Oolite Bulletins

drew wrote:

Up to 40k, but progress slowed by RL, summer now looking optimistic, but will keep plugging away...

Having fun though... Coyote+Derik+Udian+Rebecca+Jim+DaddyHoggy = FUN

Cheers,

Drew.

I am so looking forward to this...

About 46k at the moment. Had to do a plot-twist rewrite today, not quite complete. Makes the story better though, and should have people guessing longer, including the characters in the story.

Favourite Segues at the moment:

1. Commander Myy'q spills his drink
2. Commander Cheyd and the 'amazing' new Cobra Mk4
3. Rebecca and Coyote in a mexican standoff
4. Jim being educated on the finer points of verb tense by Daddyhoggy
5. Derik trying not to develop a fetish for decontamination grease
6. Captain Hesperus and a big decision. Anlian Gin or Eviljuice?
7. Udian relishing terrifying everyone with needlessly descriptive details of Thargoid one on one combat

Epic space battles, high adventure, cliff hangers and a smattering of hopefully well-crafted one-liners goes without saying of course...

Reckon I'm just over 1/3 of the way through. At this rate, we're looking at late summer. (End August)

Cheers,

Drew.

I'm intrigued by no. 4!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I'm intrigued by no. 4!

As am I by no. 3... very!

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I'm intrigued by no. 4!

I spent a whole set of train journeys working out who and what 'Daddyhoggy' was in the Oolite 'verse, where he was going and what he was doing. Hope you like...

El Viejo wrote:

As am I by no. 3... very!

Let's just say that Rebecca and Coyote don't *exactly* hit it off at first... It would have been far too boring if our collection of heroes and heroines all got along 'just so'...

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

It would have been far too boring if our collection of heroes and heroines all got along 'just so'...

Absolutely!

Can't wait drew. I devoured the first two instalments a few weekends ago (along with all your shorts). It's your fault I'm obsessed with Oolite again.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

Can't wait drew. I devoured the first two instalments a few weekends ago (along with all your shorts). It's your fault I'm obsessed with Oolite again.

Heh heh...

I consider that a job well done...

I think Incursio will be quite a bit more of a novel than the other two; deeper, longer, more satisfying (and a few other mis-construable adjectives). Reckon on 120-140k words (compared with SQ @ 50k and M at 75k).

Thanks for the encouragement folks. RL is a bit crappy at the moment, so it's very welcome to have the support!

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

Reckon on 120-140k words

<bows his head in awe> And I thought writing 25k words was hard work... wow!

drew wrote:

Capt. Murphy wrote:

Can't wait drew. I devoured the first two instalments a few weekends ago (along with all your shorts). It's your fault I'm obsessed with Oolite again.

Heh heh...

I consider that a job well done...

I think Incursio will be quite a bit more of a novel than the other two; deeper, longer, more satisfying (and a few other mis-construable adjectives). Reckon on 120-140k words (compared with SQ @ 50k and M at 75k).

Thanks for the encouragement folks. RL is a bit crappy at the moment, so it's very welcome to have the support!

Cheers,

Drew.

That's some expansion Drew - when we first discussed the new work you were aiming for 100K words - so that's a fairly chunky increase - a third and final installment as big as the first two parts in total...

[Endless Possibilities is a smidgen off 60K words at the moment - although I don't feel like I'm half way, so I'm probably looking at about 150K words in total]

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Endless Possibilities is a smidgen off 60K words at the moment - although I don't feel like I'm half way, so I'm probably looking at about 150K words in total

<bows his head in awe again> Crikey!

Don't bow in awe until it's finished! I've been here before with a previous novel - I got to 90K words with that before I got bored/distracted/frustrated and stopped writing

I'll stick to 20-25k words, I think. Anything of novel length would take me years.

That's what happened with my first novel - even I lost interest in it...

My friend Katherine - now on her ninth novel - wrote seven before she got a book deal - said she has to go from idea to finished 1st draft of a novel in nine months or so otherwise she gets bored and loses interest - which is great for her now - because she gave up her job and is now officially a full-time author (she tries to write 15-25K words a month)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Don't bow in awe until it's finished! I've been here before with a previous novel - I got to 90K words with that before I got bored/distracted/frustrated and stopped writing

Torn was like that. Took me 6 years to get it finished and it changed from a fantasy epic into a contemporary romance in that time...

El Viejo wrote:

<bows his head in awe> And I thought writing 25k words was hard work... wow!

This will be my last 'Oolite' story, so I'm trying to pull out all the stops and go out with a bang, passing the torch and all that... I've also got to do justice to having 6 main characters and a host of supplementary ones in, rather than the 2-3 I had in SQ and M.

There's a lot more in terms of dynamics here; Coyote and Derik. Coyote and Rebecca, Derik and Udian, Udian and Rebecca. Daddyhoggy and Jim, Jim and Hesperus... making sure each character gets enough 'air-time' is key, as is fleshing out a little more of the motivations and personalities; positive and negative. Trust, distrust, doubt, bravado, concern, fear, worry etc...

It's not really a chore, it's just taking longer to tell the story, hence the extra length. So far the characters have only really just begun to understand each other a little and there's been two major 'altercations'. None of the mystery has been revealed, but most of the stage is 'set'.

We'll see how it goes!

Cheers,

Drew.