Apparently, if I'm reading this notice I found correctly, QUEEN OF THE SYLPHS will be released by Dorchester in both Trade, E-book format, and Audio on 6 September 2011.
They're also rereleasing my first two books in Trade format. So yay, a solid date!
That gives me two months for all the editing.... *cry*
At least I know what I'm doing this summer.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Plugging Along or: My muse is weird
As I've mentioned before, THE HOMUNCULUS, book two of my Cuckoo series, took forever to write. I started it in March of 2010 and didn't finish the first draft until May of this year. I think it's a pretty good book (I haven't actually read it yet. I don't read my work as I'm initially writing it. Kills my creativity for some reason) but it was like pulling teeth to get it.
Two days after that one was finished, I started typing book three of the series, THE REVENANT, where inspiration proves yet again that she's a fickle, as it's day 13 after I started and I've written just over 17,000 words and am on Chapter Five. And this is after I discovered some sort of massive bug with the new version of the word processing software I was using meant it wasn't actually saving anything and I lost 5000 words. That was a bad day when I figured that one out.
The is the sort of inspiration that I want, obviously. I much prefer to spew out a book than to fight with it. I don't know why this book is coming out so easily while the last one was a reluctant mule about it (book one, THE CUCKOO, came out at a decent speed, taking me four months for the first draft). It must be something about how it was a middle of the series book. I don't know for sure. Most of the Sylph books took progressively longer to write. Book four, HUNTER OF THE SYLPHS (which is still looking for a home and may just have one soon), took what seemed forever and was another molasses book, beat only by, what a surprise, THE HOMUNCULUS.
At least it's done now. Until the rewrite, anyway.
Two days after that one was finished, I started typing book three of the series, THE REVENANT, where inspiration proves yet again that she's a fickle
The is the sort of inspiration that I want, obviously. I much prefer to spew out a book than to fight with it. I don't know why this book is coming out so easily while the last one was a reluctant mule about it (book one, THE CUCKOO, came out at a decent speed, taking me four months for the first draft). It must be something about how it was a middle of the series book. I don't know for sure. Most of the Sylph books took progressively longer to write. Book four, HUNTER OF THE SYLPHS (which is still looking for a home and may just have one soon), took what seemed forever and was another molasses book, beat only by, what a surprise, THE HOMUNCULUS.
At least it's done now. Until the rewrite, anyway.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Queen of the Sylphs cover
Look what I have. Isn't it pretty? I think this is my favourite of all the Sylph covers. It's done by Anne Cain.
Friday, May 27, 2011
I Finished!
The first draft of THE HOMUNCULUS is finished! Woot! I started that bad boy on 1 Feb 2010. Gah.... But it's done now!
Tomorrow I start on THE REVENANT. Yippee!
Edits will wait until all three are done so I can work on them as a whole. Makes continuity easier to manage.
Tomorrow I start on THE REVENANT. Yippee!
Edits will wait until all three are done so I can work on them as a whole. Makes continuity easier to manage.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Another Update
I've passed 90,000 words in The Homunculus. That's 10,000 words since my last post on 6 May, which is 17 days, which is an average of 588 words a day.
Wow, that sucks....
This book has been like pulling teeth. I'm enjoying the way it's turning out, but hoo, man, it's been fighting me! The Battle Sylph took me a month to write. I have no idea why (but I wish that always happened). Each successive Sylph book took longer to finish, to the point where book 4 took 9 months to write (book 4 does take place before book 5, but I wrote book 5 first).
I actually started writing The Homunculus on 1 Feb 2010. It REALLY fought me then until I had to put it aside for about 6 months or so until I figured out how to rework the plot. Good thing I didn't have a contract for it (still don't) as that would have really made me nervous.
My all time record for writing a book is for one called Hunting the Rapture. It's up at about a dozen houses right now for sale. It's 511 typed pages, over 200,000 words, and took me four years to write. That one was written back when I wrote everything out longhand.... took years to get me to actually type stuff straight into a computer, so I don't think that record will be broken....I hope.
Wow, that sucks....
This book has been like pulling teeth. I'm enjoying the way it's turning out, but hoo, man, it's been fighting me! The Battle Sylph took me a month to write. I have no idea why (but I wish that always happened). Each successive Sylph book took longer to finish, to the point where book 4 took 9 months to write (book 4 does take place before book 5, but I wrote book 5 first).
I actually started writing The Homunculus on 1 Feb 2010. It REALLY fought me then until I had to put it aside for about 6 months or so until I figured out how to rework the plot. Good thing I didn't have a contract for it (still don't) as that would have really made me nervous.
My all time record for writing a book is for one called Hunting the Rapture. It's up at about a dozen houses right now for sale. It's 511 typed pages, over 200,000 words, and took me four years to write. That one was written back when I wrote everything out longhand.... took years to get me to actually type stuff straight into a computer, so I don't think that record will be broken....I hope.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Another update
I've hit 80,000 words in The Humunculus! Yay!
I've also got ideas for the next series I'm going to write *sigh* that may go as many as seven books in length.
For anyone who is paying attention, I've finished playing with my site design of the most part and www.ljmcdonald.ca is just a splash page leading here. Much kudos to Starkite Works for helping me do this. I couldn't have done it without her.
I've also got ideas for the next series I'm going to write *sigh* that may go as many as seven books in length.
For anyone who is paying attention, I've finished playing with my site design of the most part and www.ljmcdonald.ca is just a splash page leading here. Much kudos to Starkite Works for helping me do this. I couldn't have done it without her.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Update
In case anyone's noticed, the site's undergoing a lot of changes. A friend's helping me turn it into something more easily updatable and customizable than my old site.
In writing news, I'm 70,000 words into the first draft of THE HOMUNCULUS. 20-30k left to go, then on to book three. I haven't sold the series yet.
Also, I stuck a new artwork in the new My Artwork page.
In writing news, I'm 70,000 words into the first draft of THE HOMUNCULUS. 20-30k left to go, then on to book three. I haven't sold the series yet.
Also, I stuck a new artwork in the new My Artwork page.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
And now for something completely different....
I know it's nothing to do with writing, but I'm happy with it. This is the first (hopefully successful) attempt at creating art on my new cintiq drawing tablet. I had to fiddle with the colour calibration when I took it off the tablet and put it on my main computer screen, so hopefully she doesn't look oddly coloured to anyone.
I should probably go write something now...
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Why Bees?
I found myself chatting with Autumn Dawn recently, a very nice author who's over at http://www.authorautumndawn.blogspot.com/ and who gave THE BATTLE SYLPH a sweet little plug. She'd just got herself a new beehive and the idea of hives and queens in the sylph universe appealed to her. She asked me why I used that idea.
It's kind of hard to say what I was thinking when I came up with it. I've said before somewhere that the sylphs were inspired by bees and tengu and all sorts of stuff. I tend to play with concepts in my writing, even if I'm the only one who knows it, and I do recall that I brought in the bee idea because I wanted to explore the idea of power. I've read a lot of books, both good and bad, which have characters with immense power, and immense power over other people. That's great. But usually those with the greatest power end up with those they have power over going "Hey! Cut it out!" Look at all the books where the the protagonists are out to stop the evil king/god/demon/priest/whatever who's crushing their freedom. I can't think off the top of my head of any books where the characters are under that sort of absolute power and are perfectly fine with it. It would be a rare sylph indeed who didn't want to have a master/queen (*shifty look towards book six*) Anyway, bees are happy with the whole hive mentality, and I kind of liked that for the sylphs. It certainly wouldn't work in any universe - humans are notoriously bad at bee-like behaviour - but it worked in this one.
It's kind of hard to say what I was thinking when I came up with it. I've said before somewhere that the sylphs were inspired by bees and tengu and all sorts of stuff. I tend to play with concepts in my writing, even if I'm the only one who knows it, and I do recall that I brought in the bee idea because I wanted to explore the idea of power. I've read a lot of books, both good and bad, which have characters with immense power, and immense power over other people. That's great. But usually those with the greatest power end up with those they have power over going "Hey! Cut it out!" Look at all the books where the the protagonists are out to stop the evil king/god/demon/priest/whatever who's crushing their freedom. I can't think off the top of my head of any books where the characters are under that sort of absolute power and are perfectly fine with it. It would be a rare sylph indeed who didn't want to have a master/queen (*shifty look towards book six*) Anyway, bees are happy with the whole hive mentality, and I kind of liked that for the sylphs. It certainly wouldn't work in any universe - humans are notoriously bad at bee-like behaviour - but it worked in this one.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
My website's fixed
Yay, I figured it out, so it's not longer saying that Midwinter still is coming out at Christmas or that Queen is releasing in March. Sorry for everyone who was misled by that. I'm pondering doing an overhaul of the site's entire look, but I primarily want to use this blog for updating and make the other site as simple as possible.
I've also added a little widget thing at the bottom of each entry so people can click to give their thoughts on whatever I put out there. I thought it was kind of cute, though I may end up regretting adding the WTF? option....
I've also added a little widget thing at the bottom of each entry so people can click to give their thoughts on whatever I put out there. I thought it was kind of cute, though I may end up regretting adding the WTF? option....
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