Here is the (more or less) complete version of the cover for my upcoming novel, Scope’s War!
It’s been 1 year…
Ok, I know this sounds like the beginning of a Barenaked Ladies song, but it’s not.
I was sitting in bed tonight, editing Scope’s War ( I’m almost done with rewrites through Ch. 13 ) when I looked up at the date on my computer. I realized with a start that tomorrow, Jan. 17, 2013 will be the 1 year mark of releasing Across the Battlefield.
It seems incredible to me that it has already been one year since I put forth my first publication. Since then, I’ve been featured in a couple flash fiction anthologies, with one more on the way, finished my first novel, and started several other short fiction project, including a followup to Across the Battlefield. Despite the difficulties of life the past year, which included changing jobs and nearly losing my brother-in-law to horrific surgery complications, I seem to have come out on top of it all.
So I’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who follows my blog and my work. Thank you to all my online friends and networking buddies who have helped get Across the Battlefield up to over 100 likes on Amazon and have convinced me that this is what I should continue to write and focus on this part of my life.
Most of all, I have to thank my amazing wife and my family, who are constantly encouraging and have pushed me on more than one occasion to keep going even when I felt like giving up.
So cheers and happy writing to you all. Let’s make this year better than last!
January Writing
Hey Everyone,
It’s been quite a while since my last post. Work and life have been busy and taken a major toll on my writing. The holidays are always busy, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to find much time to write during the past month or so. I am, however, in the process of editing Scope’s War. I’ve gone through the first 6 chapters of revisions, rereading my work and changing some character arcs, dropping and adding new characters, and making the overall timeline of the book flow more naturally. If I stay on this pace, my hope is to have first round rewrites and edits done sometime next month. Then it will be time to pull out the red pen and do the serious text editing and grammar checking. My goal is to get Scope’s War onto Amazon sometime this summer, hopefully by June, but if it happens earlier than that, so much the better. In the meantime, I’m going to be putting together a small group of test readers to read through the first 3 or 4 chapters of Scope’s War. I’d like to get an idea of how people relate to the story, the world, and the characters. If you’re interested, you can send me a message via Facebook on my Author Page. Once Scope’s War is done, I’ll be starting to work on Scope’s Redemption, the follow up book. I’m planning on the story only being a duology, rather than the traditional trilogy. I’m also going to resume work on Sands of Eternity, the alternate history / time travel novel that was my first project when I started out writing. I put about 41k words into it before I shelved it to work on Scope’s War, but my hope is to finish that up in the next year or so. I leave you, now, with an excerpt from Scope’s War. The passage below is a brief glimpse into the history of America just before the birth of our protagonist. Enjoy and, as always, happy writing!
* * * * *
The Northern War, of which he father’s friends had spoken, arrived just on the heel of the Southern War with Mexico. The city of Vancouver, in western Canada, had defected and given over control of their city and surrounding territory to the Pacific Territory Authorities, specifically to the city government of Seattle, its citizens tired of a government whose main focus was on the eastern half of the nation. The result of the United States accepting the Canadian city was that rather than gaining territory, and the economic boon the city offered, the United States once again found itself at war with a neighbor. The American military was pushed back almost a hundred miles along a northern border simply too large to adequately defend. Garrisons along the northern border stripped of their core commands to fight the Mexicans in the south found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. In the end, Canada stopped short of a full-scale invasion, content to keep what it had conquered as the United Nations stepped in to put a stop to the fighting. America lost nearly twelve percent of their continental holdings in what amounted to a Canadian blitzkrieg that couldn’t be answered.
Scope’s War + ATB:OSE Updates
Hello All,
It’s been some time now since my last post. Work has been very busy and left me with little time for writing. I have, however, somehow managed to find the time to finish the first draft of Scope’s War. The draft settled in at just over 81k words. It’s been a big work, but it feels good to finally have something to start molding into a final product. I’ll be doing rewrites and modifying some character roles in the coming weeks. As any writer will know, it’s very easy to let your story dictate itself and I found myself with a second half that didn’t really match up to the first.
On other writing fronts, I’m also now actively working on the first of two follow-ups to Across the Battlefield. The first, subtitled Operation Soaring Eagle, is based in a future version United States we got a glimpse of in story five from the original collection, Deception. This new collection is much more closely related, with certain characters reappearing later in other stories. In some ways, it is a novella as much as as an anthology. Where Across the Battlefield had only 5 stories, OSE will have 8 or 9. I’m also trying to add a little more insight to the characters and their histories and motivations.
Finally, I’ve sketched out the outline for Across the Battlefield: Volume 2. This will be a more direct follow-up than OSE, with 6 brand new stories written in the same mysterious style as the first 5. The stories are once again staggered throughout history and involve a variety of factions and peoples. It will be up to the ready to figure out who’s who before each story ends.
As always, thanks for the support, it really means everything. Cheers and happy writings!
Update – Scope, Reviews, ATB:OSE
Hey everyone!
It’s been a while since my last post, but I wanted to keep everyone up to date on how work is coming along on my projects and how things in general are going. I’ve been working really hard at my new job with just under a month there. We’re working on a new project, which will be revealed at PAX in a couple weeks, so everyone is really in high gear. As a result, I’ve had less than stellar results in trying to get the manuscript for Scope’s War done by this weekend. Time’s a ticking, and I’m putting in some work tonight, but it looks like I’ll be pushing back my finishing date until probably next weekend.
With that said, the work is coming along great. I’ve been fine-tuning the story as I go, knocking some chapters out in favor of others. I’ve also finally figured out how to incorporate some characters who were briefly introduced early on in the story. I had phased them out for simplicities sake, but then realized I could really hook the twists back in near the end of the book. It looks like, based on how the story is progressing so far, that I’ll be likely only doing a sequel, rather than a trilogy. That may change in the future, but for now that’s the plan I’m sticking with.
On the ATB front, Across the Battlefield received its fourth review, which also happened to be its third 5 Star review. Chris Thrall, author of the international best seller ‘Eating Smoke’ wrote the awesome review. It’s great to have fans, especially in successful authors. When work on Scope’s War is finished, I’ll be moving over to work on the follow-up to ATB. The second volume, titled ‘Across the Battlefield: Operation Soaring Eagle’ will be a collection for stories that expand on the arc and characters of my story ‘Deception’ which was the final story in the original collection. I’ve got a great set of new stories planned and currently have eight drafted out, which should give the collection more meat than the first one.
I’m going to sign off now and get cracking on some writing, but once again, thank you all so much for the support and encouragement. Cheers, and happy writings!
Brief Update + New Job
All’s been quiet on the writing front recently. I just started a new job this week, working for a startup mobile games developer. As such, I’ve been a little behind in my writing. I recently finished off Ch13 of Scope’s War, as well as the epilogue of the book to set it up for book 2. I’m trying to get back to some kind of writing flow, but things are very busy right now. I’m still shooting, however, to have the manuscript done by the end of September. My hope / goal is to have it edited fully by the end of December and then submit it to the Amazon Breakthrough Author competition. It might be a good way to see how it is received by professional judges and it doesn’t hurt to try. In the mean time, I’ll be focusing on my new job. If you’d like to see what I’m working on, and have an Android or iPhone, you can check out our game, Life is Crime. It is a geo-location based crime game that takes your actual position and converts the maps around you into a game. I’ll try to get another update up with more writing info soon. Cheers and happy writing!
No win for me
Well, I finally heard back from American Short Fiction’s flash fiction contest. Turns out I didn’t make the finals. Kind of a bummer, but then again it was the first paid contest I entered, so I can’t take it too harshly. I think as writers, we tend to think we are better writers and more creative than we sometimes are. On a positive note, I can still work on the story and no one holds rights to it.
On the writing front, I’ve been in a bit of a slump recently, more from lack of time to write than any real lack of inspiration. I’m nearing the end of the chapter I’m working on in Scope’s War. I’ve also been working sporadically on America’s War. I’ve nearly finished the first of the 9 projected stories, and have a good chunk of the next three written out. My plan for the collection has also morphed a little. I’m going for kind of a cross between a short collection and novella. The stories, or chapters, will stand alone by themselves, but they are all taking place during the same conflict, just in different places / times. I haven’t decided if characters will meet each other yet, I’m just letting the stories weave themselves together. As I did with ATB, I will post one of the stories, not sure which one yet, on the blog here so everyone can get a little taste of what’s in store.
Cheers and happy writing!
