Progress report:

Last time looked at: 9/28/17

Last actual wordage added: 9/28/17

Pages added, 9/28/17: 2.5

Current page count: 9

Estimated final page count: 300? I don’t really have any idea.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Word count: 1,915

Comments: Introduced the constable, Linden Watchhouse, and his wife Marigold — I don’t think those were their names before I left for Hawaii, but they are now. Finished a short first chapter, started the second (which is why there’s a half-page in the numbers above).

Provided a little more world-building with Hyacinth’s visit to the Watch House, which looks like a deserted, decaying ruin from the north (the side toward the highway), but warm and welcoming inside. Also finished a paragraph about the nature of the Folk relative to three other intelligent species (elves, human, delvers), did some very minor revisions to earlier bits.

Still haven’t introduced the retired soldier who is the only military veteran in the Vale, or his crazy uncle who was an adventurer long, long ago, or the victim’s best friend, but I’ve decided the crazy uncle is the best friend of Hyacinth’s grandfather.

Progress Report: Stormchildren

Last time looked at: 9/21/17

Last actual wordage added: 9/21/17

Pages added, 9/21/17: 3

Current page count: 4

Estimated final page count: I have no idea. I don’t even know whether it’s a novella, a novel, or a series.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Word count: 757

Comments: If you support my Patreon or read my Facebook page (the personal one, not the professional one), you’ll have seen me talking about this project. Julie and I took a sixteen-day Hawaiian vacation to celebrate our fortieth anniversary, and on the plane on the way home I saw part of “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” with the sound off while half asleep, and found myself coming up with a new story.

As if I needed one.

It does not involve pirates, or the Caribbean, or zombie sharks, or anything else from the movie; the actual inspiration was wondering why none of the characters have siblings.

I wrote the first page earlier this week, and today I added to that. The title of this first story may change; “Stormchildren” may be the series title, instead, if it becomes a series.

It’s got an odd feel to it — maybe not for readers, but for me. Maybe because it’s about family, which isn’t usually a major theme for me. It’s set in the Quandish Archipelago, in the same world as A Young Man Without Magic and Above His Proper Station and “Sorcery of the Heart” and a zillion unfinished projects, but in a very different part of that world. All the completed/published works are set in and around the Walasian Empire, the heart of the Bound Lands, while this one is set way outside the Bounds, where the laws of nature are more like suggestions.

It’s about an extended family — a group of siblings and one or more of their cousins. At the start of their story the major characters are all in their teens, ranging from sixteen to thirteen, so maybe it’ll turn out to be YA. Or maybe it won’t; I dunno yet.

So far I’ve introduced Rell Stormchild, his sister Lesma Stormchild, and their cousin Darris Fearnone, and in today’s installment Darris gets his first hints that his cousins may have inherited magical abilities from their enchanted father.

I’m enjoying it, but it would make more sense to work on Charming Sharra or Tom Derringer and the Steam-Powered Saurians or even Elfshot.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 9/17/17

Last actual wordage added: 9/17/17

Pages added, 9/17/17: 1

Current page count: 6

Estimated final page count: 300? I don’t really have any idea.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Word count: 1,310

Comments: Didn’t really accomplish much — Hyacinth is still on her way to the Watch House to fetch the constable. I’m mostly posting just to establish that I’m back to work after our Hawaii vacation.

I wish I’d written more notes — or if I did, I wish I could find them. I know I had more of this in my head, but a month-long interruption has let some of it fade. I no longer remember the names of constable or his wife, or the retired soldier who is the only military veteran in the Vale, or his crazy uncle who was an adventurer long, long ago, or the victim’s best friend (who was actually in the first draft of the opening, then written out). None of the names are really all that important, but I did have them figured out and they’re gone, which is annoying.

I did collect the notes I could find on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere.

It’s good to get back to work, even for a single page.

Last time looked at: 2/26/17

Last actual wordage added: 7/30/14 (not counting minor revisions)

Pages added, 2/26/17: 0 (but see below)

Current page count: 53

Estimated final page count: 300-350.

Deadline: None. Purely speculative.

Comments: I got chatting with an editor on Facebook on Thursday night, and he said he’d love to see an SF novel proposal from me, so I suggested Earthright as a possibility, and he thought it sounded interesting.

So I pulled it out of mothballs, and over the weekend I wrote a ten-page outline of the whole thing, completing it about 3:00 Monday afternoon. The outline includes details I hadn’t worked out before that will require a few minor tweaks to the four and a half chapters I’ve written, but that’s not a big deal.

I never had a working outline before, not really; I had the story in my head, but not on paper or disk anywhere, not as Earthright. It was cobbled together from two other stories, “Legend” and Labyrinth. “Legend” was a complete story for Marvel’s Open Space #6 that was never used because the series got cancelled after #4. Labyrinth was intended to be an Amelia Hand novel, but all I ever wrote of it was a four-page opening scene that got incorporated into Chapter Three of Earthright. I knew the premise, but never wrote it down.

Oh, and the title concept of Earthright was originally a separate idea.

Anyway, I wound up merging the three into Amelia Hand’s origin story. I initially tried to use the comic book script as an outline but diverged from it so quickly it became useless even before I got to the Labyrinth part, and other than that, until now I never had an actual written outline.

Now to clean it up and send it to my agent.

13,207 words. (The difference from last time is almost entirely because this is a WordPerfect word-count and the previous one was Neo Office — WordPerfect always runs lower.)

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 12/7/16

Last actual wordage added: 12/7/16

Pages added, 12/7/16: 2

Current page count: 14

Estimated final page count: 250-300.

Current word count: 2,846

Deadline: None. Will probably be self-published.

Comments: Finished Chapter One, started Chapter Two. Sirris has just received news she dreaded, but that she never thought would actually arrive.

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 12/4/16

Last actual wordage added: 12/4/16

Pages added, 12/4/16: 5

Current page count: 8

Estimated final page count: 250-300.

Current word count: 1,810

Deadline: None. Will probably be self-published.

Comments: I had another story idea a couple of days ago, and couldn’t resist writing the opening of the novel. Or first novel, if it turns out to be a series.

What I’ve written so far has Lerruit’s father telling him, on his sixteenth birthday, the family secrets, and explaining the legacy of the eleven blades.

I should probably give the father a name. And maybe rename Lerruit; that’s a Walasian name, but the story isn’t set in the Bound Lands.

(I thought it might be, but it works better if it’s not.)

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 2/19/16

Last actual wordage added: 2/19/16

Pages added 2/19/16: 2

Current page count: 26

Estimated final page count: About 300-400

Deadline: None. Purely speculative

Comments: Tav has stopped in to check on Uncle Potch, and has just been informed that there’s a danger he had heretofore been completely unaware of.

Word-count: 6,448

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 1/17/16

Last actual wordage added: 1/17/16

Pages added 1/17/16: 3

Current page count: 50

Estimated final page count: About 300-400

Deadline: None. Purely speculative. It started out as just a whim.

Comments: The page count incremented by four because I didn’t report a previous one-page effort.

In Pulder, Marga and Aloran are talking while Dremm and Faldren are running an errand; Marga is trying to get a better handle on Aloran’s motives.

Word-count: 11,798

Progress report:

Last time looked at: 10/29/15

Last actual wordage added: 10/29/15

Pages added 10/29/15: 4

Current page count: 49

Estimated final page count: About 300-400

Deadline: None. Purely speculative. Started it on a whim.

Comments: Okay, it’s really only three and a half pages, because I finished Chapter Four and started Chapter Five and Chapter Four didn’t end at the bottom of a page.

Veran is following Shalar and Dhalar out of Oak-Alder toward Borgran; they’ve spotted her, but she hasn’t realized it.

Once upon a time, this story was called “Bait.” It mutated.