Exciting news! After much work and dedication, the incredible narrator Andie Lovins has finished recording Rabbit Heart. It can be found on Audible here. I'm so thrilled to have this format available for y'all! Andie was great to work with.
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Last year, I began working on a single-player fantasy-adventure RPG called Abandon. It's like Dante's Inferno, but a little more wholesome. Though it's been finished for some time, I was going to hold off on publishing it until I made some headway on publishing my trilogy, Hope Springs Infernal. The game is loosely based on the second book, appropriately also called Abandon. However, given the current circumstances, I figured I'd release this, so maybe some people could take joy from it. It's 100% free. Play, pet cats, and don't abandon hope! Abandon can be downloaded here. Oh, and Happy Easter! I just finished the second, er, third draft of Blue Knife. It's complicated. Basically, Blue Knife is a contemporary horror/fantasy story set in a sleepy New England town.
It also happens to be, at this moment, my longest work. I once told myself I'd never have a story this long, as I tend to prefer tighter stories. However, a problem with the first two iterations (a screenplay and the first novel draft) was that I wasn't letting the story breathe. And weirdly enough, this version feels more focused and captures the atmosphere I wanted when I first conceived of the idea, though the story at first leaned more toward fantasy than horror. I don't plan on the novel being this length once I start revising. Granted, a story should be as long as it needs to be, and I don't know what certain additions will do to the final count. That being said, most of my novels tend to undergo some major cutting during the revisions and final proofreading. Dove Keeper went from 84K to 82K. Birds in a Cage went from 94K to 88K. Rabbit Heart lost about 3,000 words, if I recall correctly. I can only hope the final version of Blue Knife, a story I've struggled with to finally have a version I feel comfortable with, tells the story the best it can. I know the 100K milestone isn't exactly huge for people who have written much lengthier manuscripts, but as someone whose novels tend to range from 55K to ~90K, it is a pretty big deal, though I do want to caution that word count isn't everything when determining the vitality of a project. Anyway, just wanted to share this update! Writers online publish a lot of advice, and it's an incredible thing. When I was twelve and wanting to write, I didn't have anyone I knew who loved writing. All I had was the Internet and sites, blogs, and forums where writers, agents, and editors gave their tips and insights on a process I knew little about other than my passion and imagination. I learned a lot while feeling less alone in my pursuits.
So, don't think I'll ever deride writers for sharing their experiences and giving advice. And many of us live in a time when one must be assertive in their declarations: do this and definitely don't do that. However, as I've mentioned before, I have trouble being as definitive. Writers stake their identities on a lot of things: their genre, whether they plot or pants it, etc. "Are you a plotter, pantser, or plantser?" "Oh, I don't outline that way because I'm not that kind of writer." – a writing friend
"[Plotting a novel is] the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored.” – Stephen King This discussion isn't so much about outlining versus spontaneity. I am a fan of doing whatever works for you. Also, when I have a project, I don't approach each one the same way when it comes to planning. The thing is, while the core considerations I take when writing are the same—what the character wants and how it drives them—I don't follow the same outlining method every time, nor do I always stick to an outline I've created if it feels as if the plan would be unnatural and forced. A story can require different considerations depending on the viewpoints, focus, and length. |