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 |  My latest blogging endeavor to catalog my activities here on WdC |
 ~Myself~ My name is Cat Voleur and, as you've probably guessed, I'm a writer. I worked as a freelancer for a few years, taking several ghostwriting positions before finally deciding to start doing stuff under my own name. I've had a handful of small publications and am working on some bigger stuff now. ~My Blog~ This is my second WdC blog. I'm starting it because I just went through and renovated a lot of the things from my portfolio and I thought it would be a good time to get a fresh start. The book is titled after a song from one of my favorite Coheed and Cambria albums. It's mostly going to be about my and what I'm up to on the site. There will sometimes be other stuff like promotions for cool stuff that I find on other sites that I think you guys might be interested in as well as promos for cool content that I find on here. ~My Other Projects~ If you're interested in checking out some of the other work that I do, feel free to check out some of the following links: In Defense of the Horror ~ My Horror Blog hosted on WordPress https://indefenseofthehorror.wordpress.com/ And there's also a horror tumblr, for those of you who are interested: http://in-defense-of-the-horror.tumblr.com/ Toxic Bubblegum ~ A collaborative project I co-founded that provides free resources to creators. http://www.toxicbubblegum.com/ |
 Intro Leading you into the madness of my blog I meant to post this a little bit earlier in the month, but I got sort of buried in stuff right at the end of January. So I'm gonna play a little bit of catch-up and then talk about this awesome thing called Women in Horror Month (which is honestly the only part of January that I like.)  Personal A little context about my personal life outside of writing So in terms of my personal life and attaining my personal goals I've been sort of all over the place in the last few weeks. I did really well in some areas, I did really terrible in other areas. For a three day period I did absolutely nothing but feel sorry for myself, and that's the point I'm going to elaborate on here. Have any of you ever seen Full Metal Alchemist (or FMA Brotherhood)? Well my cosplay group decided that would be a good cosplay, we were going to pick a homonculus to go as. It's worth mentioning I'm the only female in our cosplay group. This has pros and cons because on the one hand I get first choice of female character, but it also sucks because female characters are so often sexualized an I'm not confident enough with my body to have fun attempting a lot of these characters. So I got to dress up as Lust, which was a double edged sword. She's a great character, probably my favorite antagonist from the show, but I also had to being seen by hundreds of strangers while wearing a very tight black dress. Additionally, she's very tall, and I'm not. I bought shoes to go with the outfit that were comfortable platforms, they added about 4 inches to my height and I felt good about walking in them for a whole weekend. Of course those shoes tore apart on my out the door, and I had already hemmed the dress for a four inch heel, so like a genius I grabbed my other 4 inch heels. The first day of the con I was feeling pretty good about it. I was walking slower than would be ideal but I wasn't in a lot of pain and I hadn't tripped or anything, I was getting compliments on the outfit, I was stopped by a few Edward Elrich cosplayers to have my picture taken, it was a good time. The second day of the convention however, I woke up and went to get dressed, only to find that my toes were about twice their usual size. They had swollen up because of the blisters that I didn't know I had because evidently my feet were too numb. So, like a genius I bandaged them up, and did another two days of the convention. I had a really good time, I met a lot of cool writers/artists, I learned a lot from panels, but when I got home my feet were in so much pain. I had to literally peel the band-aids off because there was blood and they were oozing and gross for most of the week. So that's the story of why I spent three days straight on the couch not doing a damn thing. That being said, I am really glad that I went. I got to be in a beta test for a tabletop campaign, I learned about the different interpretations of Hell in video games, an Irish guy bought me drinks at a genuine Irish pub (and then the super nice bartender recognized my costume and also got me drinks), I got to talk to one of my favorite graphic novelists, and I got into a nice discussion about LGBTQ+ representation inn video games. I also learned a lot about how utilize article SEO optimization knowledge to improve online visibility on Youtube - which is great because it was just a week or so before my podcast.  Offsite Some information about writing that I'm doing off of Writing.Com So off of Writing.Com I'm working on some cool stuff, and the first one actually relates back to the title of this post. This February (for those of you who don't know) is the 9th annual Women in Horror Month. I've been spending a lot of time on my horror blogs (tumblr  and WordPress both) spreading awareness about the event and trying to promote female creators in the horror industry.That was also the theme for the second (and currently most recent) episode of the podcast I started with my best friend. It's sort of a "By creators for Creators" type thing through our Toxic Bubblegum brand. If anyone wants to check those things out, the podcast is called "Unsolicited Advice" and the episode is called "Shindig for a Spooky Lady" It is worth mentioning that in that particular episode we talk about some sensitive material - but all the appropriate trigger warnings are right there at the beginning of the video. I've also been working a lot on anthology submissions and trying to get excited about my manuscript. (Not my collaborative manuscript, that one I'm already super excited about.)  Writing.com Updates about cool things I'm doing right here I obviously haven't been on here lately as much as would be ideal, but signing in again today I got some fantastic news - I've been nominated for a Quill Award for best reviewer for 2017. I don't really expect to win, but it's such an honor to be nominated alongside so many really talented reviewers. I get to choose three reviews from last year to submit, and I'm really looking forward to it.  Also, a big thank you to whoever nominated me! I also am hoping to get some more portfolio stuff on here soon. I've been writing a lot lately, it's just a matter of finding the time to actually upload projects.  Reviews A place for me to share reviews I've done and received I'm behind, because I have not actually done any reviews this month, but as always I intend to get some done for PDG, and I do already have a request, which I'll be getting to soon. Conclusion Wrapping up my ramblings One last thing before I wrap this up - I have been looking to put more fiction on my horror blogs, and this month particularly I'd love to feature some female writers. If you're interested (or know someone else who might be) please, please let me know! And that's about it! Thank you for reading and I hope to be talking to you guys soon. |
| Intro Leading you into the madness of my blog Hey guys! One of the things I wanted to be a little bit better about in 2018 was keeping up with this blog a little more regularly. So far I don't know how successful I've been in that, but I am here to do an entry now before another week can slip by with no update. I've also got some cool things for you guys to check out, and a big favor to ask ~ so I'd really appreciate it if you guys browse this post a little. That being said, let's get right to the good stuff Personal A little context about my personal life outside of writing So, the last two weeks have been really up and down. I've been making a sincere effort to take better care of myself which has proved to be someone of a double edged sword. On the one hand it's a positive step in the right direction, but on the other hand it's a lot of changes in my life which has meant a lot of pressure, leading to some additional stress and as always, a bit of depression. I'm striving right now to find my limits and keep moving forward, but it has led to some off days. There's also the fact that it looks like I'm going to be in the North a little longer than anticipated and that has put a lot of strain on my personal life. I'm getting through it, but it's rough. One thing that I will say in defense of myself through all of this is that I have been more productive at this point in 2018 than I was this far into 2017, so I do feel like I'm making some progress. Offsite Some information about writing that I'm doing off of Writing.Com I've been working really hard on some projects that I'm really proud of, even if not all of them are done yet, and I'd like to take just a minute to talk to you about some of them and maybe ask for your support if you feel like you've got the time. The first thing is actually not my project, but one of my friend's projects. I got the opportunity to guest star on a podcast called "Cookies and Milk" to talk about horror games. I love talking about horror games, but I also really love being invited to participate in podcasts. Cookies and Milk Episode 69 If you guys are at all interested in horror games (or just really feel like supporting me) it would mean the world to me if you would click the link, listen, like, comment, share, all that cool Youtube stuff. I am sincerely hoping that I get invited back. I've also been spending a little bit more time working on my horror blogging. It is eating up a lot of my free time. I started a promotional event that I thought would last an hour and it has really blown up, which is good because I'm starting to regain some of my followers and sad because I don't have that much free time.  But, if you're interested in checking out my horror tumblr, here is the link for that: In Defense of the Genre My zine for creators, Toxic Bubblegum, is switching over to a new platform as well. I'm bringing this up because once we've got some kinks worked out we'll be accepting submissions again, and I think it would be really cool if some of you guys, you know, submitted. We're about to start offering money for appearing in the zine, so stay tuned - I will be sharing information about that as soon as it's available, hopefully sometime this week. And finally, I'd like to talk about my manuscript. I've chosen one project to work on and I'm making good progress getting my rough draft together. I don't have a lot done yet, but I plan on sticking with it and querying by the end of the year. I want to be an author and I'm tired of setting that dream aside. If any of you are interested in doing some beta reading, I'd love to hear from you. Please feel free to PM me with questions. Writing.com Updates about cool things I'm doing right here I know I've been offline a lot, but I really am starting to get things on track here. I've been putting time into cleaning up my portfolio a little bit and it's slow going, but I have made some progress. First up, as you may have noticed, I made some changes to my blog template to bring a little bit more color in, and hopefully make things stand out a little more. Second, I've cleared out some of my private items so they're no longer cluttering up my portfolio. Some of them were sad to let go of (such as my Game of Thrones collection) but it's time to move on and get on to more positive stuff. The third thing is that I've gotten some editing done so the private items that are staying on my portfolio are slowly, slowly becoming not private anymore. I have a few more private items to make decisions about and then I'll be able to start uploading more portfolio content, which I've been meaning to get around to forever. (Also one of the things I've edited was Silence of the Lamps which I know is a fan favorite. It is now available again for those of you who want to read it.)
Just a couple more things to add in real quick. I joined a healthy lifestyle group on here. If any of you guys want to work on yourself, I recommend checking it out. Everyone there is really supportive and fantastic. "TLC Prayer Parlor" And the last thing is that I won a daily contest over at SCREAMS!!! for "Invalid Entry" Reviews A place for me to share reviews I've done and received Before I link out to the reviews that I've done, I'd actually like to share an excerpt from a review that I received that really made my day. The review was from greenbrair  (who I believe is currently accepting review requests.) and it was for my item "Invalid Entry" "I think it could do well. I you were to change a few aspects and make it not a fanfic I could see this selling as part of a short story collection." This is one of the best things that a fanfiction writer can be told about my fanfiction, and it was such a pleasant surprise to find in my inbox. Thank you so much!!!  Now, here is a list of some of the reviews I've done since my last entry, if you'd like to check them out. Invalid Review  Review of "The Song Of The Damned" Review of "Ten Little Princesses" Review of "The Poster" Review of "Advent Adversity Adventure Day 5" Review of "The Last Eagles" Review of "What You Wish For" Review of "Damaged sight" I also have two lovely review requests that I will be getting to as soon as I'm done with this blog, before I tackle the new Horror Newsletter features. As always, if you have something you'd like me to review, I'm accepting requests. Conclusion Wrapping up my ramblings That about wraps it up. Thank you guys for reading, and especially thank you to those of you who take the extra time to go click those links I included (especially the podcast, I'm really trying to drum up attention for that.) I hope to see you all again soon.  |
| Intro I just wanted to thank everybody on here for being so supportive all the time. My year has gotten off to a pretty productive start despite some situational issues ~ and that is in no small part thanks to the awesome community on here. You guys are the best.  Personal Things here are still about the same. The only "news" is that my cough seems to not be as bad today - which hopefully means I'm getting better. My headache is still here, but overall I'm going to take it as a sign of improvement. Offsite I've been working a lot on my horror blog, as per usual. I still haven't gotten my followers back from an unpopular opinion I shared about a certain 2017 horror film that I took issue with, but the followers that I still have seem to be interacting with me a little more and I've been getting a lot of hits, so that's always cool. I've also started work on a dark romance submission. The piece isn't very long, but it's a genre that I've fallen out of practice in, so the work has been kinda slow going. Writing.com I've also been doing a little more on the site, as you guys may or may not have noticed. I've written two new stories for my SCREAMS!!! Entries book: "Invalid Item" The stories were "Invalid Entry" and "Invalid Entry" , one of which won the daily prize. (Which is great - I need to start saving GPs to renew my site subscription Reviews I've done two reviews since my last post, and I'm about to go do just a couple more. Review of "Ten Little Princesses" Review of "The Song Of The Damned" Conclusion I just wanted to give a quick update and thank everyone for being so awesome and helping me start my 2018 off the right way. Sincerely, Cat |
| Intro Hey guys! I hope everyone's 2018 has started off on a good note. Mine is already filled with some ups and downs, but so far it's been productive (if not exactly the smoothest.) Personal My personal life is still sort of a mess - still dealing with my power issues in the house and I have yet to move into my apartment. It keeps getting delayed because, as is my custom, I keep finding new and exciting projects to work on that keep me away from where I'm supposed to be. The good news is that there is still an apartment for me to move into, I still have a boyfriend, and we recently got an adorable kitten, Mag. I've only seen pictures/videos but I am already very much in love. Offsite I'm working more on studying at this point than at actual work, which is something I want to be better about this year. I want to balance projects and learn to manage my time a little better. Currently a lot of my time is going to studying, but I'm almost completely done with both of the languages I'm working on as well as my latest HTML venture. What writing I have been doing is, as usual, is mostly for my blog which seems to be off to a good start so far. I'm making an effort to do more creative writing as well however instead of just interviews/articles. Writing.com I'm back on! I want to do some portfolio clean up soon as well as upload some more of my works-in-progress (and my gaming group keeps trying to get me back to uploading new chapters of our novel - oops) but first thing I want to do is enter some contests and do some reviews! I know I said I was going to be doing more reviews in December and that didn't happen. Between my usual cold season being terrible and my power issues that wasn't practical, but it's a new year and I'm going to be making more of an effort starting right now. Reviews I currently have two lovely people waiting for reviews, and I'm going to go get on that right now. If you have anything you'd like me to review, please let me know  Conclusion To wrap this up I am online, I'm ready to get some good writing/reviewing done, and I hope you are all having a fantastic New Years. -Cat |
| Intro December is here ~ I have got a lot of ups and down in my life at the moment, probably a few more downs than ups, actually, but I am determined to keep writing and make the best of things as much as possible. Here are just a few updates about my current plan to do that. Offsite I'm working on submissions, site work, and editing this beast of a novel that I finished for NaNo - so there is a lot to be done. I also just ended my hiatus for the horror blog, so that's something I have to get back to. I'm also working on some exciting new writing articles/resources for other creators, and that's something I really love doing. Writing.com It's about time for me to return to uploading my rough draft to the site, I'll probably get to that sometime next week. I'd like to run a few things past the DM before I do too much more work on that, but I might at least finish uploading Part 1 in the meantime. Reviews I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that I have turned my review requests on. I have about five items to review that will get priority because these wonderful writers have been waiting in my review queue and were very patient all through my Halloween blogging season and through my NaNoWriMo hiatus - but please feel free to submit requests to me. I'm hoping to get as much reviewing as possible done this December! Conclusion To wrap things up, I'll doing quite a bit of work and hope to see you all around. I want to stay as busy as possible through the holiday season! (And to be productive online next to my space heater instead of outside in the cold.) -Cat |
| Intro Sorry I have been MIA again. I'm still having a lot of issues with the power in my house (we thought we had it fixed for a few days but now it seems to be worse.) Because everyone in the house keeps such weird schedules, it might be really hard to get a professional out here to fix it, so for the time being we just have to make due. I've gotten a lot of reading and writing done, but unfortunately it has really cut back on my internet time, and that means it's cut back on my time here. Personal My personal life has been a little hectic. My expenses have been a little higher than usual, so it looks like it's going to be awhile before I can make it back to my apartment, and my boyfriend. It's been a long time since I've seen him, and I'm starting to really feel that distance. There has also been a lot of friend-related drama lately. A year ago it would have been a crippling amount of drama that probably would have been drawn out for weeks, but I feel like I'm handling it better now than I would have back then. Maybe it really is a sign of personal growth. I will probably elaborate more on that once my NaNo project is finished and I have time to be a little less vague. The gist of this is that I'm stressed and a little bit overwhelmed. Offsite Nearly all of my work has been offsite for the past two weeks since I updated. That of course is because of my internet/power issues. I should have been focusing entirely on my NaNoWriMo project - but I haven't been. I've been terrible about that. I guess when I hit the 50,000 word mark so early I got a little bit cocky (and my super organized outline made that cockiness feel a little worse.) I am proud of some of my other work though. I got a couple of short stories mostly done, I just have to do a little bit of polishing before they'll be ready for submission. I did a lot of character developing and some ideas about where to take the Adventures work once the book is done, so I'm pretty excited about that. And I think I will be able to finish my book, even if parts of it are a little rushed. I'm at 91,000 words right now (I need to update my word count) and I have Part 4 written. I just need to read it out to my computer, throw in one epic fight scene (Part 5) and write up an epilogue. It's a lot of work, but I'm hoping to finish reading Part 4 out today, which leaves me a few days to write out that fight and wrap things up neatly before I'm out of time to validate and claim an official win. Writing.com Obviously I haven't done a lot on here, but I'm going to. It just mostly has to wait until next week. I'm going to upload some of my new character pieces and as soon as I have validated my NaNoWriMo novel, I will get back to uploading that as well. My plan to upload it as I was writing fell through, because adding the WritingML tags and reformatting everything was taking a long time, and I fell behind with all the computer stuff. That being said I do still plan to upload the rest of the rough draft, just as soon as I validate. Conclusion I'm drowning in work, and personal issues - but aren't I always? I am going to try to be on a little more, but I do have a novel to wrap up first. I hope things are going well for all of you, and I'm still wishing you all the best. Sincerely, Cat |
| Intro So unfortunately there's no easy fix for my power problem. The good news is that I'm getting plenty of time to write, the bad news is that I'm getting not a lot of time to upload - so I'm not sure exactly where I'm at word count wise. Offsite I've been doing more writing longhand than I have been typing stuff up, so I need to start balancing those a little bit better. It's been difficult because my internet connection is so sporadic. The good news is that yesterday at the recording session I got some feedback from the other players, and it seems like I'm on track with the story and getting down characters pretty good. Writing.com Tonight since I know I'll have internet, I'm going to try really, really hard to finish uploading part one of the book. That way the other players have something to look over before next week, but I can focus on writing more of the longhand draft and when my power isn't out, I'll be able just to read that to my computer and find out where I'm actually at. One thing that has made me feel a lot better about my voice-to-text system this year is that, while the word count is a little off (thanks to mistakes, lapses in my mic, etc.) it's under the word count rather than over it - so I don't have to feel bad for putting up that number before I edit. In the first 50,000 words that I counted that way, I was actually 4,000 words under with my original estimate - and I really have only been doing the basic editing, so that's good to know. Personal In personal stuff, I've been feeling kind of down. It's not any big stuff like it has been the rest of the year when I've had these low points, but it kind of sucks. I think a lot of it is seasonal - we just had the first snow of the year up where I'm at and I never have done particularly well in the cold weather. I guess I thought having the really early NaNoWriMo validation would help combat some of the seasonal effective disorder - but it didn't really. I learned earlier this year I can't keep my depression at bay by distracting myself with online events because I rely too heavily on them, but because this is something productive outside of WdC as well and a project that people other than me believe in, I thought working on it steadily and tracking my progress so adamantly would be really good for me. I still think it is, just not to the extent that I would have hoped. Conclusion To wrap this up I'm a little sad and a lot cold, but I'm getting writing done. I'll be online for a bit if anyone wants to talk to me about anything or feels like chatting and hopefully I get some nice editing/uploading done - at least to the point I'll be able to have a more accurate word count for NaNoWriMo. I'm hoping to have an accurate, up-to-date number by the end of the weekend - and hopefully be done with the second part of the longhand writing by Friday. Thanks for reading guys, -Cat |
| Intro So, over the weekend I figured out some of what's causing the power issues in my house. One of the breakers is loose, and because of the ancient writing in this house (which is well over a hundred years old at this point) rewiring it is going to be a pain in the ass. The good news is I'm not out of power everywhere (and I have sporadic power in the areas powered by the faulty breaker) but the bad news is it's going to be a long time before I can get it entirely fixed. Personal Over the weekend I got to celebrate my birthday with people who weren't taking a road trip with me, and that was really nice. I went to see Jigsaw with a couple friends, Thor: Ragnarok with a couple other friends - and then my game group also surprised me during our Friday recording session. Radley's personal item (from the podcast that I'm adapting for NaNoWriMo) was a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird signed by everyone but Harper Lee (that sounds really weird but the personal item system is largely determined by how well you roll on a d20) so when I got the recording session on Friday they had all signed a copy of the book for me as their characters and as several of the NPCs. There was also an inscription from Radley's father - and it's without a doubt one of the coolest presents I have ever gotten. (And timely because of what I was working on over the weekend.) Offsite So, as promised I did get a little bit of NaNoing done. I had to record stuff Friday and I was at the movies yesterday but I got a lot of writing done between that. I don't know how many words exactly (because I'm not quite done typing it all out yet) but I think it's fair to say it was around 10,000 a day. Due to the power/internet issues I couldn't do my typing over the weekend while I was working, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn a little bit ago that at some point during the weekend, I hit 50,000 words (so I can validate officially this year! Yay!) The good news, obviously, is that I hit the NaNo goal and the bad news is that my book is waaaaaay longer than I thought it was going to be XD. I am a little bit into the second part of a five part book, so this is going to be another long one (although I had already suspected that might be the case. Who knows, maybe I can go after that determination badge after all this year.) The other less than pleasant news is that I did finally find a fault in my voice-typing system, and it's that I'm not used to reading things out loud so much. My throat is absolutely killing me after spending the last several hours reading what I had written this weekend. (Who thought my voice would give out before my hands?) Writing.com Since I need to take a little break from reading to my computer and since I'm technically past 50,000 (even if the book isn't finished yet) I'm going to go ahead and take a couple days to reformat Part 1 of my book for Writing.Com. I have a few people who aren't members here who are checking in on my progress, and I know they'd probably appreciate an update. Don't worry, I'll still be doing my long-hand NaNoing though. Conclusion So that's about it. I'm really excited about my project, and am happy that I'll be getting to share some of it with you over the course of this week. It's going to be longer than would be ideal, but my rough drafts usually are, and I already have a good grasp of which scenes can be cut/shortened out of the sections I have written. I'm going to go update my wordcount and check in on my teammates and my email. Thanks for reading, guys! |
| Intro I am having the best day working on NaNoWriMo that I have ever had in my entire life - and I just wanted to take a minute to share about my awesome experiences with it - because it looks like I might have time to finish a novel without focusing completely on my novel this year. Crazy, right? Personal So real quick, just to put this into some context for everyone, I write all of my rough drafts longhand. It feels more natural to me, and I write faster than I type, so that's the only way I can keep up with my brain. Well obviously, this has been a challenge for me in NaNoWriMo in previous years because there's no way for me to run a word count app on my notebook. This has left me with the option of either counting all the words I've written (never gonna happen) or typing up everything I've just written - which I'll have to do at some point anyway, but it obviously cuts into my rough draft time for the event. All of the years that I've validated I've handwritten 50,000 words and then typed them up. Last year I didn't win/validate because I got too involved in the rough draft, and didn't leave myself enough time to type it up (and I learned the follow February that my novel had over 100,000 words - which obviously would have been great for this event.) I have tried voice recognition programs in the past, which seems like an obvious solution, but I was working off or a really, really old computer until this summer, when my wonderful boyfriend bought me a new one. Programs like that in the past used to work really poorly and overheat my computer. Offsite I waited up until midnight so I could start writing right away. After literally dozens of handwritten pages I realized I better start typing, or I was never going to get an accurate wordcount for the day. I typed my first 4,000 words as I always have. When I went to use my word count tool however I saw the voice typing option. I was so in the habit of not using one that it had never occurred to me to try one this year. In the last hour since I booted that baby up, I literally doubled my wordcount and caught up with a mountain of handwritten pages I never thought I'd be able to type up by tonight. It's still not a perfect system, obviously. I mean, there are even more typos than if I were typing it myself (which is saying a lot) the punctuation is a virtually nonexistent, and because it doesn't recognize so many of my fantasy names the characters have been changed from "Franza, Belthor, and Irolt" to "Franz/Fronzo, Bella Thorne, and I-wrote?" So, there's going to be more than the usual amount of editing this year - but I have a feeling it's going to be totally worth it. This is a way to get a fairly accurate estimate of how many words I've written each day without literally having to write them twice - and since I'm editing the word document before reposting my progress here, I'll have time to make the corrections and double check that wordcount myself - just to make sure it's accurate. Writing.com I am probably not going to get anything posted to my NaNoWriMo item today. I've been up fifteen hours at this point, and I don't want to edit this tired. That being said, I'm feeling really, really good about getting my book finished up in record time this year - while still posting progress in my book item on here:
I think this is going to be a great NaNoWriMo year.  Conclusion To wrap this up, I'm tired, happy, and incredibly optimistic about my book this year. It's going to be so good! |
| Intro I know I updated my blog just a little bit ago, but I am really excited to talk to you guys about my NaNoWriMo Project for 2017 - which I just created an item for:
All the details can be found in the book item if you click on that link, but it's a little different from my previous years participating in NaNo because this novel is actually an adaptation of a podcast. Writing.com I joined the cast of the podcast after several episodes had already been recorded - so I started out pretty behind. Before I had a good grasp of who I was playing or what the world was like, I wrote a backstory piece for my character, Radley. You can read that here:
Then when I was first approached about doing a novel, I wrote a little teaser piece for it - again from Radley's POV. You can find that story here:
That accompanied my first idea for the novel, which was going to be sort of like a scrap-book format, cobbled together from bits and pieces of everyone's personal narratives, compiled by Radley - which makes sense because she was the one in the group who really loved books, and the only one with an intelligence stat high enough to decipher everyone else's memories into a plausible account of events. The first two attempts at a "novelization" of Adventures were just a big mess and ultimately I scrapped everything I had written for the project because I decided it was no good. Then I thought about NaNoWriMo and how it's inspired me in previous years. That was when I decided to get my shit together, construct a brand new outline, and enter in this great event:
I figured it was the clean start that I needed and after weeks of prep getting a new, bold outline put together (and then approved by the DM and my fellow players) I was ready to go. Offsite If any of you guys happen to be interested, I have a couple of related links for you to follow if you'd like more information on the project, podcast, etc. Podcast Channel: Stupidexport Podcast Pilot: A Natural One Cover Artist: Alan Johnson (You guys may also be interested to know that Alan, the artist, played Franza in the podcast.) Project Page: Adventures! A Novel Personal And, to go off on a little bit of a personal tangent, this project also means a lot to me, personally. The first fantasy novel I ever wrote was inspired by my first Dungeons and Dragons campaign. The book was genuinely terrible, as were the many, many sequels but it was pretty early on in my writing history and one of a handful of books that I finished before I decided that I wanted to write professionally. The books were supposed to be a sort of backstory for the character that I played, and a big part of the reason why I felt compelled to write them was because I attached so strongly to my character. She was everything that I wanted to be and I just identified so strongly with her because she was better at being those things than I ever could be. She had a lot of traits of bad characters, which is easy to see looking back at her and the way I tried to play her during our campaign. She was too perfect on paper and her personality didn't really correspond with her stats or the perks that I had chosen for her. Her backstory was wrapped up in a very two-dimensional romance that lacked chemistry and she had a lot of angst about being dead. For all of her issues as a character, she meant the world to me. That was the most dedicated Dungeons and Dragons campaign I have ever been a part of. We'd have sessions that lasted all throughout the weekend and it was to the point that my DM was picking me up from high school my freshman year - everyone pretty much thought I was a total nerd. (They weren't wrong, exactly.) I was devastated when our game group broke up, and even though I never stopped playing table top games, I didn't ever expect to play a character who I cared that strongly about. This was all but entirely confirmed when I met my significant other in a dungeons and dragons group, and I still didn't feel that involved with my character or the game. Then I started playing Radley. I didn't know the game very well (at all really) I was several levels behind everyone else, and I chose my character traits not really based off of who I wanted to play, but rather based off of what I felt the group might be lacking. (It's also worth noting I really misunderstood the rules when I put together my character sheet.) I didn't know what the plot of the game was, I didn't know what a sawov was (the race I chose for my character) and Radley was a name that Alan chose for my character based off of an ongoing joke we have about my favorite novel. I had literally no connection to this character when I hopped in for the first session - and it was kind of a rocky start. I'm not great at improvising and I didn't have anything planned, obviously, so in my first couple sessions I struggled a lot with how I wanted to play her. In a weird way, she ended up a lot like how I always wanted that first D&D character to be - but a hell of a lot more well-rounded and, human. I think it's because I spent the first few sessions playing more as myself and less of a character, but she ended up very flawed and it was enough to build off of. The good things about her were like an idealistic versions of who I wanted to be (she's very well-read, intelligent, determined, loyal) but it was easy to embrace some of my flaws through her as well (she's very self-centered, cynical, awkward, and struggles to express emotions appropriately. She even has an anxiety disorder.) We're different in a lot of ways also, but we had enough in common that the longer the podcast went on, the more connected I felt to her. By the time we recorded the last episode it was really tough, saying goodbye to her, even with all the twists that came up in the finale. So a big part of the reason why this project means so much to me is because I get to work with Radley again, and in a weird way, that's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. This doesn't just fulfill my desire to write for this character, but for a character I didn't have the skill to write for back when I was a teenager. It's also really touching to be trusted to adapt something like this. The book adaptation was Alan's idea. We've been working together for years so I wasn't surprised that he felt that I could write this. When we got the okay from the DM to work on this though, even after I mentioned changes that would likely have to get made to the story, it felt really important that he also trusted me to write a novel that took place in a universe he created that was full of his characters. It felt a little more important with each okay I got from the players. Having the people who had breathed life into these characters telling me that they trusted me to work with those characters meant the world to me. The positive feedback that I got on my characterizations from what was objectively a terrible, terrible first attempt at this project was also very gratifying. The best part though was actually in doing the new outline for this project. I transcribed the audio files from the podcast, I made cuts, I re-arranged stuff, I added scenes, and I worked harder on this outline than I've ever worked on an outline. There were so many issues and the new scenes gave me so many questions about characters that I didn't feel I knew well enough and I was working in a setting that scientifically, I didn't understand at all. When I started running into issues, I worked up the nerve to actually ask the group, and everyone really came together to help with the outline. We had consultation sessions and people were brainstorming with me at weird hours of the night, and it was just a great time. It was still difficult, especially getting down to that last draft, but it was a group effort and I think it is really going to pay off in making a faithful adaptation that hopefully is pretty decent. There's also the fact that, even though I was all over the place in last year's Write-A-Thon, I still got wonderful sponsors without having to beg or chase anybody down. The undying support that can be found here on Writing.Com remains truly inspirational and immeasurably important to me. Conclusion To wrap this up, I have been all over the place in previous years participating in NaNoWriMo. There have been years where I haven't made my word count, years I haven't validated my word count, and years where I've really, really overshot 50,000. If I'm being completely honest, even with all my outlining I don't know how long this book might end up being, but I feel very confident that I'll be making it to the end. Thank you guys for reading this. It's something that means a lot to me and that I'm very excited about - and I'll see you around for NaNoWriMo this year. |
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There is a constant stream of stray cats in our area. I said three was my limit with also having our big dog to care for, too, but now my limit is four! 
This is a great review and it's good to have you back Kat. Also, thank you for reviewing my poem, I will catch you up on that as I am a bit behind with myself and work. Loves Ya. 
