My love of horror started somewhere around 1989 with two books – Immortal Blood by Barbara Hambly (published as Those Who Hunt the Night outside of the UK) and Clive Barker’s Cabal. It was around the same time that my eventually-to-be-wife introduced me to horror films in the form of Hellraiser and I was hooked. I never really got into the hardcore horror scene but we’ve watched a lot of horror films over the years. So, when I started writing in 1992 (ouch), it was inevitable that I’d start with horror stories. The first, Almost Alone (currently unpublished and sitting in my “trunk” folder) was set in a hospital room with a malevolent creature living in the ceiling. I’m planning on revisiting the idea at some point. Since those early stories, I’ve dabbled in science fiction and fantasy but over half the stories I’ve written have been some form of horror tale. It’s been a couple of years since I wrote a full length horror story though, so getting back to horror with The Bone Boy has been fun – I’ve really been able to stretch my writing legs. I wrapped up the closing scene yesterday and at roughly 1,400 words it was … Read More
“My only friend, the end”
At 9:14pm today, I wrapped up the first draft of The Ghost Smuggler. I’ve edited out some of the notes I’ve been keeping and cleaned up a few stray blocks of text and this draft comes in at 73,936 words. There are still some notes in there so the actual word count is a bit less. Of those words, 17,514 were reclaimed which leaves 56,422 new words. I started this rewrite on 4th February 2013 and it took me 96 hours and 41 minutes, spread out over 198 writing sessions (covering 188 days of writing). That’s an average of 584 words an hour. I did actually write more than that (64,169 words in fact) but the rest (7,747 words) got deleted before the draft was finished. If I include the deleted words as well, I averaged 664 words an hour. Of course, there’s still a lot of work to be done before this is even close to being a real book so the final length is yet to be determined. But before any of that work starts, the book has to sit and fester for a few weeks – to make sure those really flaws stand out when I start revising. [“My only … Read More
Bottling Lightning
I finished writing the first draft of my new story, now called Bottled Lightning, last night. It’s a science fiction story – a first contact science fiction story in fact – and it’s a lot longer than I’d originally envisaged. My first thought was that it would be a sub-1000 word vignette, then I thought it would finish up around the 2,500 word mark but the story just kept rolling until it hit 5,498 words. It would have actually been longer but while I was in the gym last night I listened to an old episode of Writing Excuses that talked about ending your story in the right place and I ended up (do you see what I did there?) stopping several paragraphs earlier than I’d originally planned and integrating some of that material into the beginning of the story. My next step is to try to turn the story into something that I actually like because I’m not particularly happy with the story as it is. I think the concept is okay but the opening 1,500 words feels sloppy and directionless and…well, crap. In a day or two I’m going to dig out my virtual red pencil and chop out a good … Read More
The End of F Bomb
As promised, I finished the first draft of F Bomb last night. Two hundred and six minutes to write two thousand and seventy two words and I’m pretty happy with it. As always it now sits in the unfinished folder for a couple of weeks to let it ‘stew’. As well as finishing F Bomb, I created a folder for Novel Number 2 which from now on will be known as Uncanny Freaks. I won’t actually be starting on the novel for a couple of weeks yet so it’s largely a ceremonial step but it does give me somewhere to store the notes that I need to start making. I also moved an unfinished story into my abandoned folder. That makes unlucky thirteen stories in my abandoned. Some of them are just snippets of stories I wrote years ago. Others are almost complete tales that just didn’t work. Some of the ideas are good though, including the one I consigned to oblivion last night so I’ll be returning to it at some point – I’ll just be starting fresh. As well as the abandoned folder, I have a bunch of unsold stories that I like to read through every now and again. … Read More
3362
A good writing day yesterday. I clocked up nine hundred and fifty eight words and completed the first draft of the story currently known as Rainshine. The first draft wound up at 3362 words, a bit longer than I’d originally thought but pretty much an average length for me. I’m pretty happy with this one, now comes the time to put it aside and let it age for a couple of weeks. Hopefully that will give me a bit of distance so that I can come back with a fresh perspective when I come to revise it. Maybe I’ll also have my final title by then. After the I’d finished writing Rainshine, we caught up on the latest episode of Supernatural. [Slight spoiler ahead] I don’t watch a lot of TV – too many other things to do – but Supernatural is one of the few series that’s a must see. We’ve reached Season 7 though and its starting to feel like it might be time to wrap things up. I still enjoy it, although less so since we lost Castiel, but I’d rather it ended on a high rather than degenerate into mediocrity the way The X-Files did. This week we … Read More