NaNoWriMo Day 14

Hello. How are you? I hope you’re doing well.

So, yesterday I did go back and write more. I ended up writing an additional 1,677 words. Which brings yesterday’s word count up to 3,526, and my overall word count to 28,346 words total.

Today though, I realized I was a dumpster fire human. I had wanted to try out a couple different write-ins on the NaNoWriMo site to try them out and see if they help me at all. I had one scheduled for today, and completely forgot about it until I was about to start writing this.

I feel really bad, but at the same time, when this write-in was going on I was super busy helping my mom. So I think that’s a reasonable excuse as not to attend. I still feel bad about it though. But I do have a couple more write-ins written down that I’d like to attend. Maybe things will actually work out and I can.

We will see. This is my first year participating in NaNoWriMo, so quite a lot of what I’m doing is just playing it by ear. And I’ve never attended a write-in before(whether it was for NaNoWriMo or not), so I thought it would be a fun thing to do. I’ve seen so far that a big thing with NaNoWriMo is the community aspect of it. All the people coming together to help cheer one another on as they try to write 50K.

I’ve always been a loner, more so with my writing, so I thought it would be something interesting to try.

And here I’ve rambled for way too long about write-ins when I haven’t attended any yet.

*Deep Sigh*

Okay, back on track!

Today I’ve written 1,675 words so far. This brings my overall word count to 30,021.

My word counts for the day seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Question to those of you who have done NaNoWriMo before. Is this a normal thing even if you only write up to par every day? Or does it keep getting smaller like that to say, ‘hey, because you were an overachiever for a week there, now to get to your 50K you only need to write 1,000 words every day to reach it by the end of the month!’

At least that’s my take on it. Please let me know if you do, I’m very curious.

Also! I know, there are so many things to talk about today, who even is this person?

No, but really. So, I’ve been doing some non-existent/bad maths. And right now I’m at the bottom of page 18 of my 43 page outline(yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds. It is not lost on me. But check out my Tab on finding things that work for you for your answer to my ridiculousness.) and I’m already 30,000 words in.

If my math is correct, which I’m pretty sure it isn’t, by the time I have the rough draft done it’ll be more along the lines of 80-ish thousand.

Is that a bad thing? No. But just thinking about it is a lot.

I’ll be straight up here. The piece that I’m working on is Amilia, or Realm of the Demon Empress for those of you who have been around a while. It’s the first novel I ever tried to write with any kind of success, and the one I got the furthest with.

Amilia, formerly RotDE, was initially a couple of short stories that I wrote and they just had the same main characters that I really liked. And I decided to string the stories together. It became really intricate, and developed characters and conflicts from thin air. But it had its own issues because it wasn’t planned out as a novel, but several separate stories I decided to mix together.

I really like the story and the characters. So I’m hoping this time around I can do them justice. I put it away for a while so I could focus on other things and somehow figure out how I outline and plan and such.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m equal parts excited and anxious about everything having to do with this piece. I won’t mind if I have to put this in the drawer again and come back to it when I’m a better writer, but I’m also hoping I don’t have to. It’s complicated.

Anyway, I’ve rambled for long enough I feel. Too long to be honest. So, I’m going to leave this here. I hope you are having a wonderful day. And if it’s not wonderful, I hope it gets better. Stay safe, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

2019 Wrap Up

It has been a year.

I moved. My parents opened up a restaurant. I took several long breaks, some were desperately needed, others were mandatory due to the move.

It’s been interesting. I have to give it that.

This was also the first year in which I had set actual goals for myself that I wanted to get done. Last year, 2018, I only wanted to see what I could and couldn’t do over the course of a year as I worked on my writing and building a platform.

So now, much like my usual monthly wraps, I’m wrapping up the year to see what I managed to do and see what I realistically can and can’t do for next year.

So, let’s get on with it.

Trials for the Princess Ryanne and War for the Good King are going through major overhauls right now. I’m writing this post before I’m writing the post addressing it. But needless to say, neither of those are done at this moment.

As for the anthology, I have the outlines fixes, most of the rough drafts written up, some of them are typed up and on my computer, most of them have titles, but I’m not really happy with the title for the book itself just yet. So, I would say I’m about seventy percent done with the first phase of this piece. As I have said before, I came up with a few more stories that I really want to put in that tie up some more loose ends, so I still have those I need to do.

I’ve abandoned the idea for a newsletter for this year. And, honestly, I think I’m going to leave that idea for now. At this moment, I don’t really feel like I make enough quality content, or am a popular enough author to warrant monthly newsletters. Perhaps in the next few years, I’ll implement one, but for right now it just doesn’t seem like a good idea for me.

As for the revamp of the site I wanted to do. Well… You can see how that turned out. It didn’t. I’m not even really sure what I was planning to do in terms of revamping the site. I think more than anything I just wasn’t super into the layout or pictures. But I can fix that eventually if I’m still so inclined. But I’m not going to worry about that right now.

About the twelve writing contests, I wanted to enter. Yeah… that didn’t happen. I even changed my goals for this to be one contest before the end of the year. That still didn’t happen. But that’s okay. I had so much going on, I’m not upset about it.

I managed to read more than twenty-five books this year. For those of you who follow me on Goodreads, you’d see that at this moment I’ve read twenty-six. I still have a couple weeks until the end of the year at the time of writing this, so I’m not sure what the actual final count is yet. But I’m happy I managed to do this. Especially when I changed this goal from twenty-five to twenty because I wasn’t sure I could do the extra five. But I did. So, I’m very happy about that.

I did manage to outline Realm of the Demon Empress. And I’m very happy with how it’s turned out so far. It took way longer than I first expected to properly outline it and add in all the detail and extra scenes I wanted. It ended up being sixty-something pages before, and about thirty-one after I typed it up and printed it out. So I’m very happy about that.

I didn’t manage to write three short stories this year, but I did manage to write one. And I’m very happy about the premise of it, less so about the way it ends. But, you know what, it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time around, it just has to exist.

I did do a blog event/challenge. The 12 days of Blogmas, which was actually a lot of fun.

I didn’t do a one year anniversary post. That time passed while I was still unpacking and trying to figure my room out after the move. So I couldn’t. But that’s okay, there’s always next year.

I haven’t finished ‘Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Getting Serious About Writing Part 2’, but I am working on it. It’s certainly getting there.

I stopped trying the weekly writing prompts. I didn’t like how it looked on the blog, and on top of that, they weren’t my personal prompts. So I felt kinda icky taking them, despite the fact I tried to give credit where it was due. So that stopped.

I’ve made a few playlists on Youtube for the various pieces I’m working on, and the tone I need them to set. But they aren’t completely done, and there are a few I still need to make up.

And I did the research I needed to, to a degree. I still have a bit more I need to do to get it as accurate as I want to though.

So, calculating it all out, marking the ones I only partially completed as a half, I got five out of fifteen done. It’s not bad. Especially when you consider the fact I realized several things weren’t going to happen, and everything that happened this year.

Overall I’m pretty happy with what happened. And I’m looking forward to getting more done next year. Or, tomorrow I guess.

What did you manage to get done this year? What did you manage to tick off your list for the new year? I’d love to hear if you’d like to share.

I hope you’re having a great new years eve, and if it’s not great I hope it gets better. We’re about to enter a new decade, meaning we have new opportunities awaiting us. And I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

Regarding Realm of the Demon Empress

Today is November 4th, 2018. I have been working towards a finished manuscript for about a year now.

At the beginning of the year, I started off writing a few short stories while I tried to work on a novel I have since put away for the time being.

One of my short stories initially titles Princess or the Outcast, leaked into a second short story I wrote, Battle Royal. These two stories prompted me to write a third part, titled Would You Come with me. I eventually smooshed all these stories together, added a prologue and a few extra chapters and created Realm of the Demon Empress. However, I had initially written this story as separate short stories not intending to make it full on novel.

I have gotten beta reviews and feedback on it and I have a couple other beta readers who are going to get back to me with their feedback soon. That being said, there is much that needs to be changed and expanded upon to do this piece justice. How I have it written so far is not giving justice to anything I feel.

I am not abandoning this piece, I love the story and its characters too much to do that. But my heart right now is invested in my newest work in progress Trials for the Princess Ryanne and the other books that go along with it.

As such, I have made an executive decision. I’m going to gather the feedback from my beta readers, thank you to all of you who have done or are doing that for me it means so much, and I am going to rewrite Realm of the Demon Empress from the ground up. I am going to give it its dues and write it with the intention of creating a novel out of it. But it’s going to be on the back burner for right now. I want to dive head first into my trilogy and run with it. I can’t with the task of beating a dead horse dangled over my head.

This pains me because I love the story and I had full intentions of making Realm of the Demon Empress my debut novel. It’s sad it’s not going to be the case, but I refuse to force myself to work on a piece I have no motivation in.

I will be keeping the Realm of the Demon Empress tab open and adding to it as the need arises. I will be taking down the chapter preview and putting in a note to state what is occurring with it.

In the same note, that means Trials for the Princess Ryanne will be taking centre stage and get its own tab very soon.

I’m very sorry if you were hoping for more updates on the pieces, but this is what I feel is best for me. But the piece isn’t going anywhere.

I hope you have a wonderful day/afternoon/evening/night, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

October-November Goals

Alright. All the madness of my Blogtober experiment/event is over and done with. Because of this, I wasn’t able to give a proper day to a monthly wrap up like I normally do. So, because I’m all for trying new things. I’m trying a new format with this. If you like this better than the ones I normally do comment and let me know.

So, let’s start.

What have I managed to get done this October?

Well, I got a couple of really good beta readers and some amazing feedback on ‘Realm of the Demon Empress’. I’m presently in the process of implementing some of it right now. I will continue to do this throughout November and the next couple months too.

‘Trials for the Princess Ryanne’ has been edited once completely. I’m working on dividing it up into chapters and giving it a second edit. I will continue to edit it and get it ready for the beta process. That’s still a long ways away so don’t worry about that. Keeping with that vein. I have the duology and stories for the anthology outlined roughly. I need to make a few changes and expansions to the ‘War for the Good King'(the sequel if you’re new here) outline. I might change up the short story outlines as well, but I’m not sure just yet.

I have submitted my story to that contest. Easy peasy, we’ll see what happens.

And, finally, the 31 days of Blogtober have come to an end. I’m going to have a post up soon about my thoughts and experience about that so I’ll be brief here about it. I’ll just say I’m glad it’s over.

Now, what do I need to do for November?

1. I have a couple people I need to do beta readings for. I’m really excited about their pieces so I’m happy to do it. I want to get to that as soon as I can so I can give them feedback in a timely fashion.
2. I’m presently doing line edits for ‘Realm of the Demon Empress’, I think I’m about a third of the way through right now and I want to get the rest of it done by the end of the month.
3. Continuing on with ‘Realm of the Demon Empress’, this month I want to get at least five changes or major edits done to the story. It might seem a bit redundant to do the line edits while I’m still doing story edits, but I figure I should cut a large amount of the jargon out while I can. I’m going to have to do it anyway, so why not now?
4. I need to finish editing the third draft of ‘Trials for the Princess Ryanne’ and dividing it up into chapters.
5. I need to fix the outlines for ‘War for the Good King’ and the short stories for the anthology. I can’t write anything further with the story until I have all the outlining done, so this needs to get done by the end of the month.
6. I want to get the post about my experience and thoughts on a blog challenge up this month as well.
7. I have two more writing contests I need to get pieces done for before December. So those all need to get done.
8. And I have a novel I’ve been putting off and putting off and I would like to finish it this month. If not this month, by the end of the year would be nice.

Thinking about it I have a lot I need to get done. I have confidence that I’ll be able to get most of it done at least. I figure if anything is going to get missed or skipped over it’s probably going to be my readings and outline fixing. I’m not going to slack on my beta reader duties. I really want to focus a lot on ‘Realm of the Demon Empress’ this month. I really want to try to get it the point where I can start querying that sometime in 2019.

I am not taking part in Nanowrimo. I have nothing against it, nor did I forget about it. Maybe I’ll take part in it next year or in the next couple of years. Right now I just have too much to do.

Well, I think that about wraps everything up. Stay tuned to find out if I can even get half of that done.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you have a great day/afternoon/evening/night, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

Day 19: All Hallows Write- Realm of the Demon Empress

This is actually a writing tag that I found through Jenna Moreci. But the creator of this tag is actually Sam Kassé. If you would like to check out either of these amazing people I will be linking them at the end of this post.

There are two rules that come with this tag. The first is that you must provide a brief description before starting. And the second is you can’t use the same character for more than 3 answers.

Simple enough.

Realm of the Demon Empress follows Amilia as she refuses to marry for social gain, instead opting for love. She gets this after being sent up to the Demon Realm and meeting and falling in love with the Demon Lord Syler. During her time there Amilia’s father dies and her twin brother, Avery takes the throne and tries to bring her back to the Human Realm which ends in a fight between the siblings. Years later a large war is on the horizon and Amilia needs to go back to her brother for aid and rally her people if any of them want to make it out alive.

On to the questions!

1. It’s Halloween night! What is your protagonist dressed up as?

Amilia would probably go for a hyper realistic monster movie costume. Probably Freddy Kruger, or Micheal Myers, or maybe even that girl from the ring. But she would be scary. She’s not the kind to cute-ify or make a monster sexy as others would.

2. Who in your cast refuses to dress up and shows up at the Halloween party without a costume?

King Ethalnd-Dolan. Amilia and Avery’s father. He is the king, he is stuck up, he will be partaking in the drinking and feasting but it is far below him to lower himself to a disguise. Why would he ever want to be anyone other than himself?

3. Which character wears the most outrageous costume, and what would it be? 

Probably Isabella. She is Avery’s wife, and she loves the finer things in life because that’s all she’s ever gotten. She would have gotten the servants to spend months meticulously making the most extravagant costume. She’d probably end up being a Las Vegas dancing girl, with all the feathers and jewelry. Over the top, and drawing all the attention is just her style.

4. On Halloween, werewolves, vampires, and zombies are on the prowl. Which of your characters gets caught in their clutches, and which creature do they subsequently turn into?  

Avery. He is the furthest thing from a fighter in the Realm and would not be able to outrun or outfight anything. And based on his personality, I’d say he’d turn into a Jackalope. A Jackalope, in case you don’t know, is a mythical creature that has the body and size of a jackrabbit and the horns of an antelope. Thus making a Jackalope!

In all seriousness though, he would not be scary or bloodthirsty at all. I would actually be surprised if he ended up turning at all and not just end up a meal for someone. If anything I’d say a zombie.

5. Who wins the contest for best costume?

Lord Syler. He’s a Demon, of imposing magnitude, he already looks like he crawled out of the ninth circle of hell. He actually may or may not have been awarded that prize just to spite Isabella.

6. Who hands out toothbrushes to the trick and treaters?

Harry. Sir Harry of the Forest is the Battle Master in the Capital garrison, he is responsible for the training of all the knights and soldiers and commands them if ever war occurs. It’s not that he dislikes the season, it would have more to do with him remembering his youth and him forgetting to brush his teeth after eating all the candy. He’d wake up the next day with a massive toothache and he doesn’t want the other kids to do the same. So, he’d probably give out little grab bags that have candy and a toothbrush in them.

7. Which two of your characters decide to pair up and do an angel/devil costume together?

Avery and Christopher. Avery is the Prince, and Christopher is his best friend.

Avery would want to be the angel because he always wants to be portrayed as the ‘good guy’, and would potentially use it to show more of his royal heritage.

Christopher would willingly be the devil the relationship. He would spin it though and end up making it rather masculine and sexy.

8. Someone is too scared to even attend the Halloween party. Who is it?

I wouldn’t say he’s too scared, I would say he’s too busy. And that’s William. William is a well respected knight of the Realm and Amilia’s best friend. He takes on a lot of responsibilities to take care of the Realm and its people. He might have just forgotten and went back to the barracks and fell asleep because he’s too tired. Either way, he doesn’t attend.

9. Who overdoses on Halloween candy and ends up sick?

Christopher. He loves his life as an aristocrat and being the right hand to the Prince. He’s known to indulge himself, so eating too much candy wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for him.

10. Which character is most likely to place a curse/hex on someone and who would they curse?

Lord Syler would probably throw an old Demon curse on either King Ethalnd-Dolan or Isabella due to their ‘I’m better than you could ever be’ attitudes, and he would have none of it.

Now, going along the theme with tag games, I’m tagging all of you guys who are reading this who would like to participate. I will link to the original post on Sam Kassé’s Tumblr, full credit to her.

Thank you so much for joining me for day 19 of my Blogtober challenge, which is where I post a fall or Halloween themed post every day for the month of October. If you liked what you read here, you can come back tomorrow and see what I have for you them. Or, if it’s after the 31st, all of these posts are up and you can peruse them at your leisure.

Thank you again for joining me, I hope you have a great day/afternoon/evening/night, and I will see you next time.

-T.R. Flynn.

Sam Kassé’s Tumblr

skasse.tumblr.com/post/1660272962021/tag-all-hallows-write

Jenna Moreci

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS_fcv9kBpDN4WWrfcbCrgw

(I couldn’t get the link to work but it’s easy to find on her channel. Sorry.)