New stuff upcoming.

Sometime within the next week, hopefully over the weekend, I will be posting my next Katrushka Tells You the Classics (3rd Installent). This one will be called Robbin' Hood and His Band of Married Men."

There won't be a lot of novel updates anymore.

While I had a spike in late May/early June, the blog visits have fallen off again. And I really don't get a lot of comments. All blogs are vanity projects, but this one seems kind of meaningless. I would rather have dialogue than endless monologue.

I'm also a little hesitant about putting a whole novel up, too. It seems like a bad idea, but I can't articulate why. So, I suppose if any of you would like to do a read-through critique of the novel when it's finished, I would love to have a lot of good feedback. But other than that, I won't be putting any more of it up here.

There may be occasional updates to link some music or put down some poetry or short prose, just so I can keep up with it. But I'm not really seeing the need to keep a blog that focuses almost entirely on my novel when honestly, it's not very interesting.

Thanks for everyone who has been a reader in the past. I really appreciate your patronage. Excelsior!

One reason why writing a novel is harder than you think.

It's really a very simple concept. Research.

I am writing a semi-comic (and dramatic) fantasy novel, which you would think would not require a lot of research. WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Sure, courtroom fiction needs research, and medical-suspense-thriller-fiction needs research, but comic fantasy needs a megaton of research too, mostly because comic fantasy tends to parody the heck out of popular culture, history, other fantasy and sci-fi, gawd, you name it and some comic fantasy writer has probably used it in his books. Especially if his name is Terry Pratchett. And I am going a lot lighter on the parody than he does, so Og only knows how much time he spends researching for his Discworld series.

I've just spent 30 minutes checking the names I am giving different countries within this book to make sure that the allusions make sense. Tomorrow or Sunday I plan to devote a few hours to research about various mythical species (dragons, phoenixes, elves, sprites, domovoi, witches, huldrafolk, you get the idea).

I have to say that this is the most exhilarating experience I've had writing. I have about 6-7k words at the moment. I just need to repeat that 15 more times, then edit the crap out of it. And get other people to read it. Then edit it some more...and then maybe, just maybe, it will be good enough for a publishing house to at least consider.

However, next month I'll be polishing up a couple of short stories and shopping them around, mostly because I want to already have a little work out there when I'm trying to find someone who will take my novel. I do have some poetry published already, but I need to get my name out in the prose world.

There will be an update to the novel sometime this weekend, I think. Have a good one, all three of you!

Maggie and the Dragon, Part III

I keep my promises. Part IV is already written and coming soon. I have the beginnings of Part V and some of a later installment, as well.

Maggie and the Dragon, Part II.

Well, the title says it all. I'm adding more because Sarah told me to, and I do what Sarah says (especially because it's been YEARS since Sarah told me to do anything). Welcome to Maggie and the Dragon, Part Deux

Nursery rhymes and fairy tales, part two

Well, here is another story, sort of in the same vein. More or less, anyway.