Manga

I'm back in my manga mode. I actually completed a full draft, a pretty good draft, and in fact I must say I'm rather pleased with it. Oh, there's some tweaking to do.

But what I'm doing now, I confess, is drawing it. I can't say my efforts are professional quality. I had a hard time allowing myself to do it. But finally I persuaded myself that "I can't sell it" is a pretty stupid reason for not doing an art project I'm excited to do.

I Made an Animated Film

My first animated film. I love computers. You can do all kinds of things I could never have dreamed of before.

Sam and Frodo take a lovely trip on the Anduin. Enjoy! (But pay attention, the whole thing is only two-three seconds long.)

Back and Forth

Okay, I did work on the transition. It got hard, I got stuck, I got distracted by the summer. I'm back in the colony story. I've been doing a lot of the first visit to the new world, and the lead-up to it. Busy time.

Now I'm distracted from that, by an insane need to build an electric bicycle. Visit http://idledad.blogspot.com for news about that project. Moreover, I've misplaced, maybe lost the flashdrive that had the latest work, with no backup, which has me bummed about writing. If that weren't enough, I've started a new job as a special educator, my first teaching job. Fyah...

Writing Update

I finished all those edits I talked about in my last post. Finished it. Printed it. (Killed a toner cartridge in the process.) Enlisted neighboring author Jennifer McMahon (http://www.jennifer-mcmahon.com/) to read it. Jennifer proclaimed it excellent, saying she felt transported to Uliante, but... she was very busy, and decided she didn't have time to finish it, stopping right around the transition between Part One and Part Two, right where I'd worried that things might lag. She sounded sincere in her description of its virtues, but, I want to write the book that people who are busy don't put down.

She had some thoughts that gave me a direction, and I think it's a good one. It's also possible I might cut out a chapter or two. I'm back into it again, but still feel this beast is near completion.

Still Writing

Things have been crazy this past year, as usual. Sorry I've been away from this board.

Yes, I have been writing. The colonists made it to 44 Bootis A, concluding Part One. Then suddenly I was filled with the inspiration to complete that dang fantasy novel. It looked like it was almost done and would need only a last read-through and copy-edit. Then it turned out that, on the last read-through, I had an inspiration of how to address a long-burning worry I'd had about the transition between Part One and Part Two. Then I realized a character was speaking in the wrong voice, and I needed to rewrite her dialogue. Oh, and, when I wove the scenes of her subplot into the novel, I'd left out one critical one. Hmm, and there were three lowlanders living in the forest who had lowland names, and their names should have been changed to forest names when they were adopted, because the renaming of another character at the end is symbolic of her adoption. Oh, and the torture scene is too graphic, it gives me nightmares, and could get me shelved with horror. Glory, after doing all that I think I'd better read it through again for another copy-edit.

But you know what? I think this novel is coming out good.

Ironically, I'd sent the first chapter off to an agent, as a sort of threat to myself to finish it. (You'd better have it ready if he asks to see it!) I'd initially conceived of the Native American influence as a way to set off what could otherwise be a standard high fantasy story about the magical people in Flimbottomland threatened by the evil Lord Hootchiekoo. Apparently, I was effective. The agent wrote back, and said I had great promise, and wrote very well. Unfortunately, he'd seen the story as being a wholly Native American fantasy, not a high fantasy with NA flavoring, and there wasn't much market for such things.