Writing Update - March 2020

2020 itself has, so far, been a bit... bob.

"Bob" means poo, by the way. Usually these early months of the year are when I get most of the hills in. This year I've only been able to get up one (Ben A'an, a wee snip of a hill) as the weather has been routinely terrible. Currently, we appear to be having nice weekdays when I'm unable to do anything but work, and then a hearty dose of wind and rain on the days I am free. The camera is dusty, Dronathon is curled up in his box, my writing... Wait, no, my writing is doing pretty well out of all of this!

The Vile Realm's second draft is sitting at just under 200 pages (of around 300). The extra writing time has had me thinking more about the story, and adding in some extra meat for the third draft. I still don't have a firm release date set, but you can't rush these things!

And it's not just The Vile Realm. Several new, shorter stories have materialised for a potential anthology of bite-size tales and will add more depth to Traverne (The Carven Lodge, Blood or Coin, Wild Weather Warriorto name a few), and The Dead and the Rotten has developed a fair bit too! Another larger story, Delvers of the Domed Marvel, has found a home in the world, on the continent of Tarlicia, so far unexplored in my works. Steaming jungle and savage forests, windswept plateaus and ancient temples. Heavy Conan inspiration, plus I've spent a while with my head in Symbaroum TTRPG books.

Lastly, all of this indoor time has had my creativity desperate for multiple outlets. Fortunately, Dreams was released on PS4 and has given me something to get my teeth into outside of writing while my drone has been grounded and my camera's lens cap firmly fixed in shielding off rain. I've not made an actual game in Dreams yet, but I've quite enjoyed making some scenes. I'll be working out how to add some interactivity to these so that I can make further book media from the game. Trailers, music, even perhaps a little bit of explorable world. For now, I've been practicing on little things, here is my rendition of the Path of the Dead, read about (or watched) in The Return of the King!

Until the next update. Hopefully I'm closer to finishing The Vile Realm at that point!