And now I’m back after finally finishing all of my finals – I have about a month off, so I’m hoping to get a lot of writing done now!
As of this morning at 4:12 AM, I finished my initial revisions of TLOC. It was interesting to see how my writing improved as the novel went on. This one really is a lot better than the first one – hugely so. Not to mention significantly longer. In terms of TLOC, right now I am waiting on feedback from Michael Ireland and Peter Merlin, my two volunteer editors. Once I get it back and edit in their comments, and then get the cover art from Sarah Kindler, I should be set to publish it! Unfortunately, due to me not factoring finals into my schedule, it won’t be released until January. Sorry!
On the other hand, TLOS will be released on Barnes and Noble’s nook by the end of December – possibly a day or two before Christmas if all goes according to plan! Makes a great re-gift.
Also finished now is “The Man in Amber,” the horror short story I had been working on before NaNoWriMo hit. I wrote it once, then rewrote it again as I was unhappy with it. I think it’s decent now, though, even if it is one of the shorter ones. Excerpt time!
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It is the ultimate nightmare, though few even can imagine its possibility. I am eternally surrounded by this terrible substance of amber, that which lets me breathe without me breathing, lets me see without closing my eyes, and lets me live without really living. I have not had any nutritional sustenance for the longest time – many millennia more than I can remember. But though I live still, I have lost many things in this imprisonment: I can no longer hear, nor taste, nor smell, nor feel anything. Only my sight remains, and even that is limited to what I can see directly in front of me, for I can no longer move any part of my body – I have not felt my heart beat since I awoke in my prison of amber, nor my lungs swell, nor my flesh tremble. My eyes can no longer flit back and forth, nor follow the movement of a pendulum, nor even fill with tears without the greatest of pain.
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So what’s going to happen now? While I wait for feedback, I am adding appendices (there should be three of them) to TLOC, and also finishing a second horror story – “The Horror in the Woods.” After that I will focus completely on The Libel of Blood, with hopes to get the rough draft done before I go back to school. Once that’s done and editing is in progress, I will finish “The Thing From the Peaks,” yet another horror story. Following that and after TLOB is released, I shall concentrate on finishing Dark Aeons and starting People of the Storm.
I feel that I should mention that H.P. Lovecraft’s ghost-written story for Hazel Heald, “The Horror in the Museum,” is a fantastic piece of work and well-worth reading.
Also look at the shiny new background!
Z. M. Wilmot 