Archive for the ‘Progress Report’ Category

Laura Horn: I’ve Reached Chapter Thirty-Five

Posted: May 4, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Some of you may recall a while back that I wanted to get to a certain stopping point in my work-in-progress Laura Horn before I went off on my study abroad trip. And last night, after a lot of work, some hilarious SNL skits, and just the craziness that is my life, I got to that point. Chapter Thirty-Five, the perfect stopping point at this point, has been reached. And it was over twenty-five hundred words, so when I was finished, I was frankly relieved.

Also, I would’ve written about this last night, but by that time I was thinking about going to bed. Which I did.

At this point, if I manage to get any more chapters written, it’ll be a miracle, as well as icing on the cake. The likelihood of that though is pretty slim at this point, because obviously I have a study abroad trip to prepare for. But if I do, then lucky me. I still have thirty chapters left to write. Anything that makes that remaining material a bit easier to handle is A-OK in my book.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ve got to get ready for my meditation class, so I’ll be signing off. I’ll write some more if I actually get my final grades back this afternoon (God-willing).

And to all my fellow Star Wars fans, May the 4th be with you on this most auspicious of days. Or as Chewbacca would say, “Graaaaaaaaaargh!”

One Week Till My Study Abroad Trip

Posted: April 29, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report
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I can’t believe how soon it will be before I’m flying overseas to study WWII. But everywhere around me, I find the things that remind me how little time is left before I go. The constant email reminders, the calls between my medical insurance company to make sure that I have all my medication before I go, the planned shopping trip with my dad to get me some last minute clothes, the research into plugs so I know if I have to stop by RadioShack for adapters. Any day now I’m going to wake up, get dressed, and then head off to the airport.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m going on a study abroad trip to England, France, and Germany to study WWII, particularly the European theater. There’s about fourteen students, including me, and two teachers accompanying us overseas. Everyone on the trip has been studying together since the beginning of the semester, so we’ve all gotten to know each other as well. I’m so looking forward to this trip. We’ll be seeing Churchill’s bunker, the place where Turing cracked Germany’s codes, Omaha Beach and the Pegasus Bridge, the Paris Shoah Museum and the place where the Versailles treaty was signed, Wannsee and Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and so many other places. In addition, there are many places I and my classmates want to visit while we’re abroad. There’s been talk of seeing an actual Shakespeare at the Globe (we’re thinking of seeing Titus Andronicus; I wonder if my classmates realize that’s one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest and most violent plays?), and we’re in Paris I plan on going down into the catacombs (God help anyone who gets in my way). Oh, and there’s apparently an actual British police box somewhere in London. I’m so visiting that with my sonic screwdriver.

The TARDIS! Allons-y!

Sadly though, I won’t be doing a lot of blogging or blog-reading while I’m gone. I plan mostly to disconnect from the Internet while I’m abroad, so I can get as much of Europe as I can while I’m there. I’ll also be writing a lot less than I normally would (that’ll be agony in itself, but I’ll survive). However, the university is requiring us to keep blogs while we’re abroad, so I’m posting the link for mine here. And if for some reason there’s a problem with the link, my blog address for when I’m abroad is u [dot] osu [dot] edu [slash] ungar [dot] 19. So if you want to know what I’m up to while I’m abroad, just go to that site and you can read all about it.

So wish me luck while I’m abroad. I promise to come back with plenty of stories and a couple of blog posts about my time there (and whether or not I met any ghosts in the catacombs or if I managed to successfully prank anyone on my trip). And trust me, there will be plenty of photos. I even have plans to make a video slideshow of my trip once I get back. It’ll have the most amazing music too.

Oh, one more thing: I’d just like to remind everyone from May 1st-31st, Reborn City‘s e-book will be on sale for 99 cents. You read that right, 99 cents. So if you’re interested in reading the book and you have an e-reader, now would be a good time to get a copy. Once June 1st comes around, the price will go up to $1.99, and on June 14th the price will go back to the normal $2.99. So check it out while it’s on sale! And if you like or hate RC, please write me a review. I love feedback, whether it be positive or negative.

That’s all for now. I’ve got some work to do, so I’ll do some more blogging later. Have a good day, my Followers of Fear.

Laura Horn: Making Some Wonderful Progress

Posted: April 27, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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You may be familiar with my WIP Laura Horn, which I started last year and which I’ve had a heck of a time just trying to get halfway through. Between school, work, and other projects, it’s been a struggle to work on this novel, which is sad because I think it has a lot of potential. If I can only get through the first draft, I’d be able to test that theory about its potential!

But as I’ve spoken about before here, my study abroad trip will be in a little over a week (my, how time flies!), and I’ll be taking a break from blogging, writing, and most computer-related activities to go explore England, France, and Germany. This includes working on Laura Horn. Most likely I’ll kill some time in the airport on it while waiting for my flight to Heathrow, but after that it won’t be till late May that I’ll be able to work on it.

The good news is that since I took my finals, submitted my final papers, and now only have the distractions of work, trip preparation, and whatever’s on TV/in theaters/on my bookshelf to keep me from writing, I’ve been able to make a lot of progress on Laura Horn. In the past couple of days, I finished one chapter that I’d started on about two weeks ago and wrote about three more chapters. This has me elated, and I’m planning on getting more done before I go off on my trip. I hope to at least get three more done before I leave, because I’ll be a little over halfway through the novel then and when you know you’re well beyond the halfway point, the process of writing a novel becomes a bit easier and you find yourself being less intimidated by the amount of writing you have to do.

In any case, I plan on making some wonderful progress with this novel, and hopefully when I get back from Europe, I’ll be able to finish it by midway through July at the very latest. If I can do that, then I will probably feel less regret that I took so many breaks with writing the novel and look forward more to the editing and publishing process. That’s the hope, in any case.

In the meantime, I’m going to head to bed with the hopes that, after having watched a couple of scary movies these past couple of days and with the possibility of watching one more tomorrow (Oculus, to be exact), my twisted imagination cam come up with something really fun and creepy to write. In fact, I’ve been playing with this idea in my head for a story. I know how it’d start, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get the story to go beyond the first scene. Here’s hoping I can come up with something in my sleep!

And with that, I wish you a good night, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares, one and all!

“Travelers of the Loneliest Roads” Is Now On WattPad

Posted: April 24, 2014 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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A while back I wrote a short story called “Travelers of the Loneliest Roads,” a story of a young woman hitchhiking on the back roads of America who gets picked up by a very strange ride. I wasn’t having much success in finding a magazine to publish it in, so I thought I’d share it on WattPad, where short stories rejected by publishers have found some success.

I really like this story. It was my first experimentation with trying to make the story progressively more terrifying using techniques I’ve picked up from various novels and movies, and I thought I did a damn good job. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone here who checks it out has to say though. After all, you know what they say: authors are often some of the worst judges of their own work.

Anyway, if you’d like to read “Travelers”, please click here. I hope you enjoy reading it and whatever your thoughts about it, please let me know what you think. As I’m fond of saying, I love feedback, whether it be positive or negative.

That’s all for now. I’m going to try to get some more writing done before my shows come on later tonight. So until next time, happy reading my Followers of Fear.

Two Weeks Till My Study Abroad Trip

Posted: April 22, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report
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Today is April 22. And as the title of this post makes very clear, there is only two weeks until my study abroad trip. Can I just say one thing? I’M SO EXCITED!!!!

My study abroad trip is about three weeks long, and I’ll be visiting England, France, and Germany in an intensive study of the European theater of WWII. I first heard about it a year ago, though I think a part of me wanted to go on such a trip since I got to Ohio State and heard about the study abroad programs available. I met with one of the leaders of it not too long after I heard of it, Dr. Steigerwald, and we kept in touch. Then this past autumn I went through the application process to get onto the trip. I got in, and I met the other people who’d be going on the trip with me.

And this whole past semester has been basically defined by the trip. Almost all of my classes I took with most or all of the members of my study abroad trip (which allowed us to become good friends), and each class we took together had something to do with the trip. We also had to write papers and read a lot of books about WWII. I even had to write a 25-page research paper of a topic of my choosing for the trip! And as much fun as it was to learn about the actual relationship between National Socialism and the occult, it was still a lot of work, especially hwen you add in all the applications for scholarships and grants and getting the medical stuff taken care of and then some!

It feels really weird that it’s only two weeks away. I can’t believe how much time has passed since I got onto the trip, or how much time has passed since the semester started. Despite everything we were doing as prep for the troop, it felt like it was a million years off in the distance. To find that it’s already late April and I’ll soon be packing up, paying my fees, and heading onto the plane, is kind of heady.

But I’m super-excited that it’s so close. I’m so looking forward to seeing the actual sites where famous battles and events happened and getting a better understanding of them. I plan on taking a lot of photos while I’m over there too, so I’ll be able to preserve the memories of my trip as best as possible. And I’m looking forward to doing a bunch of other things while abroad, along with seeing these famous European cities. The members of my trip have been talking about seeing a play at the Globe Theatre while in London, maybe Titus Andronicus (do they know what it’s about? It’s very bloody). And while we’re in Paris, I’m going to see if I can get in on a tour of the Paris catacombs. That will be fun! And a friend of mine on the trip expressed an interest with me of visiting the Reichstag. If we can, we’ll go.

Oh, before I forget, I want to let everyone know that even while I won’t be blogging on this blog that much while abroad (can you blame me), OSU is having us keep blogs while we’re abroad (on a WordPress format, no less). I’ll post a link to the blog before I go, but that means that if you want to, you can read about what I’m doing on my travels while I’m gone. I hope you’ll enjoy reading that.

Well, that’s all for now. I’m going to get to work on dinner in a few minutes, so I hope you have a lovely rest of your day. Have a good evening, my Followers of Fear.

Reborn City: Reviews, ABNA, and a Big Sale!

Posted: April 16, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Review, Writing
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Reborn City

I’ve been meaning to write this post since Monday (along with 2 or 3 other posts) but life hasn’t been kind enough to allow me to do so. In addition to classes and work and homework, there was Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Exodus from Egypt. I’ve been to two seders in the past two days, and both of them consumed my evenings, so there was definitely no time to write a blog post.

But today miraculously I finished my homework in the early afternoon, so now that classes are over, the laundry is running, and I’ve nothing else to draw my attention right now, I’m going to knock out some blog posts, starting with this one. And if you’ve seen the title, you can tell it’s about Reborn City.

First, I’m happy to say that RC got its fifth review on Amazon last week (I would’ve posted about it sooner but I wanted to see how things went with the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. More on that below). It’s taken a while to get to five reviews, but I’m happy to say it finally happened. And this one comes from my dad, who despite being my dad is not one to pull his punches and say everything I want to hear about my novel. I’m not kidding, he’s panned some of my early work before.

Anyway, my dad gave me a five-star review, which he entitled A real page turner. This is what he had to say:

As a first published novel, this is a great effort. There are some technical/editing issues, but the story is quite good.
Characters are well-developed and the world that the author creates is quite believable–even with the superpowers of the Hydra members. I am looking forward to the sequel as there is definitely some unfinished business.

Well Abba, I hope to have the next book in the trilogy, Video Rage, edited by the end of this summer, so hopefully we can resolve that unfinished business sooner rather than later. And I’m glad you enjoyed the book and found it believable. I’ve always been the kind of guy who’s believed that a story isn’t good unless the reader can believe it, so it’s good to know that at least one reader does.

Now for some sad news. On Monday afternoon, I found out that Reborn City did not make it to the quarter-finals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Yeah, I know. I was hoping it would get to the quarter-finals as well. But you know what? This was my first novel, so I wasn’t expecting an underdog coming to the forefront and winning the whole darn thing. And my aunt made a good point on Facebook, that it was amazing that I made it to the second round to begin with. So I’m not too bummed out, though I’m a little jealous of the other authors who made it to the quarter-finals. And there’s always next year. Snake will be out by then, so maybe I’ll have a bit more luck next year than I did this year. You never know.

And finally, I’ve got a big announcement. May 1st is the six-month anniversary of Reborn City being published. In honor of that–and partly because I’ll be out of the country for most of the month–I’m putting RC‘s ebook on sale for the entire month. Instead of costing $2.99 as it usually does, the ebook will only cost $0.99 from May 1st to May 31st. And from June 1st to June 14th, the ebook will cost $1.99, after which it will go back to regular prices. Sounds great, right?

As for the print book…well, Amazon kind of sets the prices for that, so that’s kind of out of my power. But hey, if you want to read the print version, it’s a little less than nine dollars right now, so it’s definitely more affordable than a month of Netflix.

If you would like to check out Reborn City, you can find it on Amazon and on Smashwords. And if you’d like to read an excerpt before you check out the reviews, you can click here. And if you do decide to read RC, please let me know what you think of it when you’re done. I love hearing feedback from readers, positive or negative (just as long as it’s not a review left by a troll. Those are never fun).

That’s all about RC for now. I’ve got 3 more blog posts to write, so I’m going to get on them. Wish me luck and Happy Passover!

Some Good News, Some Bad News

Posted: April 11, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Reflections, Review, short story, Writing
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Good News: Somehow I managed to get several articles written for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors, all of which will come out in the coming weeks leading up to my study abroad trip. The next one comes out tomorrow, if I remember correctly.

Bad News: As the end of the semester comes closer, I’ve got a number of exams and papers to prepare for, including a 25-30 page paper for a research seminar! Oy vey! So as much as I’d like to focus on making progress in Laura Horn before I go abroad, I doubt that with my workload I’ll make it to Chapter 35, which would be a nice stopping-point before I go on my trip.

Good News: A short story I wrote for a class assignment got an A+ from the teacher, who “cried at the end of the story” and wanted me to publish it, along with some suggestions on ways to edit it. I plan to submit it somewhere this weekend, as well as submit a couple other short stories to other magazines.

Bad News: Another short story I wrote got rejected from a magazine this morning. I’ll try submitting it somewhere else, but I worry. Some of the criticism the editor gave me made me wonder if this short story is as good as I thought it was.

Good News: Reborn City got another five star review. This, along with a sale I plan to hold next month and the possibility of making it to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award make me hopeful.

Bad News: I won’t know about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award until Monday most likely, and I don’t want to go into more detail about the review or the sale until I have that info. Plus, RC‘s my first novel and I’m up against 399 other books in my category, all vying for 100 spots at most. I hope the excerpt I gave them is good enough!

Good News: I’ve found a camcorder that is within my budget that I can get after I get back from my trip. Creating book trailers and maybe starting a YouTube show or improving my YouTube channel might get easier with one of those camcorders.

Bad News: My local theater isn’t playing a movie I really want to see, a horror film with Karen Gillan of Doctor Who fame. Well, that’s not as bad as it could be. I might know a certain woman (my mother) who’ll want to go see it with me, even if we have to drag her fiancee with us to do it. Forget I mentioned it.

When you get right down to it, a self-published novelist’s life is never easy, especially when you also happen to be a student with a part-time job and a lot of homework. Sometimes, like when I get criticism from magazine editors, I feel a little down. But there’s always opportunity for improvement. There are people who enjoy what I write and let me know when they get the chance to do so.

When I first started writing this blog nearly three years ago, I was just some freshman with one publishing credit to my name, a novel in need of some serious editing, and no idea how I was going to build a following or get my novel onto the printed page. Nearly three years later, I have a few more publishing credits, I’ve got two books out, a third on its way, and two more in various stages of writing/editing. I write articles occasionally for another website to help other self-published authors out, and I’ve made some friends who’ve been invaluable assets in helping me get this far.

So is my life as a writer ideal? I don’t know a single writer who can say that their lives are ideal. Even the biggest names in the industry are wracked by the usual anxieties, wondering if their work is up to scratch or if people will think their manuscript is sh*t or if they’ll ever live up to their childhood idols or if they’ll sell any copies.

I think for where I am at this point in my career, I’m at a pretty good stage. Would I like things to be better? I don’t know a single writer who wouldn’t want that. But I’m a lot better off than I could be, and I have plenty of space to improve, and the resources and friends to allow me to do that.

So as the weekend creeps nearer, I’m going to work to improve, to write and to publish and be the best I can be.

Good News: The future is open, and my Tarot tells me fortune is headed my way. I’m heading to meet it.

Snake: Two Months Away

Posted: April 10, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
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Two months away.

Two months away.

It’s hard to believe. So much time has passed by, but you lose track of it and then these things just sneak up on you. I’m a little in shock. My youngest sister Liat is fourteen as of today. I remember when she was an itty-bitty baby, and now she’s a teenager with a really dark sense of humor. What happened in fourteen years?

But in all seriousness, two months from today my second novel Snake will hit the digital bookstores, where people can download it to their e-readers or order a print copy should they choose to do so. It’s been a very exciting process getting Snake ready for publication, and I’m looking forward to putting it out and hearing what people think of it.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Snake, here’s the blurb I’m using to advertise it:

How far will you go for love and revenge? When a young man’s girlfriend is kidnapped by the powerful Camerlengo Family, he becomes the Snake, a serial killer who takes his methods from the worst of the Russian mafia. Tracking down members of the Camerlengo Family one by one for clues, the Snake will go to any lengths to see the love of his life again…even if it means becoming a worse monster than any of the monsters he is hunting.

Sounds interesting, right? Either that or kind of twisted and creepy. I’ve gotten both reactions before. Anyway, I hope you’re looking forward to reading Snake as much as I am looking forward to you reading it. And if you want to read an excerpt from Snake, you can click here and do so. Or you can scroll down a little and watch the book trailer for Snake. I promise you, it’s veeery creepy.

Have a good day, my Followers of Fear! I know I am, and so is probably my sister. Happy Birthday, Liat. Don’t go too wild on your birthday, okay?

Laura Horn: Part II Done

Posted: April 6, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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One of the creatures I think represent Laura Horn. It definitely captures her spirit.

I was starting to doubt I’d get this done before I left for my study abroad trip, but I got through Part II of my novel-in-progress Laura Horn. This brings me a bit closer to finishing the entire novel, and I’m happy to say it’s really starting to take shape.

Laura Horn is a story of a girl who is a victim of sexual assault but never told anyone about it. When she gets her hands on something belonging to elements within the American government, she becomes the one person who can bring down to stop a plot against the United States of America. At the same time, she must also face her past and learn to walk to the future. That was the concept that I started writing with, but since then it’s also morphed into a very different story than the one I originally envisioned. Along with being a story about overcoming the past (with a political thriller plot in the background), LH has also become a story about learning to trust again, about being a true friend in times of crisis, and about being courageous in the face of overwhelming odds.

If this book were written by any other author, it might make for great YA fiction. But since it’s me, I’m not sure it could really count as YA fiction. Heck, Reborn City has plenty of elements of YA, but I doubt you’d call that YA either, given the thematic nature of the novel. And Snake? No way in hell can that be called YA. That’s straight thriller with elements of a slasher film.

So now for the page and word counts. And remember, when I say “page”, I mean 8.5″ x 11″ paper with twelve-point Times New Roman font. That’s the thing with doing these counts: there are those who care more about the page count, and then there are those who measure with word counts, usually other writers who distinguish the differences between short stories, novels, and everything in-between using word counts. It’s a weird dichotomy, and one of these days I’ll write a blog post about it. But now is not the time for it.

Anyway, the page counts for the Prologue, Part I, and Part II were 10, 43, and 107 pages respectively, for a total of 160 pages. And the word counts are 2,190 for the Prologue, 12,019 for Part I, and 29,634 words for Part II. That puts the total word count at this moment at 43,843 words. Wow, that’s quite the increase in page and word count since I finished Part I. We’re well into novella range, which I define as between forty-thousand and sixty-thousand words (60,000+ I define as a novel).

Anyway, I might take a break from fiction writing tomorrow and just veg out on TV. Then on Monday, assuming my homework isn’t trying to bury me, I’ll start Part III, which I’ve entitled “The Ringleader”. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll finish it before I leave for Europe. Not likely, but I can hope.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’m going to bed, so goodnight to you, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares, one and all!

Ohm: An Honorable Mention

Posted: March 27, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Today I received an interesting e-mail from one of the professors in the English department. Some of you may remember Ohm, the short story I wrote about a cult leader who makes up his own brand of meditation and yoga to get money and power. I submitted it to the Jacobson Short Story Award at OSU, hoping that it might do well in the contest and maybe win me a little bit of money for rent purposes.

Today I got the results. While Ohm did not get the first or second prizes, it did get an honorable mention, which is definitely worth celebrating. The person who reviewed Ohm, a novelist and a professor from the University of Colorado, Boulder, said it deserved the honorable mention “for its confident use of language”. Reading that gave me a boost to my own confidence.

I’m glad Ohm got some good recognition, even if it didn’t win the award. I’ll see about getting it in a print magazine, and if that route is unsuccessful, maybe I’ll publish it on WattPad. I won’t know until I try, so I’ll be optimistic and see what opportunities are available.

That’s all for now. I’ve got a big night of writing ahead of me. I hope to have more good news and more posts to write as time goes by. Wish me luck.

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