30 is not a four letter word

So, I turned 30 yesterday. Not so bad now I'm finally on the other side of it.

And, as I am won't to do, I've commemorated the event in pictorial form.

Looking back, I've gone through a lot of changes. Some good, some bad. But all for the better. Physically, mentally and emotionally I've grown but I think, deep down, I'm still the 5-year-old kid who desperately wanted to grow up to be a ninja turtle (Michaelangelo in particular). And I think 5-year-old me would be pretty pleased with how 30-year-old me has turned out. In fact, he would think I'm pretty radical. So, here's to 5 year old me! Well done, and thanks for everything!

What I THOUGHT I looked like:
Age 5 - Pretty much was just me.
Age 10 - I was convinced I was going to be a ninja. Friends and I used to have daily 'battles' at recess.
Age 16 - I was pretty certain in my teenage malaise that I was a Dragon Ball Z character. I experimented a lot with hair in these years.
Age 21 - Slightly more comfortable with me but hair-experimentation still necessary.
Age 25 - Moved to Scotland. Grew a 'fro. Partied a lot.
Age 30 - Pretty much back to just me again. But with bills.

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Two become one, but 17 become 26!

I've broken my promise of not touching the book for a week.

As I pondered sending it to a friend  to read it I accidentally, sort of, looked over it myself. I'm questioning the need for a Prologue. But, after speeding through the first 177 pages of Tony Diterlizzi's 'A Hero for Wondla' I began to question my chapter length.

"Life does not happen in regular chapters, nor do movies, and Homer did not write in chapters. I'm blessed if I know what function they serve in books for adults." - Terry Pratchett

A friend had admonished me ages ago about the length and I did a lot of work on the first few chapters to trim them which is why the number went up from the initial outline. He said (and rightly so) that with children's writing you want it to be smooth and quick. You want your young readers to feel like they've accomplished something by finishing a chapter, especially when they want to read 'just one more' before the mom switches off the light.

I definitely think getting all the information out to start for me is far more important than getting it right out the gate. But, I definitely see the wisdom in going back and pairing things down. So, I had a quick flick through and figured out where I can keep chapter length to a minimum. It's quite funny because I realised how much I break up chapters in the middle anyway. So, it was actually quite easy to just change where the 'official' chapter breaks happen.

Although, is it worth it to just go for a Terry Pratchett and just scupper the idea of chapters all together?

Enjoy!
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A book is born

The book is done!!!!

The Strange Chronicles: Book 1 - The Mighty Orange-Peel (first draft) was finished last night 8 August, at 9:30 pm in Edinburgh, Scotland weighting in at a healthy 17 Chapters, 125 pages (A4 1.5 spaced),  52,000 words. It will obviously change and grow as edits are made and an epilogue is developed. But, no matter what, it is novel! And, in the cold hard light of day, the final chapter still reads well!

It was a long process. I started writing the book early 2010 (I still remember the moment I 'found' Gemmy's face and writing really took off). I'm over the moon with how well it's turned out. I've reread the first half and it feels like a book. So, I'm confident the second half, which I finished much faster, has the same depth even though the pace of writing and story is much faster.

My favourite part of writing so far has been seeing how the story has developed. In my outline it was meant to be 15 chapters. The way the final book has actually taken shape is so much more different to what I'd intended. The characters have grown and changed with the story and it’s been just as much an adventure for me finding out what was going to happen. The major plot points haven’t changed, but the characters’ reactions to situations have become more organic and truer to the characters. Also, the world that I established changed. So, plot devices I’d planned for suddenly didn’t make sense. What I’d planned to go A, B, C, D ended up A, F, Z, B, D.

So, now begins the process of rationalising the book. I’m sure there’s a plot hole somewhere, a few mistyped names (Mhetli became Mehtli for about two chapters), superfluous sentences, areas needing to be expanded, etc. But, my beautiful book has been born.

It’s been crazy and fun getting the characters and story to the place where it’s at. So, I’m going to do my preliminary edits, celebrate and let the baby rest for a week, play Lego Harry Potter (finally), read A Hero for Wondla (finally), maybe do some more illustrations and then come back with fresh eyes! 

On a side note, I absolutely can't wait to get it printed and bound - by my own fair hand of course. Definitely going to have a party then.

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Who's guarding tomorrow?

So, the ominously named facility, Morgengarde, is headed up by an equally ominous director, Ixtilton Wurmstab. 

He is described as:
The director stood at least two heads taller than Gravander and was heartily built. He wore elaborate Garzian robes of red, black and gold that matched his bright flame of vermillion hair. His wide, sun-kissed face was open and pleasant. Off-set by his brilliant green eyes, Gemmy was transfixed by the man.

The character in the book comes from Vfor (pronounced 'Fuhr'), a country on the continent of Arbea minor. His 'healer's' name is directly linked to the work that is conducted at Morgengarde (which means 'guard of tomorrow'). Is he working for good or evil?

A lot of the names and places in the book are related to mythology. Ixtilton is the name of the Aztec god of medicine and healing. 


I'm not sure if the surname sounds a bit too 'on the nose' though. It's misleadingly sinister however.  'Wurmstab' refers to the Rod of Asclepius which is a symbol of healing (contrary to popular belief, it is not the caduceus).

How could a man with such a name and face not be working for good?

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Judging a book by its word count

So, chapter 15 is finished and I decided it was time to go back and look at the rest before I sprinted on with the remaining three chapters. With this two errors of memory happened.

1) I realised that chapter 15 was in fact chapter 14! Long story short, the first two chapters were extra-long with exposition so had to be split into five shorter chapters. This took them out of sync with the outline. Then, as the story developed some of the later chapters ended in the middle of the following chapter according to the outline. So, I misremembered my numbering. No big deal, right?

So because of this I decided to corral the final chapters into one document and do a word count. Then,

2) My word count revealed I was at almost 43,000 words! Now, I'm terrible with remembering numbers and the word count for a novel can be arbitrary. But, in my head I remembered that the average novel was 200k words! Panic (and probably too much coffee) set in.

I was almost certain I was on the track to exiting 'novella' territory. It's a young adult novel, so I don't want it to be J.K. Rowling/harrypotter-book-seven-long. But, I was hoping for something a bit more than Neil Gaiman/Odd and the Frost Giants-short.

I could have sworn that I'd worked out that if each chapter was around seven pages of A4 at roughly 11 pt type that I would have hit the mark. My shortest chapter is six pages and longest at eleven.

GOOD NEWS folks!!
Well, a bit of Google looking later, I realised I misremembered the figures. It is in fact (roughly) 50k words for 200 pages (printed)- which is where my memory of the 200 figure came from. So, the tale of the Mighty Orange-Peel has been given a respectable amount of space so far.

Time to crack on with the last three chapters. I'm actually really really excited. In a lot of ways, I'm finding out how it will all go down just like everyone else. The details of the story keep shifting as I write because the characters are growing and changing with the story.

Oh, here's a first crack at a cover for the book. What do y'all think?

So good!
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