Howdy folks, how are we doing today! I’ve written for about an hour on War Child this morning before coming to work. Much of that time was editing and a few hundred words were added.

I’ve come to a decision about how I want this first book to go. I think the final third of it is going to end up being book two, depending on how many words I need to add to sculpt the story how it needs to be. At the moment it’s a bit blunt force the next chapter. Even before the tweaks I’ve recently made it was very sudden and broke up the flow of the story. That’s a major fault I have when I’m jumping in and out of stories, they get disjointed. Hopefully I’m past that erratic style of writing. If I do decide to end this first book in the series earlier then I’d recently planned it’ll depend on how a moment in the story leaves the characters feeling. It might end up that it becomes a natural stopping point, until it’s written I don’t know. But, I’m making progress and I’m happy with that.

Something I’ve recently realised is I need to put more effort into the alien element of this book. I’ve not put enough thought into the fact there are aliens and their worlds aren’t going to be like ours. This is where continuity will come in on further drafts because I’m adding little details here and there and will have to put them in when I work on the next draft. At the moment I’m working is part two of book one and I’ve fleshed out a lot more of the aliens world than I had done in part one. Although there’s not as much in that first third of the book I’ll still need to add some little bits here and there. I suppose this is a downside of creating these creatures and their worlds as I’m writing it.

Last night as I was watching a couple of movies I worked on my mech story a little. So far this is in pretty good shape. It’s just shy of 40k words and feels like it’s working pretty well. I think the overall story I’ve got is pretty solid and the changes I’ve been making so far have been the odd continuity tweak. I think the main characters are quite well fleshed out and the story isn’t too bad. I’m only about a third of the way through, so a long way to go but it’s feeling good.

I would like to try and knock out a couple of short stories soon. The one I wrote and have now submitted for an anthology got me wanting to play with short fiction again. I might have ti just write a few little ideas out and see where they go.

Hours wise, I’m smashing it this month. Were day seven and I’ve already hit 20 hours. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before and am aiming to keep the momentum going. Even though I’m getting hours in the chair I’ve got to make sure I’m making forward progress. It can’t be editing for the sake of editing, or writing without a goal in sight. With War Child, Penal Earth 2, and the mech story I know where each needs to be. My aim is to get Penal Earth 2 done and dusted so when I can afford to have it edited and cover art produced, it’s ready to go. War Child is a longer term project and I honestly think I’ll end up having two or three books written before releasing the first. With something like the mech story, that’s possibly a one and done so once’s I’ve done my editing and beta readers have read it I’ll be waiting for cash to edit it and art work like Penal Earth 2.

So, I have somewhat of a plan. I need to add in finding anthologies for short story subs into that. I also need to promote myself better. I am thinking about these but haven’t quite got my head around them at the moment.

Right, I’m gonna leave it there. I’ll be starting my shift soon. But I hope you all have a good day!