At the point where I’m letting others read my work in progress

     This weekend I let a second person read the first 58 pages of my story, “Gods and Dragons.”  She is my neighbor and a school teacher, so I might get a little more of a grammar critique then I want.  This is OK; my grammar needs a lot of critique.  I have one more veracious reader that I plan to give a copy to soon and hope their comments will let me better shape the story going forward.

     I have a nagging ache in the back of my mind that the first chapter needs to be rewritten and punched up a bit.  If I stop to do it now, I’m afraid I’ll loose momentum.  I’m very happy at the pace I’m writing and really don’t want to stop and go back right now.  So I guess, I’ll just continue to tell people that I let read the story not to worry, the first chapter will get rewritten eventually.

     The other issue with the book is my title.  I’m not really happy with it and I’m thinking about going with something like, “The Gods and the General.”  Then the second book would be, “The Dragons and the General.”  I’m not sure yet, a lot will depend on what the final version of the book looks like.  I might just end up writing one large book and let the title come from some of the early reader’s feeling.  I’ll have to start asking the people I let read the story to give me their ideas.   

Thanks and let me know your thoughts on the title, I’d love to hear them.Lonnie

I’m really starting to make some headway now

I’m up to about 58 pages and have really started rolling.  I don’t know if I’m particularly good at writing fight scenes but they sure are fun to write.  And to my surprise, a simple short fight between a couple of characters can fill up the pages in a hurry.  Before I knew it, I was fighting the clock to try and finish it before I had to head out the door.  

            The first part of my book was spent trying to layout the characters and get them moving in the right direction, defined as toward the point of dire consequences.   Now that I have the main characters moving, I ended up with them in three different locations.  Now I’m bouncing back and forth just to get them heading in the same direction.   A chase between the pro and antagonist will eventually get them in the right place.  It’s just a matter of pacing the story in such a way as to keep the reader interested in all the characters and not too confused.  I guess I’ll know I’m successful if the story sells.

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings,

Lonnie

Email from John Hemry

I got and email response back from John Hemry, author of The Lost Fleet series today.  I’m very excited that he took the time to respond to my email from yesterday.  I dropped him a line, thanking him for writing such a great series and inspiring me to pick up the pen again, (ok really a key board). 

 

When I mentioned the only thing I didn’t like about the book was the cover art, he let me know that he doesn’t get to pick it. I pretty much figured that he didn’t have much control over the cover so I can only guess how bad my cover art would be if I actually get my work published.  I’ll worry about that if it happens. Until then I’ll just keep plugging away at the key board

 

On a really good note, he wrote that he was planning to include the first couple of chapters from Valiant on his website.  Valiant is the 4^th book in the series and is now available for pre order from Amazon, (due in June).  I strongly encourage everyone to give these books a read; you will not be disappointed.

 

http://www.johnghemry.com/

 Lonnie

Things are going to get a little dark

I’m entering what might be one of the darkest moments in the book.  I’ve been referring to something called, being staked but haven’t expanded on it until now.  I’m going to use it as a way to really differentiate the good guys from the bad guys.  I hope this will also add weight to the drama, because people will understand what’s at stake, (pun, I know), if the good guys get caught.  The immediate writings following this dark point will be the drama of a chase and rescue.  I believe the key will be to get on with the story as quickly as possible so the reader is left with a good feeling after this low point.  

I haven’t been too successful with driving the story forward, because I find myself bogged down in dialog.  I’m going to keep this in the forefront of mind as I write to insure this doesn’t happen here.  I’ll let you know if I’m successful.

 Lonnie

Gods and Dragons, The direction of the Story

I’m feeling excited about the recent direction of the story.  I’m finally getting the characters moving and soon look forward to several confrontations between the good guys and the bad guys.  With the two new characters I’m introducing, there should be a good amount of humor that I can add to the story from time to time.  The trick will be how to maintain the balance of humor, action and suspense.  But, isn’t that the trick in all writing. 

Thanks

Lonnie

Out of the town

If you’ve read the first chapter of Gods and Dragons it may come as a surprise that through the first four chapters I can’t seem to get out of the damn town. I’ve got two stories going on, one with the main characters and one with the Impressers. The problem is the Impressers are a very small part so the bulk of the story is still in the town. I’m trying to balance character development with story progression, but story progression is not keeping up. I think I’m going to end up editing the fourth chapter so most of the character motivation and planning takes place on the move. Not sure when I’ll do that because I’m trying to concentrate on writing the story forward and leaving the editing to the end. I’ve tried to edit as I go in prior writing, but I always end up getting bogged down and the story stagnates.

I’m having some concerns with the name of the novel. There seems to be a lot of Gods and Dragons out there when I do a Google search and even a website with that name. I registered godsanddragonsbook.com, but I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing with it. Looking forward to where I want to take the story, I can envision three separate books so a different naming convention makes sense. The main character Harpsarro should be in the title, so I’m probably going to include “The General” in the title. I’m thinking the first book may end up being, Gods and the General; the second book could be, Dragons and the General; the third is still open. This would end up being The General series, but I’m not completely sure where the story will end up by then so it can wait a while.

If you have any ideas either way or even a completely different direction I’d like to here it.

Thanks,
Lonnie

First person I let read the story.

Saturday was a big day for my writing; I let someone read the first 40 pages of Gods and Dragons. She was visiting my wife and me for the weekend and is an avid reader. I routinely loan her books from my small library, so I know the types books she likes. It was still a little unnerving because a 79 year old great-grandmother is not your typical fantasy reader. However, she really likes the The Eagle series, by Simon Scarrow and the 1632 series, by Eric Flint so I thought I would give it a shot.

After handing the pages to her I had to leave the room. However, I kept coming back and forth to see her progress and almost screamed when she announce that she would finish it tomorrow, ugh. Granted it took her a few hours to get through the first 31 pages, but come on there are only 42 total. Good to her word, she finished it the next morning and gave me some good feedback. She really liked the story so far and signed up to read it as fast as I write it, (good news). The spelling and misprints were distracting, (bad news), so I told her she had to read the rest with a pencil in her hand and be my first line editor.

It was nice to have someone finally read the words I’ve written. However, the next step is to have a disinterest reader, not sure when I’ll be ready for that.

Lonnie