Hello spring. It’s good to be here again. Last time we sat on the edge of the hot season we were still struggling to get our gears rolling in terms of projects, goals, and desires for the exciting new year; the year I was given a chance to make my dreams a reality. On March 16, 2016, I started the latest draft of the novel Draco Artifactium: Doppelganger. March 23, 2017, 121,468 words, 372 days, and many outline revisions later, I finished it. I can’t tell you the jubilation I feel from this marker.
That’s draft one, though, and we’re not ready to go into production. Not yet at least. The current goal is to go through the second draft corrections before May, and after that a dialogue pass before I send the manuscript to an editor. I expect things to be brutal as this is the first book I’m letting someone edit, and I don’t know how thick my skin is on that side. I know the book needs it as I’m far from the best at grammar, but I know I’ve told a wonderful story. We’ll cover the process more in future updates, but know I’m not just shoving the book out and hoping it’s good enough. It isn’t yet, and I’m willing to do the work to make sure it does.
On the podcast front, I am officially part of three podcasts again. Hiddengrid is doing okay, although I had declared I was going to start doing two episodes a week there. That’s actually not doable with my schedule and work flow. It just isn’t and so I’m unofficially announcing it here the end of the twice weekly show, and later this week I’ll announce it on the Hiddengrid’s various networks. Seize The GM is doing amazing. We had our first interview with Ben Loomes, creator of Syrinscape. Solid RPG soundscape program there; I highly recommend it and the interview that’ll come out later this month. Derek and Joules have been doing great with their work over there and I’m happy to be helping them out as a co-host. Finally, The Trans-Dimensional Café is back. I know, I know, it’s a seven year old beast that won’t stay down, and for that I’m thankful. Dakota is back as host in this iteration, and we’ve got a new podcasting voice along for the ride, Bryan Hessee. We’re retooled the show back to its roots of being about creatives doing their thing before gabbing about whatever, and I think overall while it’s still got growing pains the show is doing great. Again I’ll go over each of these in more detail in the coming weeks.
As it’s the start of a new quarter it’s good to look back over the previous update post to see where we are in terms of our goals. First, we didn’t hit the deadline of February 14th for the finish of the first draft. A month and a half late there. We won’t hit the April publication deadline either, and certain private circumstances will prevent me from saying the I want to be published by the June 1st goal I’d like. Instead, if I need to put down a goal date, I’m going with July 25th. It’s a fairly special day for me, and an ideal day I can gift the new book to someone. We don’t have any short stories written, so if we’re going to reach 10 by the end of the year, we need to get jumping. Same with a second book. We also didn’t return to weekly blog posts. This post is the correction to that. Expect them more often although I’m not posting the schedule I have just yet. I need to be sure it’s the right timing for the various blogs I want to post to. Finally I haven’t read a single book this year. So much for 26 by the end of it.
We’re going to call it there. It’s good to be back at this blog. I’m hoping I have the drive to keep working on all of these projects without losing interest. I just need to make sure I keep up with the momentum and not let anything hold me back.
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