May Report

Alright, so at the beginning of the month I set about twelve goals that I wanted to accomplish before May was over. Shall we see how I did?

1. Finish first draft of Hector Kingsley. I am happy to report that this goal was definitely achieved! In fact I actually managed to get it done before the month started, which could be considered cheating but oh well...

2. Revise around 48k of Hector Kingsley before the end of the month. Cough cough. I, uh, kind of overachieved on this one. I started out doing around twelve thousand words a week, then I discovered that depending on the situation, I could get that much done a day and well... Let's just say that we have a fully functional, readable draft of Kingsley ready for anyone who wants to read it, okay?

3. Read and revise Megan's book, Contractural Gods. Success! Got it done last week in fact, and already returned it to her. It's a great story, and I am glad to have read it. Now we just need to get it published so more people can enjoy it!

4. Begin IA and write 6k per week on it. So far so good! The first draft of this one has already been a bit sloppier than Kingsley, but given that we are talking about a longer story that has been written far, far quicker than Kingsley was at the beginning, I am still satisfied with how it is developing. Now we just need to hammer out a few more details, and we will be set.

5. Visit the temple. Finally got this one done. I think I shall preserve this goal for future months. Going there definitely brought us some peace and direction that we could all use.

6. Attempt to go home teaching. Well, as long as you count the attempt part I managed it. I mostly just succeeded in getting a new home teaching assignment, but we'll work on that one. (Bows head in shame).

7. Do something social. Surprisingly enough, we managed this one. Actually had a night out with friends, baby and all. See, I can be around people too...kinda...

8. Work out the car licenses and drivers licenses. Ummm, kinda dropped the ball here. Might be able to work some of this in tomorrow, but I will need to continue my efforts in this category next month.

9. Begin my job hunt. I certainly started, now I just need to follow through...

10. E publish 'Killer'. It's up on Amazon as a Kindle book! Four people have already bought it. Shouldn't you? Heh heh heh.

11. Buy some new clothes. Much to the delight of my wife, we managed this one. Mostly got work clothes, since that's what I wear for most of the week, but that's okay. Now we just need new casual/sports stuff.

12. Stay sane. Well, how do you guys think I did on this one? Come on, be honest...

So there's my progress for the month. I think I managed to get a lot done before the end. We shall see how June turns out; hopefully I will be similarly productive, but we shall see. See you around!

On E-publishing Killer

So I actually have a story up on Amazon now, sold through their Kindle Store. It's only 99 cents, which means only about 35 cents goes to me each time anyone buys it, but still, it's up for purchase!

I have to credit Joe Vasicek as an example in what I'm doing, since he got his stuff up long before I did. He has three up on Amazon, From the Ice Incarnate, Decision LZ1527, and Memoirs of a Snowflake. For those of you who somehow read this blog and don't know or read Joe's stuff, go buy his short stories. Decision LZ1527 is one of my favorite works of his, and all three are only 99 cents.

In any case, Killer is a short story I wrote a long time ago. It's based on an anecdote I heard in an immunology course at BYU, where a disgruntled researcher spiked her coworkers' donuts with a bacteria called Shigella. Shigella, if you are curious, has the effect of causing symptoms so bad they probably make the person wish they had explosive diarrhea instead. So naturally I took that story, turned it quite a bit darker and more disturbing, and wrote it up. The resulting story actually got Honorable Mention in the Mayhew Short Story contest, and is one of the more interesting projects I had during college. Formatting it to put it online was pretty good practice for both me and my loving, ever-patient wife, and may serve as a basis for the novels I'm writing now. We'll just have to see how things go.

In any case, it's awesome. So go buy it! Pretty, pretty please... :)

Edit: As ordered Drek.

http://www.amazon.com/Killer-ebook/dp/B0050O7R8Y/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1305560895&sr=8-1

Merge, Everybody Merge!

So as I was pondering today, it occurred to me that a lot of my best ideas come from mashing a lot of different themes, character ideas and plotlines together to make a new, chimerical monstrosity to work with. I’ve done it with a lot of my favorite stories, or at least parts of them.

How I typically put things together could be shown a bit more clearly by a short story I wrote called Killer. I pretty much started out with three ideas and smashed them together. The first was the character of Teancum, of Book of Mormon, spear-to-the-chest fame. He’s always kind of appealed to me, and the fact that he’s typically overlooked when those chapters are discussed added to my interest. Another idea was presented in a class I had during college, called Immunity and Infection. The teacher had been relating some information about various diseases, and mentioned an anecdote that caught my attention. He told a story about how a disgruntled employee had actually sprinkled Shigella bacteria on the donuts in the break room of the facility where she worked to get revenge on her coworkers. The sheer craziness of that situation was too good to pass up. The final piece to the puzzle, though was the whole idea of revenge versus justice. That theme has probably been done to death many, many times, but here was a way to approach it in an entirely new way. Thus, the story was born, and I think it turned out very well.

Wolfhound is one example of a novel when I did this, while Brellan is an example of a time when I didn’t. The former came together almost like the pieces of a puzzle, each character and plot event clicking in and settling perfectly against the others. All I had to do was write well enough to express what was going on, and the story took care of itself. The latter, on the other hand, seemed to make me work and fight for every page, and it always seemed a bit more insubstantial than some of my other stuff. When I finished the latest complete draft, I still felt uncomfortable with how it worked out, and from the start I knew it would need a lot of revision to work. From those experiences, it kind of seems like I just can’t write based on a single, overriding idea and have enough to keep the story really going. I need a bunch of stuff to bounce off of.

So that’s a writing technique I guess I use when I am putting together the idea for a story. How about you guys? Let me know if you have a particular way you work; it’s always interesting to me to see how my fellow writers think. Not that I have malicious plans about that or anything. Mwahahaha… See ya!