It’s a new month, which means it’s time for a new update on the ol’ WIPs. Good news this time!
Chronicles from the World of Guilt is Pretty Much Done! All the stories are written, the first draft has been put into something resembling an order, and I’ve done a round of edits on each story.
For those who might not remember, this is the collection of stories spanning a few thousand years after the day the world ends, which happens courtesy of a giant space whale in whose shadow things become somewhat horrific. The setting, I guess, is kind of post-apocalyptic dark fantasy, but the stories themselves range from horror-esque to hopeful to just sort of vaguely whimsical. It’d still be a big world with lots of different things going on, after all.
I’m just reading through to make sure nothing’s horrendously wrong with the book as a whole, and then…
I need beta readers!
If you are the sort of wonderful and kind person who would like to read about 60,000 words, distributed among 25 or so short stories, and give me some invaluable feedback on how I can make it all more better before publishing, please let me know. I’d be exceptionally grateful, and would of course be happy to read your own stuff in return if I can.
The rest of September was spent:
- helping out behind the scenes with Skullgate Media’s Kickstarter campaign for the second volume of Tales from the Year Between (which you can still back for cool rewards, by the way)
- beta reading a couple of things for some friends, which I very much enjoyed doing
- being super busy at work (I’m now also doing a marketing qualification, which is taking up some of that elusive free time)
- writing, editing, and submitting a short story for consideration in an upcoming anthology
Oh, and I also wrote 30,000 words on, uh, Something Else Entirely. So, y’know, that took up a fair bit of time.
It’s not that I can’t talk about that yet, but it’s still very much pre-production and I have no idea what it’ll look like when it does come to fruition, but… it involves a few extremely talented people, it’s going to be a multimedia project like nothing I’ve ever done before, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be amazing. Right now, all I’m writing is the bare bones of the story, but that story’s gonna be told in cool ways I would never have been able to do on my own.
What next, then?
Well, once I’ve hopefully found a few spectacularly cool beta readers and sent Chronicles from the World of Guilt out to them, I’d really like to finish up f.utility next (the sci-fi novella exploring different ideas around what it means to create an ‘optimal’ society). Then I’ll need betas for that, too, and hopefully at some point I’ll then have feedback with which to work on Chronicles version 2!
October is also likely to be quite busy on the Skullgate front, because Tales from the Year Between‘s second volume may well be kicking off this month. I’ve decided to step back from this one as an actual contributor; although I’ll still be helping to produce and edit the volume, I’m not going to be taking part in the game or writing any pieces.
There’s also an anthology I’ve been invited to join for which I need to write a 5,000 word contribution in the next couple of months, plus a collaboration with some cool people for which I’d ideally like to do a short or two fairly soon.
Plus, of course, there are all the Just Chris’s Things I’d really like to get to! I’m not sure what to do after Chronicles and f.utility are drafted; part of me thinks I ought to start planning and outlining the solarpunk progression fantasy series I’ve been considering for a while and the other part really wants to finish drafting Through All Things A River, which started as my NaNoWriMo 2018 thing and in my head is now going to be something bigger and more important. So… I’ll just have to actually write it into that, which is generally the hard part.
And I still have I Am The Chosen One to come back to, and… oh, dear.
Oh, and there are two other novellas I kind of wanna do at some point as well.
So, uh… yeah. Time management is this big part of adulting that nobody warns you about, eh? I’ve definitely got enough to be getting along with, so I’m not gonna put too much pressure on myself to have anything in particular done by the end of October, but… well, we’ll see how it ends up going!
And that’s the update. Stay safe, be kind, and review indie books.
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Chris Durston 