Friday, June 27, 2014

Word Count!

My overall goals I hoped to achieve the Lore of the Reluctant series have always included the following:

1) Create fun fantasy stories that can be read as standalone adventures, but likewise take place in a greater storyline. Much like the old Conan stories, you can certainly read them out of order, but reading them chronologically gives you a greater sense of his journey.

2) Have fun with the genre, but don't make fun of the genre. I'm writing as a fan, not as a critic.

3) And lastly, keep them short so they don't wear out their welcome. I'm writing fantasy, but I'm also writing comedy, which I feel works better when it sticks around only for as long as it needs to. As an added bonus, it also allows me to make meaningful progress on the stories, despite my rickety schedule.

But to that last point, I promised myself (in a blog post, no less!) that I'd try to flesh out the world a bit more, and I feel as though I'm doing just that with Book 2. There's a lot more lore packed into this story, and because of that, I don't think I'll be able to keep it confined to the 50,000 word count that I was aiming for.

So, as a tentative heads-up, Book 2 might be a tad longer than I'd planned, which might kick it's overall progress back a bit, but hopefully not that much. In the coming days, I hope to have another excerpt from Book 2 here on the blog, but I will say that I recently had to write a "Lockpick Rap" for Jasper, which is every bit as silly as it sounds!

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As for what I've been up to outside of writing, I've gone back to work at the used bookstore here in town, which, as always, is an absolute joy. I might also be taking a free online course at Coursera, since it happens to be Lord of the Rings Online-centric. It's an honor system thing, so it's not for college credit or anything beyond the experience. Sounds like fun, and it comes highly recommended by the people who've tried it, so I'll probably give it a shot.


We also went to go see Edge of Tomorrow, which was an excellent sci-fi film and way, way better than I thought it would be. I highly recommend it. As for books, I'm currently reading the Japanese light novel the movie was based on, All You Need is Kill, in addition to Hollow World by Michael J. Sullivan. I always see Sullivan hanging around /r/Fantasy, and he always toes the line between contributor and promoter very well. He also just seems like a super nice guy, to boot. So I picked up his latest sci-fi/fantasy offering, and it's turning out marvelously. I love books that can strike a good balance between dialogue and worldbuilding without being too wordy, and Hollow World has met the criteria so far.

Really great stuff. It's been a fun summer so far!