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FoWaG (barf phase)

FoWaG (barf phase)

FoWaG (barf phase)

“Fortress of Wind and Glass” is the latest short story in the Chronicles from the Nexus and November’s goal in my Story a Month Project.  I’ve arbitrarily set the target word total to 10,000.

FoWaG is set in 765 TE9 on Mana and is Angst Gryphon’s first solo mission.

Yesterday evening I completed the beta draft of “Winters’ Unexpected Arrival” at 8,971 words. I am planning on another tweak-polish pass with a focus on “tack-on” phrases. Oh yes, and to make sure all the numbers, dates, and etc. line up. My “story a month project” continues on track with WUA, the third story in three months.

Yesterday I finished up the barf phase of “Winters’ Unexpected Arrival”.  Interestingly enough, the word count for WUA stands at 7440 as I go into the polish phase.  I had set a pretty much arbitrary goal of 7500 words for this short story, and there it is.  My writing process is generative all the up until the very end when I do the “that hunt” and other related final polish activities.  I expect that it will be somewhere between 8500 and 9000 words by the time I’m done.

Speaking of which, it looks like I am on schedule to finish the story by the end of the month.  This is the first regular month in my “story a month project”, and it’s nice to know that I am keeping to the schedule that I have set for myself.  I started the “story a month project” in mid-August (after being inspired by a panel / lecture at WorldCon) and took on “The Unmodified Man”, which was partially complete, with the expectation that I could get it done by the end of August.  No such luck.  It ended up taking until the middle of September to complete (going from around 3000 words to 11,500 words).  Then I “cheated” by reworking a the prologue of “Tactics of Transience” into “Death’s Harp has One String” (something that I had been wanting to do for some time) and that fit neatly into the later half of September.  Which brings me back to October and “Winters’ Unexpected Arrival”.

Just received Schlock Mercenary: Terraport Wars in the mail. Very cool. By the way, if you like good space opera with a humorous twist, go check it out here. Its posted daily (and he hasn’t missed once), but be warned, the web comic goes back to June of 2000. It took me about six months to get caught up.

I ordered Schlock Mercenary: Terraport Wars at WorldCon in Denver this last August while I was buying copies of the previous Schlock books from their ever gracious and talented author Howard Taylor and his wife Sandra. He kindly personalized them with an illustration each (a con special).

Thanks Howard!

IO9 has posted more links to Frazetta’s SF art here.

One of the aspects of writing that I find most intriguing and a great deal of fun is when a story takes an unanticipated turn and I find myself exploring new aspects of character, plot, setting, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Drop by RayGunRevival.com for your latest fix of space opera SF (PDF file).