The Waste Lands

What I Want To Read In 2015

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I didn’t read any where near enough last year. I can think of a half a dozen books that I really wanted to read but just didn’t get around to (Wool, Pandemic, Feed, The Man in the High Castle, Soul Asylum and The Earthsea Quartet). Those are just the ones off the top of my head. Lets add in some shorter pieces by Dan Abnett (set in his Gaunt’s Ghosts series) and J.C. Hutchins novella series, The 33.
Then I’ve got novels by Justin R. Macumber, Terry Mixon, Paul E. Cooley, Armand Rosamillia, Mimi Black and Christopher Stocking. (Dan Abnett also has a full length Gaunt’s Ghosts novel out this year too, yes I’m excited!).
I’d also like to read the second Lincoln Rhyme book, The Coffin Dancer by Jeffery Deaver and the first Harry Potter book read early on this year as well.
I’d really like to get start on the fourth Dark Tower book as I finished the third recently, but as it’s taking me a while to get through this series by Stephen King I’m a little reluctant to make a start on Wizard and Glass while I’ve got so many other books that I’m itching to read. That said, if I get through enough by the mid-point of the year then I may dive into it. I was thinking about giving it a go as an audiobook but these Dark Tower books seem so complex I’m not sure I’ll absorb them as much as I would do if I read them. I am a big fan of audiobooks, but I do miss the odd thing while listening (interruptions while at work) and also, I’ve read the previous three books and I think it’ll feel weird not reading the other four.

These are all books I’ve already got, either on my bookshelf or on my Kindle app or my iBooks app.

I will be listening to a lot of audiobooks this year as well. I’ve got eight or nine in my Audible library already.

I’ve set a Goodreads target of 60 books this year. With the audiobooks, comic books and the shorter pieces I’m planning on reading I think I’ll manage that. If I’m well ahead of target early on I may increase it but I’ll see how I’m doing.

Here’s A Quickie!

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Hey all, 1277 words tonight in under an hour, but it has wiped me out a little. I can feel a headache creeping in so I’m planning on putting the dishes away, and then getting into bed and reading for a while, I’m determined to finish off The Waste Lands by Stephen King (The Dark Tower book three) this week.

NaNoWriMo: Day 18

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Even though I’ve passed the 50,000 word target I’ve still got a novel to write and although it’s nearing its end it still doesn’t feel like it’s quite there yet. I have eased off the pace a little though. I’m still trying to write a couple hundred words before work but I’m not going to continue to write during my lunch breaks while at work.

I’ve also dropped my daily word count target down to 1000 words a day from the 1667 that is the minimum daily target if you are to hit 50k by the end of the month. I’m sure I could keep up my pace, but I’m not willing to wipe myself out just to maintain a 2000 word plus, a day average. I still have a full time job to think about which is the main reason why I’m drooping the word count down.

One thing I am worried about is that I am now going to loose this momentum I’ve got from doing NaNo, which I really don’t want to let happen. I’m hoping that writing each day is now a habit and it’s one that won’t be broken easily. I’ve written for eighteen days straight now and I’ve been told that once you’ve done something daily for twenty-one days then it’s a habit. So three more days and then it should, hopefully be well rammed into my mind.

I know almost all of my posts have been NaNo related recently but I will be getting back to my other random posts in the next couple of weeks.

This is me done for the night now. I’m going to get into bed and get a few pages of The Waste Lands by Stephen King consumed 🙂

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Ahead of Target

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When I shut done my Mac this evening I’d just past 7300 words, which puts me well ahead of where I should be. I’d set myself a target of 5000 words for this weekend, so to smash that by 2300 words really makes my day. But it’s also a reminder of just how well I can write when I put my mind to it. I’ve heard a couple of writers saying that NaNoWriMo is every month for them. I’ve also heard professional writers say that they typically write about 2000 words a day and when they say that it occurs to me that that’s what I want to be trying to do. Maybe not 2k a day but maybe 1k a day when I’m working on a first draft. That’s something that’s at the forefront of my mind at the moment as I’ll be writing what may be the biggest novel I’ve written next year. And something I want to do is write a clean first draft.
As I’ve been working on Earth, After Liberation it’s frustrated me a lot at just how much of a mess it is. So I’m working hard with its sequel, Oppression, to make it as clean a draft as possible. When I do the second draft I really don’t want to go through the same rigmarole that I’m going to have to go through with the first draft. As I’ve been writing Oppression I’ve caught myself a few times thinking about re-writing Earth, After Liberation because I don’t want it to read like it’s been sliced and diced a few times, but that’s a decision that can wait till a later date.

I’ve not plotted out any novel as much as I have done with this one and having as much joy with it as I am has got me thinking that maybe being a pantser is not for me. I think I’m going to be able to write a much more fluid and structured story by starting off with an outline, so far it’s feeling like a much more natural writing process for me.

I’m now going to log out for the night, watch the end of Apollo 13 and then dive into The Waste Lands by Stephen King.

The Champion by Scott Sigler

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I was going to give a quick summery of the start of this story but if I did that then it would be a spoiler for the previous book. This is book five of Scott Sigler’s Galactic Football League series and it follows the life of Quentin Barnes as he tries to lead the Ionaith Krakens to a Galactic Bowl title, and deal with his family, team mates, his coach, team owner, Gods and the various people who want to kill him.

It’s been two years since book four came out and I’ve got the limited edition hardback and I’ve been listening to the podcast as Sigler is, like pretty much all of his work, is giving it away for free but after this weeks episode I realised I couldn’t wait each week for the story to continue. So I used my Audible credit this month to download the audiobook (I would’ve started reading it but I’m reading The Waste Lands by Stephen King). In two days I blitzed through this audiobook, getting through till about 10pm on Wednesday night as there was no way I could wait till the next day at work to finish it off.

I’ve been consuming Sigler’s work since about 2007/2008 and most of his work takes place in the one universe and theres a part in this book early on that almost knocked me off my feet, you’ll know it if you know Sigler’s work. That is something that I admire, writers being able to tie this stories together in this way, and it’s something that I’d love to be able to do myself one day.

This book had me laughing, it had me crying, it had me on the edge of my seat and it had me cheering on the Krakens.

The ending left a lot up in the air, but it didn’t leave me feeling short changed, not by a long way. Scott Sigler has said this is a seven book series and those last two books are going to be epic!

 

(over the next few months I’m going to be getting the previous four novels in the Galactic Football League series on audio because they are stories which get richer with each listen and from a writing point of view they are a great way to look at world building and character development and building a long term story.)