McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Author In Progress

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Mickey Finn:
Are you learning to become an author, but haven't yet published professionally?

Tell us about yourself and your work here. (Please don't post samples directly to the board. Links ok.)

LoVeBoOkS:
HI!

My name is Amber, and yes, I am an up-and-coming author. No, nothing published yet, but i am trying!!

Right now i'm writing two books, which is difficult with school and everything else a 14, almost 15, year old has to deal with. I write murder/mystery novels, seeing as how that is my favorite genre, along with fantasy of course. I've talked to many people to help me get my facts straight. I know the State Supreme Court Justice, who is a very nice lady. I've been interviewed by the local newspaper. I enjoy writing so much. I've email about 3 authors, counting Mr. Butcher, and have gotten emails back, except from Mr. Butcher lol.

My first book i started about two years ago and it's called Silent Death. It's in third person, and it's actually going very well. I'm about half-way through, and very excited about when i finish. Hopefully i can get out there!

My other book is a little different. I started it maybe a year ago, when i was originally typing a journal entry but decided it would make a good plot line. It's called Found Missing, and it's in first person, although i don't use myself. It's going along well too, although it's about a fourth of the way through. I'm also very excited for the finished product.

I like picking titles that contradict. For example, Found Missing. If you're found, how can you be missing? And if you're missing, how can you be found and missing at the same time? Do you see? Silent Death is a bit more complicated. Death is supposed to be posted. Whether it's murder or natural causes, you usually see something about it in the paper. But yet there is the silent part. Hence the contradiction.

I don't feel comfortable letting anyone see my work considering it is not copyrighted and i don't need people stealing my ideas. However, i may be lenient to offer a small tidbit:

The heat around her was thickening, stifling, like a blanket. Branches whipped out at her, cutting her face and tearing at her clothes, slowing her down. Death lurked behind her, a merciless being with a heart blacker than ebony. She tries to scream, but the humid air cuts her off, like the fear that chokes her. Trees flash past, twisted and gnarled things that look nothing like the regular beauty of the swamp. Like the hunter that stalks behind her, hurtful and predatory. She looks behind her, tripping over a tree root and stumbling, sending her sprawling headlong into a weeping willow. Too late, no one to come and answer her screams for help, for mercy, never coming.
  The hunter lurks over her, a smile curling the corners of the mouth. Her screams intrigue something, send something stirring inside. Excitement, happiness. The predator knows this little slut has no more control over her life. The knife is the only one that does. The knife is evil, like the murderer that holds it.
  Smiling, the knife is raised and plunged, drawing blood as alluring as red champagne.........

Tell me what you think!!!

Kalshane:
So, about 13 years ago I started writing a book, and then later some short stories, about a smart-ass 20-something wizard with a prediliction for wearing long black coats living in Chicagoland who fell in love with a girl who turned out to be a vampire, had a mentor in the form of a talking peace pipe and battled various supernatural nasties. It was very derivative of a certain RPG, considering the character originated in said game, and had some other issues, mostly due to being written by a 17-year-old kid without a clue and while I still made occaisional stops in for a thousand words or so from time to time and I had 10 years of the character's life developed in my head, it never really went anywhere.

Over a year ago, I decided to revisit this character, as he's still the favorite of everything I've ever made, and re-write his story from the ground up, completely divorcing him from his RPG origins. I've gotten about 40,000 words of the new novel done and I'm liking how it's shaping up. However, since there's already a series of books about a dark-coated wizard fighting evil in Chicagoland (maybe you all have heard of it  ;) ) I have a feeling when it's time to do my second draft, I'm probably going to have to re-work things quite a bit so it doesn't seem derivative.

In any case, in its current form, it's a 3rd-person urban fantasy with a sense of humor set in a fictional Illinois college town within a couple hours of Chicago. I'm currently doing my best to slog through "The Great Swampy Middle", as Jim puts it. I know where I'm going, just having trouble getting there.

pathele:
I have been writing since I was a kid. Mostly short stories.  About five years ago I decided to try my hand at a novel.  I wrote a totally crappy 90,000 word monster, and put it on a shelf. I take it out once in a while to remind myself that I had a lot to learn. 

I have learned a lot since and am currently working on a couple of novels.  Jim's livejournal and several books by Jack Bickham have helped my craft tremendously.
The main novel that I am working on is kind of cyberpunk in that there is strong use of technology, but it is more like magic. 
I have plotted the first book and have written the first couple of chapters.  It seems to be going well, but of course I am biased.  I hope to some day be able to mark my name in the published professional authors list.

-paul

Tersa:
I've wanted to write a book and be an author for a long time, and recently I put together the beginnings of a book.  I don't know how it's going to end yet or even if it will be half decent when I'm through, but I'm trying!   

It's about magic and wizards and all that jazz, since that's what I've been reading and in the mood for lately, but in the world I have the wizarding world is a kind of altered reflection of our world with its own set of rules and customs.  All that exist are wizards and archangels.  Vampires used to be running about, but they've been exterminated and the only traces left of them are various families that have vampire in their bloodlines. It's being written in first person from a wizard prodigy named Jacob Bowen, who is preparing to take on his first apprentice at the beginning of the book.

My wizards are strange because I don't see them as doing magic in the traditional wave a wand and a teacup turns into a cat sense. They can rearrange molecules, protons, quarks, all the building blocks of matter, but they can't change the particles themselves, just what they combine to make, and they cannot create or destroy matter.  I suppose they're more alchemists than wizards, in that sense.  This is my first totally original work, so I'm just trying to watch and see where it goes.
 

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