Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night have come and gone. I wasn’t particularly festive this year, but it was a good excuse to watch a massive pile of bad horror movies and eat candy.
But I haven’t been wholly idle during all this time either. I went to Fountains Abbey once more; so late in the autumn the trees have become a gorgeous multicolored array of seasonal colors, with the dead leaves dotting the ground. I got to hike around here and there, to the next village and back, to see more autumn-time colors. I’ve also gone Christmas shopping a couple of times (I hope everybody likes what they’re getting).
So late into autumn now, I've put some more thought into the story idea I had mused about earlier. Seeing the seasonal changes firsthand makes me even more giddy about the idea of creating an autumn-themed mythos. And I think a story is starting to weave itself together. I think it should definitely be a paranormal mystery of some kind. I definitely want to write about an alternate world coinciding with our own; a netherworld that we cannot see, but is the residence of ghosts trapped in Purgatory. I think it would be an excellent set-up for another thrilling adventure. I've started some more research and designing on this project, but it is still a low-priority thing for me.
And just the other day, I took the chance to see a band I enjoy; the Gorillaz played live at Manchester
More importantly, the writing has picked up, finally. My number-one project over the last year or two has been an epic fantasy called Angel-Craft, the second in what I hope to be an eight book series (collectively called Ouroboros). This book compliments Devil-Lore, the story about a warlock who becomes a power-hungry tyrant. But while Devil-Lore was a rather dark and gothic portrayal of evil, Angel-Craft is meant to be the exact opposite, focusing on good over evil, God instead of the Devil, love instead of hate, and mercy instead of revenge, with a woman as a main character instead of a man. Angel-Craft will also focus on the mythology of the east (where as the previous book was based on Middle-Eastern myth and culture); the environment in this case has been modeled after ancient Chinese, Japanese, and Korean mythology. I’ve drafted this book in its entirety once before, but determined that the story didn’t work for some reason or another. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it felt off. I think the plot structure was too contrived (I was so bent on reflecting Devil-Lore so much that I made the two stories too similar for their first halves; the second half of Angel-Craft felt too disjointed, hopping from one battle to another without good enough coherency). I also think that the characters didn’t receive good enough treatment, and I don’t think I was immersed enough in the environment to care for it. Thus, I’ve been redrafting the entire manuscript, keeping maybe 25% of the original and rewriting the rest. It’s a daunting task, and it’s dragged on for many months, but I feel much more confident about the new draft, and I’m gratified in thinking that I’m getting it right this time.
I took a bit of a break on that, working on a story idea I had for over eight years now (Perfectly Inhuman, the story of a promiscuous woman who is discovered to be a clone). But now, work on Angel-Craft has continued, and I’ve made good progress in it. I think I’m finally reaching the same level of immersion that made Devil-Lore such an easy thing to write, and the story feels more natural now. I’ve got over 80 pages drafted, and I think the most interesting parts have yet to come…
I’ve also taken the time to submit new queries for a couple of my finished manuscripts. One came back as a negative already, but it still feels good to think “at least I tried,” as opposed to not doing anything at all. And I’ll likely try again soon.