I’ve been revising what is now the Prologue, as well as Chapters 1 & 2. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m doing what I can to keep the Delay bugbear at bay. I shared the most recent Prologue with my Discord writers’ group. I was planning to share it with Scott Dikkers and […]
Category: Fiction
A (slightly less) crappy second draft
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been working on a second draft. It’s going slower than hoped. Part of it is that the first draft — which I dictated and transcribed — is a mess. I can live with that. I’m just glad the first draft exists. It took me only two weekends to produce. […]
A new narrative frame
The old frame Dearest friends, brave souls all, please lend…umm…an ear. For I sing to you the song of Sir Aliyah, Knight-Errant.First Among Equals in the Order of the Frilly Garter.Most Cherished Champion of Her Royal Highness, the fairest and most kindly Queen Gwennifer.And who am I who presumes to be worthy enough to tell […]
Sneaky Twerp now a Kindle Select All Star in Australia & the UK
Yesterday, I was surprised — and amused — to find this message in my inbox: Unbeknownst to me, Sneaky Twerp has been having a nice little surge in sales on Amazon AU. It’s recently been number one in a couple of its categories. Who knows why? Needless to say, I’m looking forward to spending that […]
Thinking through the narrative frame
What follows is a raw version of fairly recent thinking on how to settle on the best narrative frame for the story. Maybe have Lester be a motormouth — who admits that he “talks a lot” when he gets nervous. Right there, I have the seeds of a running joke. Whenever he starts monologuing, the […]
First draft done
I just got back from a two-week hiatus. My crappy first draft has been marinating in a series of mp3 files. I dictated the entire first draft using a Sony voice recorder. Now I’m transcribing the audio files using a nifty piece of software called MacWhisper. Once the transcriptions are done, I’ll copy and paste […]
Cast of characters
Here are the characters, along with their comic archetype: Sir Aliyah Abdullah — Royal/Fighter/Know-It-All (about chivalry)Lester [needs a last name] (Sir Aliyah’s Page) — Nerd Who Thinks He’s Clever/HedonistMo & Fadwa Abdullah (Aliyah’s parents)Mr. Quaggy (school counselor/homeroom teacher)Principal Regina Regis (middle school principal)Skippy (Med Faire joust opponent)King Courtois of Fief — Bumbling Authority/Showbiz TypeQueen Gwennifer […]
A first peek behind the curtain
I write in Google Docs & Scrivener. Google Docs is where I brainstorm and journal. When an idea grows into a premise, I move it to Scrivener. Here are a couple screenshots for the Scrivener “Project” I’m using for the medieval comedy fantasy. The working title is Sir Aliyah, Knight-Errant. As you may know, the […]
Editor’s top 3 premises
The editor I hired on Reedsy choose the following 3 as the most promising of the 10 middle-grade novel premises I shared with him: Premise #6: Four Square Premise #9: Parental Abduction Premise #10: The Sad But 100% Completely True Tale of Lester, Court Jester, as told by his Faithful Cousin Sir Aliyah, Knight Errant […]
10 novel premises challenge
Two years ago I joined this novel-writing course at The Novelry called Write a Novel in a Year. At the time, I was waffling between two projects. The first was a retelling of Cinderella called Spiderella. You can probably guess the premise from the title. Instead of a princess, her fairy godspider transformed Spiderella into […]