First and foremost, in this blog post, I'm announcing a slight change. I'm going to slow things down a little bit on the posts until I get a little nearer to publishing.
The goal of this blog is to provide background information on me and give people who enjoy my work something to follow during the time in-between stories. I hope that it can provide a little bit of information about me and the miscellanea of my thoughts. As a result, I'm going to do one post a month going forward. Once I'm published, I'll go back to my two a month pace.
Project-wise, things are moving forward. I'm on track to complete the major revision of Gloradel by end of year. I had hoped to finish it earlier, but there was a lot of learning that still needed to be done. However, while I will always be learning, I can finally see the light at the end of this editing tunnel! The prophesied time is finally almost at hand, and I couldn't be more excited to share this story with whoever is interested.
The last chapter, Chapter 27, will be done this month, in October, and then all that's left is the epilogue. I've reformatted my query letter as well, and I'm actually quite proud of the query blurb now. Hopefully, it'll be enough to catch the eye of an interested agent, and I can move forward in my dreams of being a published author with this book.
Another reason why I'm excited to finish this batch of Gloradel edits is that I'm itching to begin the White Rose edits. I really want to try my new editing process with my second book and see how White Rose flows after everything I've learned thus far.
While all that is going on, Howl will be resting and building time between the last time I touched it and when I'll begin edits on it after I finish White Rose. Harsh Soil is also moving forward, all steam ahead with the drafting. It's currently sitting at around 125k words and I think it'll finish around maybe 155k to 165k words.
I'll be taking a break on the drafting in October, but that's only because I'm going for the 50k goal of NaNoWriMo and I need to plot out the stories that I'm going to hit. I'm hoping that the remnant of Harsh Soil will be at least 30k words. However, with a goal of 50k written words set for November of 2023, that'll leave at least 20k of words in need of a story.
Currently, I'm hesitant to start a fifth book in November, and I'm torn on which direction I want to proceed via. After Harsh Soil, there's four books that I'm tempted to write. They are as follows:
A new sci-fi IP about a veteran who signed himself up for a reality TV show in the Amazon. Think The Amazing Race meets The Bachelor meets The Running Man.
Then there are the sequels to both Gloradel and Howl. I'm more tempted to write Howl's sequel, and whenever I choose one of those stories, I'll probably aim to write the whole sequel trilogy in one pass.
Last but not least, I'm tempted to write a stand-alone novel in the world of Howl. Whether it stars a character from the books or is just set in the world in general, is something that's still percolating in my mind.
Either way, they all feel like 2024 projects to me, and I think that's where at least one of them will start at the earliest. It's interesting, the ideas and stories I want to tell. Even after these, there are characters and tales I want to share with the rest of the world (*cough *cough the Omegas series and the fantasy fall of Rome re-telling series *cough). It's both a blessing and a curse to be honest.
And so, I'm tempted to write some short stories to fill the gap. This month is going to be an experimentation in writing short stories, but the ideas I have for those are as follows:
A story following Hunter Post Gloradel called The Swamp Knight.
A story following a Roman Centurion in the aftermath of the Parthian Conflict where Crassus dies. Lost in the desert, the soldier is being hunted by a dragon or giant sand lizard or a desert bear.
A story following Dusty post-Howl where he arrives in a wolf town.
A story following a deep space miner who encounters a ruined altar that shows his future to him and a proposition to change it. This one still needs work.
Maybe a story about a man reflecting on his life after he receives his final cybernetic part. Like a dark night of the soul where the character wonders at what point does he stop being human.
Maybe a Viking short story. About what it means to be a warrior. Maybe he's haunted by the spirit of his ancestor and is dying. Maybe not.
All six of the above need serious work, and I'm hoping as I go through October, I can better smooth it out. I also need to edit my VR mourning short story.
Anyways, that's all I got for today. Thanks again for reading and I hope you all have a great day!
Sincerely,
Josh Acocella
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