Tag: progress report

A Bit of Me, Overworld, Updates, Writing

NaNo Report, Part 2

Becca Lusher

I’m not sure this whole catch up with NaNo on a Wednesday thing is going to work. Thus far I’m not doing too well at it, but as long as I’m still writing I guess that’s the important thing. I would say I’ll move this to Thursday now, but if I do something else will break or explode or just happen along to distr-

Oh look, the kraken is picking up its squidlings from school!

Never mind.

Anyway, this week in the NaNo tally, things have been chugging along quite nicely. All the plots I had for this book have gone missing and I’ve gone off in another weird direction. I’m sort of hoping one or two of them might come back, but not confident. My dragons are spontaneous and resent forward planning.

I’m kicking the word count where it matters though, which is nice. Especially since all my plans yesterday went out the window. Not that I’m complaining, because in the scheme of everything, my NaNo goals are not important. But since my boiler is still broken and I spent most of today waiting for the engineer to come fix it (he’s here now), I caught up on my word count and Cloud Cursed at least is back on track. As far as I know, but see spontaneous dragons for why this may not be true.

I also have something extra to share, but I’ll talk about that at the end of the post.

Now onto the Weekly Progress-O-Meter of Snippets (no spoilers)!

DAY FOUR
Cloud Cursed Ch 5+6

“There are others here that are not so friendly towards my Clan.”
“That’s because your Clan is populated by idiots.”

– Leasang, Chapter 5

“I’m so pleased you picked such a comfortable spot. Wouldn’t it be terrible to find somewhere where there weren’t barbs and shards sticking in my feet? No, no, don’t get off, I can bear your weight just fine.”

– Teka, Chapter 5

Day 4 – 6763 words
Overall – 21,001 words

DAY FIVE and SIX

Nothing. My weekend was gobbled up by other things.

DAY SEVEN
Cloud Cursed Ch 7

“Father Sun, this trip was making him lose his mind. This was why he didn’t have friends.”

– Khennik, Chapter 7

Day 7 – 4888 words
Overall – 25, 889 words

DAY EIGHT
Cloud Cursed Ch 8

“We will never be friends, you and I.”

– Khennik, Chapter 8

Day 8 – 4618 words
Overall – 30, 507 words

DAY NINE
Cloud Cursed Ch 9

“Ready?” Nera asked.
He grinned. “Ready.”
The lieutenant gave a sharp whistle, waving her arm to get her flurry lined up behind her, and grinned back. “Then let’s go!”

– Estenarven, Chapter 9

Day 9 – 2986 words
Overall – 33, 495 words

DAY TEN
Cloud Cursed Ch 10+11

“I’m really not sure about this, Tek,” she admitted, leaning forward to smooth a hand down her bonded’s neck.

– Nera, Chapter 10

“I bloody hate ancient second-generation runes. And poetry. Why did they always use poetry? Father Sun, it might as well be gibberish.”

– Khennik, Chapter 11

Day 10 – 8038 words
Overall – 41, 533 words

41533 / 80000 words. 52% done!

Woo – and if I may be so bold as to add – hoo!

Now, on to the non-NaNo Thing that has grown out of hazy idea I had bumbling around in the back of my brain, but mostly as a response to everything that’s going on right now.

I had considered making it a novella, however, instead it looks like it might turn into something else. I don’t know how long it will be, I don’t really know where it’s going. All I know is that it’ll be a completely fluffy piece of M/M dragon romance told scene by scene.

I wrote the first one today. I’ll write the second one tomorrow. I’ll try and write a little more every day and post it around the Rift and NaNo updates. So look out on Saturday for the first scene – perhaps even the first two scenes. I would say three, but that’ll be a fine way to ensure I never write anything on it again.

It’s called A Courtship of Dragons and it’s from the Dragonlands series, fitting neatly in between the end of Blazing Dawn and the start of Storm Rising. It’s about Mastekh and Estenarven, in case you were wondering and hadn’t quite guessed yet. It will probably also contain Rift Riders, miryhls and other sundry characters, since it’s all one Overworld.

I guess I’ll find out as I go along.

There was a flower on his bed.

– Mastekh, Scene 1

No, you’re not getting any more. It’s less than 300 words long at the moment. Come back on Saturday.

In the meantime, love and good thoughts and hope and support to you all.

A Bit of Me, Overworld, Updates, Writing

NaNo Report, Part 1

Becca Lusher

So November is here and NaNo has begun, but rather than spam everyone with daily updates on my progress, I thought I’d go for weekly instead. Since this month ends on a Wednesday, I figured a Wednesday update would work best. However, since I had something else to post yesterday, I’m doing it on Thursday. Which is a great start! Um…

Anyway, it’s Day 3 and, since I get up early and write in the morning, my count for the day is in. It’s going quite well so far. Cloud Cursed is taking shape and an idea pounced on me yesterday that may or may not turn into a major plot point. Not sure I could make it work, but if I can, it could be interesting.

So, progress so far (with daily snippets – no spoilers):

DAY ONE
Cloud Cursed Ch 1

Clearly he was having a mid-century crisis. Well, he was more than seven hundred years old. It was bound to hit him sooner or later.

Khennik, Chapter 1

Overall – 4295 words

DAY TWO
Cloud Cursed Ch 2+3

“It always starts in the library.”

Estenarven, Chapter 2

Day 2 – 4774 words
Overall – 9069 words

DAY THREE
Cloud Cursed Ch 4

He’d never done so much thinking in his life and, quite frankly, he was exhausted.

Estenarven, Chapter 4

Day 3 – 5169 words
Overall – 14,238 words

14238 / 80000 words. 18% done!

So far so good. I’m slowly increasing my count every day, but I’m still feeling my way into the book so it should go up even more when I know where it’s all going. For the moment, though, I’m happy with it. I’m hoping to get it over 20,000 by the weekend. We shall see.

To all my fellow NaNo participants out there, hope it’s going as well for you.

Merry Thursday, everybody!

Books, Overworld, Updates

Cover Love

Becca Lusher

ETA: I’ve tweaked them a tiny bit.

I’ve been playing around with covers over the last few days, in between bouts of editing and formatting, and I’ve landed on a few I’m happy with.

First up:

Blazing Dawn Cover 2

Everything seems set for a Friday release, though I do still have a few tweaks to make here and there. One of these days I might even be able to have an advanced release date and preorder links.

Then again, this is me, so probably not. That would mean being organised *gasp*

Anyway, here’s Khennik kin Blazeborn Clan Sunray, swirling about at dawn as is his preferred way of greeting the day. I know he doesn’t stand out too brilliantly, but that’s the problem with having a bronze dragon on this background. Also, since you can’t see him too clearly at thumbnail size anyway, I don’t really mind him blending in a bit.

I always have these grand ideas for covers, but frequently when I come to make them, I find they’re too cluttered and plain horrible looking. I might have gone completely the other way now with the Wingborn series, but I kind of like the new, cleaner style.

Wingborn Cover 2

I’m planning on using the wings to unify all the covers – like this:

Rift Rider Cover 8

I may have to tweak the colours again on this one. I’m not sure if it’s too pink, but since making it more red leaves it pretty overwhelming, on the whole I like it. For now.

Hope the week is treating you all kindly, wherever in the world you may be. I’ll no doubt be back at some point over the next few days to bug you about the dragon book. That is if I ever manage to write a blurb I’m happy with.

So there are these dragons, oh, and don’t forget the giant eagles and humans who fly them, ’cause they’re kind of important. There’s quite a bit of politics, lots of flying, a few sunrises, some fun and games, oh, and danger, and don’t forget the stormy stuff. There might even be a romance or two bubbling in the background. Seriously, what more do you want? A nervous water dragon? I have one of those. A stubborn rock dragon? Yup, that too. How about a grumpy dragon hero and a shy but determined human heroine? And a handful of playful, foolish, flirty Riders. Well, good, ’cause that’s what I’ve got. Want to read?

I’ll keep working on it.

Updates, Writing

Progress Report: The Woe of Words

Becca Lusher

Why did I ever think making up my own language was cool? I’ve never been good at languages. I’m barely passable with English most days, especially when it comes to correct grammatical terms.

Which might be why I made up my own language, now I think on it.

It was an okay language as far as it went – because it had no rules and I botched it together as and when I needed it. But then I had to try and tidy it up and put in proper rules for verbs and such things.

Which already gives me a headache just thinking about. And that was before a character turned up only speaking in auxiliary verbs! (Okay, he doesn’t only speak in aux verbs, but it felt like it when I was trying to translate it.)

I never even thought to plan for auxiliary verbs! I never thought I’d need to! I’ve been avoiding writing practically anything in Aekh-speak ever since I decided to tidy it up and realised as a purely spoken language that I needed to be able to pronounce it! And then along he came, with his verb baggage trundling behind him.

So now I have a new rule, which is basically don’t bother conjugating the second verb unless it looks prettier that way (I’m kidding. Mostly. About the last six words, anyway). I’m sure this will trip me up spectacularly at some point. Right now, however, I don’t care.

*kicks the Man Who Fell To Earth*

As you can probably tell, I’m really enjoying writing The Crying Child. Although I’m still not sure whether I’d prefer for Icaria to be more or less creepy. Less would probably be better for my health.

Oh well. I hope your summer is treating you well in your part of the world. Unless you are upside down, in which case I hope your winter is passing swiftly.

My summer is now wet, but then I am in England, so I should expect nothing else. I did, however, see a hummingbird hawk-moth in my garden the other day! And a white stag!(!) In the wild. An actual white stag!(!!) (No wardrobes were spotted in the sighting of this stag. Nor any lions (religiously metaphoric or otherwise) or witches either. Alas.) He’s a fallow deer and he had ladies and a baby in tow, but they were mostly hidden in the bushes while he stood out in front like a forgotten Christmas lawn ornament.

I also saw a rainbow at dawn this morning. In the west. I’ve never seen one that early in the day before, but it was very pretty in its half-shining state.

Fun times.