Hello folks! It has been a while and I thought I should check in because exciting things have happened!
I finished the first book in my Goddess of Disaster serial! And hit 100 followers on Royal Road! And, most importantly to me, it has gotten nearly a hundred more comments over its time on Royal Road. It seems like the readers are invested!
My mind is blown. This is a similar or better place than where Hack and Slash was before I published it, and H&S had gone through several rounds of professional edits and excoriating rewrites. Goddess of Disaster is entirely self edited and has received no outside help.
This is absolutely fantastic news and reassures me that my choice to write a long story like Soleil’s is worth it. How long? Well, my basic idea is to have one “book” or plot arc for each semester of Soleil’s 4 years at Glayth University, so there’s 8 books to go.
Given that it took me 5 months to do book one, I guess that means I know what I will be writing for the next 3 and a bit years?
It’s funny. That would have made me feel exhausted, terrified and stressed, once upon a time. But now I am just excited to see where the story will take me. Is this me growing as an author? Gosh!
The next book in the series will follow our main character, Soleil, into her first semester at Glayth Skerry University. It’s a magical school for prospective adventurers, so magical drama is the name of the game here. I have decided to call this book “Fresh Meat” since Soleil is a freshman. Also it hints at the horrors to come! I kid, I kid, it’s not that scary. Unless the mere thought of university leaves you in a state. Which, honestly, fair enough.
I have also been writing a monthly post for my Patreon, focusing on the world building for this story. It means that I get to have a bit of fun doing something that I really enjoy (writing weird little bits of world building) and the folks who sign up to follow it get to see a bit behind the curtain. The bonus for paying members is that they can vote on what the next world building piece will be about, I think this month it is a focus on the home towns of some of the secondary characters? It’s great fun for me, because world building is my favourite part of writing. But it also gives readers a chance to influence future plot points because once I’ve written a post about a subject that thread is now dangling in my head, just waiting for a future plot bunny to latch on! It’s not even intentional, it’s just that once I’ve put work into fleshing out a piece of this world my brain just has room to grow into it. So yeah, if you want to influence the story I guess my advice is to get involved with these votes since once an idea has been put into my head it is hard to get it out again.
But what else have I been up to?
Well, I have grown a little obsessed with a new phone game. It’s called Terra Mine and was created by a teacher who wanted to make something to push his students to go out and visit places, rather than rotting at home in front of a screen.
There are a bunch of different elements to the game and they are each fun in their own way. The first is the most basic, you play mini games to earn the in game currency that you can then use to buy plots of land. The plots of land can earn you a whopping 1c per month if you get the best kind (it’s random) and some people are going for it and trying to earn a living on it! Supposedly you just need to get 1500 plots of land to make a hundred dollars a month, but I’m not holding my breath for that. I am having more with the secondary part of the app, that when you buy a plot of land, other people can visit it and you can leave messages back and forth for each other. So far I have left notes at numerous train stations, the LARP site I go to, and, of course, my local Tesco (UK supermarket chain).
Actually, I made a bit of a mess of it when I left one at Tesco recently. I set up a note reminding people to bring in their bag of bags. And then forgot mine! Clearly the brain was not engaged that day.
But I have had a lot of fun with Terra Mine and it feels nice to be helping an indie developer. Apparently he was not expecting it to go as well as it has and neither was Google! They contacted him recently completely confused about this new game that has been getting so much attention. I think that’s probably a good sign?
If you would like to hang out with me on Terra Mine here is a referral code to get you started.
TM – 5LLG3
If you enter it when you start the game you should get enough to buy 10 extra plots of land, the same will happen for me once you’ve played on a couple of different days and had a go at a mini game. Apparently people were setting up dozens of alternate accounts to spam the referral codes, so they have added a few extra steps like making people play on multiple days. It’s crazy that people would want to cheat like that, it’s just a silly wee phone game!
In other news, I have been looking at a few writing contests that I am tempted by. It is quite hard to find good ones that don’t charge a reading fee, but I have a top three I am interested in!
The Des Moines Public Library is holding a short story contest themed around the phrase “After the storm” and isn’t that a good writing prompt! I can definitely see a whole host of ways that that could be used by a writer. The deadline is August 31st and you could win $200 for first place, $100 for second, and $50 for third.
1Picture1000Words is a contest where they post a picture and you have to write a story about it, in exactly 1000 words! The reward for first place is $1000 dollars which is pretty great, while second and third place each get $250. The current picture is a sad dog sitting on a sofa, so I have definitely had some ideas about what I want to write for that, but I’ll be really interested in seeing what other people do. This is also due by August 31st.
And finally, there is the Briar Press Folk Horror Short Story Contest, which, in case you couldn’t guess, is a contest for writing folk horror! Not going to lie, my brain absolutely perked up at the thought of this like a pet hearing treats come out of the cupboard. I have until October 1st to write something for that and I am already mulling it over. The reward is publication in their next anthology, plus all the marketing and oomph they can give, so it seems like it would be fun.
Out of the three I think the sad dog story in 1000 words is the one that my brain has really latched onto, I’m considering all the ways that I could play that. Whether I go for the straightforward (the dog’s point of view) or something that feels a little more complicated and nuanced. It’s going to be tragic, I’m fairly certain about that, but hooowwww tragic? Hmmm.
In a bit of a contrast to all of that, one of my favourite fanfiction authors has posted a new story and seems to be publishing a new chapter every other day or so. AMarguerite is an amazing author and if you are interested in Jane Austen fanfic I would highly, HIGHLY, recommend her stories. I’m not generally a fan of modern day adaptations but I make an exception for her, every time and always.
Anyway, that’s my news, how are you all doing? Anyone got some big exciting news? Or small exciting news? I’m all for a bit of humble bragging in the comments if you would like to have a go!
Stay safe out there,
K
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