Happy Eclipse Day, everyone!
Just a quick update to let everyone know that the beginning stages of the developmental editing process are proceeding nicely. I promised a behind-the-scenes look, so read on if you’re interested in hearing more....
My developmental editor, Matt Harry, and I have spent the past month passing an 11-page outline back and forth. At this point, we have settled on the arc for the story as a whole, and the arcs of the main characters.
I am thrilled with the tweaks to the original storyboard and feel that the alterations and additions to the initial plot will serve to reinforce the themes. I am eager to see where it leads.
Now that the outline is complete, we are moving on. I am currently spending a few hours a day working on rewriting and editing the first 100 pages to turn over to Matt so that he can provide page-specific notes. As of now, I have worked through about 60% of the first section, and hope to complete it within a week.
Matt will then work through the first 100 pages as I edit and rewrite the next 100 pages. We will then do this with a final section (the book will likely end up between 250 and 300 pages). Because we are adding new scenes and drastically altering others, the second and third segments will take a bit longer to work through.
After the first round is complete, we will rinse and repeat a couple of times until we are both happy with the story.
So, there you have it. As always, thank you for the support. Every day that I sit down and write, I think of all of you. I am forever grateful for this opportunity.
Until next time,
-Jacqui
Baby Freya is now 2 months old! Jeez! The past few months has been a whirlwind of love, excitement, family, and sleep deprivation!
(Full post can be read on my blog HERE to see future posts sign up to my newsletter HERE)
Despite the newfound groggy-eyed joys of fatherhood, I have still been hard at work not only on RUNE’s sequel (Oath of the Apprentice), but also on an exciting new Indie Video Game project called Shadow of the Moon (which takes place chronologically between The Rune Chronicles books 1 and 2). I’m so excited to tell you about this game I’m shaking... Or is that the coffee which is currently keeping me awake?! The world may never know...
Many of you might remember Shadow of the Moon from the collaborative Inkshares video game anthology I was a part of called Too Many Controllers. Yes, that same book which "won" the Nerdist and Inkshares Video Game Publishing Contest. (And yes, thanks for asking, I am still sore about the book being canned.) Well, some friends and I were talking about how TMC being canceled shouldn’t be the death of such a great story. We were sad, however, because Shadow of the Moon was written with video game mechanics at its core, and therefore, did not really read well (make sense) as a stand alone literary work.
I kept on trying to figure out a way around this because Shadow of the Moon’s female protagonist, Zera, is featured heavily as a main character in The Rune Chronicles Book 2: Oath of the Apprentice. I could not get over how cool Zera’s background and unique motivations were and desperately wanted readers to have a chance, if they were interested, to know more about her and why she was such a bad ass. Sadly, try as I might, I could not find a good fix to the logistical story problems and was stumped for months!
Well, during the days following Freya’s birth I came to the crazy conclusion that if I could not "write" a solution for the story dilemma, the only "logical" course of action was to actually turn Shadow of the Moon into a full fledged indie video game! GG EZ Fix!
I must have been profoundly sleep deprived because changing mediums would add a huge, exponential multiplier to the amount of work required. Like, There are no words which can adequately describe how much more effort making a video game, even an indie, will be. But I have been working on this project for two months now, and trust me folks, Zera’s story is, hot damn, well worth it! Truly.
Seen above is Zera, the protagonist of Shadow of the Moon, and I have so much more I’m dying to share with you all! We have art, game design mechanics, real to life martial arts, and even code for our custom SDL game engine (which should run a playable demo soon.) Its crazy awesome how much cool shit will be in this game! And the story, oh how the story has grown and evolved!
All of this is thanks to our amazingly talented team. Despite my sleepless nights, I have been able to gather a super dedicated group over at Apotheosis Studios to help me transform my novella into a Rogue-like Action-Adventure, 2D Top Down, RPG Video Game of epic, pixelated proportions! (Think Hyper Light Drifter meets Darkest Dungeon meets Bastion. Yes, you heard me right--we are not fucking around. This game is the real deal.)
I am leading this fearless indie dev team as Creative Director/Writer and so far we have 2 other writers/designers, 1 programmer, 1 editor/marketer, 2 "interns", a wolf, and a viking baby! What could possibly go wrong?!?! If you want to join our ranks, hit me up at @StoneJamison (Currently we are looking for a pixel and/or sprite artist, and music composer, btw!)
I’m also super excited to say that I will documenting our game progress on my blog HERE with an Apotheosis Studios Indie Game Dev Blog Series! I have so much more to share (and some really killer art) but will save those additional details about the game for the "official" blog series, so stay tuned! And yes, I will be doing all of this with a new baby. Many believe I have lost my mind, which if true, should make this game and RUNE’s sequel pretty freaking awesome, haha!
All jokes aside, buckle up Masters and Apprentices and get ready for many more blog posts to come. I am so excited to not only share developments and updates on Shadow of the Moon game development, but also how my wife and I raise our Viking Ninja baby girl.
And in case you are wondering how one raises a little Viking Ninja baby girl in 2017... Well, I’m not really sure, but I figure age and gender appropriate toys (swords, obviously!); good role models (bad ass active duty Army musician mommy and Zera of Shadow of the Moon!); and a loving, strong, and supportive daddy (I’m still growing out my "Ragnar Viking haircut") is a good place to start!
Stay tuned via my news letter HERE and I’ll let you know how it all goes!
Oh, and P.S. if you have not yet posted a review for Rune of the Apprentice on Amazon Dear god, please do so! We currently have 66 reviews, but need 100+! It really helps! Seriously! Thank you!
One person I pay a lot of attention to is Donald Maass, from Donald Maass Literary Agency. He’s written several books and frequently contributes articles to Writer Unboxed and other groups, but I think my go-to book from him right now is The Breakout Novelist. That book is a quasi-compilation of much of Maass’s earlier works and is written to be a sort-of story doctor for when you get stuck or jammed in a novel.
One thing I find particularly useful about the book is the extensive series of exercises. I’m not always a big fan of exercises in books on writing, but the intent of a lot of Maass’s exercises is to get you to think deeper about the major parts of the story, characters, plot, theme, setting etc. as opposed to ‘write two paragraphs on x.’
Having had a chance to go through a developmental edit with Girl Friday Productions as well, many of the exercises are directly relatable to issues that my developmental editor mentioned, like the nine-tenths of character details and timeline issues that probably don’t even make it directly into the novel, but which are important to know since they can be obliquely referenced to give added depth. Aside from reading the book, the worksheets and all the exercises are freely available through Writer’s Digest at http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-goal/improve-my-writing/breakout-worksheets.
I’ve gone through a couple of other books by Maass as well (currently enjoying The Emotional Craft of Fiction) but I’d have to say that The Breakout Novelist is my favorite so far.