McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Author In Progress
belial.1980:
Hey Lurline!
Your WIP sounds very cool. Just keep at it and don't give up. This is definitely the place to come for good advice and tips on writing. Welcome!
Thrythlind:
hmm, mentioned some of this in my intro, but here goes:
I'm currently a self-published author with four books out (not including my mammoth list of fan fiction stories) and another on the way with a few other ideas.
I'm trying to find an agent or publisher currently, so that I that have some help in publishing my works and don't feel like a louse for mentioning them pretty much everywhere online.
I have a level of popularity in some fanfiction circles, being regarded as having written some of the classics of Ranma fanfiction (boggles my mind, really). I mostly did fanfiction as a way of getting practice in characterization and planning, experimenting with a particular concept specifically while everything else is set and in reading and reacting to reader comment and criticism. Last month I had 13,000 hits across all 48 of my stories, from I think about 5,500 visitors.
I just wish that popularity was easily translated to my original works.....
Anyway, my stories
Greenwater Novels: a serial story (going to go to part 3 and 4 when I finish this current novel) in a high fantasy setting. The main character is a Ffolk(no, that's not a misspelling) "skinner" from a swamp on the edge of civilized land who leaves home after a scandal when his two closest friends were killed by a rogue animal and people start to suspect him of setting it up. He volunteers as a scout for military and ends up in the "Greenwater" which is an inland sea roughly the size of Texas out of which grow trees the size of some mountains. As he arrives, strange things start to happen. An assassin tries to kill an old man in the company he travels with, a snake-woman holy warrior brings word of some sort of prophecy and madness-causing snakes swarm over several villages.
Greenwater Art: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#Art-related-to-the-Greenwater-Novels
Links to the books: http://stores.lulu.com/thrythlind
Zodiacs: a gaming project actually, a campaign setting geared to no specific setting that provides information on the cultures, races and magic systems of a continent in the world setting. Sort of a mish mash of Wu Xia, Samurai and Old West stories. There's a short-story book that includes my idea of how the first adventure of the example campaign might go for the pre-written characters.
Zodiac Art: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#Zodiacs
Bystander: Bystander is the series I most want to finish, and the one that is going to be most difficult to get completely out...if I could make a living on writing and write everyday 10+ hours a day, I could get two or three Bystander books done a year, maybe more, but as it stands, I've been developing the main character for more than fifteen years and I'm about 10k words away from finishing the first book. I don't have the time I'd like to focus on this story.
Anyway, Bystander is sort of an urban fantasy, on the superhero side of things, most "peaks" live pretty much normal lives and work as lawyers, waiters, construction workers and so forth like any other person. The main character is Lucretia, no surname, an ex-con peak working as a librarian. She has the dubious distinction of so far being the world's only(or at least first) "official" supervillain since she had the bad luck to get drunk and see if she was strong enough to break a bank vault one night and the Government wanted to make an example to show that they could handle peaks fine (there was a counter example of a heroic "wereshark" who worked for the navy as a rescue diver...though she's not mentioned first book).
Lucretia is a quirky sort of character. She's got the Superman suite, but she's a lousy fighter unable to put much of her strength to good use and her extra visual senses get in the way of her favorite past time: reading history books and spy novels (yes, despite having very real troubles reading, it is her favorite thing). She's flirty, but is always wearing concealing dresses (granted, they tend to be very tight-fitting) and rarely if ever touches people. She's a street rat with lots of skill as a lock pick and pick pocket and going unnoticed in crowds and she has a immense talent with reading and manipulating people, but hasn't honed it much yet so she makes mistakes. She has much more power than she's aware of, but tends to succeed on her skills more than her powers.
The first book involves Lu interrupting a bank robbery (by sabotaging the bad guy's guns) and then several flashbacks showing her 3 years of parole leading up to that incident as the bank robbers turn out to be not your average criminals and decide for a bit of revenge. That's going to be the catalyst for people deciding that she's not just another "bystander" (superhuman not involved with any of the underground espionage Factions and not trying to do anything on their own) and start having various organizations try to acquire her for research. As the story progresses, I start getting into the "magical" background of the world setting (there are magicians and such, they just know what causes the superpowers to develop and work and are able to develop more versatile sets of abilities since they're consciously guiding the practice) and on to the eventual end game.
Here's the first chapter: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d1g8iz0
And some art (including some old, old, old versions when Lu had a tail and cat's eyes instead of being what she is now): http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#Bystander-Art
my favorite picture of her isn't up yet, but some key favorites are here:
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143vaj
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143s41
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143rwy
http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/?56596#/d143r9h
Breandan:
My name is Breandán and I am... well, to be frank, I am somewhat of a reluctant writer. While not entirely sure whether I qualify as an aspiring author or not due to that reluctance, I am hoping to publish at least one of the novels I have been working on so that I can get my family and friends off of my back. Seriously, I have the equivalent of a torch-and-pitchfork-bearing mob pushing me to publish books that I wrote merely to get them out of my head. Has that ever happened to anyone else?
Anyway, I write sci-fi with a military/space opera angle to it, though I try not to fall short on character development in the process. I made the mistake of letting a friend read what I had written a while back and- with a maniacal gleam in his eye- he grabbed me by the collar and demanded more. Then he shared it with another friend, and my younger brother read it, then my wife, and on and on... pretty soon it snowballed until I had two dozen people demanding that I write more, and a short story has since exploded into a trilogy of novels. I often find myself writing and asking myself "How the HELL did I get into this mess?" ;D
Despite the enthusiastic support from friends and family, however, I have yet to submit any of my work to the draconian crucible of literary review by other authors or editors, and while I hope for a positive reaction, I need candid opinions, for good or ill. To that end, this is the prologue and first few chapters of the first book. It is very rough, so be forewarned that this is anything but polished work.
KCK_Sparks:
Kansas City Author and Painter here.
My work is Thriller-paced Horror/Fantasy. I believe the story is strong and I must say, I have yet to find a better resource for the nuts-n-bolts of storycraft than Jim's own here.
Would be interested in knowing if anyone is aware of writing groups for people like us in the Kansas City metro area?
I look forward to getting to know you all better,
Jeff in Kansas City
meg_evonne:
Shoot, that would have been a good question to ask of the folks at the signing in Independence. Hopefully someone will respond! Welcome Jeff in Kansas City.
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