Running Out Of Ink

Well it's been a month and I'm still making progress with BiTe Me: A Chronicle of Ashly Holiday’s Misadventures. I'm not writing as much as I'm back in school again so that has been taking up a lot of my time. But I couldn't be happier with how far I've gotten. As of now my page count is at 42 and the word count is at 19,062.

I'm pretty much at the stage where I've written out the main scenes and plot points for all the stories so all that's left is filling the blanks in between. After that then I need to go back through everything again to spot check and expand on descriptions as I've been skimping on them so far.

I think I'm going to try to do at least a monthly update from now on, except for when I hit 50 pages as right now that's my big goal. I can't help but feel amazed that I've written something this long as most of my fanfiction where one shots that never reached the double digits for page counts. Maybe it's because this is my world and my characters that I feel more free to do things with them than with other people's characters.

I know I'm long overdue for doing this. But I have an excuse that can be considered viable. I took a class over summer which crammed a full quarter's worth of material into four weeks so I actually had things to do other than be a lazy bum.

I've pretty much ditched the original BiTe Me book I was writing. Even though I made it up to around 13,000 words I just didn't feel like I could have finished it up with it actually being a decent read. Especially when I had a new vampire story idea that showed up and demanded to be written. Or in other words I found something else vampire related that I thought would be more interesting to write about.

So I stole the BiTe Me name and decided to try my hand at a vampire book series. It sounds intimidating for an author that has yet to finish a single book but I found a brilliant way for it to work. Instead of starting with a full length story I'm making at least the first three books a collection of short stories that are connected by an overlying plot for the entire book. So far it has worked out well as I have just passed the 14,000 word mark after only starting on this about five weeks ago. I can only hope that things keep going well and I'll reach my word count goal of 35,000 words before the end of the year. Then I can start asking friends to look over the draft for edits.

The title of this book is BiTe Me: A Chronicle of Ashly Holiday’s Misadventures. As one can guess the main character of the book is named Ashly Holiday. He is a vampire but a rather lazy one that hates pretty much everyone. The book begins with him having to burn his manor to the ground or be evicted and then the rest of the stories are about his travels until he finds a place he can stay. And I'll be doing a better write up of the plot later but that's the bare bones of it.

I'm still going strong with this and I have a really good feeling that I may one day finish. I'm trying to make myself write at least a page a day and so far I've been really good with actually doing that. It may take me a bit before I start writing but once I do I find it easy to keep going for a while. Things are falling into place much better and as I make it further through Twilight the easier it is to come up with new material. Though I've decided that I won't write another book on this after this one. I'd like to move on and do something different. Though there is a certain fantasy book series that I hear is terrible that I might be tempted to do as I'm a big fantasy fan. But that all depends if I actually finish this.

I've ended up renaming some characters already and will likely rename others as I go on. But I know I'm sticking to the name for the lead character, Samantha Yure, or Sam Yure for the anagram to work.

Progress

Word count: 8,393

Content

Nibble pg. 5

Bite.1 pg. 6
Bite.2 pg. 9
Bite.3 pg. 10
Bite.4 pg. 11
Bite.5 pg. 12
Bite.6 pg. 13
Bite.7 pg. 13
Bite.8 pg. 14
Bite.9 pg. 15
Bite.10 pg. 16
Bite.11 pg. 17
Bite.12 pg. 18
Bite.13 pg. 20

Bloated Mosquito pg. 21

Author’s Notes pg. 22

About the Author pg. 24

BiTe ME continues to be the only original story that I've made any progress with. I can already look at parts of it and know I'm going to have to do some complete rewrites in parts. But that's to be expected as I'm jumping around a lot, though I have settled a bit on the first two chapters so things are looking good. I even got ahead of myself and made a cover for the book, which I also made an icon version of that I'm using for this post.

As this doesn't have a specific word count I'm going for, other than enough to fill the amount of pages needed to print it as a book, I'm going to do the progress report a little differently. Still going to keep the word count but I'm also posting what the content page of the book looks like too.

Progress

Word count: 4,679

Content

Nibble pg. 5

Bite.1 pg. 6
Bite.2 pg. 7
Bite.3 pg. 8
Bite.4 pg. 9
Bite.5 pg. 9
Bite.6 pg. 10
Bite.7 pg. 10
Bite.8 pg. 11
Bite.9 pg. 12
Bite.10 pg. 12
Bite.11 pg. 14

Bloated Mosquito pg. 14

Author’s Notes pg. 15

About the Author pg. 17


In other news, kinda writing related, I'm doing a class over the summer that begins next week. I don't think I'll be doing much recreational writing during that time as it's a quarter worth of material quashed into four weeks. But I'll a couple of months of not doing anything before classes begin in the fall so I'll try to focus on writing then.

Yes, I have begun yet another book, but unlike the rest this is a one shot and I'm not trying for novel length so it can be done whenever I feel I've written all there needs to be written for it. It's taken the top spot for everything I'm writing for now and I've even gone so far as making a badly photo shopped cover for it. I'll probably share that later, like the next time I remember it has been forever since I've updated on JF.

If you can't tell from the title this is meant to be a parody, for me it's a way to save my mind while trying to read the dreck that is Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. I find the story and characters just full of fail so far and I'm only about 50 pages in to what is 325 pages long. I doubt BiTe ME is going to be that long. Maybe if I changed the print size it could be... But I regress. My parody is just my way of poking fun at it and just be silly with it. It is rather devoid of any plot, even after 2,000 words and I don't see it getting any better. But seeing what my inspiration is it's probably not that surprising. But it has vampires and werewolves and a special snowflake heroine and takes place in Washington State and mosquitoes rule, yo. Srzly, they do.

BiTe ME
Word Count: 2,139

Horribly late doing this as I know it's been over a month since I promised doing summaries for what I'm writing. I just fail like that. ORZ

Okay, starting off with the series that looks like I might actually finish one day as I've made the most progress with it, is B-Idol. I was labeling it as Boy-CH, but I think B-Idol fits the series much better. It's something I kinda started when I got into the Johnny's Entertainment boy bands. I know there's quite a few fans that write RPF/RPS for the JE boys, but I don't feel 100% comfortable with writing that so I decided I would just create my own idol world for any plot bunnies I would get. So I've probably been working on this for almost a year, though I haven't gotten far with it.

Basically it's a BL/yaoi/shounen-ai/whatever you want to call the genre story about Japanese boy bands. It's kinda set up that this first book can be a stand alone or a bigger part of a series unlike the other books I'm trying to write. I think it will end up being a series as I want to write about the side characters more. But the two main characters in the first story are part of two different boy bands but are attached to the same company, Tomura Entertainment Group. The basic set up is that the company is doing a special promotion by making temporary groups with different members of their various groups. This puts Shoji Kawamori, 20, and Akihide Tougo, 26, together as a duo. Shoji has been a big fan of Akihide for years and already has a crush on Akihide. And the feelings just get stronger the more Shoji gets to know his idol but he's afraid to confess them as he's already been horribly burned before.

I know it's not the most original of plots but it's easy to write and with the cast I've built up it would be difficult to juggle so many characters in something more complicated than that at my current skill level. Plus I prefer character driven stuff than plot so it works well with my likes.

I think another reason I like writing this because I don't feel like I need to be too serious over it. Though I know I'm going to be scared to death about asking other people to read it, as I still need to work on improving my writing skills but I won't get anywhere if I don't try and ask others for their C&C. But I think I would much rather have this be my first foray into writing a novel as it is something I can just enjoy doing and not worry too much about. Plus it gives me another excuse to fangirl over JE boy bands as I can say it's for research. XD;;

B-Idol
Word Count: 3,278

I really don't get people some times. Especially the wank-a-palooza that is DA at the moment. The wank is all centered around a bill that was introduced to congress about orphaned works, aka works not actively covered by copyright, back in 2006. An article at Animation World News that was written by Mark Simon, a producer/director, went out and said that artists will lose all their rights to their works with this bill.

If like me and you're still confused about what exactly the bill covers and why it was even introduced in the first place after reading said article, visiting this link, that gives a good explanation of what the bill is all about, will help as well as give a much different view of the bill and how it actually would work. And Snover over at Y!Gallery (another gallery site that is probably splooging out the ears as bad as DA) has posted an entry to debunk Mark Simon's article, like the fact orphaned works =/= public domain. You know, things even producer/directors should know before they go spouting off on half-baked conceptions.

Of course finding concrete facts is not something the denizens of DA are known for and it doesn't take long for everyone and their mudkip to be wanking about it all over the site. There's even an online petition for it. I think I'm going to stay away from DA for awhile until the splooge dies down.

I know copyright is something I do worry about as it is something I will have to deal with if I ever enter the publishing world with anything I write, but I don't think people should be scaring people about losing their copyright without the hard facts to back it up. All it does is create unnecessary drama and spread ignorance about copyrights and IPs.

P.S. I know I haven't done what I said I would in my last post. Sorry, I will try to be unlazy and write those entries soon.

Just this morning I had a plot bunny for a semi-new series. It's semi-new because it draws back on some ideas I've had running in my head for a series. In fact the series I have been calling Bone King is supposed to be based off the same concepts, except it ended going completely off in its own direction and no longer resembles anything close to what I had first thought of it. So from now on that series is going to be called Asolund and the new one I just created today will be called Bone King, as it fits the title much better.

I think this week I'm going to make it a priority to write out descriptions of the series I'm working on as I realize it can't be all that exciting reading about progress on titles you have no clue about. So in the couple of days you can expect some brief summaries to show up here.

Finals week is upon me now and I have never had the desire to write anything but the papers that are due this week than now. After not touching fanfic for months I have pumped out two short Bleach fics and it looks like I may actually finish a Reborn fic sequel that I must have left undone for almost a year now. Of course that helps none with my school work, OTL. But I expect once I get through enough fanfic I'll make some decent progress on my original stories.

Current status report:

Moon Prince
Earthbound (novel) Word Count: 1,048
Three unfinished short stories.

Bone King (working title)
Word Count: 2,010

Boy-CH (working title)
Word Count: 3,020

Finally decided to get off my lazy ass and use this journal for more than a way to comment on f_w. This is mainly for now going to be a way for me to track my writing progress on the original stories I'm writing. I'm hoping to finish the first draft of one of the novel length stories I'm writing at some point in the near future. Or at least this year maybe.

Moon Prince
Earthbound (novel) Word Count: 1,048
Three unfinished short stories.

Bone King (working title)
Word Count: 1,740

Boy-CH (working title)
Word Count: 2,783