A Tribute to Nanowrimo

During November 2011, I took part in the National Novel Writing month writing challenge.  The objective was to write at least 50,000 words by the 30^th November.  I succeeded in the challenge, writing at the time 51,000 words. A year later that Nanowrimo writing piece became Haldred Chronicles: Alyssa; my first novel.

Since then almost every year, I've taken part in Nanowrimo. It has been a fantastic experience each time, and has enhanced my writing extensively.  I have met and communicated with some extremely talented authors, been challenged to improve my writing, and taken full advantage of the huge range of tips and tricks offered by the Nanowrimo community.

5 years after that first big push into the world of writing, I'm still at it. Last week I finished my 2 short story submissions for the Mantic Games Nanowrimo-inspired writing competition, and submitted both. I'm currently working on the Haldred Chronicles: Shade synopsis, with a view to submitting to potential publishers.  I also have a fourth Haldred Chronicles novel to work on called ‘Anna’.

As something of a tribute to the last 5 years, you will find on Amazon for the first time, my third book ‘Haldred Chronicles: Shade’ free for downloading on Kindle.  It will be so for the next five days so if you’ve not already picked it up, now is a good time.  Like my other books, it had its beginnings as a Nanowrimo entry.

Shade on Amazon.com

Shade on Amazon.co.uk

To both the organisers and many participates in the Nanowrimo community, thank you all so much for all your encouragement, direction, advise, critique and most of all, for all the fun I’ve had during the many subsequent Novembers since I took my first steps into writing stories.  May the next 5 years be the same.

Until next time.

I've not been idle

Well it's true, it's just I've not had much time to write a blog, but I'm taking a bit of time now to redress the balance.

It's been four months since my last blog update, and exactly seven months since my son Logan was born. We've been a busy little family since then, and our 'wee man' has been growing up fast.

On the writing front, I've been busy with the following.

I finished the first draft of the Wrathborn wargames background and submitted my writing so far to its creator. We'll be meeting up again soon to expand on the background further.

I submitted a short story entry to Black Library publishing house, who produce Warhammer and Warhammer 40k novels. Sadly, my entry was not accepted for publication, but I did get past the first triage so I'm pleased they took a good look at my entry. I'll definitely be trying again next year.

Very recently I've been working again on my fourth Haldred Chronicles book 'Anna'. For a long time I've been going back to it but not feeling inspired enough. Now, with an infusion of new ideas, the story is back on track! I'm up to 22,000 words and counting.

I'm also writing a synopsis for Haldred Chronicles : Shade. The plan is I will being using Shade as my pitching book to publishers, so I need to write the synopsis very carefully.

Finally, I'm taking part in Nanowrimo, the November writing competition, but in a different kind of way. Mantic Games, a local wargaming company, are running a writing competition in celebration of Nanowrimo. They want a couple of short stories written for their Warpath and Kings of War gaming systems. So, I'm going to have a go! Closing date is 1st December so like all those taking part in Nanowrimo proper, I've a deadline to work toward.

 Plenty to keep me busy these next few months. Until next time, take care.

What should I write next?

Keeping to a trend, at last, a blog update!  Sorry for taking so long.

To update you all on my writing, I attempted Nanowrimo 2015 in November, but sadly I only managed 7,000 words on my concept novel ‘Haldred Chronicles: Titan’.  I got the characters and a lot of scenes fleshed out but I just didn’t make the time to finish it off.

However, I still started the novel well, and it now joins several other ideas that are more than just a few lines on a page.  Hence the title of this blog post.

2015 has been a great year.  Haldred Chronicles: Shade was released in August, and recently all 3 of my novels are now available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback format (check them out HERE for the UK and HERE for the US!).  I’m very glad I now have a proper starter ‘trilogy’ of novels and judging by reviews, people are liking my writing.

2016 is going to be a busy and exciting year for me outside of writing, but I still want to keep writing even a little bit.

To do this, I want to start 2016 by properly kicking off another project.

That’s where you, the person reading this blog post, come in.  Help me choose which idea to pursue. 

Here are the options:
• Haldred Chronicles: Titan = "Victoria and Co find themselves on the world's first ‘tourism’ ship, but someone plans on spoiling the party..." = This was my Nanowrimo 2015 novel and I got to 7,000 words with it.  Should I finish it in 2016?
• Haldred Chronicles: Anna = “Victoria and her team travel to the mighty Magra empire to investigate a series of deadly seaborne raids from mysterious attackers.” = this novel was originally to be my 3rd book but ‘Shade’ took over.  It’s set in the Magra empire, a Chinese/Japanese themed land were villages along the sea have experienced deadly raids by unknown enemies.  I’ve already written 19,000 words on this and developed some interesting characters.  Should I continue?
• Haldred Chronicles: Fey-hacking = “Courier-fey provide secure, reliable, almost instant communications across Larrick City…or do they?” = Courier-fey are like text messaging in the world of Haldred Chronicles.  After reading a brilliant book about the News of the World hacking scandal I thought to myself, what if something like that happened with the Courier-fey in my world?  This story at the moment has only a couple of introduction scenes, but I like them; one involves a talking cat.  Maybe this is the novel I should write in 2016?
• Adventure and other bad ideas: Sophie’s story = “Sophie Dalvich, a barmaid at the Broken Dreams tavern, finds her cartography and map making skill’s requested by a group of mercenaries.” = This was to be the BIG novel, way before Haldred Chronicles: Alyssa was written.  It was what established the Haldred Chronicles world but the story itself was never finished.  Despite this, even in it’s draft form it is over 75,000 words long and has an entire cast already created for it.  It concentrates on a group of adventures operating in Larrick City, from many different cultures and races, banded together on various mercenary missions.  I could go back to it, refine it, and produce it as a huge spin-off novel.  Should I?

So those are the options.  Titan, Anna, Fey-Hacking or Sophie’s story.  The titles will probably change but the concepts are there.

Vote by replying to this post with the name of the story you like.  Likewise, PM me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Tumblr (now that Tumblr has instant messaging!) and let me know which one you like the look of.  See links to the right of this post.

Then I’ll make 2016 the year of that novel.

Thanks everyone.  Till next time!

I'm keeping at it

It’s been a long time since my last blog update but readers will be used to that now I think.

The good news is that, still, I have been writing and immensely enjoying.

Haldred Chronicles: Shade now stands at a healthy 45,000 words and I have set myself the goal of finishing the book by the end of December.  At least from a 1^st Draft perspective. I had hoped to finish by the end of November but looking at what else I have on, I think there just isn’t enough time.

I would love to be taking part officially in the November writing competition over at www.nanowrimo.org but I’m not writing a brand new novel, so I’m just using the event as inspiration to get my own current novel finished, as well as encouraging others. Those who follow my twitter account and Facebook page will have seen numerous references and encouragements regards Nanowrimo 2014.  To those taking part officially, good luck and enjoy!

But what are the other ‘things’ that are taking up ones time?  They are good things I can assure you.

Being married rocks, and I’m immensely enjoying.  Deborah and I have been making extensive plans for the future, including moving house next year.  She has continued to be an immense encouragement to me in my writing.  As well as this, I’ve continued to help in developing a wargames background material.

For the last 7 weeks I’ve been sending ideas to Rick over at Hairy Studios, who are in the process of developing the skirmish game ‘Wrathborn’.  Rick has given me the ideas in his head and I in turn have fleshed them out.  Races, history, important events, and even right down to the culture and economics of the system have all been developing via this collaboration.

So plenty is happening, lots to keep me occupied.  Hopefully next time I am posting an update I’ll have the 1^st draft completed but we’ll see.  I must concede that Shade is definitely the very definition of ‘that difficult 3^rd book’.  But it’s getting done!  Till next time.

Other peoples blogs!

A quick little blog post to get another aspect to this blog going.  That of blogging about other peoples blog’s!

I’ll try and do this every so often, just to high-light some posts I think are interesting or useful (or both!)

First up, this post about using LinkedIn.  I have to admit, I’ve not yet followed the advise on this one but it definitely has some very good tips.  Hope it proves useful for my fellow authors in particular.

http://m.entrepreneur.com/article/226895

Books and such provides this handy little guide, which was particularly useful when I was first starting out my Nanowrimo experiences but still rings true now.  It’s all about first drafts and not to worry about them!

http://www.booksandsuch.biz/blog/writing-a-first-draft/

Finally, something a little different for both mystery authors and those just interested in running a mystery themed RPG.  This gem was passed to me by my fellow Nanowrimo writing buddy Daireen and is an excellent article on the fine particulars of writing mystery fiction.

http://rpgathenaeum.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/write-a-gripping-mystery-adventure-in-four-steps/

Hope everyone enjoys.  Meantime, I have been writing away on both Tales of Larrick City and Book 4.  Tales of Larrick City has hit 10,000 words and Book 4 is coming together nicely with a lot of little modifications.  I’ll be taking a rest over Christmas, obviously, but will be back at things come 2014.

Just in case I don’t get posting up before then, I wish you all a very happy Christmas and a happy new year.

Till next time.

My Nanowrimo experience

Hello everyone.  Yes, I know it’s been a while.  But I have lots to tell I’m glad to report.

As I reported in my last blog post way back at the end of October, my plan was to take part in the National Novel writing month run by www.nanowrimo.org.  An event known on Facebook and Twitter as #nanowrimo.  I am glad to report that I took part in the event throughout November, though I did not complete it as intended.  The plan was to write 50,000 words but I only managed 26,000.

Still, the entire experience was one I would definitely recommend to any budding writer or current writer looking to boost there creativity.  The event forces you to concentrate on writing, even writing for the sake of writing.  Quantity is better than quality, the idea being that you complete a 1^st draft then spend the next while perfecting what you manage to write in the tight time scale.

26,000 words was not what was required to ‘win’, but it certainly gave me a lot to think about and has set a solid foundation for Haldred Chronicles book 4.  The main characters, major plot points and scenes have all been formed in one way or another.  What is needed now is some time to properly connect them all together and fill in the details, particularly regards the descriptions.

A lot of the writing was often just dialogue between characters, to be filled in at a later date.  But that’s part of the fun!  Letting you set things up so that later you can go back and fill out the details; updating descriptions and making the scenes truly breath.

I had a lot of positive experiences during November as the challenge went ahead.  For example, I noticed certain activates I’d been doing in my life influenced my writing.  Obviously every writer will take some kind of small influence from there own life in writing, but during Nanowrimo this seemed to be heightened due to the challenge to put words on the page.  One example was my experience with the boxed set of all the seasons of the TV comedy series Frazier in my DVD collection that played in the background whenever I was writing.  I have found that some of the humour in book four has been influenced by the Frazier style of comedy; that unique sort of dry sarcastic wit.  Indeed, one of the characters I can say with confidence is definitely my own take on Frazier Crane, though given the setting he is sufficiently different not to just be a direct copy.

It was a fantastic experience as well due to the community involvement.  The multiple forums on the nanowrimo website were highly active during November and before, offering help and tips as well as places to brag / encourage.  The topic posts were a treasure trove of helpful material from ‘how do you escape a burning building’ to ‘dress sense of the 17^th century’.  Anything and everything could be covered and when you asked a question, however obscure, someone somewhere on the boards would be able to answer it for you, often very quickly.  For those interested, the forums are still up and the community still very active.  Go take a look!

The experience was further enhanced by the writing buddies system.

Before the event began, I was able to connect with a number of like minded individuals in order to encourage each other, share work and comment.  This provided a more personal connection for developing the story and putting words on the page.  Constantly these writing buddies encouraged me to ‘keep writing!’.  They were part of the reason I got as far as I did.

I must send a particular big congrats to my writing buddies BriegeH, Daireen, Eimi111, Erin Funk, GabzWritez and ValkyrieMist who did successfully complete the challenge.  Good job all of you!  I assure you, I am immensely jealous J.

I may not have completed the Nanowrimo challenge, but I have certainly benefited from the event and now, the future is clear for books 3 and 4 to grow.  The plan will be to return to book 3 in about a months time and finish it.  Before that, I will continue for another month on book 4 and fill in a few more of the scenes.  I want to leave book 4 in at least draft 2 form. 

Book 3, ‘Tales of Larrick City’ will then be finished and I will look to release it in the first quarter of 2014. 

Once again, my thanks to all my writing buddies on Nanowrimo and everyone who encouraged me in completing the challenge.  Thank you so much!  Good luck with your own endeavours.

Till next time.

A post before the battle...

Well, November is almost here and with it, the November writing competition at www.nanowrimo.org.  Preparations are being made.

First, sadly, I’ll have to suspend this Blog to give me time to write.  I’ll need to write around 1,500 words a day if I am to get anywhere near my goal of finishing a novel by the end of the month, so unfortunately I will probably only post about once in the next month; just to let people know I am still writing and how far I’ve got.  This will probably be in the middle of the month.

Secondly, I will of course suspend work on Tales of Larrick City.  I hope in the next few days to get it up to 10,000 words at least (at 7,600 now) and leave it in good form but we’ll see what time I get.  The plan is still to be in December with the 1^st Draft’s of 2 books; it would be fantastic if I manage to do that.  I like a challenge!

Finally, I just want to wish all the very best to everyone doing Nanowrimo this year.  Friends, family and fellow writers, good luck to you all and successful writing!

Until the next Blog post, all the best.

My writing space

A slightly late blog this time (I normally try to post on Mondays and Fridays) so apologies.

At the weekend I did something that I don’t get to do often; type up my novel seated at my ‘writing space’; my specific little area that I’ve cleared for writing.  It was…liberating.

Normally, I just write where-ever I have somewhere I can put the laptop down or make a note on, but I have also set aside a place in my house specifically for writing.  I’ve set up my perch in the spare bedroom, opposite the window on a nice big table, with plenty of room for the laptop and notes.  I managed to bring my word count up to 5,000 for Tales of Larrick City as well as making a few more notes on the future.

To describe it further, I’ll go through what I see when I sit down.  On my left is the Google Chrome book laptop that I use to check out forums / blogs etc.  Beside it are some of my reference book’s (Forensics’ for dummies for example, very good book) and my note books too.  In the corner are more note books and previous book drafts for easy access.

Directly in front of me at the end of the table is a pile of RPG source books and rulebooks from various gaming systems.  Good for inspiration and visual reference.

Moving on to my right hand side I find my main laptop: a small Dell Latitude D430.  This is where I actually do my writing, hammering away on the keyboard which is nice and clickly (I don’t like the new silent keyboards, no response!).

Everything at the table is nice and spaced out, with stationary in the drawers out of the way and space to place a cup of tea or coffee without it being in danger of spilling over a keyboard.

This blog isn’t so much an instruction on how to create your own writing space, it’s just a comment on how I’ve organized mine.  If you’re a writer, how do you organize your writing area?  Do you even have a writing area or just write where-ever there is room?

Meanwhile, like I said, I’ve made good progress on Tales of Larrick City as we are up to 5,000 words and climbing.  November is getting closer which is prompting more work in that regard as I want to have a solid, 1^st Draft for Tales of Larrick City before I hammer into Nanowrimo and start on the 4^th book properly.  It will be an intense November; the writing space will be a critical battleground!

Till next time.

Good days and bad

Don’t be worried by the title, JG’s not having a bad day.  I am just reflecting on the tendency with writing to have your good days and bad.

A good day is when you get a lot of writing done, obviously.  My Sunday yesterday was such a day, were I was able to sit down and make a lot of good progress on not only ‘Tales of Larrick City’ but also on a number of other little projects; that’s a good writing day.

A bad writing day is just a day were either you’ve set time aside for writing and get nothing done, or a day where you just don’t have the time to get anything done in the first place!  How does one overcome such obstacles?

For me, half the battle is fought and won when you have set some time aside.  It doesn’t necessarily need to be a strict routine thing (e.g. 1 hour every day).  Just means that if you’re planning your week you make sure that you’ve set some time aside to write.  Secondly, to defeat the problem of having nothing to write during those times, taking quick notes is a must.

Inspiration, after all, can come at any time but you might not be in a position to elaborate on something you thought off at the time.  So, instead, quickly jot it down or make a note on a phone.  Then, when it comes to your ‘writing’ time, you can bring out the note / phone and properly write up the idea, which might possibly cascade into further ideas.

Now as I said in my previous blog, I don’t think I’ve been in the game long enough to be dispensing advice, so veterans may consider this just ‘what I do’ as apposed to definitive directions on how to write up your story.  Just a little thought J.

Meanwhile, as I said, I made very good progress on Tales of Larrick City and have now got a lot of the ground work done.  However, the middle of the mouth is coming soon so I really need to kick it up a gear if I am to finish the 1^st draft by the end of the month and be ready for Nanowrimo.  Hopefully over this week I will grab some ‘writing time’ as intended and get more done.  I also now have 6 reviews on Amazon.co.uk for Kalla which is fantastic.  My thanks again to everyone who has been reviewing my book, it really helps!

Till next time all.

Other peoples blog's

I am glad to report, I have been working away on Tales of Larrick City this week as planned.  In the process, I’ve also been reading a lot of other peoples blog’s.  This is both an educational experience but also very interesting to see the different styles, different advise and just the different things people post about.

Take this update for example from one of my favourite authors, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, talking about the writing of his latest novel.  The post is entitled “Lets talk about Abaddon”.  For Warhammer 40K players you’ll know what he’s talking about.

http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/

The post is humourous, as well as being very insightful into the world he is writing on and the amount of research he’s been doing.  And like I said, it’s just damn funny.  It’s the kind of blog I wish I could write.  Interesting, informative and funny.

Then there’s this blog from Randy Ross

http://www.theloneliestplanet.com/2013/10/18-months-of-social-media-one-writers.html?m=1

This one is more of an insight into the writers experiences with social media.  Which, sadly, seem to have been not the very best particularly regards Facebook and Twitter.  Read carefully and you see plenty of hints and tips on how to maximize their effect, as well as pitfalls to avoid; a very informative blog post.

Finally, from Bob Mayer.

http://writeitforward.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/the-authors-marathon-10-things-to-remember

This post is all about writing marathons and I thought quite useful due to my intention to run with Nanowrimo in November.  Again, its an advise blog with plenty of very good information.

These blogs and more have greatly encouraged me in my writing and I hope they do the same for you.  I still consider myself a complete novice in the world of the writer so I don’t feel I’m in a position to write ‘advise’ blogs just yet.  But I think I can still make my posts interesting to the reader and I hope this one has been interesting for you, if only just to direct you to other peoples sites.

It will be a learning experience as I continue to experiment with my online presence.  In particular this week I have seen a massive increase in my activates on Goodreads.com.  Come visit me if you are on the site yourself J

www.goodreads.com/jgcully

Till next time everyone, have a good weekend.

Inspirations

This weekend past I was in Scotland, visiting friends and family with Debs. It was a fantastic trip, a proper catchup and an opportunity to visit some beautiful and interesting place's. Place's such as the Macintosh museum in Glasgow (Macintosh was a noted and highly regarded designer from the very early 20th century), and a little walk round the park there, as well as a trip to Edinburgh. 

Perfect places for inspiration to strike. Which it did! I now have two more book ideas from this little trip alone. One was inspired by the Macintosh museum, particularly because Macintoshs designs were so modern for the 1900's. It got me thinking about how a Macintosh-like individual would be treated in the world of Haldred Chronicles. 

The second idea, was from a chat with a good friend we visited about his latest design projects and his...'Mad scientist ' aspirations shall we say. 

For those of the writing type, I ask you. Where does your inspiration and ideas come from? Is it from a place or person you visit? A sudden random thought triggered by anything from a song you hear or just a text message? Just curious :-).

News wise, I'm making good progress with Tales of Larrick City and enjoying the writing immensely. I have also been making preparations for the November writing challenge, as i've now signed up with Nanowrimo officially. Also seen a big increase in likes on Facebook again; once more a big thank you to my fellow authors for the interest and support.

And finally, I now have 5 reviews of Haldred Chronicles: Kalla on Amazon which is just fantastic! Thanks so much to everyone who has been reviewing and passing on encouragement. You guys and gals are great, keep them coming.

Till next time.

PS: this blog update was created solely on my Z10 blackberry. So yes, I have confirmed I can email-blog now as well! ‎

The need to blog more often

Well, tonight I’m not feeling the best.  I had to cancel some gaming I was hosting, which sucks as I was really looking forward to it.  However, I have managed to write up this blog and do some profile updates whilst the meds hopefully do there work to convince my guts that being sick is not a good career path.

As the title says, I need to blog more often.  I’ve started to realize the potential of blogging.

Blogging is supposed to inform people of what I’m up to; that bit I’ve gotten right.  Via this blog in its various forms across websites and forums, I’ve kept everyone up to date on what I’ve been doing on the writing front; word counts, plot plans, book plans, character interactions and all that other good stuff.

I’ve also occasionally posted up short stories to give you a little something extra to take a look through and get a glimpse of just what goes on in this dangerous mind of mine.

What I haven’t done is promoted any particular discussion, or informed on techniques used in my writing.  I’ve been talking about writing stories but not prompted anyone’s individual thoughts on writing.  I’ve proposed characters but not encouraged any engagement on them.  In essence, I need to get people talking instead of just reading a blog post and forgetting about it.

Fortunately, a lot of very talented ebook writers and bloggers have helped immensely in advising on just how to do this and get more from book blogging.  That, and they’ve been a great help in improving my various internet profiles.

An example of good blogging is this post from an interview with the author of ‘Wool’, currently one of the most popular ebooks ever.

It can be found here = http://writerunboxed.com/2013/09/23/the-year-of-the-reader-how-one-successful-indie-author-marketed-his-work-up-the-bestseller-lists/

Then there’s the advise I got from members of the Createspace community.  I’d like to publicly thank Eric from the createspace forums / blogs for helping me improve the next few links to my profiles (his own link is http://ericvanderhope.com/ please visit!)

My LinkedIn profile is now = uk.linkedin.com/in/jgcully

Much easier to remember I think you’ll agree.

My good reads profile is now = http://www.goodreads.com/jgcully

Again, much easier to remember and quote.

And he even helped me update my Author pages on Amazon too!

Amazon.com = http://www.amazon.com/author/jgcully

Amazon.co.uk = http://www.amazon.co.uk/JG-Cully/e/B00AJ3LPA2/

They now look a lot tidier and go directly to my internet pages on these sites.  Thanks again Eric!

Now for some news.  As of today I have officially started writing ‘Tales of Larrick City’.  It’s format will be a departure from the last two Haldred Chronicles books as this one is going to be a short story compendium and glossary of the series.  It’s also going to be a departure from a price point of view too, because when it’s released it will be free!  It will give me an excuse to try a few different writing styles and experiment more, as well as filling in some nice additional detail on characters and the Haldred Chronicle’s background.

In addition, I have decided that I will write book 4 as part of the November Novel Writing Month competition held by The Office of Letters and Light (www.nanowrimo.org).  This competition is the reason ‘Alyssa’ was finished and published in the first instance, so it will be good to get back to it.

This should mean that I will have at least the first drafts of my next 2 books done by the end of November.  It’s ambitious but I’m going to try as a little extra work at the start of the process makes all the difference.

So there we have it.  New ideas about blogging, new internet profiles on websites across the board and new plans for the future.  Lots happening!  Till next time everyone (when I hope to be updating as a much healthier individual).

The time of publishing approaches...

The time of publication is fast approaching.  After months on months of drafting, rewrites and proofing the final product is pretty much ready.

Haldred Chronicles: Kalla will be released on schedule on the 31^st August 2013.

As a final precaution I am having the “final” draft looked over by a fresh proof reader, as well as two other people who hadn’t read the first book; just to check coherency and if the book sits well as a stand alone story.  I have written it with the idea that you don’t need to have read the first book, but if you have you’ll get that little bit extra out of it.  I hope, depending on what comments come back to me, that I have succeeded.

A launch party is also confirmed, but it has become a more low-key affair than originally intended.  It’s a social meet up for a load of friends and a few guests to come and enjoy some banter, an interview with myself and a reading of part of the book.  It will be good fun but won’t be over the top.

The next update to this blog will be literally the ‘it’s out!’ post with a link to purchase the book.

After book 2, what are my plans?

Well, I hope to continue work on the short story compendium “Tales of Larrick City.”  This, once complete, will be a freely downloadable book of short stories, as well as a glossary for the Haldred Chronicles universe.  Release date is still to be confirmed; I need to finish it first!  I hope people will enjoy as it fills out the story and background of the world.  That and it’s a good excuse to keep writing before starting work on book 3.

Speaking of book 3, the plan is to start it off in November 2013.  I will write it as part of the November writing completion run as the National Novel Writing Month at www.nanowrimo.org.  Hopefully I will finish a complete first draft by the end of that month. 

So that’s the plans anyways.  Next blog update will be the release of the book.  I hope you all enjoy!

Take care.