Author In Progress

[Mickey Finn]

Are you learning to become an author, but haven't yet published professionally?

Tell us about yourself and your work here. (Please don't post samples directly to the board. Links ok.)

[LoVeBoOkS]

HI!

My name is Amber, and yes, I am an up-and-coming author. No, nothing published yet, but i am trying!!

Right now i'm writing two books, which is difficult with school and everything else a 14, almost 15, year old has to deal with. I write murder/mystery novels, seeing as how that is my favorite genre, along with fantasy of course. I've talked to many people to help me get my facts straight. I know the State Supreme Court Justice, who is a very nice lady. I've been interviewed by the local newspaper. I enjoy writing so much. I've email about 3 authors, counting Mr. Butcher, and have gotten emails back, except from Mr. Butcher lol.

My first book i started about two years ago and it's called Silent Death. It's in third person, and it's actually going very well. I'm about half-way through, and very excited about when i finish. Hopefully i can get out there!

My other book is a little different. I started it maybe a year ago, when i was originally typing a journal entry but decided it would make a good plot line. It's called Found Missing, and it's in first person, although i don't use myself. It's going along well too, although it's about a fourth of the way through. I'm also very excited for the finished product.

I like picking titles that contradict. For example, Found Missing. If you're found, how can you be missing? And if you're missing, how can you be found and missing at the same time? Do you see? Silent Death is a bit more complicated. Death is supposed to be posted. Whether it's murder or natural causes, you usually see something about it in the paper. But yet there is the silent part. Hence the contradiction.

I don't feel comfortable letting anyone see my work considering it is not copyrighted and i don't need people stealing my ideas. However, i may be lenient to offer a small tidbit:

The heat around her was thickening, stifling, like a blanket. Branches whipped out at her, cutting her face and tearing at her clothes, slowing her down. Death lurked behind her, a merciless being with a heart blacker than ebony. She tries to scream, but the humid air cuts her off, like the fear that chokes her. Trees flash past, twisted and gnarled things that look nothing like the regular beauty of the swamp. Like the hunter that stalks behind her, hurtful and predatory. She looks behind her, tripping over a tree root and stumbling, sending her sprawling headlong into a weeping willow. Too late, no one to come and answer her screams for help, for mercy, never coming.
  The hunter lurks over her, a smile curling the corners of the mouth. Her screams intrigue something, send something stirring inside. Excitement, happiness. The predator knows this little slut has no more control over her life. The knife is the only one that does. The knife is evil, like the murderer that holds it.
  Smiling, the knife is raised and plunged, drawing blood as alluring as red champagne.........

Tell me what you think!!!

[Kalshane]

So, about 13 years ago I started writing a book, and then later some short stories, about a smart-ass 20-something wizard with a prediliction for wearing long black coats living in Chicagoland who fell in love with a girl who turned out to be a vampire, had a mentor in the form of a talking peace pipe and battled various supernatural nasties. It was very derivative of a certain RPG, considering the character originated in said game, and had some other issues, mostly due to being written by a 17-year-old kid without a clue and while I still made occaisional stops in for a thousand words or so from time to time and I had 10 years of the character's life developed in my head, it never really went anywhere.

Over a year ago, I decided to revisit this character, as he's still the favorite of everything I've ever made, and re-write his story from the ground up, completely divorcing him from his RPG origins. I've gotten about 40,000 words of the new novel done and I'm liking how it's shaping up. However, since there's already a series of books about a dark-coated wizard fighting evil in Chicagoland (maybe you all have heard of it  ) I have a feeling when it's time to do my second draft, I'm probably going to have to re-work things quite a bit so it doesn't seem derivative.

In any case, in its current form, it's a 3rd-person urban fantasy with a sense of humor set in a fictional Illinois college town within a couple hours of Chicago. I'm currently doing my best to slog through "The Great Swampy Middle", as Jim puts it. I know where I'm going, just having trouble getting there.

[pathele]

I have been writing since I was a kid. Mostly short stories.  About five years ago I decided to try my hand at a novel.  I wrote a totally crappy 90,000 word monster, and put it on a shelf. I take it out once in a while to remind myself that I had a lot to learn. 

I have learned a lot since and am currently working on a couple of novels.  Jim's livejournal and several books by Jack Bickham have helped my craft tremendously.
The main novel that I am working on is kind of cyberpunk in that there is strong use of technology, but it is more like magic. 
I have plotted the first book and have written the first couple of chapters.  It seems to be going well, but of course I am biased.  I hope to some day be able to mark my name in the published professional authors list.

-paul

[Tersa]

I've wanted to write a book and be an author for a long time, and recently I put together the beginnings of a book.  I don't know how it's going to end yet or even if it will be half decent when I'm through, but I'm trying!   

It's about magic and wizards and all that jazz, since that's what I've been reading and in the mood for lately, but in the world I have the wizarding world is a kind of altered reflection of our world with its own set of rules and customs.  All that exist are wizards and archangels.  Vampires used to be running about, but they've been exterminated and the only traces left of them are various families that have vampire in their bloodlines. It's being written in first person from a wizard prodigy named Jacob Bowen, who is preparing to take on his first apprentice at the beginning of the book.

My wizards are strange because I don't see them as doing magic in the traditional wave a wand and a teacup turns into a cat sense. They can rearrange molecules, protons, quarks, all the building blocks of matter, but they can't change the particles themselves, just what they combine to make, and they cannot create or destroy matter.  I suppose they're more alchemists than wizards, in that sense.  This is my first totally original work, so I'm just trying to watch and see where it goes.
 

[Benchleyfan]

My name is Shelley and I have been writing and/or telling stories since I can remember.  What I'm working on now, I hope to get published one day.  Mostly I want to see how the story ends.  It's a pretty straight forward private eye mystery.  My detective used to be a cop, but got badly burned out and decided to go the private eye route.  I'm not very nice to him.  Instead of the sexy secretary, in his first case, I have saddled him with his older bossy sister.  Just until he "gets established."  Insert evil author laughter.   

Anyway, my guy Nick might have dreamed about being a lone wolf investigator, but he comes from a large family which won't let him.  His family and some friends who won't cut him any slack, that is.  On the plus side, he does have a sultry redhead as a girlfriend so I'm not being entirely harsh to my hero.  The story I'm writing is about Nick's first case.  A simple missing person case that turns deadly.  It's been a lot of fun to write and I'm hoping someday to be bugging people to be test readers. 

[Danielle/Evie]

Hey, Danielle here.

I've been writing forever..or well, as soon as I could write on the lines. Somewhere in the 7-10 age range I went ka-boom with writing, working on a disastrous assortment of diary entrys that I added extra plots to, a few goofy poems and a few deeper, darker poems, and a lot of short stories with blood, fright, and an incredibly dramatic twist in the end. Before, during, and after that I was/am a frightfully intense reader of every kind of book (except maybe War and Peace, which I'm am terrified of), which is where I've learned most of what I know, in addition to every spare scrap of artical or interview I can get my hands on.

Right now, I've got my sights set on a fantasy novel (which in my head has sparked a series) that gets me more and more excited everytime I think about it. It's growing up, finding love, keeping love, losing love, evil, goodness, a journey, a war...but still based on characters that are meant to be real, complicated, and themselves, most importantly. I'm learning as I go, and it may turn out to be absolutely ridiculous.....but I absolutly love it.

Amoung many others, I'm trying to get this short story out. This ones about a man named Eddy Flies who is a vampire in a world where vampires don't exist. I'm considering called it Redemption...and have it be about his struggle to be human and his physical inability to never be able to do so, what with being known as the son of the devil. Now, I have no idea where the redemption part is going to come in, or whether there will be any redeming at all (I'm really only at the part where he makes his first kill), but so far I really like the character, and I'm going to keep working on it until it's fit to be published!

All it all, though, the biggest struggle is finding time. It exists, yes, but so far my biggest problem is getting myself to take advantage of it. But, hey! I'm 15, and while I'm planning on writing as much as I can, I still have a few other things to learn.
     
On a less me-note, everyone else's ideas sound absolutely fantastic!!! I really look forward to picking up a book or a short stories mag and saying, "Hey!!! I recognize that story!" and being able to brag that I have a sort-of, not-completely-existing "in" with the author. 

[Dom]

Wow, sounds like a lot of urban fantasy here. (I didn't mention it before, because I'm already the one whose blabbed the most about themselves, but I do Sci-Fi too.  It's just on the back burner at the moment.)

DannyJD--hope your last name doesn't start with a "G".  My first name is Danielle too, and I go by "Danni"! We might get mixed up on the shelves if we're both ever so lucky to be published. 

[Richelle Mead]

Oh, wow, I am psyched at all the writers around here.  I love how everyone has such strong ideas for stories!

[Danielle/Evie]

Dom- ACTUALLY..while my last name starts with D (oh the horror that has been wraught with the initals DD  ) ...it actually means "of the Gardens" in French. Coincidence? I think..so. But amusing nonetheless.  I'll make sure to keep the name foreign for the shelves

[Kiriath]

Hello. I'm Ryan. 

Since November 05, I've worked on a fantasy novel with the title Vortex Trigger. It's about a dreamer elf and a shady rogue who chase a sentient storm and its elemental army.

I'm shooting for Vortex Trigger as a full 400 page fantasy novel, and I plan to revise it as viciously as I need to and publish it. It's light and romantic; think The Dragon and the George, Anne McCaffrey, The Dark Crystal and Renaissance festivals.

My next novel, Enemy Territory, occurs within a space empire of a hundred planets where an impatient prince battles a mad genius, psychic supersoldiers with abilities suppressed with drugs and a powerful insect race. Think Gundam, Godzilla and Phantasy Star.

I've written one novel already as a concept generator. Titled Oracle Dream, it's 150 pages and about a girl who sees ghosts and a bank robbery.

I don't think it's especially well written for many reasons, but that really wasn't the point of it... I wanted to show myself that I could write a novel! My sister adored it, though, and she's drawing short comics with the characters. I have many stories in mind. It's just that Oracle Dream wasn't the story I wanted to tell about them.

[terroja]

TL KINCAID here.

I am a writer. I don't write very well, but if most of the books I read are any indication, that doesn't really matter.

I completed the first draft of a novel called Red Day when I was 18 years old, but realized that no one with a sane bone in their body would ever publish it. It was completely morally abberant and probably would have had lynch mobs forming in my front lawn if it ever got any sort of notoriety. So I shelved it and began working on a new book.

I'm still wroking on my new book. It's called The Plague of Meaning. It is currently 77,000 words long and nowhere near finished. I suspect its final length will be a hurtle when it comes time for me to publish it, but I really don't particularly care. I know that I'm supposed to pander to what readers and publishers want, but I don't really care about that stuff. I write for me. If a company is stupid enough to publish me and readers are smart enough to read me, than that's their business. I'm only interested in the ego-boost of saying, "I wrote a novel!"

Anyway, that's me.

[ethyachk]

While technically I've been writing on and off since high school, I'll only admit that what I wrote since '03-'04 is mine. I actually started writing again because of Fool Moon; Jim inspired me, what can I say? Anyway, I started writing a book as a first person, modern fantasy, stream of consciousness novel, got 40 pages in and realized how bad it was and stalled. Later I eventually pushed on and finished the book, but I've done massive rewrites to it.  I've since finished two sequels, and I have plans for a fourth sequel, and started a seperate high fantasy book. My favorite bookstore owner in the world edited my first book recently, and he's helping me prepare for trying to get the thing published. So much work! The basic plot is a wizard goes to college, meets a vampire who becomes his best friend, then tries to help stop someone from taking over the world. Plenty more than that happens, as it's a 150k word book, but it's complicated, so you'll just have to wait and see if I manage to get published. 

[Dom]

TL KINCAID here.

I am a writer. I don't write very well, but if most of the books I read are any indication, that doesn't really matter.

Motto. 

[Divolg]

Hi, my name is Kurt, and I'm an alco---alcoho--err, an unpublished writer. 

My first novel, The Interesting Accountant, was about an accountant who is turned into an elf with a revenant on his tail after pissing off a necromancer.  He's up against the clock with the necromancer trying to bring back the Wild Host led by the Yule Alf (Santa's real predecessor).  I know, I know, I have never heard of an "interesting accountant" either.  No nibbles on it, but I had fun writing the story.

My second novel, Loki Moon, was about a commune raised ex-Navy Seal who's sent into a subglacial research facility (200 meters below a glacier, with miles of tunnels) to investigate a potential outbreak of an infectious agent.  The infectious agent, released from the ice, transforms people into various manifestations of beings bearing similar traits to those of Norse myth (various conditions the victims are in determines what they become).  After the military move in to deal with the threat, the facility is overrun and the main character and a handful of survivors are trapped inside one of the subglacial labs.  After making homemade bombs from lab chemicals (flashbacks to my childhood) to use on the creatures pounding and weakening the lab hatch, the survivors flee through the maintenance tunnels, then through the meltwater tunnels into the depths of the glacier, where they find the source of the infectious agent.  They find an old Nazi ice drill vehicle preserved in the cold (abandoned when the original occupants investigated the depths) and when the host of beings stir to life to feed on the survivors, they drive the vehicle down the subglacial river artery and out the snout into a proglacial lake.  As they're surrounded by the host of beings, the main character realizes the link between a scientific solution and the purported solution mentioned in Norse lore for the threat.

Had loads of fun writing this story and learning about the subglacial world of scientists in Norway.  Talk about rugged scientists, they're the real deal.  They study microscopic life frozen in the lightless, airless ice for space travel applications--cool stuff.  That was where I had the notion of an infectious agent frozen in a glacier being the cause for the beings out of Norse myth. 

Still piling up rejection letters for this one, but I'll keep plugging away.  The next novel I'm working on is a murder mystery set in Navy Seal training (BUDS), where an officer trainees' fellow officers start getting murdered.  I don't care much for delving into my personal experiences in BUDS (each day we were served a different variety of shit sandwich, but no matter how they served it, it as still a shit sandwich), but it might be fun for people to read about a guy struggling through training one minute and the next he's trying to figure out who's killing his classmates (before its his turn).

Great stories from everybody on the board.  Good luck to all of you with your writing.  We're so fortunate to share this passion.  You all inspire me, thanks for your posts.