Archive for the ‘Progress Report’ Category

“Doll’s Game”–Beginning the Revision Process

Posted: November 10, 2012 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , ,
0

In my creative writing class, I have to do a revision exercise due two days after my workshop date. Yes, that means I have to turn in a new draft on Sunday. By noon, too. Jeez, what if I want to sleep past one in the afternoon?

Well, I can’t sleep in that late apparently, not without getting a lowered grade. So I did my revision exercise and I plan to send it in after I finish writing this post. What I had to do was take a certain section of the story and, taking into account all the suggestions I got on the day of my workshop, rewrite it. And that’s what I did, editing one of the early sections of Doll’s Game. And now, I think I’ll work on the rest of the short story, doing an entirely new version of the story based on all the feedback and critiques I got on Friday.

What does that mean, though? Basically I’ll be writing an entirely new story with the same main motif at the center. What was that motif? A girl raised in captivity by her kidnapper gets free and gets a real shock when she escapes. The original story focused on her entire life after she escaped, but now I’ll be focusing on her time in captivity, and what happened immediately after the escape.

And yes, I do write that sort of creepy subject material. Why? I blame a childhood trauma I wrote about several posts back.

But back to the main theme of this post: I’m basically doing an entire rewrite. At the center will be the main character and her experience, but it’s less about her lfie growing up after her trauma and more about what happened immediately afterwards, which is just as terrifying, if not more so, than her time in captivity. Imagine how terrifying an unfamiliar world might be after escaping one that was familiar but filled with pain and fear. It’s horrible.

Which works to my strengths, since I’m writing disturbing material whenever I’m not writing a term paper or something along those lines. But still, it’s going to be quite a lot of work.

Oh well, that’s the challenge I’ve taken up, isn’t it? And besides, I’ve got about a month. If I work now, I should have plenty of time to do any necessary revision. And if I get a good grade, who knows? I may seek to get it published somewhere. I’m not sure where, though; even hardcore horror magazines might pass on a story involving this sort of story if they feel it’s a little too disturbing for their tastes.

Well, wish me luck. I’ve got some work to do.

Update on the Self-Publishing Front–Part 2

Posted: November 8, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report
Tags: ,
0

Okay, remember my last post, where I said I’d probably set up my press as a sole proprietorship? Well, I got an email from an uncle of mine who has to deal with lawyers from time to time (including his brother-in-law), and he said I’d do better with an LLC. I believe him, but I also plan to talk to my other uncle on that side of the family, who, although not in business, is a lawyer, jsut to check one or two things about the differences and the benefits and disadvantages of LLCs and sole proprietorships.

So, just wanted to let you know about that. I’ll hopefully figure this out quickly and won’t have any problems setting things up. Wish me luck.

News on the Self-Publishing Front

Posted: November 8, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Writing
Tags: , , ,
2

I’ve mentioned this once or twice, but I’m preparing to self-publish my science-fiction novel Reborn City (still being looked over by a friend at this moment, hope for some new news soon). I’ve also mentioned that I’ll be starting up my own independent publishing press, both as a way to gain more legal control over my published work and as a way to gain maximum profit if, God-willing, my books are picked up by a major publishing company.

Well, I contacted Ohio State’s Student Legal Services to see if they had any advice in that area, because I have no idea whether or not forming these sorts of businesses requires any paperwork to be filed or fees to be paid to the state or whatever. They emailed me today, about an hour after I’d sent my email to them, attaching a document with all the different business types here in Ohio and what was required to create any of them. Looking over the document, I think my best bet would be to create a sole proprietorship, which would give me all the control over the business and its assets, and all I’d have to do would be to file a form with Ohio’s Secretary of State if I’m using a business name other than my own (which I plan to do). I’ll probably download both the document SLS sent me and the forms for the business once I can get to a printer, so until then I’ll be making sure no one else has the name I plan to use for the press (I’ll let you know what it is as soon as the paperwork’s filed and I have everything in order).

You know, this self-publishing process is easier than I thought it might be. So far, the only fees I might accrue are copyright and trademark fees, especially given I’ll be formatting my work as e-books and the sites I’ll be using don’t charge for the formatting. Hopefully my books will be successful as well (fingers crossed). Now I just have to put the final touches on Reborn City, get a cover, set up the business, set a release date, and do some advertising. Not too much trouble, right?

100 Followers! Thank You All So Much!

Posted: November 6, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report
Tags:
2

Party rockers in the house tonight! Everybody just have a good time!

Yes, ladies and gentlebloggers! I finally have 100 followers. Thank you so much, beginning of hope (http://adyasha.wordpress.com/) for logging on as the maker of this major milestone for me.

You know, for nearly five months, I had no followers. No one read my blog regularly. I wondered if anyone actually cared about my blog, or if they were reading just because they knew me personally and they wanted to make me feel good by reading it. Or even worse, they only read it because they had some odd Google term.

And then, 7 months and 3 weeks ago, Vina Kent (http://vinakent.wordpress.com/) became my first follower. And then came Robotic Rhetoric (http://roboticrhetoric.wordpress.com/), Matt Williams (http://storiesbywilliams.com/), Karmi Cangel (http://aportiaadamsadventure.wordpress.com/), and more.

I want to thank you all on this election night for giving me all the points I’ve wanted for the longest while. I’ve been told when these sort of milestones start to come along, the view counts and the likes and whatever just start coming to you. Well, I haven’t seen anything yet to contradict that. But still, I have to thank you so much. You have no idea what it means to me that you’ve decided to read my blog and my work. It’s something…a writer can’t use words for.

Read “Ripple” Now

Posted: November 5, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, short story, Writing
Tags: , , , ,
0

Remember, remember,
The 5th of November
When my alien story came out
I see no reason, this page you should be leaving,
And not find out what my story’s about.

Did you like that? That fourth line gave me trouble, but I got it to rhyme pretty well.

So yes, Ripple is now published on Nth Degree magazine, an online publication devoted to science-fiction and fantasy pieces, and they just published my story, Ripple. I came up with Ripple after watching the movie District 9, when I was thinking about how in all the movies about aliens visiting Earth, the aliens are either friendly and humans are the bad guys or the aliens are downright evil and humans need to defend themselves. District 9 kind of broke away from that pattern, but I wondered if there was a story that broke away from it even more. This eventually led to me writing Ripple about a year ago, and now a year after I started its first draft, it’s been published.

I’m so happy right now. I would like to thank the folks at Nth Degree for publishing Ripple. You have no idea what it means to me that you published it.

Below are the addresses for the website and the short story, respectively. I hope you check out both, not only to read my story, but maybe to see if you’d want to submit something to Nth Degree. Also, I would not mind feedback on Ripple. Tell me what you like, what you hate. Heck, even tell me that my aliens are unimaginative or remind you a little bit of the Navi or anthropologists. I don’t care. Just tell me what you think.

Hope you like what you read. Enjoy.

http://nthzine.com/

http://www.nthzine.com/fiction_online.php?archiveDisplay=20121105

NaNoWriMo Day 4: Progressing on the Snake

Posted: November 4, 2012 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
Tags: , , , ,
2

Yes, it’s a gruesome image, but it works so well with what’s happening right now in the story.

I just finished a chapter on Snake, so I thought I’d discuss some of what’s going on in the world of Snake and in my life. First, I’d like to discuss how I’m doing so far in my first NaNoWriMo. So fat, about as well as I could hope. With classes, homework, and the need to relax and sleep (and not always at the same time), I’ve gotten about 4 chapters done, or one a day. Of course, these chapters are all less than six pages, so it’s not something to go wild about. However, I did add a chapter to Part I of the story, and I’ve gotten the first three chapters of Part III finished.

Actually, make that two chapters. I usually look over a chapter again after I finish it, and so far I haven’t looked over Chapter 38 yet. But I don’t think I’ll be changing that much; it’s pretty good as I wrote it.

So, I probably won’t finish Snake by November 30. I probably won’t write 50,000 words either. But hey, I’m getting a lot done, and I’ve gotten to a very important part in the story, one where the Snake’s brutal attacks on the mafia family he’s been stalking is starting to have its consequences.

And none of these consequences necessarily affect the Snake.

So I’ll let you know if I happen to finish Part III earlier than expected. In the meantime, I hope you all are having a good time with NaNoWriMo, and good luck to each and every one of you.

A Snake Conundrum

Posted: November 1, 2012 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
Tags: , ,
2

Oh, I hope this Snake unties itself like my problem did.

This evening I was working on Snake, and I had my titular character pull out his phone and check his location using his phone’s GPS. As I was typing that out, I stopped and thought to myself, Wait a minute. Something doesn’t sit right here. And then two things hit me:

1. I don’t have a smartphone that can connect to the internet or has apps. I don’t even text on my phone. How do phones and internet connections work exactly?

2. The Snake uses a burner phone so he can’t be traced if he makes phone calls. Can burner phones ever be smartphones?

Well, the first question could be answered with a simple Google search, but I heard voices out in the hallway and I thought I’d ask my neighbors if they could make it easy for me to understand. Thankfully they did, explaining to me in full detail and in terms I understood how a phone connects to the Internet and how it isn’t dependent on wireless access, only on bars and how much allotted data space you have, so a GPS app would work in the situation I have planned.

Now that answered my first question. When I voiced the second question, my neighbor said that you can jack an iPhone and reconfigure it to become a burner. Tempting, but I don’t think the Snake would waste his time like that.

So I did some digging on Google. Apparently there’s an app for iPhones and Androids that allows you to temporarily turn your phone into a burner phone, which is handy if you’re a telemarketer or you want to pull a phone prank. The brilliant part is that if you’re suspected of something but you don’t have a burner phone, the police can only connect you to the crime if you have this app and you’ve used it around the time of the crime (DISCLAIMER: I’m not encouraging anyone commit a crime from reading this. If you get the idea from me, I’m not liable, it’s all on your head for breaking the law and potentially ruining the lives of who knows how many people).

So that little conundrum is fixed. Back to the writing. I want to see if I can get the full 50K words novelists try to write during NaNoWriMo. So far I have a little over a thousand. 40k more to go!

It’s NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth!!!

Posted: November 1, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, Writing
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
4

And yet for some reason, it’s celebrated in other countries too. Shouldn’t it be INternational NOvel WRIting MOnth (InNoWriMo)? On second thought, maybe not. That abbreviation sounds worse than NaNoWriMo, actually.

Right, onto the reason we’re reading this post. It’s National Novel Writing Month, when writers buckle down and really put their hearts into their novels. Some decide that this is the time to start what they hope will be the Next Great (insert country here) Novel. Others try to write a novel in only 30 days, doing all the research, writing, and editing in that amount of time. And some, like me, will put their all into their works in progress and edit their on-the-way-to-being-published projects…after they’ve done all their homework.

As you can already tell from this post, I’m already in the novel-writing mode. I had fun in a haunted house last night during Halloween (one of my favorite times of the year), so I’m ready to write scary stuff. I’ve also got a short story coming out on Monday, so that’s sure to be a boost. Yes, there’s a short story of mine coming out on Monday. It’s called Ripple, it’s a science-fiction story about a war with aliens, and I hope you read it and give me some feedback.

I’ll be primarily focusing on my serial killer thriller Snake, trying to write as many chapters as possible (and possibly adding one, if I think it’s appropriate). I’ll also work on my science-fiction novel Reborn City when my friend who’s helping me edit the story gets back to me with chapters (thank you Matt! You’ll show up in the Acknowledgements section in the book when it comes out). I don’t think I’ll owrk on any short stories–except the ones for class and the ones I finished prior to November. Basically, I’ll be doing a lot of work…when I’m not at work or doing school work.

So wish me luck. To all other writers taking part in NaNoWriMo, good luck on your various creative works. Let’s get writing.

The Succubus Story is Finished…Again!

Posted: October 26, 2012 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
Tags: , , ,
0

Alright, so I finished the new version of Dodi Li, the succubus story I wrote over the summer whose first draft I hated so much I put it away as a learning experience on what happens when your story’s too plot-heavy. But thanks to an idea I got in my creative writing class, I worked out a new story that was much better, and now has a new name: Revenge for a Succubus’s Beloved. Sounds like an awesome title, right?

I think the only thing to stay from the first version of the story was Umuruk, the succubus character. Her character stays the same though, a demoness who fell in love with a human and watches over and protects him. However, that protection can lead to trouble…

I’ll put this story away for a while, especially since NaNoWriMo is in six days and I have to get back into Snake. However I’m certainly going to try to get this one published, and it shouldn’t be too hard, seeing as the latest edition of Writers Digest’s Nevel & Short Story Writer’s Market has a lot more horror publications listed in its pages than it did last year. Fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Once again, have a nice weekend, and don’t go too crazy with the Halloween parties.

I’ll Be Using Smashwords

Posted: October 24, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report
Tags: , , , , ,
2

When I publish Reborn City, that is. I did a little research, and I found out that Smashwords, besides being a retailer for e-books, allows authors to self-publish their works as e-books, formats them for other distributors such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and even gives you ISBNs. All this and more for how much? Free! And the authors keep exclusive rights to their works while Smashwords distributes the books. Not only that, but authors keeps up to 85% of the profits (70.5% from partner distributors) and can take their works off or modify them at any time.

With all this and more, is it any suprise that so many authors are using Smashwords? I don’t think so!

I would like to thank my friend Pat Bertram for pointing out the website and its many features (for her blog, click here: http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/ ). Once again, I hope to have RC out as soon as possible, so please bear with me till then and keep reading Rami Ungar the Writer.

If you want to check out Smashwords, here’s the address: http://www.smashwords.com/. While you’re checking it out, I’ll be signing up for a free account. Have a stress-free day.

Older Entries
Newer Entries