#p:cws

[theouterdark]

Day 24 - NaNoWriMo 2022

The draft isn’t done, but the first 50,000 words are. Feeling good.

D

[theouterdark]

Day 7 - NaNoWriMo 2022

START: 7:15 PM END: 9:30 PM DAILY WORD COUNT: 1,768 TOTAL WORD COUNT: 16,098

The power is back! Spent some time today running errands in the wake of being without electricity for two days, and having a mild mouse problem my uncle needed some help with. I got a later start than usual, but managed to get my words in without much fuss. I expect to get more work done in the coming days as my weekend plans will slow me down again. But it’s been good to get back in the saddle with a proper keyboard and not have to rely on my phone.

Also, finished another chapter! Four under my belt now for the second draft, and it just about wraps up this act. All the major characters have been introduced, but the final hooks need to come into play in chapter five. Going to have fun with this one.

One concern: One dimensional characters. I know a few of them will be fleshed out more in another pass, but it’s still a concern at this point. I actually feel like I’m overcompensating with lesser characters, making them a little more fleshed out because I knew they may feel hollow. But I need to spread the love evenly, I think.

One surprise: Finding tension and catharsis in the quiet moments, and through that, Blake’s voice.

One delight: Having fun writing the only American character in the book. And I’m enjoying the few small Ruby moments that happen early on too. She kind of skirts the main plotline in a slalom that I expect will have a hard collision with Blake’s path in the coming chapters.

D

[theouterdark]

Day 2 - NaNoWriMo 2022

START: 4:00 PM END: 6:30 PM DAILY WORD COUNT: 2,139 TOTAL WORD COUNT:  5,074

I continued outlining today, and transitioned into drafting, which was my initial goal, so everything is on track. Feels good to be working on this story again, though I did start later in the day than I intended and did not put as many hours as I would like.

One concern: The balance of mystery/horror is hard to tune. I’m getting the sense that I need to drizzle a bit of each throughout to help sell this story. Blake seems to be lacking agency in the outline as well. Can’t have that.

One surprise: I was full of excitement and dread while transitioning into this draft, but the words actually came easier than expected. They may be hot garbage, but they’re hitting the beats I outlined without feeling forced.

One delight: My outline has each named character in a position of relevance/agency at some point. Still worried about bloat, but right now, it doesn’t seem like anyone is hanging around that shouldn’t be there.

D

[theouterdark]

Tag: WIP List

Thanks for the tag, @zmlorenz. I haven’t given an update in a while, so I feel like I owe y’all something.

Rules: Share a list of all the stories you’re currently working on, regardless of whether or not you have introduced them to writeblr.

I have quite a few projects. I’m going to group them by series and then medium. Works marked with an asterisk are tentatively titled.

Blake Livingston Mysteries (Series)

Coldwater Sound

Status: Drafting (2nd Draft) | Word Count: 81K | Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror

An island. A vast estate. A haunted family. An untried investigator. The  sound swallows the causeway behind Blake Livingston as she arrives on Coldwater Isle. There, a drowning causes a noble family grief, confusion, and fear. Blake will have to endure it all if she ever wishes to depart.

The Devil from the Outer Dark

Status: Drafting (2nd Draft) | Word Count: 70.5K | Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror

A painter. A locksmith. Unrequited love. An unknown darkness. Horrors unfold in the south of France in the wake of a terrible accident. Blake Livingston travels to the town of Céret, eager to venture down a new path that closes in on her before she can find the ground beneath her feet.

Gates of Sleep

Status: Drafting (1st Draft) | Word Count: 1.2K | Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror

A comatose client. Fantastical dreams. A howling man. London particulars. The fiancé of a victim guides Blake Livingston through a world she is only beginning to understand. She must descend the steps of deeper slumber to solve a crime that occurs before her very eyes, yet that she cannot see.

Other Blake Livingston Mysteries in Progress

The Gloaming

And Soon They Shall Wake

Islands Disappear

Beyond the Real

Cracks Always There

Linger

Through the Eyes of Madness

Spinoff Works

Deadbulbs*

Space Pan (Series, Collaboration)

Space Pan: Volume 1*

Status: Backburner | Word Count: 289K | Genre: Epic Space Fantasy/Opera

Various perspectives converge through time and space...with a cooking utensil. A bicycle courier from NYC. A devout space marine. An alcoholic reporter with an obscene tongue. A weary test subject, ready for retirement. A fifteen-year-old space pirate. A douchebag with a goatee.

Other Space Pan Works in Progress

Volume 2, 3, 4, and 5* and beyond?

The Inverted World*

The Marked Child*

The World Mirror* (Series)

Status: Ideation Phase | Genre: Epic Fantasy

I’m still worldbuilding this thing. There’s magic, multiple POV characters. Political conflicts. Climate change. It’s a whole thing. I haven’t decided on the structure yet. There may be a duology of novellas proceeding a series. There may not, but here’s a taste:

Sound split a wood both dark and light. Silence swept a wood both black and white. I found her there. I remember the sound of all the flies buzzing.

Standalone Fiction

Topiary Black

Status: Outlining | Word Count: 4K | Genre: Cyberpunk Thriller

A cryptic post on a deep-web forum leads an agoraphobic computer specialist into a web of intrigue, crime, and terror. Before long, she’s put on the shortlist for a mysterious game referred to as Topiary Black, the nature of which begins to unravel her understanding of the world as she knows it.

The Call of the World or: A Godless Man in Purgatory

Status: Serial Release (Drafting Part 5) | Genre: Weird Fiction

Somewhere, there is an island. On it, there is a man. And he cannot leave.

Deerfield Run

Status: Ideation Phase | Genre: Dystopian Sci-Fi

No one wanders into the barrens where once we grew corn and wheat, and the suburban sprawl stretched from one horizon to the next. Excepting the runners. No sensible souls cross the cordons, anyhow. There’s a quiet out there. You can hear it in the steady weaving of trumpet vines up the siding of a hundred empty houses. In the patter of windswept leaves across deserted baseball diamonds, bursting with wild grass and sunken with cottontail warrens. It’s the quiet of the steady progression of nature, reclaiming order from chaos. It’s the sound of humanity in retrograde.

And—there’s something else. The runners say it’s old. They say it’s been sleeping, alone out there, before all the clapboards and eaves of our derelict homes went to rot. Before the trees so kindly fell before the axes of the men who built them. Before any of them sprouted, they say. When night falls, and the antediluvian dark smothers the barrens, they say you can hear it in the quiet of Cascadia. The hum. The stirring of a primordial mind beginning to wake.

Hunters of Salt Station

Status: Ideation Phase | Genre: Historical Fiction, Western

A western-style piece that takes place in Canada.

Compilations, Short Stories, Podcasts, and Screenplays

Somnambulant Directives: Dreams from the Outer Dark (an experimental dream journal)

“The God Machine” (speculative fiction about the discovery of an advanced AI)

“The Shore Remains” (based on Tarriance in Clepsydra by @doubleviewfinder)

Precursors* (podcast - Mystery/Horror/Fiction/Epistolary)

Rot* (Feature Screenplay - Lynchian Horror/Weird Cinema)

Beating to Windward* (Feature Screenplay - Comedy)

You Have Until Dawn* (Feature Screenplay - Western/Action/Comedy)

Going Home* (Feature Screenplay - Drama)

I think that’s everything. So. /rant.

No pressure to participate. If anyone sees this and wants to give us an update, go for it.

Tagging: @dotr-rose-love, @byjillianmaria, @midnightstreetwanderings, @sassypandacandy, @kwriteswords, and @phantomswriting.

D

[theouterdark]

Tag: Last Line XVI

This is the first of many last line tags I have to catch up on, courtesy of @zmlorenz.

This is from the new draft of Coldwater Sound. More on that soon. Honest to blog.

Rules: Write the last sentence in your current WIP.

The colonnade of aspens enclosing the approach to Rosenford bent near to snapping.

Tagging: Tagging @zmlorenz back, @writingmyassoff, @sassypandacandy, and anyone who wants to participate.

Tag list: @writingmyassoff, @erinisawriter, @zmlorenz, @els-writes, @midnightstreetwanderings, @sassypandacandy, @bethwrotethis, @doux-ciel, @hilunawrites, @ghost-possum, @doubleviewfinder, @veronicadent, @dantedevereaux, @tlbodine, @hypotheticalwriterquestions, @hazeywrites, @reeseweston, @withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus, @dotr-rose-love, @katabasiss, @byjillianmaria, @james-stark-the-writer, and @therainsoakedwriter. Let me know if you’d like to be added or removed from the tag list.

See you soon with more.

D

[theouterdark]

Tag: Last Line XV

Thanks for the tag, @zmlorenz. This one is from the current draft of Coldwater Sound, and I’ll tag you back in this one.

Rules: Write the last sentence in your current WIP.

The iron arch bridge extended over the tideland sweep of a wide estuary. To the east, a hundred-fifty hectares of wetlands and shattered moors spread through the divots of Mount Crannoch’s spine. Its swards were not full and green, but dark, yellow, and spotted like a mangy dog, entwining with sinuous creeks and stagnant pools, and at the edge of it all, where the land bunched into chaotic heaps and collided with the sea, Coldwater Sound brewed its discontent to violent ends.

Tagging: Anyone who wants to participate.

Tag list: @writingmyassoff, @erinisawriter, @zmlorenz, @els-writes, @midnightstreetwanderings, @sassypandacandy, @bethwrotethis, @doux-ciel, @hilunawrites, @ghost-possum, @doubleviewfinder, @veronicadent, @dantedevereaux, @tlbodine, @hypotheticalwriterquestions, @hazeywrites, @reeseweston, @withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus, @katabasiss, @byjillianmaria, @james-stark-the-writer, and @therainsoakedwriter. Hope y’all enjoyed this peek into the current draft.

See you soon with more.

D

[theouterdark]

Tag: 5 Facts

Thanks once again, @zmlorenz, for the tag. I’m trying to remain active even though I’ve been a busy bee lately.

Rules: Give five lesser known facts about your WIP.

Okay, let’s talk about Coldwater Sound.

The book was originally 3-4 stories in one, and told within different time periods. In the initial version, Coldwater Sound was an unfinished book by the fictional author Henry Ambrose. He wrote it in 1953 and it was published posthumously, against his wishes. In 1985, a ghost writer (and Ambrose scholar) was hired to complete the work by the company that owned the publishing rights to the story, and this ghostwriter eventually discovered that Ambrose did not create the story, but it was based on the real accounts of a woman named Jane Chambers, whose journals and letters were given to Ambrose some time after WWII. It was vastly more complicated. Who knows, maybe I’ll give it a go.

Blake Livingston’s name was originally Jane Chambers. I prefer her new name.

There are complicated pieces to the story that make me think its sequel, The Devil from the Outer Dark, will actually be completed first. That one is simpler, and honestly more compelling. Maybe I’m biased. Who knows.

The works of HP Lovecraft and the Poirot novels by Agatha Christie inspired this piece. I don’t want to get to spoilery and tell you why. The original concept was also heavily influenced by the novel S. by Doug Dorst and JJ Abrams, but in truth it only came about from a sleep-deprived string of consciousness note I fumble-keyed into my phone one night. It was more of a voice experiment than anything else, but both Blake and Kenny Deegan were created in the scene, and parts of it remain unchanged from the original version. A line or two at least.

Coldwater Isle’s original location was going to be kept a secret. I wanted to hint at various times that it could be near Nova Scotia, Scotland, the Falklands, or the Canary Islands, as spatial disorientation was important to me. That has mostly fallen by the wayside, but there are relics to each still there. I may explore that again. We’ll see.

Tagging the usual suspects: @writingmyassoff, @erinisawriter, @zmlorenz (gotcha again friendo), @els-writes, @midnightstreetwanderings, @sassypandacandy, and those interested in the project: @leofailsatwriting, @bethwrotethis, @doux-ciel, @hilunawrites, @ghost-possum, @doubleviewfinder, @veronicadent, @dantedevereaux, @tlbodine, @hypotheticalwriterquestions, @hazeywrites, @reeseweston, @withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus, @katabasiss, @byjillianmaria, @james-stark-the-writer, and @therainsoakedwriter.

Don’t feel like you have to participate, just thought you might be interested in these tidbits.

D

[theouterdark]

Tag: OC Fears

Thanks for the tag, and your patience, @gottaenjoythelittlethingzz​. Here we go. Doing this for some of the principal cast of Coldwater Sound.

Bold is for a full on fear. Italics is for something that makes them uncomfortable.

Coldwater Sound

Blake Livingston:

the dark ⋆ fire ⋆ open water ⋆ deep water ⋆ being alone ⋆ crowded spaces ⋆ confined spaces ⋆ change ⋆ failure ⋆ war ⋆ loss of control ⋆ powerlessness ⋆ prison ⋆ blood ⋆ drowning ⋆ suffocation ⋆ public speaking ⋆ natural animals ⋆ the supernatural ⋆ heights ⋆ death ⋆ dying ⋆ intimacy ⋆ rejection ⋆ abandonment ⋆ loss ⋆ the unknown ⋆ the future ⋆ not being good enough ⋆ scary stories ⋆ speaking to new people ⋆ poverty ⋆ loud noises ⋆ being touched ⋆ forgetting ⋆ being forgotten

Kenny Deegan:

the dark ⋆ fire ⋆ open water ⋆ deep water ⋆ being alone ⋆ crowded spaces ⋆ confined spaces ⋆ change ⋆ failure ⋆ war ⋆ loss of control ⋆ powerlessness ⋆ prison ⋆ blood ⋆ drowning ⋆ suffocation ⋆ public speaking ⋆ natural animals ⋆ the supernatural ⋆ heights ⋆ death ⋆ dying ⋆ intimacy ⋆ rejection ⋆ abandonment ⋆ loss ⋆ the unknown ⋆ the future ⋆ not being good enough ⋆ scary stories ⋆ speaking to new people ⋆ poverty ⋆ loud noises ⋆ being touched ⋆ forgetting ⋆ being forgotten

Margaret Ashby:

the dark ⋆ fire ⋆ open water ⋆ deep water ⋆ being alone ⋆ crowded spaces ⋆ confined spaces ⋆ change ⋆ failure ⋆ war ⋆ loss of control ⋆ powerlessness ⋆ prison ⋆ blood ⋆ drowning ⋆ suffocation ⋆ public speaking ⋆ natural animals ⋆ the supernatural ⋆ heights ⋆ death ⋆ dying ⋆ intimacy ⋆ rejection ⋆ abandonment ⋆ loss ⋆ the unknown ⋆ the future ⋆ not being good enough ⋆ scary stories ⋆ speaking to new people ⋆ poverty ⋆ loud noises ⋆ being touched ⋆ forgetting ⋆ being forgotten

Tagging: @writingmyassoff​, @phantomswriting​, @katabasiss​, and @sassypandacandy​. Have fun, all.

D