What I've Been Up, Two

          Hey everybody, I have a novel update to chat about today!

The idea for the character Kuzunoha first came from a character I made for a roleplaying game. Here is the mini I painted for her. The sword is way too long for a wakizashi though.

    

          Since I'm hoping to publish the first Kitsune-Ken book later this year, I knew I'd have to get on writing the next volumes since this is going to be a series. The first book follows Kuzunoha Tanami, the bastard daughter of a rich merchant family, while she works to find independence from her sister, going on a very literal treasure hunt to find it.

          The second book continues with the same characters (though with a few new viewpoints added), as they leave their home town of Hidalgo for the city of Kevettika, the capital of the neighbouring country Kessel, where some documents found in the last book suggest that the Tanami family may still kin living there. 

          Of course, all of your favourite characters will still be there. Jocelyn, Richard, Salla, Skylla, Himiko, Kuzunoha, and you'll find new characters to know and love!

          So, why am I writing the second book before I've even edited the first book, and more importantly, why am I taunting you with updates about it when you can't even go out and buy the first book yet? 

          Well, I knew that I would need at least two to three months between writing a book and editing it. I didn't want to leave the characters without doing anything with them for that long and I didn't want you to have to wait double that for the sequel
. Thus, writing the second book and then editing the first, followed by writing the third, then editing the second and so on and so forth. As soon as I've edited it, I'm going to send it to a professional editor and then set a date for publishing. At that point, I'll begin looking into covers and all the rest, while doing any changes that I need to make as suggested by the editor.

          As for the second part of the question? Well, that should be obvious. I taunt you because I'm a writer... and that's sort of our schtick. 

          Keep an eye out for updates, and the occasional rocking scene here.

#Readfor15yyc

I'm a big reader, as I'm sure anyone following my blog may have realized. I've read 9 books this year and 1 manga already and I've pledged to take part in the Goodreads reading challenge and put down 100 books total. Today though, I found out about an awesome little thing that the Calgary Public Library is doing.

#Readfor15yyc is a little thing they're doing to show the world how much Calgarians specifically read! They'll be following the hashtag above all day today, so read for 15 minutes and post about it on FB or Twitter or wherever you hang out and use the hashtag to let them know!

Me, I spent the afternoon reading Pathfinders advernture path, Secrets of the Spinx to prepare for our game that I'm running today, and then took 15 glorious minutes to read a bit more of Besieged by Rowena Cory Daniells.

Are you in Calgary? What did you read today? Let me know in the comments below!

What I've Been Up To (Part One)

          It has been too long since I was last here! Which, unfortunately, is what happens when you get sick and are sure that you must have updated just before you got sick... Bleh. I must admit, most times I get sick, I just get a bit annoyed for a day or two as my muscles all ache and I don't get enough sleep. This time, I was actually laid out for a day and the only reason I didn't end up taking time of work was that I was able to hold off until my I-Day came up.

          Enough about me being sick though, since that isn't a fun conversation. Lets do an update! I've been writing, pretty darn consistently this year. I did end up having to lower down my weekly goals though. I had originally set myself up for 10k a week, which while awesome, was way too much to sustain while holding down a full-time job.

          Your mileage will vary, since we all write at different speeds, but I looked at how I was feeling at the end of the first week and I was miserable and behind in my count. So, I did the adult thing and looked at changing my goal to something more reasonable. I finally settled on 7k a week. A thousand words a day is still challenging while being reachable. If I'm truly on the ball, I can do 1k in an hour generally... but lets face it, much more often, it will take me double that or maybe even triple that on a super bad day.

          I know many friends of mine will look at that goal and think, "Wow, so low?" but the truth is that I am a really slow writer. And this is about creating a schedule I can follow and achieve my goals while this reaching. This weekly amount, does it.

This is a picture I drew years ago. She came from the idea of a kitsune onmyiodo dressed like a miko.

          Just to let you guys know where I'm standing right now, my new novel that I'm working on (Kitsune-Ken II; the sequel to the book I wrote for Nanowrimo - more about the plot for the new book later as well) is currently at 21,224 words. Since today is January 23th, I should hit 23,000 today. As you can see, I'm still a bit behind, but I'm going to try to get myself completely caught up today! I'll let you know in my next post if I succeed!

          This blog post is going a little bit long, so I'll cut off here and do the rest of my updates in a future post (probably on Wednesday). Until then, tell me how your goals are going? Are you holding to your resolutions?

Nothing New Under the Sun

Or at least, not all that much new for me. I've been reading a lot, managed to get to 101 books before the end of 2015. Now it's the 2nd and I've already finished book #1 on the list; a delightful read by Molly Harper called The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf. The character voice is pretty the same as all of her other characters, but if you like her novels this is a fine book of hers!

I did start writing on the first, though not quite as early as I thought I was going to. I picked up a video game called Ori and the Blind Forest. If you haven't played it, I would highly suggest it, based on the 2 hours experience I've got on it. It did mean that yesterdays words only came the next day after company had left though. I suppose I still managed to get 1190 words, so a more than reasonable enough start to book 2 in my series. I'm getting my characters in to conflict on page 1, which is always fun.

Other than that, I bought some awesome books.

This was only part of the haul!

I've had Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert on my list for quite a while, so I was super glad to finally pick up a copy last year. I also picked up the manga, Puella Magi Tart Magica, which is is awesome and based in the same world as Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The other two books pictured are ones I haven't read and really only know about them from what's the back. Its a tradition of mine. As an end of year ritual, I pick up at least one book each year solely based on the cover and the back cover explanation. If both have me interested I pick up the book. For me, its essentially a book blind date; Its got some good credentials to recommend it, so I'm proposing we sit down for a few hours and get to know each other. 

The other books I picked up this year, 3 light novels (Spice & Wolf, Vol 15, Coin of the Sun II and books 005 and 006 from the Sword Art Online set) and two gifts (hard covers of S.M. Stirlings newest Emberverse novels) are all books that I've been looking forward to for a long time and I can't wait to get started on them. 

What books or awesome gifts did you get this year? Have you read any of these yet? Let me know in the comments below.