I don’t know what it is with this chapter, but it’s coming in small drips and drabs. All the ushabit have to do is pull out a stump, but it’s faster to pull out the stump than write about it. I’m wondering if it’s just that there is no great external conflict – no bullets, no bombs, no bleeding. It’s an important scene to let us see the ushabit from someone else’s eyes, but it’s just so slow in coming out. I managed to get the 1,500 out yesterday, but it took me almost all the morning for me to do that. I am considering stepping away and working on it in my head a little more before putting it down on paper. Right now, I have written for about an hour and a half and managed to get only 364 words out. Yeah, I’m doggin’ it again. I think I’ll just write this blog and call it a day. As much as that little voice inside me keeps screaming to finish, I know that the more I just sit there and putter around, the more frustrated I get and the more frustrated I get the less productive I am at the screen. A couple of people have suggested that I might skip ahead to the next scene and just keep moving, but I am afraid that I am going to forget that I skipped something after I send it to Amazon (an irrational fear, I know – my editor will more than likely catch that and ask me where the rest is, but I am trying to lessen her load as much as possible).

On other news, I have started walking again after work. Just a couple of miles down to the library and past the post office – not a whole lot but it is exercise and a lot more than what I was doing a week ago (nothing). With the weather cooling down somewhat, I hope I will come home looking less and less like someone threw me in a pool on a lark. I also am going to register the rare complaint about Apple TV: they’re not updating The Colbert Report as they should. When I check on the feed through my subscriptions, it only shows the episode from the 4^th. When I go through as if I am going to purchase more episodes, I can find them all. It’s frustrating that I have to go through all of these different pages on the TV just to get to the show I want. I’m thinking about not renewing the pass and just trying it on Hulu Plus – it’s a less than a multi-pass ($7.99 a month versus $20.00) and I don’t miss anything. Don’t get me wrong – Apple TV is great, but I don’t like the idea of missing shows just because they’re tucked away somewhere else. Speaking of shows, I should go on ahead and grab the season pass to Sons of Anarchy and Ghost Adventures. Yes – I watch some of those ghost hunter shows. It helps me get ideas for a novel I might write one of these days.

Well, I am off to shower and get ready for work. I hope y’all have a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello all.  Got my 1,500 out today, but I ran out of time to write anything in the blog. I’ve been doggin’ it (as my uncle would say) for the past few days and I finally got the inertia up to carry me across the finish line. I’m working on chapter eight, still I’m having a bit of a time getting the chapter going mostly because I’m having a change in POV from the ushabit to the happy villagers. I’m doing this because I think the reader can use the break from the sturm und drang and we get to see them act in what we would consider a natural environment. I might end up moving the scene with the bandits (when we see Nysa perform a Master Class wig-out) to the next chapter and have the scene with the Master’s soldiers either as an interlude out just take it out completely. I might do the later since I don’t want to have the influence of the Master suite up very often…which reminds me I need to write the interlude that introduces Lady Khepri. Got to have that gun on the mantle.

Other than that, there is little else going on. I’m getting ready for NanoWriMo and I might take the opportunity to do a quick one-off novel (perhaps a romance?), just to give Tyro and company a bit of a break. Also give myself a chance to work on a different part of the same world. I should probably redraw the map at some point just to keep everything looking better. The hand drawn map I have is from a future map of the US, and you can tell its from the US. Maybe if I get some spare time, I should research it and try to make it as realistic as possible.

Drat. Back to work.

Sincerely,
Seething Apathy

I had a good weekend, I got a new toy from work (apparently, if you a good job, you get points towards getting little gadgets and I’ve apparently done 8,000 points of a good job) a lot sooner than I expected. I do have some good writer news to detail below, but I am going to save that. There is not a whole lot to detail here – I had a decent, restful weekend and I am ready to get back into the novel.

Well, the problem I was having with the third Tyro novel was that I had a theme (apotheosis) and an opening scene, but nothing else. When I was writing the outline for the second book I wanted to add a secondary character that was introduced in the first book (I’m actually getting to that point in the manuscript) by the name of Lady Khepri: the newest member of the Ahaut Taui and potentially a rival to Tyro’s former Master. I wanted her in the second book to act as a foil to the antagonist, Siva. So, I wrote the outline and I kept forgetting that Khepri was there, supposedly pushing Tyro along against both Siva and the court of Daergal. I can see why – Khepri was meant to be the antagonist in the third book. The theme behind the first book is escape, the second one is freedom and the third is apotheosis. Khepri is Tyro’s dirty funhouse mirror in that regard: she’s obtained apotheosis by undergoing the steps to join the Ahaut Taui, but she has none of the morality. Tyro has the morality by the third book, but she’s reluctant to accept that power. So, instead of Lady Khepri trying to get on Tyro’s good side in the second book in order to try to claim her as her own ushabit, I am going to have an ushabit planted there by Lady Khepri to keep tabs on Siva and stumble onto Tyro by accident. I think that would work out a little better.

Wow – summer is pretty much over except for the sweating in the last few days and now we are coming to fall. I am starting the countdown to my last vacation: the last week in October – of which I think I’m only going to get the last four days rather than the week and a half I asked for originally. Not bad, at least it’s time off and I am not going to work on my birthday. I might even try to gather the nerve to ask someone to have lunch with me on that day. But I’m looking too far ahead for such a thing. I just need to focus on this week and getting this chapter finished… and maybe getting some DLC for Borderlands 2 and maybe watching another episode of Attack on Titan.

So, off to have a seamstress measure a gorilla for some clothes. It’ll make sense later on, I promise.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello all, this has been a bit of a low productivity week for me. Barely got any decent word count on my novel and the blog is languishing. This weekend is going to be a bit of a reset for me. I’m going to work on the novel a little bit more this Saturday. I’ve been falling behind, but I am getting to a good spot in the lull and I am looking forward to giving a character a happy(ish) ending for a change. The next chapter after this one is going to be from the POV of one of the villagers. This will go on for a while to hopefully give us a better look at how odd the ushabit are compared to the regular people.

I don’t know about you, but this week has been a little bleh for me. I’ve just been out of sorts. I can explain one day (for myself), but the other days are an oddity. It’s one of the fears I have about going into writing full-time. I am afraid that I’m going to sit in front of the computer and just have nothing to show for it, so I’ll get up and do something else. Tomorrow told around…then a week… then a month… I don’t know what I would do at that point. Well, I’ll agonize over that when I get to that point in my life.

I am happy that Art Bell is coming back in less than two weeks. I got a subscription for Sirius satellite radio and I am going to get the radio the next time I get paid and upgrade my subscription so I get everything…including the channel for my favorite football team and hockey team. I should also look into getting a new desk. The one I have blocks the for easy into the living room when I am at it. So, there’s a smaller desk for sale that should be able to fit in the same space, but I can slide my chair next to the for rather than in front of it. When all is set, I will supply a picture.

Nothing new here, really. I will enable to return to the regular blog tomorrow and maybe have some better news.

Sincerely,
Seething Apathy.

…and to my European friends, happy Monday! I get the day off (for those of you who don’t work in a call center, public holidays are not guaranteed) today, so I am going to use this day to write some more on the novel at a leisurely pace to day. I’m going to hit the word count, but I am not going to do it with an eye on the clock like I normally do. First, I am going to finish the dishes and run off to the grocery store to get the chicken for the dinner tonight – I am so happy that I am getting dinner not only at 6:00 PM, but it’s not a sandwich! I am getting a half pound of orange chicken and a half pound of General Tso’s chicken (love the General as much as I love the Colonel) and cook up some rice. I might even have enough cash (chicken is going to cost about $7.00) to get some lettuce to make a salad as well. I certain that the shock of a healthy dinner won’t kill me, however – I will see if they have tapioca pudding to ameliorate the effects of all those toxic vitamins being put into my body. 😀

The novel creeps about as it wants. The group has managed to get into the friendly village and now I am trying to figure out (and I know this is the least of my problems at the moment) how the language that the humans speak should sound. I am thinking about using Gothic language since the names I am using for the humans are Germanic in origin. I just need to get my hands on a couple of dictionaries and make up a grammar – like I did with Tyro’s language that we’re only going to read two paragraphs of in the whole book. The reason why I am picking a dead language is that for a region in the world (and this does come into play in the book) I used Russian names and Googled translations from English into Russian. My thinking was: hey, how many people are going to speak Russian and read my stuff? The same thought process I had when I decided to use Hindi as a language for the Rahsaya, but make my own grammar. I’m not Tolkein. I can’t make a language out of whole cloth. I’m neither that smart, nor am I an Oxford Don (which kinda go hand in hand – see? Not smart at all).

Did I mention that we have one person who speaks Russian and another that more than likely knows Hindi? Why can’t I hit these kinds of odds in the lottery? Seriously.

Anyway – in an effort to keep going, I am writing what is to be in the foreign language in red bold to remind me that I need to add it in later on. The villagers are friendly and going to give the ushabit food which they really don’t need and clothes to protect their modesty (I keep forgetting they are wearing loincloths and wrappings across the women’s chest). I am hoping that today I can get them through the chapter and maybe start to work on the chapter where the ushabit starting learning about the habits of the villagers – particularly about working.

Well, I should get to work… on those dishes and more than likely scoot to the store to get everything. Hopefully the deli won’t close early. If it does…well… there is always Penn Station.

Have a good Labor Day y’all.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello all. Sorry if my post sounded abrupt last time, but the 28th is a hard day for me. I am back and sadly I can’t give you a novel update because I spend the day trying to get my anti-virus updated and this company has made it eye-bleedingly difficult. I am going to write over the weekend and gain a little ground. I’ve figured out what Tyro is going to remember and I’m going to do another flashback before getting back to the present day. I’m looking forward to it, more so that I am going to give Nysa a break from what I was going to originally. We will see.

I’m looking forward to this long holiday weekend (which I am getting paid for, thankfully) to be able to get more novelizing done and still have some time for the important things: Borderlands 2 (going to get GOTY for the PC) and maybe a movie or two. I still have to watch Grace and The Last Exorcism so I might do that Saturday night with some popcorn. No rum, sadly…I’ve only got a few dollars to my name after I get gas and have paid the bills. So rum its going to be a next week sort of thing.

I have gotten a couple of plot bunnies for a swords & sorcery. One of them concerns the cost of magic in this world and I had the idea of a sorceress just known as The Woman. The idea that she had to give up her true identity in order to gain more power for contracts with other beings. The more she gives up, the more power she gets. I’m trying to stay away from the traditional ‘pound of flesh’ sort of thing because that’s been done to death. So the idea I had wad she’s giving up parts of her identity — giving up her family name, for example and the stakes keep going up from there. In our society, our button of identity is more grounded in a data set rather than something like a family name. Look at it this way: how much of your personal reputation would you give up for say… the power to heal yourself from injury that would kill someone else? Where in that scramble for power are you going to draw the line? To ruin the punchline for a favorite joke: “He don’t chase rabbits.” could be the personal limit for some people, but not others. Right now I’m just working on this when I should be working on either the novel or on another project. At least it gives me a chance to get used to using this Swype keyboard.

Well, back to faking interest. I hope y’all have a good holiday weekend.

Sincerely,
Seething Apathy

No post today.

Today was further proof that I need sleep. I couldn’t settle down until 4:00 AM and got up at 10:00 AM to deal with the people to clean the gutters. After that was done, I tried to get something done, but only managed a couple hundred words… and I am having a change of heart concerning one character’s departure from the book.  For this of you interested or want to give feedback, read on.

There is a character in the first book named Nysa. I’m sure I’ve mentioned her a couple of times. Well, in the first mental run through of the novel, and she was going to have a very tragic death at the hands of angry villagers (fire, pitchforks and the such). It was going to be the first death that was going to shake the group to the core as they left, proving to the ushabit that the world they are in now isn’t all sunshine and happy work. I liked that idea, trying to keep up the notion that anyone can die. However, there have been some changes from in between what was in my head and what’s ending up on paper. I’ve already killed off one character and now I’m in the cool-down part of the novel, so less action, more character development. So, I’m thinking of giving Nysa a more romantic send-off. Letting her elect to remain behind in the happy village, leaving behind Marah and the others to go on. The relationship between Marah and Nysa is supposed to be more one resembling mother/daughter rather than any sort of romantic interests. Of course, Nysa is still a stitched together corpse animated by magic and had her mind shattered at the hands of her very creator – so there is still a little bit of a squick factor to be looked at. Would like to get some sort of feed back on this: we had one main character death in the previous chapter, would another one make this book seem to swerve in G. R. R. Martin territory, or will it outside that there is no such thing at safety in this series?

In other news, I went out to a ballgame and got a light sunburn on the left side of my face. It was a good day as I got to spend it outside with some relative peace. The team lost, but since I had no money on it, it’s no big loss to me. Football season starts soon, and I am going to get the satellite train package to get every game of my favorite team (for a change) rather than relying on the networks to cut in on the last 5 minutes of a game. Seriously guys, there are other teams than Patriots, Packers, Cowboys, Redskins, Ravens, Saints and every other team other than the Panthers, Jaguars and the Bills. I’m looking at you Fox. Yes, you.

I should get back to work, or at least back to faking it.

Sincerely,
Seething Apathy

Well, I finally got it!

I feel like I can fire someone from this chair and it would stick.

My back is happy and I feel a lot more productive in this (firing people aside). I am also hoping that this will translate into a higher word count, or at least, the ability to write for longer than fifteen minutes before having to get up and walk around in an effort to stave off the impending back ache. I need to also get my hands on one of the rubber mats to make it easier to get in and out, and I am also looking at a cheap desk to replace the one I have here just so I can have some more room in the living room to move about.

The novel is starting to take an argumentative turn, bringing to mind this saying by Victor Hugo: Slaves would be tyrants were the chance theirs. While I know that Tyro is trying to come out from under the shadow of the Master’s influence, but she’s being a little hard-nosed about it. Thankfully, Ghislain is there to maintain the peace (3 words at a time) and I am feeling that it’s about time to get them to the Happy Village™ and lighten up the mood a bit more. Maybe even get some romance in there between a couple of the characters. Not going to say who, but I want to try to move things along in an unexpected direction. I hope I did that in one of Tyro’s memory flashbacks (entitled in my head: ‘You weren’t going to eat that, were you?’) and I hope to keep it going along throughout the series… as soon as I have finished figuring out what’s going to happen in the third book… which I still have no idea what to do. I am not going to panic until I get halfway through book two. Given the pace that I am writing book one; I should have plenty of time until I get halfway through book two.

Just as a bit of a question to everyone here who reads this: what would you like to see in this blog going towards the future. Yes, I do plan on using this as a platform to shill my wares, but I don’t want it to be a blatant cash grab (that’s what the writing is for). Mostly, this journal is a way of getting things off my chest that I can’t say publicly – did you think my mom held me aloft and said ‘what a darling baby boy – let’s name him Seething Apathy’, did you? Yeah – I try to sell my stuff, so my real name isn’t the closely kept secret I would like to think it is, but it’s not public knowledge either. So – wandering back to the original question: what would you like to see here other than my meandering prose?

I need to head out and get cleaned up for work, so y’all can chew on that for a minute. Leave any suggestions in the comments and tips by the jar.

Thank and I hope y’all have a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello everyone. I was concerned about getting my word count down for today on the novel that I ran out of time to do an entry today. So, I’m writing a quick one today just to let people know I am alive and to adjust accordingly.

I think I found the problem with my cresting and falling productivity: sleep. Yesterday, I managed to go to bed earlier than Tuesday. Waking up this morning was a lot easier and I was at least able to finally get going and got to the magic number (1,530 for a total of 40,305) today. It’s still a little lighter than the previous chapter and I was able to set up another one of the ushabit’s superstitions concerning the dead. Oddly enough, I was able to have a light moment with one of the main character’s memories and a sweet moment between two characters. All in all, not a bad day.

I should get back to work. After all, they’re pretending to pay me, I should pretend to work.

Sincerely,
Seething Apathy