Pawnstorm Digital Press

Today I’m spending my time on Broken Shores (which you should totally check out if you haven’t already, its a nontraditional fantasy, closer to Modesitt than Tolkien), which is sorely in need of some attention, so there won’t be too much going on here. I do plan on having a new Cover Design article for you either on Friday morning or sometime Tuesday. If you’re looking for something good to read, I’m reading Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, which is interesting so far, and a welcome change from Western fantasy (the fact that one of the main characters is a chubby old guy is fantastic).

Today I'm spending my time on Broken Shores (which you should totally check out if you haven't already, its a nontraditional fantasy, closer to Modesitt than Tolkien), which is sorely in need of some attention, so there won't be too much going on here. I do plan on having a new Cover Design article ...

I’ve continued to work on revising Caldera, and am happy to say that I’m almost there. In other news, you may have noticed that I’ve added a link to my goodreads profile and swapped out the list of stories for image thumbnails. Unfortunately, you can’t see all of the stories listed in the sidebar, but it looks better (in my opinion) and you can still get at everything from the stories page. In other news, I’ve also been working on the ShoStoWriMo site, and have switched over to bbPress, which appears to be a better fit. You can feel free to register whenever you want, now, no authorization from me required.

In the next week, I hope to finish up my revisions of Caldera, as well as doing a second draft of The Forked Path. In addition, I plan on resuming work on Soapbox (and finally getting everything back to its pre-crash state), although probably at a reduced frequency.

I've continued to work on revising Caldera, and am happy to say that I'm almost there. In other news, you may have noticed that I've added a link to my goodreads profile and swapped out the list of stories for image thumbnails. Unfortunately, you can't see all of the stories listed in the sidebar, ...

I’ve been without power for most of the past six days, which has led to a predictable drop in productivity. I’m happy to report that the power is back on, and I hope to have the Broken Shores story that I’m working on finished by the end of the week. In other news, I’ve been thinking about the story that I wrote to submit to Machine of Death for Volume 2. They didn’t buy it, and although they mentioned something about possibly buying more of the submissions, they haven’t mentioned anything about it since. Since I’m the impatient type, I’ll probably post it here sometime soon, so keep an eye out for that.

I've been without power for most of the past six days, which has led to a predictable drop in productivity. I'm happy to report that the power is back on, and I hope to have the Broken Shores story that I'm working on finished by the end of the week. In other news, I've ...

Last fall, due to spam, I took the ShoStoWriMo forum offline, with the intention of bringing it back in 2012. I had been putting it off (probably until March), but I’ve started to see people trying to go to the nonexistent forum to register. Since I lost a lot in the Hostocalypse I’ve had to restart from scratch, but the bones are up. Currently, registration is by admin approval only, but if you really want to get in, register an account and put a comment here (by clicking on the post title, this is on my to-fix list, I assure you).

In any case, I give you the 2012 Short Story Writing Month forum!

Last fall, due to spam, I took the ShoStoWriMo forum offline, with the intention of bringing it back in 2012. I had been putting it off (probably until March), but I've started to see people trying to go to the nonexistent forum to register. Since I lost a lot in the Hostocalypse I've had ...

In December, I decided to take part of the Reddit Fantasy Writers December Writing Challenge (which was to start a short story with the line: “I guarantee you won’t find the same quality for a cheaper price,” the merchant insisted.). All was going well, I had an idea, and finished a first draft by the sixteenth, but then forgot all about it and missed the deadline for submission. In any case, I went ahead and revised it this morning and have posted it. It’s only about 1250 words, so it shouldn’t take long to read. Enjoy!

In other news, I hope to make some more progress on restoring this site tomorrow and Wednesday, focusing on redoing the sidebar and fixing the RSS links (I try to run everything through my feedburner feed). In addition, I plan on fixing the Soapbox page so that it once again has the complete story.

In December, I decided to take part of the Reddit Fantasy Writers December Writing Challenge (which was to start a short story with the line: "I guarantee you won't find the same quality for a cheaper price," the merchant insisted.). All was going well, I had an idea, and finished a first draft by the ...

Things are starting to get back to normal. I’ve managed to migrate over to my new account at FatCow Hosting, and things are looking pretty good. I still have a few things to take care of, like fixing the sidebar and updating the Soapbox page, but I hope to do those tomorrow. As for writing, I haven’t done any in a couple of weeks, but I plan on getting back on track in that department tomorrow, as well, and will probably have some new fiction this month. My projects for the month are: revising Caldera, finishing the rough draft of the new Broken Shores story, and starting work on a story idea that my cousin gave me about intelligent food hamsters. I probably won’t get back to Soapbox until early next month, however, so apologies in advance for that.

Things are starting to get back to normal. I've managed to migrate over to my new account at FatCow Hosting, and things are looking pretty good. I still have a few things to take care of, like fixing the sidebar and updating the Soapbox page, but I hope to do those tomorrow. As for ...

Due to the upcoming holiday, I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing Soapbox. Don’t worry, I won’t be slacking off completely. During that time, I plan on doing a final revision to Caldera, writing a piece of flash for the /r/fantasywriters December challenge, and writing a piece of flash for Broken Shores. I also plan on the occasional blog post. In any case, happy Snowflake Day!

Due to the upcoming holiday, I’m going to take a few weeks off from writing Soapbox. Don’t worry, I won’t be slacking off completely. During that time, I plan on doing a final revision to Caldera, writing a piece of flash for the /r/fantasywriters December challenge, and writing a piece of flash for Broken Shores. I also ...

I just finished the first revision of Caldera, and will soon send it out to some readers. If you want to read it and give feedback, let me know.

I just finished the first revision of Caldera, and will soon send it out to some readers. If you want to read it and give feedback, let me know.

I just finished writing the last bit of the rough draft for Caldera. It weighs in at about 13,000 words, but I imagine that it will gain a couple thousand words in the second draft as I fill in bits and write in better transitions for parts that were written at different times. I first had the idea for this project more than five years ago, and it has gone through several different incarnations, but I’m really happy with how it worked out (although I shouldn’t really say that until I’ve done a couple more drafts).

So what now? The story needs to sit for a bit, so that I can look at it with fresh eyes. In the meantime, I’ll probably write another Broken Shores story, and start making notes for the next Horizon story. Once I get a second draft done, I’ll send it out to readers for feedback, and once I hear back from them I’ll fix whatever is broken and put some polish on it. Then I’ll try to sell it.

Whew.

I just finished writing the last bit of the rough draft for Caldera. It weighs in at about 13,000 words, but I imagine that it will gain a couple thousand words in the second draft as I fill in bits and write in better transitions for parts that were written at different times. I ...

Only two days left in November. Whew. It’s been a busy month. I’ve gotten a lot of work done on Caldera, although it has gone slower than I would like. I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow. I’ve started a new project, Soapbox, which has been a fun experiment (and will continue to be so with any luck). Finally, I finished Trust and Vulnerability over at Broken Shores, and it has been well received.  All in all, I’ve written something like 15-20k words this month.

As for reading, I’ve been continuing to read A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine, which has continued to be rewarding. Also, I have started to make my way through Neal Stephenson’s new book, Reamde, with which I have to be careful or else it will take over my life for a few days as I do nothing but read it. Finally, I’ve read some good short stories, most notably The Things by Peter Watts, which is the story of the creature from the movie The Thing, but from the Thing’s perspective.

I’m not sure how much I’m going to get done next month, hopefully a short story and flash piece for Broken Shores, more Soapbox, and maybe a new Horizon story (Interstellar Fish Larceny FTW!), maybe I’ll even get around to revising Caldera. Also, I want to make some improvements to this site (I want classification icons for the stories here: funny, SF, fantasy, free, etc.). In any case, I have a lot of writing ahead of me today, but there will be a new Soapbox piece tomorrow and a progress update for Caldera the day after.

Only two days left in November. Whew. It's been a busy month. I've gotten a lot of work done on Caldera, although it has gone slower than I would like. I'm hoping to finish it tomorrow. I've started a new project, Soapbox, which has been a fun experiment (and will continue to be so ...