... leaning towards quiet

I've been writing recently, but not COT related. I have two storybooks in the works, The Adventures of Clifton Thrift and All There is to See. The later is a story I have been mulling over for possibly five years, but ended up being written in a single day on New Year's Eve. The former is something I wrote back in November, but today I took one of the chapters, divided them in two, and fleshed both out. I'm fairly confident that both are "done" pending tweaks and proofreading.

But now I will probably take a break from writing to work on game design again. The only news I have about COT novels is that I've continued to develop the formatting for the short story collection, which I still think will be called Circle of Tales, but am not totally sure. The only thing I have to report there is that I've thrown out the "six books" idea and the list of stories it will contain has grown to eighteen. I've also thrown out the idea of making the order arbitrary. It will be for the most part, but some stories will definitely require reading previous ones to understand. I hate extensive recapping, especially within the same project! I'm going to let ideas for this project stew for a little before attempting anything, as sort of a quality control process. Ideas that I become less fond of over time will be thrown out, and new ideas added in. We'll see what happens.

... and now, from our sponsor

COT isn't my only writing project. (How could it be?) Another book which I wrote about two years ago and was recently illustrated is now online for sale at CreateSpace.

This children's book features a group of seven friends who confront a mysterious and (as the title suggests!) massive wall, and the adventure that results. The book is 8"x8" and 26 pages, with color illustration on every-other page. Recommended for ages three to ten, or grown-ups who are still kids at heart. 1st grade reading level.

Arnie's favorite thing to do was to run around and see what he could find. But one day Arnie found something new, though it had been there all along. It was a great big, enormous, neverending wall. He wondered what could be behind it. He was sure it would be new places to run and explore.

I hope there will be some interest for this here among my blog readers and COT fans. This little project came about back during architecture school while I was designing a preschool. I wanted to collaborate with my sister on a book project and this seemed like a great place to start. So, I found it, dusted it off, rewrote some parts, and she did watercolor paintings for it. We have a second storybook in the works, this time written specifically for her particular illustration talents. I'll be posting about that here, too, when it's done.

Some previews can be found here.
http://irethkalt.deviantart.com/art/Arnie-s-discovery-144342128
http://irethkalt.deviantart.com/art/Stew-digs-144358559

... words from editor land

I received another phone call from my editor. Things progress well, and yet she feels that another read-through before she sends it back to me is needed. What will this be, her fourth? fifth? I've lost count. The point is that my final revision is still some time away, but her editing will have been very thorough. She promises a complete overhaul to the Hammerite dialog to make it grammatically correct for English in the style of "King Arther and his Knights" (since she didn't have a King James Bible like I had suggested). She's also (I did not ask her to do this) edited the entire manuscript into the format it would need to be in for book-style publishing. Essentially, when it's back in my hands my remaining work will probably be very small.

There's no new news from COT2 land, though there is a great deal of other writing news in my life. My Japan Journal is back up for sale, and I'll be giving CreateSpace a proper shakedown to see how well it handles my store. I have two more works in the pipeline, both storybooks, both awaiting the final illustrations.

I have not yet decided what to do with the published original COT, but still think that if I do allow people to buy it I should only do so much closer to the release of COT-R, if not after it. I did a poll previously on this, but encourage the new readers to offer their thoughts on how to handle it.

... being this as it does

I've started discussion of the two most recent polls in the Batcave Forum to see what people actually think about it. As I mentioned before, I am not against naming the books, I just can't think of proper names for them. As for publishing COT-O ... I think the best time to do it would be in anticipation of COT-R ... so once I work out a publishing schedule, say one volume per month, I'll do COT-O for the first month.

As for now, I'm working on an update to my portfolio, which shall take a few more months of work, I think. At the moment I am working in 3dsMax 2010, which I am finally starting to feel comfortable enough with to actually show some of my work off. After that I really should move on to UT3Ed and/or TES4CS.

... mind the gap

I should have seen this coming. After working on thesis, COT, then the Japan journal, I am pretty sick of text. I did a little more work on the cosas release packs, but then decided I am sick of work in general. But now I need to get back to work... on school related nonsense. There's a thesis gallery on Friday, and because my presentation was done on the projector, and there will be none at the gallery, it means I need to get to work on a pinup. It's no big deal... it will just take a few hours. I am just sick of my thesis.

The good news is that both the MX manual printing and the Japan Journal have been a success. The manual is ready to go, but I am going to hold off on it until things can calm down. There's no rush, after all.

Also, from the looks of things, my critics don't have much time to do any criticising either, so now isn't a bad time for a break.

... I can get back to work now?

Urph, done. http://stores.lulu.com/justfivewordsofwisdom

The full color version turned out to be way too expensive, but I am putting it in the store anyway, in case there's a crazy person out there. You never know. I might be able to get myself a copy when I actually have an income.

I'm tired now, but at least I can resume COT.

... still "in" Japan

I gave the first run of the MX manual to the artist Ireth Kalt (Marianna) who did the team member portraits (which turned out to be eerily accurate in some cases, in spite of neither she nor I knowing what some of us looked like) for use in her samples kit. I expect the next draft in the mail any day now. An additional problem has appeared through - any time there are elements which must be precisely against the edge of the page, it seems I am asking for trouble. As a result, half of the borders around the pages are cut off by about an eighth of an inch. I don't think there's anything that can be done about it. Another problem was the darkness of the cover image, but I anticipated this and brightened it up for the second run. We'll see how it turns out! By the way, its a perfect fit for a DVD case insert; both the dimensions and the thickness of the booklet for fitting under the plastic tabs in most cases. I suppose this means that an MX DVD cover should be next, no? Anyone want to try designing one for me? :)

As the title suggests, I am still hard at work on the Japan Journal. The text is finished of course, with the selection and insertion of photos dragging on and on. The problem is that I have about 2,500 photos, and I am trying to narrow that selection down to only a few hundred. In the end it looks like the book will be about 400 pages long, which means for black and white it will be about $10 (guess) and for full color about $80. I'm going to make the full color one a hardback too. Oddly enough it did a switch on me mid-path. I was thinking of it as a journal with a few photos to illustrate. Really it's more of a photo book with a few pages of text as introduction to each photo section. Eeeash!

I'm going to add a new poll to the site, which asks opinions about the ending. Don't worry, I am not going to determine the story based on popular vote, I am just curious about how people feel concerning a certain topic, especially considering it entails dramatically changing the ending from the original. Doing this poll, I keep in mind several things. I have never been formally educated in creative writing, and have always considered COT as a learning process. Discussing and debating storytelling issues is almost as interesting as writing itself. I like to keep things unexpected and mysterious, but think that plot-twists are an overrated device. The reader should feel that the author is a confidant, not a trickster or conman.

... in hand, 150 miles away

The Mission X Manual arived in the mail today. It came to my family's house rather than to my apartment. This is good, but it means that I will not be able to have a look at it until the 3rd of this month. At the moment I am back in Tampa turning in my printed/published Thesis. Work also continues on the Japan Journal today, with possably another day after that. I hope to resume work on COT no later than Thursday.

... my other book

As I mentioned in my other post, I am taking a brief break from the COT revision to compile, edit, and complete my Japan daily journal. During the summer of '07 I spent over seven weeks there on study abroad with architecture school, and I kept a daily log of my adventures. I always meant to edit it into a book and self-publish it, and now seems like a good time. I needed a little break from COT, and this way I can get it done and ready in time for Christmas in case I want to send it to anyone as gifts (or if anyone wants it). Yesterday I went through all 120 pages of it, scanning for errors but leaving most of the writing as-is, since it should maintain the "journal" aspect. I also added comments as footnotes wherever I felt like it.

The next step will be to add photos, but I also want to write an introduction (in case anyone gets their hands on it who doesn't actually know me) and a concluding journal entry as a year-and-a-half later reflection. Naturally, if anyone wants a peek at it, I'll be happy to send out the manuscript. Or you could just head over to my other blog and check out the J months in 2007, as well as my flickr and youtube accounts, which are all linked to on the side of the page.

In other news, the print&bound Mission X manual should be arriving any time now, and once I've had a look at it to make sure there's no problems with it, I'll see about using it as a "trial run" for how the COT volumes will be distrubuted.

... a trip through crazy town

Very little commenting is done in the revision of Chapter 6, because almost all of the editing is structural and not content related. On the other hand, I've always had trouble editing these parts of the story because I get into it too much while reading, and find it hard to take the time to scrutinize my sentence structure.

In a switch from the previous pairing, 6 focuses mostly on Ghost and Jyre, though the story is still told from the point of view of all five. The difference is that those two are in the most proactive situations whereas the other three are stuck in mostly reactive situations.

In a fit of nostalgia, I recall that it was the contents of this chapter which prompted the rewrite to begin with. I was plugging away at COT2 and tackling the problem of the monster in the forbidden district, when I decided I needed to do a 'flashback' to refresh the reader's memory about what exactly I was talking about. No, wait, that's not what it was - I was writing about events that were taking place at the same time (the whole chapter was a flashback) and wanted to illustrate that, at that very moment, Jyre had read the scroll and was summoning the monster, so I added in the text from COT. Well, I was miserable over the fact that the pasted text from the old COT scene was very "roughly" written compared to the surrounding content, so I decided to rewrite it. I wouldn't set about trashing COT2 in favor of the rewrite until some time later, but that's where the bug came from. Of course, the rewritten section I used back then wasn't used in the actual rewrite (though it was temporarily!), because the situation and circumstances are very very different in the current draft. Explanation: In the original, Jyre just found the scroll under some loose rocks outside the mansion after a few minutes of looking.

From the looks of the latest poll, I'll be needed to switch the chapter headings back to Nightfall, as it was in the original story.

I will be taking a break from the COT revision to work on something else soon (maybe today, maybe I will work on Chapter 7 first) - the editing of my Japan daily journal into a book, which I think would make a nice Christmas present for some people. That, and I might actually be able to sell it. Wouldn't that be cool! It would also be ironic that my first published and for-sale book turned out to be nonfiction!

... a brief distraction abated

I never did get to Chapter 2 last night. I am about to go visit my family for Thanksgiving (they get the whole week this year, not just one day) so I decided to get a little more of The Witcher in before I left, since I am not taking my big desktop PC with me. I ended up playing for about eight hours, and finished the game. I loved it. However I don't think the people who made it understand what an epilogue is. ;) On the other hand, now that's finished, it's one less "obligation" to keep me away from working on COT. (I don't think that Bioshock and STALKER will ever be able to hold my attention for eight hours straight, because almost no game can, not even Thief. Is Bioshock even eight hours long?)

Also, to avoid confusion, I am not saying that I liked The Witcher more than Thief, just because I could play it for eight hours straight and I couldn't do that with Thief. Witcher is quite easy (I had it on medium setting) so there's very little anxiety, and it's very story based, so there's always the need to see what happens next. Thief on the other hand is extremely stressful (if it's good ... Thief is no fun if it's not stressful!) and the story is under several layers, with the focus much more on your gameplay choices. So as you can see, the time you spend playing something often has nothing to do with how much you like or dislike it!