three cups later....

Short of death, dismemberment, or other unfortunate and unspeakable things, I am 100% certain I am going to finish this iteration of the book. I'm not certain how marketable the finished protect will be. I'm hoping very -- I'm hoping I'll finally sell something novel-length and kick my career in the ass -- but I can't know until it's done and I start schlepping around to publishers and agents.

I was thirteen when I made my first sale. Lots of people say that makes me professional. I don't know if I agree. A story sale is not the dividing line between me and my next meal.

I do probably focus on the art and craft of storytelling more than most normal folk, and that may be where professionalism comes in. I am fascinated by cultures, by speakers, by the effectiveness of a good yarn.

It's been more than fifteen years since I started taking note of writing styles and effectiveness; what's been preserved in my own writing is hard for me to see. I know what's changed, but I can only take a blind guess at what's remained. I don't tend to re-read stories I've written after they're published. If it makes any sense, once a story is told and released, it's "dead". It's lived its life. It is done now, and I want it to rest.

Some authors say their stories are character driven, some authors say theirs are story driven, I like to think I approach things from both angles. There's a story -- and in my case, there must always be twists in the story -- but it's nothing without compelling characters who you either really really really want to make it out alive, or who you wish would curl up and die.

There are more characters in this iteration of Sword of Shades than in the original (which I started when I was 21). In fact, in the original there were only two characters left by the end of the story; over the years, I've stretched things out and found more aspects of the tale I wanted to reveal.

At some point I want to write something more airy, more fairytale like. The original SoS was like that, but the more I pondered it the less I wanted to write those characters in that way. I prefer that they be human, faulty, but heroic in spite of that. The same is true for the so-called villains.

A lot of my current understanding of aikido is in this book, even though the martial art itself is completely missing. Most people will likely miss it. A few won't. And that evolved over the last year; it wasn't there, originally. Now it is.

And there's also a great deal that is me. The singledom I've lived with the last seven years, the changes that's brought on me. Two of the main characters have to deal with that, as I've dealt with it.

Ah, anyway...this started out as having structure, but now it's just babbling. So there you have it. Ten chapters since August! That's two chapters a month, though I don't know if I can count December since it was such a hellacious month. Let's aim for three chapters a month this year, shall we? Yes we shall!