Our publishing date may be sooner than expected! Yes!
Great news! Because the second draft is now likely going to be done before the summer is over, we may see the novel Dark Soldier be published BEFORE it’s original goal of March 2016! This is heavily reliant upon us getting the proper publisher, as I do not plan to self-publish. I have nothing wrong with self-publishing, but I think this is a better style for me. The plan as of right now is to get…
Great news! Because the second draft is now likely going to be done before the summer is over, we may see the novel Dark Soldier be published BEFORE it’s original goal of March 2016!
This is heavily reliant upon us getting the proper publisher, as I do not plan to self-publish. I have nothing wrong with self-publishing, but I think this is a better style for me. The plan as of right now is to get either Baen Books, Gollancz Publishing or Penguin Random House. I’m slightly more worried about Penguin house, as I have not heard great things about their interactions with authors. But no matter! We’re closer than we’ve ever been!
Sorry for the great lack of writing-based posts in the last couple of days. I will fix that issue in the coming week.
If you are seeing this post, then I must inform you that I am, in fact, not here. This is a post from the past, sent to the future, to let you know that I am in Canada at this time. I am visiting my relatives in the great wild Yukon.
Ok, it’s not really the Yukon, it’s Ontario. Close enough. They still have Tim Hortons, which I’ll have you know makes the world’s greatest coffee and bagels.
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.
For your information, I actually have used this image before. This is the kind of gold that comes out of this blog, and exactly why you should follow it.
This means I can’t actually reply to your comments or like your stuff for the next couple days. It also means I can’t participate in the Blogging 101 assignments. But. BUT. You should still keep tabs on this page. Why? Because I’ve scheduled a few awesome posts for you to enjoy in the meantime. This includes Faith Fridays (coming later today) and Short Story Saturdays and the regular awesomeness!! So keep up on all this!
Ciao
A drawing of the Bandit Queen, Zenti, is being worked on. I only heard of it last night after a delightful evening with A. Sams (the illustrator) and her family. But those who have seen it in progress have had only good things to say about it. I also heard the hair design is a key part of it. But she won’t show it, not yet, not till it’s done! So now it’s just a matter of waiting…
More news regarding Dark Soldier! #mapmaking #novel #news
Today, finally, I get to do some more stuff for the book Dark Soldier. This time, we’re talking about world building. This is going to be super hard for me because I’m not really good at map-making. Okay, technically I’ve never made a map. Technically, I’m still not going to make the map. That’s the illustrator’s job. But here’s one thing I do have to do: I have to make it make sense. So, I’ve…
Today, finally, I get to do some more stuff for the book Dark Soldier. This time, we’re talking about world building. This is going to be super hard for me because I’m not really good at map-making. Okay, technically I’ve never made a map. Technically, I’m still not going to make the map. That’s the illustrator’s job. But here’s one thing I do have to do: I have to make it make sense. So, I’ve been on a journey to make it make sense. I’ve been thinking, “what will this world look like in real life?” and “how do I make the geography work?”
I came to realize that the country that most of this takes place and looks most like Italy. It’s a semi–large peninsula, But not big enough to be a continent by any means. So, what does that mean for the geography of this world? Would that make me have to remove mountains and replace them with very large hills? How would the climate be? Would it be mainly low areas? Could there be forests?
I suppose it makes sense. Obviously, there’s still going to be mountains in the wonderful country that I will probably not be giving you the name for until very late in the series. But it forced me to think, and that means some things are about to change.
There will indeed now be areas of rolling hills. There will likely be lakes in that country now. There will be plains and mountains. There will be forests and dunes. There will be hot summers and mediocre winters (compared to Canada, at least). There will probably be islands, but as all the action takes place on the mainland for the first book, you won’t be seeing them in the first map. Heck, I might even throw in a volcano. Basically, I’m just ready to start moving.
And that also means that even “white” people are probably going to be at least tanned. This is, after all, a peninsula.
I’m pretty freakin’ psyched if you can’t tell. Hopefully, my illustrator is just as psyched. Knowing her, she probably is, even though it means a bit more work. She’s cool like that.
I apologize for the lack of fantastic blogs and complete lack of podcasts this month. This is the second-to-last week before finals for my college, so the stress is getting to me a little bit. It’s very hard to be creative when you’re trying to save the entire semester. So I may not be doing as many blogs this next week, or any blogs this next week.
My illustrator and I are kind of in the same…
I apologize for the lack of fantastic blogs and complete lack of podcasts this month. This is the second-to-last week before finals for my college, so the stress is getting to me a little bit. It’s very hard to be creative when you’re trying to save the entire semester. So I may not be doing as many blogs this next week, or any blogs this next week.
My illustrator and I are kind of in the same position, although she actually is getting more illustrations out. So you may be seeing a new one pretty soon. I’m pretty excited about that one. But, honestly, I’m more excited about the concept drawings for the different characters. I decided to give her only basic concepts of what the characters looked like so that I can see new faces for the characters instead of the ones I imagined. Not everybody sees the characters the exact same way, and that’s just fine. My reader doesn’t even have to agree with the illustration if they don’t like it. And that’s just fine. Everybody thinking the exact same thing is boring. I’m not a huge fan of boring.
But if you’re having a really hard day today, I’ve got something for you. It’s one of my favorite songs from an anime called Big O. Big O a lot of great songs in its soundtrack, but not all of them have a saxophone. Put some RainyMood in there as well, and you’re golden. Maybe it’s just me that needs RainyMood to hear this, but hey! Who knows? So chill down with some smooth jazz and let your worries pass you by.
For these next two minutes, don’t think about exams. Don’t think about work. Just chill. It’s an awesome thing to do from time to time. 🙂
The second part of the series on making the language for the book!
I haven’t gotten a whole lot more done in regards to language for the novel, but here’s what I can tell you. A lot of soul speak is based off Gaelic, with the general sound at least. The rest, in regards to sound, is based off Elvish. Well, it is and it isn’t. I like Tolkien’s concept I’m making Elvish role off the tongue, in essence making a very human language. But I’m going in a slightly…
I haven’t gotten a whole lot more done in regards to language for the novel, but here’s what I can tell you. A lot of soul speak is based off Gaelic, with the general sound at least. The rest, in regards to sound, is based off Elvish. Well, it is and it isn’t. I like Tolkien’s concept I’m making Elvish role off the tongue, in essence making a very human language. But I’m going in a slightly different direction. I don’t want you to have to worry about breathing while speaking this language.
No, don’t worry, you are going to be breathing while speaking. What I mean by that is that I incorporate the breath into the language. For instance, one of the letters is literally just a heavy “H”. It sounds like you’re sighing. So, when you say a word like “Hhalverron”, you get to breath out while speaking. Now, as you may remember with the other blog about this, I don’t actually use English letters for this language. The letter “HHA” is merely a spiral. That’s all. I’m also working on the letters based on breathing in, but I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to do that. That all comes with making the language, I suppose.
So why did I choose to make the language based on breathing? Simply because it’s easier that way. If you can skip the breaths between words, you can get messages across faster. Plus, it sounds cool. Who doesn’t want a really cool sounding language?
I’m beginning to realize just how much is involved making this language. For the next couple weeks, I’ll probably be getting some form of a language major to help me with making this language. I’m still working on connector words, like “And”, “Or”, “Nor”, etc. I’m not sure I mentioned this in the last post, but as of now it’s based on dashes, literally connecting the words or phrases.
That’s it for today’s post, let me know what you think in the comments section. All of the stuff is up for grabs; you guys are more than welcome to try to help me out with this. I’m really not a multiple languages major or anything like that, so I don’t know a whole lot about making languages. But there might be somebody on WordPress that does! So don’t delay to give me ideas!
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou
Making the link between anarchism and Christianity.
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Gabriel to Earth 