Which of course is utter bollocks. But still, his view of the importance of outlining and setting up value charges in each scene robs the art of romance for me, so historically I’ve resisted it and gone for the method Stephen King outlines in On Writing - look at it as though you were a paleontologist unearthing a dinosaur, you dig in and find the spirit of the story. These two forces in my head battle constantly, my left brain wanting the clarity of an outline and my right brain wanting the spirit and romance of the more adventurous seat-of-the-pants approach.

So I’ve settled on more of a hybrid approach with the latest story. It’s to be a sequel to Kidnap over Dyra!, but this time I’ve written it straight as I did with Kidnap, before breaking the first draft down into scenes on 3×5 cards, throwing some scenes out and dropping others in, and eventually winding up with a full outline running to about a thousand words - the story itself will probably run at around four and a half thousand, and the thing will end up on Lulu just like Kidnap.

On Lulu, but not only there. I’m going to do a full rebrand of Daily Flash Fiction, primarily because it’s an awful name that sets up all kinds of false expectations in readers (specifically that it’ll be daily). I still don’t know what to call it, and the old domain will still go there, but instead it’ll be a base for serial fiction as well, sort of like Mike Stackpole’s serial fiction experiments. And the old Flash fiction will stay up there as well, possibly with an explanation.

On not-writingy-stuff news, I’m learning PHP in the hopes of being able to get a better day job, and I’ll probably play around with category-specific templates to separate the stuff in more of a clean manner.

Eric Clough “…secretly built an incredible scavenger hunt into a $8.5-million, 4,200-square-foot Park Avenue apartment that included ciphers, riddles, poems and a lot of hidden doors and compartments.”

Which is totally freaking cool.

After completing the first draft of March of the Titans, I promptly renamed it to Rise of the Titans or possibly Titanomachy, depending on whichever suits me better - mainly because of a white history book of the same name that I wish to avoid confusion with. I can assure you this novel will have almost nothing to do with racial homogeneity.

So how’s the second draft going? I’m glad you asked.

Nearly finished now, running up to the final chapter. Also planning to write a novella I plan to give away to help promote it - it’ll feature most of the same characters, except younger and in a totally different setting.

There is now a daily flash fiction blook available - more info and a buy link here.

So I’m approaching the end. All of the pieces are in place, we’re in the midst of the final battle, and strange lights have started falling from the sky. Or those might just be a delusion on the part of Our Hero. He’s been through a lot in the past months after all.

Looks like it’s going to be below target, but I already think I’m going to have to add a few chapters to flesh out some secondary storylines, including a very important minor character (for one of the major characters if not the plot as a whole) who’s dropped in the middle of the novel. Might be some shuffling too. But for all intents and purposes I’m nearly done.

So what does this mean? It means the Daily Flash may well be coming back at some point fairly soon, depending on prior commitments. I’m at least going to get a few in the can fairly soon so I can make a start. That’ll keep me going until the novel’s been edited and added too. I plan on fixing the main mistake that led to me dropping it in the first place - scheduling. I’m going to get about twenty or thirty in the can before I start blogging again, so I can get around problems I had last time (flashes turning out to be more involved short stories, for example).

I’m also editing a short collection of the current stuff up there for a lulu book. Which should be fun.

Apologies for not posting much, I’ve been a touch busy writing and trying to get a job so I have some actual income coming in as well, primarily because I’m starting to run out of money. Ho hum.

Anyways, only got 1700 words or so down today, but I did some shuffling around as well so I feel a some accomplishment - at least I did something after all.