ogling girls in swimsuits...yes its intended to be humorous, if I ever get anything else written for it.

My best developed and most worked-on series is a pure fantasy series set in a world I've been working on for probably as long as the super-hero story and likewise has gone through MANY incarnations. It's also the only project I've been semi-actively working on of late. Like all of my stories it has elements of intrigue, politics, horror and strained romance. It also includes a moslty full though lost origin story and ancient long-buried and mostly forgotten evils.
And thus we come to my question...almost. In this series there are a number of races based on blendings of humans and other elements whether plant, animal or the elements themselves. Amongst them is a wolf-man species I call the "Canen" and have been fairly happy with their hunter-like nomadic mentality.

Then this year I started reading Jim's Codex Alera and discovered his wolf-man species, the "Canim"...or "Cane" for short. You see my problem? I don't want to have a race that is too similar to Jim's creation, but I don't want to lose them either. At one point they were a Bull-man/Minotaur species called the "Thaur" which I liked well enough, but were too close to Wow's Tauren so I changed it to avoid any possible lawsuits. I'm trying to be as original as possible in my ideas and concepts so I don't want to be coying someone elses ideas, even if I've been workin on my book for a very long time.
Any suggestions on how to handle this? Should I even be worried about it?

[meg_evonne]

Personally, I like Thaur.  :-)  Welcome!

[Ren]

Well I like the Thaur as well and they still technically exist in my World as the Thaur and Canen are subspecies of the same overall group of Beast-men. I think I'm going to swap the Thaur back to the more major role, and leave the Canen as a background race for the most part. Except for the Canen Investogator character, because a Hunting-dog detective just makes sense...literally sniff out the criminals!
But I really wanted to avoid the potential for for Cow-related jokes...8P
Granted they could amke a good traitor-race, make them COWardly...*ba-dum, ching*...see what I mean?
Or maybe just perceived as Cowardly because they are for the most part pascifists...except for the males, don't wear red near them...
sigh...good imagination and a love for bad jokes will not a good fantasy novel make...entertaining maybe...but not really the tone I'm tyring to set...
sorry for ranmbling...off I go

[adamsoa]

Hello All,

My name is Andy and I'm still trying to figure out how write that first novel.  I've written several short stories, mostly comedy about my exploits in life.  I occasionally do some things that others find funny. 
I've been an avid reader most of my life and there are few things I enjoy more than a good story.  I've always wanted to write and share some of my imagination with others.  The hardest part is the how.  How to set something up that will make sense to others and allow me to keep up a great flow for the story.
Now that I've decided that I'll figure out the how as I go, I'm working on my first novel.  I'll let you know how its working out as I go.

 
 

[meg_evonne]

adamsoa, welcome.  the best advice I've heard is write, write, write...  everything else will come as you explore the craft, read up on it.  we always point people to Jim's writing blog, which is an excellent place to begin.  enjoy!