Tag: #amwriting

‘Rag & Muffin’ Progress Update

My next book, Rag & Muffin, is coming along well. I didn’t make the goal (big surprise) I had of finishing it last weekend, mostly because some of the action sequences at the climax are in heavy need of rewriting.

The rooftop chase scene with the cannnibal cyborg only needed light rewriting, and the sword battle with the demon-possessed robot armed with giant chainsaw-scissors was mostly okay, as was the wire-fu knife fight—but the running gun battle with the robot soldiers of the Chinese mafia is a complete mess.

As some of you know, I was working on Rag & Muffin even before I wrote Jake and the Dynamo. The stories bear some similarities in that both are about fourteen-year-old boys tagging along after violent, superpowered girls, but Rag & Muffin is considerably more bloody and brutal, and less funny.

So what took me so dang long to get this ready to publish? There are several reasons including some I don’t divulge to strangers on the internet, but the least private reason is that I needed to develop and polish some writing skills before the book could even be in a condition to publish.

Now that I have one novel out and another off to the publisher and coming out in a few months, finishing Rag & Muffin feels easy. Yes, it needs some work, but finishing it is no longer the insurmountable difficulty it once appeared to be.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:6 years ago
75%

‘Pretty Cure’ Holds a World Record

This is kind of old, but it escaped my notice at the time. Apparently, the film Hug! Pretty Cure, Futari Wa Pretty Cure the Movie, now holds the Guinness World Record for most magical girl warriors in a single film, as reported on the Guinness site.

They accomplished this by stuffing every single Cure into the movie, a total of fifty-five. To acknowledge the record, Guinness arbitrarily required that each girl had to have dialogue and participate in combat.

This is such an oddball record, it’s unlikely that any other movie will beat it—unless it’s another Pretty Cure Film.

Update

In other news, I have decided I am going to make a more ambitious goal for the completion of the revision phase of Rag & Muffin. I believe it is possible to have it done by the end of this weekend.

I just finished revising chapter ten. There are twenty chapters. From here on, the book will need more work, but that’s still only five chapters a day.

Once I finish this, I can send it out the door to my editor and get to work on the research and outlining phase of Son of Hel, which I’m quite looking forward to.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:6 years ago
54%

‘Rag & Muffin’ Now Underway!

I am now revising the draft of Rag & Muffin, the next novel on my list. The early chapters need the least work, so it will go quickly for a while, but will become slower later on.

I’m giving myself two months to have a workable draft followed by a month each for editing and proofing. The final proofing will be after my editor sees it, so that self-appointed deadline will have to be flexible.

Anyway, a highly optimistic date for final proofing and submission will be about the beginning of November.

Rag & Muffin
Phase:Revising
Due:6 years ago
13%

‘Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites’ Submitted!

I have just finished the final edits (on my end) of Dead to Rites, the second volume of Jake and the Dynamo.

As usual, the process took me (embarrassingly) longer than I predicted. Although this phase was supposed to be just proofreading for final edits, I ended up deleting a scene, fixing some minor inconsistencies, shuffling a few other scenes around … you know how it goes.

Nonetheless, this book required less extensive reworking than the previous one did, which means I was able to dedicate most of this time to the nitty-gritty points of grammar and style—and that means a better experience for the reader.

If the publishing process is the same as last time, the galley will appear on my desk just once more, asking for my approval after it goes through a final round of someone else’s edits. Then my work on it is done.

I’m jumping from this straight into my next project, which is producing the final, submission-worthy draft of Rag & Muffin. I previously intended to work on my Christmas novel Son of Hel first, but after I realized how much research it will require, I decided to finalize this other novel that’s already written instead.

If things go as planned, I will have two books out this year and two out next year. That’s not exactly pulp speed, admittedly, but it is at least better than average.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Proofing
100%

Roffles Lowell is also working on the illustrations. I couldn’t resist, in the header, showing this detail from one of the pictures he’s sent me (I will have to struggle to resist showing them all before the book is published). This is not the first time he’s drawn Dana Volt in her non-magical form, but I think it’s the first time he’s drawn her as such for a book illustration, and I love it.

It Is Finished (Again)

When Lord Shadow takes his throne, even the gods will bow down.

Featured image from CloudNovel.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
100%

I have not posted for a while because I was in another “I’m not blogging until I’m finished with this” phase of writing. More specifically, I was moving Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites from rough draft to submission draft. It again took me longer than I intended, but I believe it is ready to go off to both my illustrator, who will make the pictures, and my editor, who will ask for rewrites.

With this phase done, I may turn away from it to work on another project so I’ll be better equipped to see typos and so forth when I return to it to produce the final draft, after it’s come back from my editor.

So that means I can start in earnest on Son of Hel. And that means this will shortly become a Christmas blog as well as a magical girl blog.

I have some other things to write about, and I should have a review tomorrow, if all goes according to plan. But for now, I need to stop staring at a screen.

Progress Update

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
70.7%
Son of Hel
Phase:Writing
Due:6 years ago
2.4%

Today is another work day for me. I’m coming along on Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. Very, very soon now, it will be out of the house. I’m in that “I’m sick of this” phase.

I’ve also added Son of Hel to my book progress tracker because it’s my next project. Fair warning: This is going to become a Christmas-themed blog while I’m working on that one.

Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites Progress Update


Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites
Phase:Editing
41.1%

 

I’m spending the day working on the editing phase of Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites. It’s coming along smoothly, if slowly. I hope to be about half done by the end of the day, and my goal is to have it out to both my illustrator and my editor by the end of the month.

In other news, I’m working my way through Little Witch Academia, and will review when I’m done. I’m also hoping to finally get through the two series of Glitter Force by the end of the month, but I’ve picked a bad month for it, since I’m also trying to finish my book.

There’s a lot of other things going on in the world of YA and anime, much of it rancorous. I’m mostly keeping my nose out of it, but might have a few comments later.

‘Jake and the Dynamo’ Volume 2 Complete

Featured image: “Sailor Moon as Pretty Cure 5” by williukea.

Sort of.

Not happy with the progress I was making, I decided to stay off the blog for a while until I completed the first draft of Jake and the Dynamo: Dead to Rites, which is of course the sequel to .

That draft is now done. Much of it is still rough, of course, but I hope to have the first pass finished in a few days, after which it will go to my illustrator. After the second pass, it will go to my editor.

The draft is about 140,000 words, which makes it almost half as long again as the previous volume.

Writing Day

I know I’ve got a few promised reviews in the queue, but today I’m spending on Dead to Rites. This book keeps getting longer and longer … but at least I can see the light. I am on the last action scene! And then it’s pretty much just the denouement and the first draft is done.

I haven’t had many update posts lately because I sort of screwed up the app I was using to record my progress, and I’m not sure how to fix it. Oh well. I expect the book will get even longer on my second pass, as for me, a second pass usually means adding detail as opposed to cutting out extraneous stuff.

Writing Day for ‘Dead to Rites’

Today is a writing day for Dead to Rites. I am still making my way through ViVid Strike!, which I want to wrap up before I review anything else, simply because I’m afraid it will disappear from Amazon Prime. I’m not done with it yet (I have too much else to do), but I will say in advance that I so far think it is the most entertaining series in the Lyrical Nanoha franchise, even though it is also easily the shallowest and stupidest. Unfortunately, I am easily entertained by scenes of young girls beating the everloving snot out of each other, and that’s pretty much the show’s entire premise.

The rough draft of Dead to Rites, second volume of Jake and the Dynamo, is just about done. Tonight, I am working on the grand climax. There’s probably one to two chapters after that, and then it’s on to the editing and rewriting phase.