While I had great intentions at the beginning of the month, I dashed off to World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, NY for four days of super social, authorly fun. Then my mother in law came for a visit, and my Sunburst Award work needed attention. Before I knew it there was only a week left and I was behind at only about 13,000 words. Then I got sick. I’m not looking for sympathy. It was what it was, but I still feel that I accomplished something in the progress of this novel so it was well worth doing the bit I did.
I had been struggling to find the plot and the right place to start as well as the best way to convey the inciting incident. Sometimes stories come to me in broken up parts, so it takes some thinking to piece together how the whole thing should flow. Like giving birth, sometimes it’s fast and easy, other times it’s wicked hard. I could look at this as a failure, but it does nothing helpful for me to try to destroy my self esteem over something I did some of instead of all of. I have nothing special to prove to myself–I won Nanowrimo twice already. Artistic people have to learn to encourage themselves, not criticize. It’s hard enough to do this without all the pressure we put on ourselves.
Some good news…my novel “Ungloved” was selected to be featured on Wattpad.com in about a week and a half. This will do much for the number of people who are actually able to find the work on this site. Even on a free site, it can be really difficult to get noticed! I also began posting my second novel, “Unsheathed” which hasn’t been noticed much yet, so the boost might affect it as well. I’d best be ready for the onslaught. I hear one gets a lot of comments at first.
I have been feeling super creative lately, though, and where I may not have made huge strides in the current novel, I wrote a short story and came up with a great idea for a world for my next series.
I very much want to include some of my art in this blog, but I have been so busy that I haven’t created any yet. It was my idea to sketch scenery and characters from my world and put them here. Perhaps one day, others will send me their own sketches which I can share as well. Fantasy can be very visual, and I love visual.
In the meanwhile, I offer up the map of my world as it currently stands. It’s a quick sketch, and I’m no map maker, but it was necessary for me to have that visual to write in this world. I may get someone to do a more professional version. I actually met a guy who was a professional cartographer or geographer recently. He said he could do something for me if I wanted. Of course, he will need paying, and I have an editor and eventually will have a cover designer, and well… you can hear the clink of coins as they leave my proverbial pocket. Preparing my first novel is going to be expensive.
So here it is: Estallium, the world which includes two kinds of people, The Hilliri, and The Trillas. And of course, there are also the Guardians, but they kind of don’t live in the world.
