Over on Amazon we are doing a free promotion for The Seduction of Honey for a few days, given how successful the promotion for A Pocket Full of Spells went. So far, half a day in, it seems to be going along better than the first one.
Hopefully that is the incentive needed to kick me into gear and finish off the next stories for the collection.
The following is a sneak peak of the WIP for the next Braeden Wolf paranormal/cyberpunk book. Yes, I am working on one.
There comes a point in everyone’s life when they ask themselves just how they got to where they were.
For me that day came in a grimy alleyway on a cold autumn night many years ago, wracked by tearing pains, alternating between shivering and sweating. The answer, when I could think straight, was obvious. I had turned left when I should have turned right. A simple mistake, the most recent in a long line, but a critical one as mistakes go.
Rain was blowing in off the harbour, humping down hard across the city, whether the gleaming heart with its skyscrapers or the sprawling slums that ringed it. I had been huddled up beneath a greatcoat in the lee of an overflowing skip bin, its garbage added to the accumulated detritus that swirled about, trying to avoid the worst of the weather as my body shudder; it wasn’t from the weather that I suffered that affliction.
Something ran across my foot; a rat, or worse. My foot kicked out instinctively and the animal squeaked as it shot through the air, impacting on the far wall with a solid thud. The sound of cracking bones carried to me. Normally such a thing would have gone unmarked but my hearing had been swimming in and out, hypersensitive to the least change, adding to the pains that had torn at my mind.
The rat’s body fell to the ground and the fresh, sharp scent of warm blood rose in the air, a scent that should have been drowned out by the rain and the stench of garbage.
It awoke in me a terrible, tearing hunger, ripping through my innards. It called out for release, to simply give in, to succumb and seek the sustenance to take the edge of it.
Except I didn’t know what it was that I had desired, and all I could do had been to whimper and try and fight it off. Each minute I resisted though made the hunger worse.
A shaking hand reached into a pocket and from it I removed a small flask. Trembling hands fumbled at the lid with difficulty but then it came off and I took a quick swig of the burning liquid within, one that scraped the throat clean and brought water to the eyes. It took some of the edge off the hunger though it didn’t last long, and by that stage the flask was all but empty.
My eyes had remained shut the whole time. Like my hearing I had no control over my vision that took in light and magnified it tenfold, even the softest of light lancing through my eyes and into my brain.
My hands gripped the top of my head, squeezing tightly as if it would contain the tearing pain in my head. My hands had slid down across my face, and in my pain and misery I had scratched and torn at it. The skin would not break beneath my nails, and nor could any blood be drawn.
Something was badly wrong with me and at the time I had no idea what, nor could I remember what had gone before. My head hammered back into the wall, trying to drive the pain out.
A burning hunger I could not satiate, hypersensitivity of sight and hearing and smell and skin that would not break. What had I become?
It has been a while since I last did one of my grant PPV predictions, but in an effort to post more – and not just about writing – here goes.
We only have 4 listed matches – and no divas – so I expect extra matches to be snuck in as usual.
Cena vs Kane – Much as I’d like to see Kane go down for his dastardly attack on Ryder, I think Kane will win. If not physically, then mentally as he forces Cena to embrace the dark side to win.
Bryan vs Mark Henry vs Big Show – Cowardly little heel in a cage with two monsters? There is no way that Bryan in’t winning that. Plus the two big men are working injured, so there isn’t much point in giving the title to them.
Punk vs Ziggler – I’d like to see Ziggles win it, and I’m certain he will sometime this year, but I am certain Punk will retain, against the odds.
The Rumble – Without knowing who is in the thing, picking a winner can be hard, but it seems that it will be between two; Randy Orton or Chris Jericho. It is Orton’s home town, and Vince doesn’t like having both Cena and Orton out of the title picture, but on the other hand a Jericho-Punk clash at Wrestlemania for the title is being bandied around.
And another year dawns; so time for some sort of resolutions. My track record with resolutions isn’t good, therefore these will be more like a wishlist.
Firstly, I need to start posting on this blog more often and more regularly. I need to explore the setting more, the characters, ideas and concepts, as well as delving into other things not related to the Braeden Wolf setting.
Second, I need to work to finish the Moments collection. Given they are rather short length, they shouldn’t be too hard to crank out. I need to spend a day to sit down and plot them all out.
After that comes two novels that need to be written; more if I can manage it.
Then there are the other projects, not related to Braeden Wolf, which kind of stalled. Must get them back into action too.
I went into this year’s NaNoWriMo – my first – with high hopes. Let’s just say that it was a spectacular failure. Yes, I know that technically there is a week to run, but I’ve never been able to manage the 10K+ a day some can crank out. Plus there is everything else that needs doing that eats away at writing time.
I did make a start and do have an outline of a novel, so it isn’t a complete waste. And I should see if I can at least get somewhere with the story by the end of the month – even if it is only 10-15K.
As I may have alluded to once or twice before, I’m a bit of a wrestling fan. One of my current favourites is Zack Ryder, who has an interesting story behind his recent rise in popularity, and one that has a lesson to be learned from.
Go back a year and things were different. He barely appeared on the show, and when he did it wasn’t to wrestle. Many were forecasting that he would be included in the next round of people to be released.
Not wanting to simply wait around, Zack came up with an idea to get himself noticed, one way or the other. His idea was a youtube show – Z! True Long Island Stories. At the time it was sink or swim. He didn’t know how it would go down or even if he would get let go over it – the industry prefers to make it stars rather than let them make themselves. But he really didn’t have a lot to loose given his status at the time.
A few people watched it, and then a few more. Quite quickly the numbers began to swell and it became rather popular. Fans started carrying signs for him at shows and chanting for him. It took some time for the industry to notice, but they had to given the amount of merchandise he was shipping out for them and the reactions he got. The end result is that he appears almost weekly on the shows now, gets to wrestle and looks to be on track to earn the intermediate title. He got to team up with Hugh Jackman when he was a guest on the show and even had Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy do his catchphrase for the Halloween special. The chants for him in MSG at last nights PPV were thunderous.
It has been a remarkable turn around, and all down to putting himself forward and market himself. It is a lesson I need to take to heart and try and emulate. You can’t sit back and wait for things to happen and to be discovered. Sure it may be a risk, but the upside is huge and the downside negligible.
With NaNoWriMo all but upon us, I am putting the final touches to the preparation for my first go at it. I have some rough notes for the novel and will spend the rest of the day working on finalising those notes.
The story I am going with will be called Knife’s Edge Deep and is a sort of prequel novel to the currently written novellas of the paranormal/cyberpunk world of Braeden Wolf. it is the story of what it was that made him into what he is in the later stories, in his own words.
For those interested in buddying up, I am ashstirling over on the NaNoWriMo site.
I’ve known of NaNoWriMo for years. I’ve been writing for years. Yet somehow I’ve never taken part in NaNoWriMo before.
This year I am going to. Come next month I am going to hack out a novel about Braeden Wolf (the first novel in the series). I’ve got it roughly plotted out and hope to have a few more details worked out by the time it starts, but won’t start writing until November.
In the meantime I’m planning on doing a few more short stories.
The five short stories I had written earlier and are on my website are now also on Smashwords, with shiny new covers, free to download and with a wider audience.
They won’t be the last ones I put up there.
What I plan to do is write more of these rather short stories as a series of vignettes, or brief moments in time revolving around various characters and events in The City, most of which build up an overall story.
I am thinking of doing around 15 more of these vignettes, and another 5 short stories unrelated but still providing snapshots of The City.
Only been up a couple of days but already have around 350 downloads, which is a good start.
