Writing progress

Just checking in.  Making steady, if slow, progress on Tangleways.  I'm still aiming to finish it this year, but haven't been nearly as quick as I like.

My speed on different types of stories, and sections in them, can vary wildly.  Second books in a series are particularly hard because it's necessary to introduce the existing world and through-plot while carrying the new one in an interesting way, and avoiding it turning into a dull info-dump.  So the establishment chapters of Tangleways have been particularly challenging for me (bringing in enough of the world without weighing everything down), with such a complex world as the Trifold.

I also needed to settle some plot details before I could start writing toward them, and fortunately have figured out some of the major ones.  I tend to look forward to and plan out 'fun scenes', and am soon to reach some of them, which will be nice.

Anyway, still here, still going!  My philosophy on writing is that as long as I keep adding new sentences, even if it's only one a day, I'll eventually end up with a book.

Status - February 2020

As y'all noticed, my output over the last year significantly slowed down, in part because I'm finding Tangleways challenging.  An odd thing, given I have a very good idea of what I want to write in it.  I think, because I consider Pyramids the best book I've ever written, I keep worrying that the direct sequel won't live up to it, and keep trying to get every word right.  Giving myself permission to just write the book I want is important.

On the plus side, I am writing a ton lately, but that's because I put Tangleways down for the moment to give myself some head space, and went back to a silly side-project I've been writing on-and-off for a couple of years.  It's a high school romance with a lot of explicit sex, which definitely doesn't fit the rest of my output - I ususally don't even put sex scenes in my books because mostly they're unnecessary to the story.  But I fell in love with the characters, and have been having a lot of fun writing 'Firsts'.  [I'll probably publish that under a pen name, since it's completely off-genre, but I'll link to it from here.]

Apologies to all those waiting for Tangleways!  I've been keeping you on a chain for quite a while now, but I promise not to pull a McKinley!  Once I've gotten Firsts (and maybe Seconds) out of my system, I'll definitely have given myself enough distance to look at what I've done on Tangleways with clear eyes, and I'm already finding myself looking forward to getting back to it.

Sentence by sentence

Still making progress on Tangleways, but as the title suggests, not very quickly.  I'm having a very consumer-oriented year, just reading and reading, with a side of game playing.  Very unlikely to get a book out this year as a result, though I am having fun with the story, even if it's not a fast one to emerge.

I really like Iona and Wen (both of whom appeared briefly in Pyramids, and have larger roles throughout the series).

I promise not to let my current addiction to Chinese webnovels alter the story too much.  No face-slapping.  No revenges.  Am going to make quite a few of you cry, though, because there's a third character I like a lot in this story, and they're in an unwinnable bind.

That time I was reincarnated...

I've been tracking my reading on Goodreads since 2010, with a peak of 159 books in 2011 (I was having a big Rex Stout binge), but halfway through this year Goodreads tells me I've read a grand total of four books.

Now, the site has never captured all my reading, since it's very much focused on traditionally published media (by that I'm not talking about self-published or not - I mean the reading of things that have ISBNs or ASINs or things that there's some kind of formal system of indexing).  I've never tried to track the webcomics I read, or even more formal 'Western' comics, let alone the volume of illicitly translated manga/manhua I tend to read.

Earlier this year, the reading of webtoons led me to a translation site of the vast reams of web novels that often form the basis of webtoons.  These are almost all Chinese, Japanese and Korean language stories that aren't available in English (and thus the translation site exists in a legal shadowland in much the same way as fan translations of manga).  These translations are practically the only stories I've been reading since February.

As the title of this post indicates, reincarnation is the hot trope in web novels at the moment (and for the last few years), combining neatly with the other hot trope, isekai (other world) stories.  Many of these are fantastically indulgent power fantasies, but that's okay, I like fantastically indulgent power fantasies.  Better still, not all of these power fantasies feature your Standard Ordinary Guy Lead.

The three countries these stories are sourced from do have some distinct variants (at least in the stories I read - never underestimate the sheer variety of stories out there).

The Korean stories I read tend to fall into two categories.  Girls who pull fantastic derp faces while lying to mystical creatures who have strayed into modern Korea, and guys in some kind of gaming environment becoming supremely powerful and looking incredibly cool while being underestimated.  [I like zero to hero stories like this so long as they don't turn into harem stories.]

Half of the Japanese stories I've been reading are "I've been reincarnated into an Otome game, and I'm the villain!".  [An Otome game is a story-focused romance game aimed at girls.]  The web novels almost always have the 'villain' trying to avoid the execution waiting at the end of the game through good deeds, while somehow failing to realise that she's made all the people she expects to be her enemies absolutely adore her.  But there are quite a few variants - one where the would-be villainess embraces her role (probably in attempt to avoid the love interest being executed in her place).  The other half are straight isekai or reincarnation (transported or reborn into another world that's not an Otome game).  A good third of these are homages to Japanese cooking, where earnest Japanese strays introduce deprived other worlds to things like spices, and not drowning your food in oil, and other basics of cooking.  Being reborn into your own past and attempting to save the lives of soon to be murdered family members is another common one (Lady Baby being an amusing entry here).  But there's some wild variants - the girl with the magic bear suit, the girl who became insanely powerful killing level 1 slimes, and wildest of all, the girl who saves the magical kingdom by hiring mercenaries from her own world and taking down those dragons with tanks - while wearing a gothic lolita princess dress.

But it's really the Chinese reincarnation stories where I've spending most of my time.  Not least because these are frequently 1000 to 2000 chapter stories, but also because many of these stories fulfil my yen for overpowered female mages (in a sub-genre called 'Cultivation' stories).  I rarely make it to the end of any of these stories, not least because they're often not fully translated, or are still on-going, but I enjoy reading them until I can't take the power ups any more.  They take your traditional zero to hero story, focus it around a female character, and add lashings of slapping, family politics, coughing up blood (a sign of fury/chagrin), epic beat-downs, ruthless pragmatism, and fifty servings of revenge (both hot and cold).

Not all of the things I've been reading are magical power fantasies, however.  "To be a virtuous wife" by Yue Xia Die Ying is this amazingly languorous story about a very lazy 'reincarnee', and is also one of the most nuanced 'tell it in the spaces around the words' stories I've ever read.  If you want to read a story about the heights of formality and restraint, this one's for you.  And there's a series of stories which starts off with a detective and a forensic pathologist reborn as two of three sisters (which, amazingly, have actual endings to the stories, even if they're all interlinked).

If I had one negative for the Chinese sub-set of these stories is that most of these girls are thirteen to fifteen years old (not counting their reincarnated souls), and are considered 'too old' if they hit seventeen unmarried.

Anyway, that's how I've been spending my reading time.  Still working on Tangleways - slow going because it's such a damn complex world and I struggle to turn infodump into story flow.  And I think I'm going to have to go straight into book 3 of Trifold once I finish Tangleways, rather than hop back to Singularity because it's super hard to keep all the details this world in my head.

[Also coming up to a major anticipated game release, which will significantly impede writing progress for a few weeks.]

Current Status

I'm writing very slowly this year (partly because I took up playing an MMO again in order to write my MMO novel, and spent rather a lot of time playing the MMO).

I don't think it's very likely I'll finish Snug Ship this year (though first quarter next year is likely).  And that will push Tangleways to the end of next year.

I am enjoying writing Snug Ship immensely, at least, though it's rather more complex than I anticipated (and at the same time has a non-typical story structure).  I'm looking forward to sharing it with you all!

Cover reveal: Tangleways

This (Australian financial) year, a couple of Bookbub promos have seen a spike in my royalties that I suspect won't be repeated next year, so I have been busily upping my expenses (and thus lowering my taxes) by commissioning covers well in advance.

No-one is going to be surprised to discover that the Cwn Annwn are a factor in Tangleways after this cover. :D  I asked Julie to use salukis as the model - and this hound of death is just as gorgeous and strange as I hoped.  [DWJ's Dogsbody was one of the major inspirations for the Trifold world.]

The font layout was HARD for this one, because the background curves aren't symmetrical, but I think this works.  [I've taken to designing an ebook cover with larger fonts, and then a TPB later - where the edges will be cropped.]

WIP-wise, I've been bouncing around.  I've written one of three planned short stories for the trip to France that sits between Pyramids and Tangleways.  Actually, at around 7,500 words, it might just creep into novelette status - a first for me, and the next will probably be a little longer, though the third is just a shortish scene that could helpfully be titled "Ned's First Kiss".

Primarily, though, I've been working on The Sleeping Life and still expect it to be my next release, out toward the end of the year.

I've also been straying a little into my MMO game series, and have commissioned two covers for it (as part of my "OMG, I don't want to pay that much tax I'd rather buy covers" splurge).  After TSL has been released, I'll be working concurrently on both the Trifold and Singularity Game series, working my way through them.  Singularity is an open-ended series - no fixed end point.  I'm finding its worldbuilding endlessly entertaining, especially since people have been talking lately about utopias and the game in Snugships would probably qualify for one - though humanity is kinda on the level of chocobos in that universe.  [For those who don't get the Final Fantasy reference, that means we make great pets. ;) ]