mistermadigan

Been a while since I've spoken/updated about my novel.  It's no big surprise for two reasons:
1. Being the fact that deviantart is feeling kind of stale of late.  Plenty of great artists still post here, but it's been stagnant.  Never really became that social community that so many other sites have become (and there are plenty of reasons for that, I'm sure).
2. Truth be told... I've had some real bad struggles the past year.  After doing my first two drafts, I cut my first novel into two, had to do a lot of rework on the direction I wanted to take, did another 6 drafts (of various percentages of completion - start is always the hardest part) before eventually settling on a story arc that I think will work.  Now I just need to finish writing it.

Anyways, I was hoping to finish the story before commissioning art for the cover and characters, but I decided to get the art first.  Have previews of the art (if you are interested) but I don't plan to do any big reveals until I have completed the novel (or in the weeks approaching release).

Guess my current quandary is wondering if I want to continue to go with the "young adult" angle (which would make sense as the characters are all mid-teens, or if I want to make it more of an adult fiction - as during the mythological setting of the story, mid-teens were considered adults.  Things to think about.

See you in the Bronze Age.

Wow that's a fancy font for the title of this journal entry.  And a very plain font for the body text.

Anyways, so it's been almost a month since my last update.  I've been struggling through my second draft, making a lot of changes to the novel, and bouncing back and forth between ideas for the characters and the plot.  But you can hardly blame me, first books are hard and I'm also including mythological figures into my story, who are literally larger than life.

Spent the better part of today writing outlines for the appendices I plan to include at the end of the novel (educational notes at the end of a novel meant for kids/young adults?  You're just padding the word count, aren't you?)

I'm around a month away from when I plan to publish the novel, and while I haven't gotten the text finely polished yet, I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking about the other things I will need before I make it available for sale.  Namely, I'm starting to look for artists to draw a book cover.  I've already sent out a couple of notes to some of the artists I know, but have yet to get a reply back.

It is a rather daunting thing though, seeing as how I would like the artist to be available to make covers for the other 19 books I have planned, but that's a matter for another day.

That's about it for now.  Hope you are all having a nice day.

And if you know an artist looking to do some book cover work, toss a note my way and we'll see if we can make something happen

Firstly - regarding my previous journal entry.  My ambition as a game developer is on permanent hiatus.  It just got taken over my my long-standing desire to write and publish my own original novel.

To this end, I have spent the past month working on my first draft and it is finally completed... but wow is it a mess.
So many times while writing I wanted to go back and change details and expand the story and mess with the characters and add dialogue so that it wouldn't be a confusing pile of nonsense.
But I told myself that I would finish the draft first, and then go back to do revisions.
It was so hard, but I finally finished... but looking at what I actually accomplished, I'm happy with what I've done, but at the same time it seems rather... small.
I'm aiming for a young adult's novel, but between the font size and the word count, it's still a fairly short novel.  Which is what I was aiming for I suppose.
It's the first book in a 20 part series.

The theme is essentially - traveling through world mythologies.  Set during ancient history where mythology happens parallel to actual history.  Where the world is growing and expanding and humans are still pushing the boundaries of their understanding.  Each land is ruled by it's own mythological pantheon, and we are barely at the point where societies are starting to interact with each other.

Each book will focus on a distinct geographic area, we will interact with famous figures and moments from mythology, all while fitting into the framework of my original story, which is essentially a hero's journey of three friends from a small village in Saaremaa, Estonia (which is where we being our story).

I have a lot of revisions to do, but I am feeling confident about my goal to have the story finished and electronically published by the end of the year.  With more books to come out in 3 month intervals.

If you are interested, leave me a comment and I'll tell you more.  If you would like an early review copy to help me with the editing/revision process, let me know and we can make arrangements

I must admit that I am feeling much happier about actually making progress towards this goal of mine.  I've been wanting to write this series for 12 years, and I finally sat down and got to work on it.  Feel good.

...Feels better than the election going on today in any case.  Good grief United States, these choices... OTL

So yeah...
moving to Oregon at the end of the month.  Going to get away from the dry hills of San Diego and moving to the green hills of Central Oregon... middle of nowhere.

Battling depression after losing out on the job with the Sheriff's Dept. really sank me for a while, but it hit me with a strong vibe that what I'm looking for is not where I am.  So the move might do me some good.

I might have made a mistake though.  Sure it was only $130, but I bought a copy of/license to use RPGMaker MV.  So I'm going to start working on my own RPG.  Do I have any experience with this?
Nope.
Was I never able to use the "create event" mechanic when I played any of the hundreds of RTS games back in the day?
Nope.
Am I going to try my best regardless and hopefully make a game that is:
a. entertaining
b. good value
c. be filled with artwork that is free to use and sourced so I don't get sued by artists who say I owe them money
d. not a complete waste of my time and efforts

That's the real thing with this game.  I literally have notebooks full of notes for various RPGs that I meant to play with friends over the years.  For one reason or another they never got off the ground though.  But I still have all these notes and details about mechanics and items and stats and abilities and plots... I think it's high time I put all of that work to use.  And who know, maybe something good might come of it.



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