Woohoo! The 90K barrier has been breached!

Reached just over 91,000 words last night, which is pretty cool. My characters are now in a pretty damn-awful situation; after being (finally) captured by our mutual friend and agent Bren, they've been transported to Lord Triscim's headquarters in Westar. They're locked up in the high-security wing of Triscim's secret underground prison, and they have been given three days to either join the Following or be tortured to death. Agent Bren has already started showing off some of his 'apparatus', including an evil little device designed to shred the tongue into ribbons. God, I hate these Following people. Arrogant and evil at the same time.
Anyway, there's more. Triscim has revealed that he's actually Rhys's cousin; Rhys's father, Lord Eraven, had a brother named Rigen who was exiled for spreading heresy and treason. Apparently, Rigen founded the Following twenty years previously, in Serilonia. Irind Triscim is Rigen's son. This is certainly news to me ... but it adds a fun little twist. Lol. I found myself thinking along these lines:

Darth Triscim: Lord Eraven never told you what happened to your cousin, did he?
Rhys Skywalker: He told me enough. He told me you killed him!
Darth Triscim: No, Rhys. I am your cousin.
Rhys Skywalker: Nooooooo ...

God, I almost laughed myself silly with that one. Don't worry, it didn't appear in the book, but I was kind of tempted for a moment there. Star Wars sure has a lot to answer for ...
I'm going to take a rest from writing this weekend, for one day at least. I reckon that, on Sunday, I'm going to go on a nice long trek through some of the old country that I haven't visited this past year. One of the routes I found last winter. Maybe the north coastal route (ack, all 20 stinky, marshy miles of it) ... or maybe not. The south coastal route would be better. Weather permitting, of course; 12 miles of exposed, muddy seawall is not a fun place to be when the northeasters start blowing. See you on Monday!
(Wow. Next time I post in this blog, it'll be December. How time does fly ... by the time I get used to it being 2003, it won't be 2003 anymore. Kind of Douglas Adamsy, don't you think? :) )

The Migril Factor

I've got this major problem that I call the Migril Factor, arising from the bad old days writing the Life of a Falcon trilogy. In LOAF, most of the book consisted of Captain Migril (good-guy cavalry officer) travelling through the endless wilderness and occasionally killing a roving goblin or two. Amazingly, I never got bored with it. I had this insane, delusional vision that LOAF was the best novel ever to be written ... okay, enough of that. If you want that evil story, go read the articles on my main site. Basically, I've coined the term 'the Migril Factor' to describe the opposite of this: the almost paranoic fear of travel in fantasy novels.
In a good many fantasy books, there's always some kind of long-distance travel involved. Twilight is no different, but every time I get to the point where they have to ride across miles of empty country, I freak out. It scares me. So I invent little dodges that mean I don't have to write these boring bits. Twice already they've been captured and transported to their destination by the bad guys (either Irind Triscim's Following or the Imperial Legionnaires), and I've used my handy remote meeting points for long-distance teleport a couple of times, too. This is the Migril Factor; where the author (usually me) invents complicated ways of getting the MCs from A to B in a very short space of time and with minimal boredom involved.
It was the best thing to do the first couple of times. You still get to your destination, and you've got loads of yummy conflict to go with it, such as being beaten up by evil guards or the slight danger of being mashed on a cellular level by the translocation beam. But I've still got long distances that Rhys and co. need to travel, and I've run out of dodges.
Help! Please? Do any other fantasy authors have a decent way of doing this that I haven't thought of yet? I just can't seem to make boring travel interesting.
Edit: By the way, how do you like my new titlebar? I sacrificed some of my writing time last night to make it. I rather like the metal border--kind of the same style as my 'AR' logo.

The end approacheth!

With only 65 pages until my target range for The Twilight Trilogy: Part I, I'm coming to the end of the first novel in the series. I think the plot may run over the 100,000 word barrier a little, but that's no problem. I've got some nice stuff to fit in at the end, although it won't make such a dramatic ending as the one in Darkness in the Forest. Seeing as it's only the end of Part I, that shouldn't matter.
I'm also looking forward to rewriting Darkness in the Forest next month. I know there are some really major problems that need sorting out, notably the three spiritual influences: Woden, Berkana, and Gledwine. Woden needs some kind of reason for being in the book in the first place, Berkana needs kicking out entirely, and Gledwine needs to be suitably wrapped up in the climax as either a good or bad guy. I also need to sort out the characterisation issues with Evelyn, Brenna (possibly to be renamed as Isolde) and Cyric earlier on, because they sort of became main characters about half way through. Grrr. Evil people.

I've updated my sidebar to the right of the blog, to include a special WIP Progress Meter (!) to show how far I'm through my current book. I'll try and update it as often as I can. Kate, if you read this, is it okay to link to your weblog? I don't reckon you'll mind, but I thought I'd better ask.

Offers ... *gulps*

I got two offers from UCAS through the post yesterday, which is pretty amazing seeing as I only submitted my form last week. One from the University of Coventry, guaranteeing me a place if I get 200 points or more (that's about 3 C's), and one from the Edgehill College of Higher Education in Ormskirk, near Liverpool. Not somewhere I really want to go, seeing as it's nearly 800 miles away from where I live, but I had to put down a fifth choice on the list.
I'm still waiting in anticipation for the reply from UEA. I really want to get into the University of East Anglia if it's at all possible; it's in Norwich, which is only about 50 miles north of here, and it's one of the best universities in the area. Let's just hope their Computer Science courses aren't completely flooded.

I survived!

I completed the Organic Chemistry mock exam--and I'm still alive!
How come the big nasty question at the end is always on a topic you don't know? I mean, this time around it was on cis-trans isomerism and stereoisomerism in organic compounds. I think we covered that ... sometime at the beginning of last year. Oh well. The rest of it was almost deleriously easy (I laughed at the first question. 'Here is a chemical equation. Draw the structural forumula of the compound'. lol!). A few of the other questions were a bit nasty; I knew one on polypeptides would come up, and it did. I think I got the reaction mechanism the right way round ... then again, I always got it wrong in the practice papers.
Generally, it went better than I had hoped. Which is a good thing.

w00t! w00t!

Wow. That was one hell of a busy weekend. NaNo is now completed; I'm 80,000 words through the novel, which means I finished NaNo about 54,000 words through. I'm not stopping now I've gotten into the end rush, though; I'm on page 400, which means that things start to get intense some time about now. Rhys and Cathany are back together again, after Rhys rescues her from the hands of her evil father, King Imrasil. The Irostite Revolution is also in full swing, complete with the storming of Royal Square and the King's palace, and rioting in the streets. I like it! It's amazing how much I'm borrowing from the LOAF trilogy here, but it doesn't matter; Life of a Falcon is dead, so as far as I'm concerned I can use it as a kind of scrap metal mine for ideas.
Revision for Organic Chemistry is pretty much done. The exam is in two hours, so I think I've got enough time for some last-minute cramming over break before I go to meet my destiny. I hope it won't be as hard as it looks ... then again, the polypeptide link always stumps me. Let's hope I remember it in two hours time.
What else fun happened this weekend? Oh, yes. The rain. After skulking in the shadow of late autumn, winter has finally decided to come and show us what it can do. Three months of beautiful, dry weather, then this. It has now rained solidly for no less than four days. Dog walking in the forest is really fun in this weather, especially with the bitter northerly wind driving the rain in your face, right through your waterproof coat, and soaking into your skin. I came back from walking Amber yesterday unable to feel my face, legs or fingers, covered in mud, and half-dead. Amber looked like something out of a horror movie. That said ... I like this weather. It kind of reminds me of the good ol' days in Grimwith up north.
And (you've guessed it) another prisoner has escaped from Hollesley Bay! That makes it two in the last week! Apparently, the police found three or four of them in the pub in Hollesley village, drinking beer with their friends. It defies belief ...

Oh Yikes ...

I've just discovered that there is, in fact, something at the end of the tunnel. It's big, black and furry, and it's got lots of teeth.
I've been so busy NaNoing that I forgot the time of year. November. Mid November. About the 20th of November. You know what that means? MOCK EXAMS! I have a Chemistry mock exam on Monday ('Chains, Rings and Spectroscopy' or organic chemistry) and an ICT mock on Wednesday (networked systems and distributed databases). We were given a whole folder full of practice exam papers a while back, but ... dammit, I'd forgotten all about them.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's do a status check. How much revision have I done? About five minutes, two weeks ago. How much do I remember of the organic chemistry course? Uh ... the stuff we did yesterday, and sod all else. How much time am I going to have for revision between now and Monday? Not enough.
Real Life has decided to come along and wallop me on the behind for neglecting it. *adopts noble, martyred stance* It's my fault, I accept full responsibility ... *RL snarls and shows off 100+ teeth* Stay away! I'll do the revision! Just don't eat me!
It's not a disaster. These are, after all, mock exams only (or whatever the almighty European Commission demands we call them now. Pre-Preparatory exams, or something). The results of these exams won't rule my future. And there's still a chance if I cut back on the writing ... and let's face it, I'm ahead. I can afford to cut back.
On the writing front, I've blasted through the 40K barrier, and I'm still travelling at Warp 9. Maybe that asteroid field ahead labelled 'Real Life' will force me to drop to half-impulse, but at least I've broken the back of it. *grins* And maybe it's time to load the photon torpedoes.

Going green!

Things are picking up with The Twilight Trilogy. I got an absolutely gorgeous scene done yesterday; the occasion when Cathany returns home to her father's palace after four years of exile. I had a wonderful opportunity to show more facets of her personality--the image of a female assassin crying over a heap of treasured soft toys is very poignant. I've also introduced an evil little plan of her father's. She tells him the truth about her mission in Serilonia with Rhys and Hadrin, hoping it will work in her favour; instead, her father calls her a liar and has her dragged away screaming in chains. Seeing as the King will know she isn't lying (Deroans have super-senses and can smell lies), there's clearly some kind of evil plot at work here, but I'm damned if I know what it is. Oh well, I'm sure all will be revealed to me in time.
Anyway, I'm on a roll! Page 327 and still going!

More Random Stuff

*sighs* another prisoner has escaped from Hollesley Bay. That makes about 43 ... when is it going to end?? :P
Anyway, I got another 2,500 words on Twilight last night. I'm getting the words down, it's just becoming increasingly hard to do them, and I'm taking longer sessions reading Terry Pratchet novels in between the odd paragraph or page. I'm probably entering a mini burn-up period; I think the problem is that I didn't fully plan the plot beforehand, and now I'm writing faster than I'm plotting. Or something like that. Anyway, I've got to have at least a day's rest to figure out exactly where the book's going in the immediate future. That shouldn't be a problem, because I'm way ahead of schedule on NaNo *grins*.
NEWSFLASH: a new blog is in operation! Following the closure of Project Cold Witness (which was getting too weird for comfort), I've opened up Trekking Central (see links to the right); the place where I'll be exploring the wild unknown. Disclaimer: any damage that this new blog causes to your health is probably my fault, but you'll have to deal with it yourself anyway. So nyah.

Page 300!

Wow! Smashed the 300 page barrier on The Twilight Trilogy yesterday--word count for the novel is now 60,000, and word count for NaNo is now 32,589. I can't believe I'm going so well on this! I'm actually ahead of schedule! At this rate, I'm fully expecting to have finished Part I by the end of the month.
Things are going great. After their capture, Cathany has been carted off in chains to Tarsin to stand trial for terrorism and returning to the Derowyn Empire after her exile. Rhys and Hadrin were captured by a different bunch of Imperial legionnaires, but now they've been recaptured by the IFF (Irostite Freedom Forces) Shock Troops. Kind of like musical chairs. Anyway, Rhys and Cathany have finally admitted their love for each other ... but, as always in life, it's happened at just the wrong time. Cathany probably has less than a month left before her execution in Royal Square. What else ... oh yes, Erolsin is soon to be beseiged by an Imperial relief column, and Rhys and Hadrin will be trapped in the city as Cathany gets further and further away from them. I've also introduced our mutual friend's subplot (he has a real name now, too), and Agent Bren has pretty much recovered from his crossbow wound. More here tommorrow.

Phew....

Tried editing the blog template earlier, only to find that my meddling in the arcane arts of HTML had disasterous and far-reaching consequences. I opened my blog to find the sidebar to the left instead of the right, all the posts bunched up in about two square inches, and the titlebar doing some kind of weird contortion as it vainly tried to circumvent the laws of physics.
HTML's fun. I've got the thing back up and working again (hell, all I wanted to do was reduce the size of the text), but I've decided to keep backup copies of the template whenever I want to start meddling in future.

Halfway through!

At 25,750 words, I'm halfway through NaNo! I'm also half way through the book itself, seeing as I started NaNo 25,000 words through. Things can only get better from now on!
Rhys, Cathany and Hadrin have now been picked up by the Imperial XXth Legion outside the city of Erolsin. As there's a major battle in progress there between the Imperials and the Irostite Freedom Forces (ie. bomb-wielding terrorists), the soldiers who captured them assume that they're terrorists too. This view is reinforced by the fact that Cathany's carrying a sniper crossbow--a weapon favoured by the Irostites. She also has a death sentence in the Deroan Empire. How in the name of God are they going to get out of this mess? *cracks knuckles, grins savagely* I think that, for me at least, things are starting to get interesting. I love this! Writing at such an intense level makes it so much more fun--and you get better stuff, too. Never again am I going back to the two thousand-word-a-week days!

I'm managing to remain just ahead of the pointer on the NaNo meter, despite looming coursework deadlines for both Chemistry and Design. I'm also putting more time into Project Cold Witness than I really should, but I can't help myself.
I've calculated that I can finish The Twilight Trilogy: Part I by Christmas if I keep going at this rate. I know I've got to start the revisions for Darkness in the Forest next month, but I'll be off the hook with regards to coursework and exams. After I'm done, I think I'll have a couple of months writing Cold Witness before I go back to Part II of Twilight. It's going to be hard keeping track of which project is where, now that I've got three going at once. But hey--it's all part of being a writer, a student and someone with lots of weird hobbies.

Wow! 3,400 words done on NaNo yesterday. I'm ahead of schedule (but only just).

I'm over fifteen thousand words through NaNo now; slightly behind schedule, but not much. I didn't have time to get much done yesterday, but I got a whopping 2,900 words on Saturday (pretty much my absolute maximum). I should be approaching the midpoint of The Twilight Trilogy: Part 1 by the end of the week.
I'm introducing some nice little plot updates. They've been shipwrecked on the Serilonian shore, and with the northern ice sheets descending on them, they need to get out of there fast. Later on (warning: spoiler!) they'll be picked up by a patrol to the south of Erolsin--and as Cathany has a death sentence hanging over her head in the Deroan Empire, things don't look so good.

All material regarding Project Cold Witness will now be featured in its very own blog. Find it in the links to the right. This blog will remain as a chronicle of my current WIP: for the time being, that's The Twilight Trilogy. Cold Witness is so different from anything I've ever done before that I'm moving it to its very own site. Give me a couple of days to get it up and running.

Project Cold Witness
That's going to be the name for my next novel--it's being placed in Cold Storage at present, until I can finish [i]The Twilight Trilogy[/i].
In essence, it's related to the mysterious incidents surrounding the US military base on Orfordness spit, about a mile from where I live on the East Coast of England. The original project, entitled Cobra Mist or System 441A, was an Over-The-Horizon radar station designed to detect Russian and Chinese test missile launches. But a government leak indicates that Cobra Mist (which was dismantled in 1973) was superceded by a project known as Cold Witness--one which has terrifying implications if it turns out to be true.
My dad remembers seeing a twin-rotored prototype helicopter chasing a man in a kyak out to sea, sometime in the 70's. Apparently this guy was paddling as if his life depended on it. I'm making no claims, but maybe this guy was a Russian agent, checking up on Cold Witness? A high amount of Russian trawlers were sighted off the East Coast during that time, after all ...
Personally, I don't care whether it's true or not. The idea of gigantic EMP cannons and weird psychoelectrical experiments on humans sounds a bit far fetched to me, but it will be first class novel material. I'm already starting the research (which will last AGES), but I won't be able to start writing it until about mid 2005. Maybe I can have it as my busman's holiday, to be worked on whenever I feel the need. In any case, I've taken a step into a new dimension--this will be my first non-fantasy novel.

I feel like talking about something other than writing today. Let's think ...
Ah yes, perfect. I read in the paper yesterday that yet another prisoner has escaped from Hollesley Bay prison (about ten miles from where I live). Another one! It's becoming practically a weekly occurance! The authorities only admit to having lost twenty four prisoners in the past year, but I've counted at least forty. Hardly a week goes past without the helicopters scanning the forest for signs of people living rough.
But it's hardly suprising that prisoners are escaping. After all, it's what they call an 'open prison'--prisoners are allowed out of the institution whenever they want, only loosely guarded. In fact, nowadays they hardly even bother posting guards. This latest escapee claimed that he wanted to visit Woodbridge with his girlfriend--they let him go, and then start complaining when he doesn't come back. I mean, what do they expect?!
This is starting to get beyond the joke. The prisoners in Hollesley Bay are hardly axe-murderers, but unless they want the facility to be totally deserted in a couple of months they are going to have to tighten their security.

I shifted to Haloscan instead, which looks much neater. *sniffs* not that anyone ever posts comments to my poor, neglected weblog ... my site doesn't seem to be seeing much traffic, either. Despite it being linked half way to hell and back. Oh well, let's give it time, shall we?

Isn't there anyone who reads this? Or am I just a voice crying out in the wilderness? (I love that quote. It's from the Macintosh Bible: Fourth Edition. Old, but still the best).

Anyone know how to get rid of the annoying 'Comments by SquawkBox TV' thing in the Comments field? It's driving me nuts. I've tried editing it out of the HTML code, but to no avail. Help!

I've just taken the personality test for one of my main characters from The Twilight Trilogy: Cathany Arwyn. Here are the results:

ESFJ - "Seller". Most sociable of all types. Nurturer of harmony. Outstanding host or hostesses. 12.3% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Um ... doesn't seem too accurate to me. She's a female assassin, used to surviving on her own and with a bitter and complex history. Seller?? Weird.

I'm back. I decided to sever my connection to pretty much everything last week, just to see how much writing I could get done. My word count is up to 33,333.3 words (that's right. I finished a third through the word 'and', just for the hell of it). I wrote 20,000 words last week! A third of The Twilight Trilogy: Shadows over Voril done!
I've also got a second article published by Holly Lisle's ezine, Vision. Read it at http://lazette.net/vision/Issue18/advessentialequip.htm .