WiPpet Wednesday: Locked Up

It’s that time of the week again, that’s right, it’s WiPpet Wednesday. This week I’m sharing some more of the Autharium Project with you all. I really do need to come up with a new name for the story, one that I can actually use when I start searching for a cover artist and when it comes time to hit that publish button. After a week or so of making no progress I finally sat down yesterday and wrote almost an entire scene. That’s about 1,531 words for this particular scene. Now I’m not going to show you all of it, that would be silly. But I thought that I share with you the first part. I think I’ve done quite well with the world building here and the reader starts to see the kind of society that Kaya and her crew live in, or rather have escaped from.

To catch you up, Kaya has broken into Crown Haven’s dungeon, managed to make her way to Marrick and make her escape. It was all a trap though and the ‘lovely’ Arnoth Bay caught her and her crew and put them on trial before the Council of Elders. Understandably, as pirates, she and her crew were sentenced to hang until Bay stepped in and offered a deal; they get something for him and they take their chances fighting in the civil war plaguing the Empire. Kaya, naturally tells him no and now they’re stuck in the dungeon, arguing amongst themselves about what to do.

“We don’t even know what the Oracle looks like!” Keiran cried “It could be absolutely massive or the size of a thimble. It’s a death trap taking on this journey,”

“It’s a chance to live,” growled Carrock “A chance for us all to live and go back to our lives,”

“Go back to the front lines you mean,” Carter said, “Or did you miss the bit where Bay said we would be sent there as cross bow fodder should we succeed? We aren’t going to come out of this alive, whichever choice we make. Taking this mission is just postponing the inevitable,”

“At least on the front lines we know what we’re dealing with,” Cassie said, glaring at Carter “We have a chance there! We can fight and we can survive long enough for Bay to forget all about us,”

“You mean the men will have a chance to survive,” Carter said dryly “Or did you forget that women don’t have a place in the Empire’s military too? You won’t get to serve on the ships, you’ll serve at the ports, spreading your legs for whichever pathetic flier has enough silver to line your master’s pockets,”

The cells descended into shouting and yelling, much as it had done for the past two days. It was the eve of the hanging and Kaya had grown tired of the constant talk. Marrick was a little better, able to sit up by himself now but it made little difference, he would soon be swinging from the gallows just like the rest of them. Kaya watched as her crew grew more and more irate. These men and women were not made to be confined, to be locked up within four walls. They were meant to roam free, like the mountain eagles. The confinement, the constant threat of death and the promise that was dangled before them was so tempting but so dangerous, were all wearing thin on everyone’s nerves.

And then, right on cue, came the whistling and slow footsteps of Arnoth Bay, for the third time that day, the arguments died down into silence.

As always this is completely pure and unedited, exactly as I wrote it yesterday. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what’s there.

Is the world building nice and subtle enough? Is Carter being a bit too mean? Do all my characters sound the same (because that’s something I’m a little worried about)? What do you like about it? What do you hate about it?

Let me know down in the comments and keep an eye out on Friday for a new Series of posts that I’m starting.

WiPpet Wednesday: A Darker Side of the Heroine

Here we are, another Wednesday, another Work in Progress. I actually quite enjoy doing these to be honest, it’s nice to get some feedback from people regarding my writing, especially which characters they really like.

This week I’ve returned to the Autharium Project (that really needs a new title) and we take a visit to Crown Haven’s lovely neighbourhood dungeon. Captain Kaya has finally managed to track down the wayward Marrick (who you all loved last time) and they’ve gone to get him out of whatever trouble he’s in. Of course, being pirates, she and her crew haven’t exactly taken the front door. But when they get inside they begin to realise that all is not as it seems and it’s definitely going to be harder to get Marrick out than they expected and we begin to see a darker side of our heroine.

She rushed through and knelt by Marrick’s head, gently brushing the matted and bloody hair back from his face.

 His eyes were bruised and battered, one so purple and swollen that he could barely get it open. The skin had split, leaving a line of blood to trickle down one cheek and a oozing mass of black clotted blood filled the wound. His nose was swollen too, bent out of shape like it was broken. His lip was split down the middle and bruises covered his face. Some were yellow and green, telling the tale of strikes made days ago, others were purple and black, only hours old. Marrick tried to sit up, grabbing at Kaya’s hands but he was too weak, his body too damaged for him to be able to.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he whispered quietly, his voice thick and rasping “It’s what he wanted.”

 “He doesn’t know I’m here,” Kaya whispered back, stroking her hand through his bloody hair

“We’ll get you out of here.”

“We’ll get you out of here.”

 She slowly climbed to her feet and rounded on Malcolm who had drawn closer as she had tended to her injured friend.

 “What did you do to him?!” she hissed.

 Malcolm didn’t answer, he was gazing at Marrick with shock on his face, the blood drained from his features leaving his skin an ashy white colour.

 “I didn’t do this,” he said slowly, horror in his voice as he shook his head “I had no idea things were this bad, I swear. Bay took him to a room, said he wanted to have a little chat. I didn’t know he was doing this to him.”

 “If I find out that you had any part in this…” she said. She suddenly reached for Malcolm and pulled him close, hissing in his face “I swear that I will kill every person that you love and make you watch,”

There we are. I hope that you like it. Is it mysterious enough for you? Do you want to know more about this Bay chappy? Are you getting the hint that Kaya and Marrick are more than good friends? (Hint: they are) Who is this strange Malcolm chap? Will they manage to get out? As usual let me know what you think in the comments below and please, don’t hold back.

WiPpet Wednesday

So it’s Wednesday and I know that last week I did a RoW80 check in and a bit of WiPpet Wednesday. Well this week I’m just doing the WiPpet Wednesday instead of both. I think that two check ins a week is a little much, it’s only been like three days since I last checked in and while things are going a little better I don’t think it’s enough to really count. Plus I don’t want to keep bogging you all down with progress updates all the time instead of doing something fun and useful for my posts.

But I did enjoy the WiPpet Wednesday part. It was great to get even a little bit of feedback that I got and see what people think of what I have for the Autharium project so far. So without further ado, here is this week’s WiPpet. It’s about 400 words from a little further in and the story’s moved on a little more. We meet a somewhat sinister character, two very loyal friends and Kaya the pirate captain and leading lady of our story. Not everything is as it seems though and secrets are being hinted at. So far Kaya’s travelled to a port city to try and find the wayward Marrick who didn’t turn up when promised but she and her friends have been followed by a mysterious hooded figure. After laying a trap they have the man on his back. Keiran’s gotten to close though and the hooded figure just tried to slice his face off; that’s where we come in;

Kaya acted quickly, drawing her own sword and tapping it hard, flat side against the man’s elbow. He dropped the blade and swore, clutching his arm to his chest and glaring up at the captain from beneath his hood. Kaya tipped his chin back with her blade, forcing him to look her in the eye. She sucked in a surprised breath as the hood fell back to reveal shaggy blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and a strong stubble lined jaw.

 “So which of you do I have the pleasure of talking to today?” she said dryly. “Jareth or Gareth?” 

The man just smirked at her, dimples appearing in his cheeks and he laughed through his nose. 

“Jareth it is,” Kaya said. “What do you want?” 

She dug her sword harder into his clavicle, turning his smirk into a frown of pain. He didn’t move away though, didn’t try to break free of the blade. He just leaned backwards, propping himself up on his elbows. 

“Who says I’m Jareth?” he said eventually, glaring at Kaya with hatred. 

“Gareth has more dimples,” Kaya said and jabbed him with her blade “Now answer the question. What do you want? Why aren’t you at your master’s side?” 

“The Commander is a little… preoccupied at the moment shall we say?” said Jareth “He has made a new friend and is trying to find out a little more about him before he decides whether to keep him around or not,” 

“So you thought that you’d what? Slip free of your leash and come to pay little old me a visit for old times sake?” Kaya said sarcastically. 

“No.” Jareth said, looking at her in challenge “I came to warn you.” 

“Warn her? Warn her of what?” Keiran demanded to know, interrupting the conversation “You follow us, try to stab me and then want to warn her of something. What game are you playing?” 

“You should not take me trying to stab you too personally,” Jareth said, “I tend to try and stab everyone I meet.” 

“What are you wanting to warn me about Jareth?” snapped Kaya, losing patience. “And why?” 

“I owe you,” Jareth said simply “You saved Gareth’s life and I owe you for that. Now I have come to repay my debt,” 

“Bay would kill you for this,” Kaya said harshly “What’s your real reason?” 

“That is it,” Jareth said with a shrug, “Take it or leave it,” 

“Wait Bay?!” Enora cried, grabbing Kaya and forcing the other woman to look at her “Bay as in Arnoth Bay? Commander of the Air Navy and enemy of pirates everywhere. He works for Bay and you know him,” 

“Oh she knows us all very well,” Jareth said smoothly “Do you not Kalanya?” 

“Don’t call me that,” hissed Kaya, shoving her blade against his throat. “Don’t ever say that name again. Kalanya is dead and buried. I’m Kaya now,”

As you can see Kaya has a bit of a secret past that not even Keiran and Enora, two of her closest friends, know about. For the record Jareth and Gareth are twin brothers, one’s more psychopathic than the other but that’s not saying much. As for Bay... he’s the big bad of the story, or at least it looks that way for now. So what’s Jareth come to warn Kaya about? Who is Kalanya? Why on earth does Kaya know Jareth and Bay and what made her leave her past behind? I’m not totally sure yet but I’m sure that it’ll all be revealed in time. This was pure and unedited first draft prose, no polish, no second read-through, nothing. It has come out exactly as it was in my brain.

As always let me know what you think in the comments belo.? Is there lots of lovely tension? Are you wondering the same things that the characters are wondering? Who do you see as Jareth? Personally I see a younger version of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, (the guy who plays Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones) as Jareth but that’s just me. I always try to respond to any comments I may have and I really enjoy hearing from you all.

What's Up Pussycat?

So I have been a busy little beaver lately. My freelance work is coming slowly but steadily and I have no complaints there, although there is the faint whispering in my mind that I really need to get a website up and running as well as a Facebook page sorted out. That’s something I did begin to do but I never finished so it’s on my To Do list. There’s a lot on my To Do list really. I also wish that I did have a little bit more business coming my way but I suppose that’s the perils of only using one website and not having my own form of advertising.

My planning the Autharium Project (as I am temporarily calling the book I am creating for That Blog Series) is coming along well. I pretty much have the outline done, now I just need to expand the chapter outlines a little, or at least the scene sketches. More importantly I need to actually create my characters. Right now there are only two that I know that I need but they have no name, no personality and no backstory. So basically they are just words in an outline as opposed to real people. I’ve also been thinking about titles. I hate titles, like to the bottom of my soul. It’s why this blog doesn’t have the best name (I will change it one day I promise) and why so many of my Works in Progress have generic explanatory titles that don’t really grab your attention. It needs to grab your attention if I’m to have any hope of getting people to read it. I will be writing the next post that will go on the Autharium blog and this time I will, hopefully, put a version of it up on here too.

The planning came a lot easier than I expected. I can see what happens when and how I can keep the tension up and then let it down again. I also, finally, managed to apply the three act structure to my outlines at last. It’s something I’ve avoided in the past, I didn’t want to restrict my writing or do what everyone else does. Now I’ve actually used it though I can see how it is in fact very, very helpful. I can see where the tension is, how the stakes get higher and higher until it all comes crumbling down. I haven’t followed it exactly (I’ve not got to that point quite yet) but it’s there and the arcs are there and I’m definitely going to use it again. I also plan to do a proper post about it in more detail at a later date too (if I remember).

Don’t think that I’ve forgotten about the One Freelancer’s Journey series either. I’m hard at work on that and should have another post up about it soon. Right now I’m just mulling over some of the content and try to work out ways of phrasing it without making it seem as though I’m lecturing. Writing on blogs, not novels or stories, is something that I find a little tricky, I will admit. I want to get the tone right, I want to keep it casual, but when I start talking about something or explaining something to you all I can’t help but slip into lecture mode and I hate it. I Hate It!

I also want to quickly catch you up on what’s been happening with my WiPs, specifically Love Complications (which will be renamed eventually) and Feral Diaries 1 (which will also be renamed).
The notes for revision on LC are complete. Now I’m working out what needs to go where, the time frame and what new scenes need to be added. It needs a lot of work and I need to actually put in some sort of three act structure. Most of all I need to stop letting it read as though it was written by a teenage girl (which it was) and instead make it read as though it were written for a teenage girl (which it was). The characters need to be rounded out and I need to stop my main character from being such a Mary Sue! Yes, that’s right, I wrote a Mary Sue. In fact it was a little bit of a wish fulfilment novel for me at the time, having everything happen right, just how I wished my life could be. Of course that doesn’t make for good reading so it needs to be shaken up, torn to pieces and reassembled into something shiny and new. And the Mary Sue needs to be burned and destroyed.
Feral Diaries (whose title also needs to be changed), meanwhile is not coming along so well. I’ve been making my notes, I’ve actually gotten quite far in with them, almost halfway. But then I looked back and noticed that in the earlier notes I had been actually outlining the new scenes that I needed to add to the story. I hadn’t been doing that for a while. So I need to go back and do that for the other chapters and it’s starting to feel a little one step forward, two steps back. BUT! It’s not all bad news. A friend of mine, wanting to procrastinate, decided to mess around with some 3D imagining software that she loves to use and actually created an amazing cover for me. I’ll show it to you another day although you could always check out my twitter feed and see for yourself.

But for now, it’s back to the grindstone, I have a few chapters to write for work and then it’s on to transcribing my planning notes for the Autharium Project. Do you have any ideas for what to do with the Mary Sue? Have you ever written a Mary Sue? Do you want me to get on with the Freelancer’s Journey Series? Or would you rather I shut up and share a bit more about Feral Diaries?

Let me know in the comments, I love hearing from you.