What I have written.

I have a new notebook.

If you have been following my twitter feed you will have seen exclusive photos of my new book complete with some of the writing I have been doing in it.

One of the few discernible words on the text is 'Malakan' who is one of the principle characters. Some of his chapters, most notably the first three, were written some time ago but will need heavy editing. My style of writing is not what it was. What I have written now starts off badly and gets progressively better before plummeting again. In the chapter that I have finished Malakan is talking to another character, Dravis. (I will tell you more about Dravis when I write his part of the story) When I was writing it, I had in my mind the scene from the film 'Heat' by Michael Mann, in which the two principal characters sit and share a coffee. I doubt I will convey that sort of power in my text but I hope that my readers will enjoy that scene and recognize it's importance.

DR

Haramakion's House

This is a low quality map highlighting some of the more important features of the country of Prathin on the planet Humanisan.

Haramakion is the king of Prathin.

DR

*edit (12.06.13) For some reason the image in this blog post failed so I have put it back in again.

The story so far.

My book is made up of many interacting characters. Each chapter is about one character in particular but we are now getting to the point where these characters are beginning to interact.

It creates new problems for me as a writer. When I write, I write about one character and try to maintain a certain amount of flow and continuity between disparate chapters. Here I have to make sure that I write in order for things to maintain their rhythm, I have to make sure that things go in the right order. If not I will get continuity errors.

Here is my problem. I have three principle characters whose webs we now discover to be tangled together, these are Ronin, Haramakion and Malakan. I have got to a point where Ronin and Haramakion are interacting but now I need to get Malakan to the same point. This should pose no difficulties until they begin to interact.

At that point I have to maintain overall plot continuity and also individual character continuity. I imagine that I will get to this point in about six weeks. Watch this space.

Also I have finished my notebook. I started it on Friday March the 13th and finished it today. That means I have written in excess of forty-five thousand words in ninety-five days. That is less than 95 working days and even less if I take into account the fact that I have been on holiday and their are many days when for whatever reason, it is not possible to write.

I will try and update this blog more often.

Sorry.

DR

Secrets

From a comment by 'Sylvain'.

Do you keep "secrets" that we will discover reading your book ?

Yes, definitely and vice versa. Their are things that are on this blog that are not in the book. Some of the information on Prathin in my previous post for example. There are many many things in the book that will not be posted on the blog.

This blog is to give you a taster and to let you know how the book is being constructed as well as to provide some of the re-imagined physics and philosophy that underpin it.

Pictures, ideas, edits, character information can be found here.

For the plot, see my publisher. *lol*

DR

Update.

This is an update, hence the title; 'Update'.

I have been writing inconsistently most notable due to problems in the Parisien public transport system but I am getting along quite well. I have been playing sillies with the chapter construction too, cutting some out that I thought erroneous and blending others. As yet I haven't added any new chapters into the plan but I'm fairly sure that I will put one in later on in the story of Haramakion.

As noted I am writing about Haramakion at the moment. He is a human and a King, the King of the country of Prathin on the planet of Humanisan. Humanisan is one of the older human worlds and the original settlers wanted to show that this was a human only system and a safe haven from other problems. Humanisan was settled not long after the destruction of the human colonies of San Hedrin. The name shows this. Humanisan is literally 'Human system' as San Hedrin is the system of Hedrin. Humanisan is however only the name of the planet. The system in which it resides is called San Lhaw and is very cosmopolitan.

Haramakion is I think the oldest of all the major characters but by how much and why, I'm never sure. I imagine that he would be played but someone like Derek Jacobi.

DR

The Wonder of Net

Well well well...

Now here's a thing. Let me tell you a little story. I was on the train this morning and I was about to start a new character, Haramakion, in the place of Ronin. Mostly because the two of them have started to interact so I need to get Haramakion to the same point. It was a last minute decision, (as seen in my boo if you follow me on Twitter), and I realised that I had no idea when, how or where I had left him last time.

So I tweeted and booed to that effect before logging on to my Google docs to see if I had put anything on there. Indeed I had and although I didn't have all my typed up documents, I did have a plotlist. So I downloaded it onto my iphone and read it through and preceded to start doing some writing. It was in fact a slight rewrite but there you have it.

I am beginning to understand what people mean about Cloud computing. As a tool to help me write my book, I also use Evernote. During the day, if I have any notes, I write them in my iphone and they automatically update when I get home. This then syncs with my laptop so I have everything I need, when and where I need it.

Tonight I have downloaded and started to use DocList Uploader and I will put everything on Google Docs as a back up.

It's amazing how much data I can have flowing through the ether. I hope that I won't be disappointed by it all.

DR

Still 'Ronin' on.

I am still writing about Ronin, I'm keeping going and see where my mind takes me. I did well this morning, writing a lot on the train, almost missing my stop in fact, but less on the way home.

So now you know. What I wanted to tell you all was that I wander, I have very definite ideas of what I want a chapter to be about and ideas of how to get there but it never quite works out like that. For example, I need Ronin to discuss freedom and the complications therein but instead he ended up discussing predator/prey relationships and the future of the Harlequin race. I like what I wrote, don't get me wrong but it's just not what I wanted to write. I know that the author of a text is on a journey of discovery and things will happen in the books that were not foreseen but even so.

Oh well, I have more travelling to do later so I will try and writ his freedom later today.

DR

Started again.

If you have been following my twitter feed, you will know that things have been going very a-pickle over the last week or so.

However...

I am delighted to note that today I did writing, quite a bit and it wasn't so bad. I was writing a conversation between Ronin, I know, I said I would change but I may not, and Bast his chief intelligence officer. They are discussing possible futures for the ships under Ronin's command.

With interesting results.

It took me in a direction that I din't anticipate, but the other stuff will have to go in soon anyway.

I won't be writing tomorrow or Thursday but I'm definitely good for Friday. This just shows you the power of headphones. (See Twitter)

This post is bitty but I wanted you to be the first to know.

As ever, comments are welcome.

DR

I feel obliged to apologise for my complete failure to write today. Just so you know, we mow have public holidays in France so no work, no travel and thus no writing for the next few days.

Sorry.

DR

Well hello everybody.

I'm back from my sojourn in the big apple and i'm disappointed to report that in terms of writing, i have done precisely zero. I'm very sorry.

For those of you who also following my twitter feed you may also be aware that i left my headphones at home. It is the reason that i am blogging now as opposed to later. I will try to write but generally find myself distracted when i can't block everything out. I'm sending this from my phone instead of writing. It's something about coming back off holiday too. I often find, as has been previously noted, that holidays tend to knock me out of my rhythm. All part and parcel of being in France, where endless holidays are enshrined in law. I know one person who gets, wait for it, 57 days holiday a year. A little over eleven weeks. I do have other holidays coming up too although running counter to that is the knowledge that i have quite a bit of work over the next few weeks too. Generally i write on the train and lots of work means loys of train travel. Still, i imagine that alot of writers struggle for rhythm at times.

What will happen will happen.

DR

Well hello...

Hello everybody,

And a particularly warm welcome to Teresa who has left me a message. Her previous attempts had been thwarted by updates and problems. I am yet to go to work today so I am yet to do any writing.

I will blog again later, hopefully having written something.

DR

Well the exciting news is that i finished another chapter today. I have decided that i will change character on my return from New York. The next problem is my subject matter. I need to think about it more before i commit it to paper. Ronin is being introspective without getting to the heart of the problem. I hope that my readers will notice that he is trying to resolve an emotional issue but is treating it as a mental challenge. He cannot resolve it because he doesn't understand it.

My apologies that this blog is short but i'm sending from my phone.

DR

Twitter Feed

I have been doing lots of exciting things with my Twitter feed, something I wholeheartedly encourage you to follow. Not only you you get updates whenever I blog here but you will also get audio blogs and hopefully video blogs in the not too distant future. Pictures are also coming on the twitter feed but I intend to put those on the blog as well for future reference. I have had a busy week, with my cousin's daughter here in Paris and organising things for my holiday. Yes folks, another holiday is winging it's way towards me, I will not be blogging from 9th to 17th May inclusive as I will be in New York.

Nor will I be using the new found powers of my twitter feed. On the plus side, I hope to have written some more of my book to discuss on my return.

I, as I hope you are aware, have been writing about Ronin. He is currently having an in depth conversation with one of the other characters. I might leave it there for the time being and then come back to him. I might do the following chapter too, I don't know. I will then move to a different character for a while though I don't know who. I have a feeling it might be the Dumru; Thorbardin.

We shall see. Still, just as I depart on holiday again, my writing seems to have returned. I will try and get as much as I can done before I go.

I shall try to address the current intermittence on this blog too.

Get in touch, I would love to hear any comments.

DR

The state of play.

Hello everybody.

I haven't written anything recently. Here's why; Normally I write on the train and I haven't been working as much as normally over the last few days. Secondly, the creative juices seemed to have clogged shut. I'm not sure what it is that makes it come and go. If I did know, I would bottle it and be a millionaire by the end of the week. I have heard many people say that external stimulus can inspire it, I will go to New York and see what I make of that. On the other hand, that is an external stimulus and I am trying to stimulate myself internally. Surely I need internal stimulus. To that end, this blog may go a long way off topic in the next few weeks. Invariably, to stimulate myself internally I read, last time it was The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant. Currently my bedtime book, which I'm rather enjoying, is The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. But that is my bedtime book. I think that this time I might pick up Nietzsche or Descartes and see what they have to say for themselves.

Reading texts such as these allows me to think about me more and as such, my book is just an extension of this. They are my ideas after all.

DR

I haven't been blogging because I haven't been writing. My cousin's daughter Rachael came to visit us and so my time has been otherwise invested.

DR

Hors de stilo

This weekend and to a lesser extent today, I have been hors de stilo. (Without pen) This is in fact a lie. I have been with pen but without fizzly brain. It gets this way sometimes. I think that I am a writer of habit. I have been on holiday and it seems to have clammed up my creative glands. To make it worse I'm about to go on holiday again. It may be some months before the creative juices really start to build up again. Probably around the end of August, just about when I'm due off in fact.

Ho hum.

I have also found out who my first mystery follower was, I'll leave that 'til next time though.

DR

I did, but not enough and not to a high standard.

I did write today but I don't like what I wrote. I also seem to have woken up dyslexic this morning. Words, letters and sentences have absolutely been a closed book to me today, bit of a handicap for an English teacher.

Today I was writing about some of the motivations of Ronin as we continue into his character. Suffice to say that I have introduced the character of Mémé who has a discussion with Ronin on possible responses to discrete prostitutes operating on board the Harlequin fleet. On the way to work I had a fizzly mind and it all went sparklingly, on my return, it was all a little flat. A disappointing day.

I fancy beer, anyone up for a night out on the streets of Paris?

DR

The words of Leo.

I was in a bar last night talking to my esteemed friend Leo and he asked me a very good question. He had been reading my blog, although is yet to leave a comment I note, and struck upon a thing.

"Who is Ronin?"

It's a good question. I don't want to reveal too much of course but Ronin is one of the principle characters of my book. He is a commander in the Harlequin fleet. I don't really know what else you want me to tell you. He is, naturally, a Harlequin and he is quite young. He is in an interesting position in his life and it has rather warped him. I like him as a character but I don't like him as a person. He would not be someone I consider a friend.

Ronin that is, not Leo.

Leo is lovely.

Today I have done some writing and prepared some groundwork for a tying together of several seemingly disparate statements. I started this yesterday but I didn't blog, I didn't feel that I had anything that I wanted to commit to screen. Tomorrow I have a long journey ahead of me, both there and back so I should have some more things to report. Maybe not of course...

DR

Shame on me.

I did very little today. I started again with Ronin on a new chapter which describes the Harlequin society in a little greater depth. I did a hundred words, two hundred maximum. But I'm quite happy with what I have written. it comes and goes I find. Some days I find I write two thousand words or more of complete and utter dross. On other days I write one tenth of that but I rate its quality.

Still, we're starting go get into the meat of Ronin as a character. He is, in fact, a bit of a cunt but we are starting to see some of the reasons for this. His upbringing and unique situation in the Harlequin fleet has made him overly ruthless I suppose. He is capable of making the right decision for all the right reasons when we, as readers, know he should make the wrong decision. He can be so charming and kind to one person and two breaths later have the very same person executed.

This is not to say that he is without emotion, but I think that all emotion can be displaced or at any moment be disregarded for those things he considers greater.

I'll leave you to make you own mind up as to his moral standpoints.

DR

Somethings and yet not others.

Today I have done no writing and only a little editing. I hope you will all forgive me. I have however done some thinking and have got further through various problems that I had. I still have other problems to resolve which will involve rewriting but each thing in it's own time.

I will try putting pen to paper again tomorrow.

On the plus side, I have discovered Tweetdeck.

I have got rid of Chirpr, for the time being.

DR

When things start to come apart at the seams.

Oh well.

Another day thinking things through having found more holes in my plot than a balloon in a pin shop. Missing planets, Ok, I can deal with that. Extra things, Ok, unforeseen but workroundable. (Perfectly cromulent that word) Missing character when you are hundreds of thousands of words in...

...A different sort of problem.

Still nothing that floods of tears and tantrums won't clear away.

Yes, I have edited out a vital character in the course of defattening, (leaning?), my plot. I have been going over things in my head and I think that I have found a way back in but we will see. Still a long way to go.

You know that fish thing I mentioned a few posts back. Wedll it turns out that it's more like a plague of frogs. Maybe like London Buses.

I am not a happy bunny.

DR

Comments

Hello Everyone.

Some people have had problems leaving comments and viewing my profile.

If you try again now, that should be working. They had foreseen an update but it ran over on time which is why it was out when it shouldn't have been.

Try again if you wish.

DR

Sometimes you just have to blog it.

I was idling my time away, I am on holiday after all when I discovered something that could not sum up my book in any better way. My book sits between the lord of the rings and star wars so to see this headline was something of a coup.

The Perfect Headline.

DR

Twitter & Stuff

I haven't updated the twitter feed because I am not at home, I must get round to it.

I will post more pictures the moment someone leaves me a comment.

DR

Timeframe.

I didn't. (See previous blog)

I'm sorry but whilst I have thought about timeframe I haven't actually done anything about it. Neither have I done any writing but I have eaten a considerable quantity of duck. I have also typed up one of the major chapters involving the plotters circle. I will do more as the week progresses. I'm not at all sure exactly how many words I have written but on reflection more than I think. Or thought anyway. I do not have them typed up so I don't know. When I have, I shall pass on the message.

Ho Hum, still a long way to go.

DR

To break.

Hello everybody,

I am on holiday on the French coast so in terms of both writing and updating this blog I may be a little wayward. Also some of you have noted that the red on black was too harsh, garish, difficult to read etc. I have changed it to pale blue but I am open to suggestions.

Yesterday I finished a section and I am going to start the next one but first I need to organise a bit of timeframe.

I might do that now in fact...

DR

Aha!

I both wrote and yet did not write today. I finished the last chapter of that particular section and then stopped to do some thinking. I need to make sure that I get my time frames right otherwise things will be happening at the wrong moment.

Anyhoo, I hope that you are all aware of the television series of Red Dwarf. I have read the books which are not as funny but a damn sight nastier. I think the TV series has less bite but there you have it. In the books, when the crew are still alive Rimmer takes his officers exam. Building up to it, he spends hours and hours and hours carefully designing and painting a revision schedule, a work of design beauty. The day before his exam, at a point where he has not done any of the revision planned, he discovers that in his timetable he has added September twice. Panicked he decides to cheat by writing the answers all over his body but being so nervous begins to sweat and all the answers are blurred. He responds to this problem by repeatedly rewriting the words 'I am a fish' on his officers exam going so far as requesting extra paper so he can carry on writing it.

I have had such a September moment.

I have had to very carefully construct a certain section of the book in terms of what happens and why it happens. It was specifically designed to built over six chapters.

I discovered the other day that I have written seven.

Watch this fis... ...space.

DR

The day that is today.

I finished another chapter today and have smashed straight into the next one. I'm pootling along at quite a lick. I have been writing for about 90 minutes today and I expect I will do another 90 shortly. I find that I write at about two thousand words an hour which means I hope that I will have written about six thousand words today. I will not have done. I will have only written about five thousand because various scribblings, musing and off-the-cuff ideas will also be put down. I wish I could write on computer that fast. I have stopped typing up recently but started again yesterday. Still I'm happy with the amount that I'm writing. When the pen is going full bore I find my days less wasted.

I'm gibbering today and for that I apologise. I should have thought harder about what I was going to write on my blog. I hope you can forgive me.

DR

Finding Me!

I wonder if I show up in a Google search.

DR

I have a follower.

I finally have a follower. In fact I've had them for some time but I have no idea who it is. I wish I did know then I would be able to write them follower love poetry. Saying that, now I have confessed, they are probably less likely to write me a response. Ho hum.

I have been neglecting my blog and for this I am sorry, but I have not been neglecting my book. In fact I think that I am probably about twenty thousand words ahead of where I thought I was and I guess I wrote another two thousand words today. That is I am writing not redrafting and editing and typing up. Just writing. I have been writing the opening chapters that introduce the character of Ronin. His first chapter is difficult. I always find it difficult to introduce a major character, his first chapter will need much redrafting. However his second chapter is rattling along and I'm enjoying writing it, or would be if; 1 I wasn't writing this blog and 2 I hadn't nearly finished it. Nevertheless where chapter two goes, chapter three must surely follow. Then four and five I hope. I would like to have finished Ronin's part of the story by the end of August but I know what I am like.

Here's to hoping.

DR

Restarting.

I have finished the section that I had started on so will start another one. Well I say start another one, in fact I have already started it. It is in fact the section that contains the five previous chapters. I rarely work in chronological order. Still you will be pleased to know that I have started. I was describing a war but it has become a bit of an albatross so I have put it to one side. I will edit it when this bit is done.

DR

I have nothing to say.

The Nature of Creation.

You may or may not have noticed that this blog has not been updated over the last few days and I am very sorry. Sometimes writing is my creative outlet but sometimes I get pulled into something else. This has happened recently. If it is something creative I don't really mind, I still feel a little guilty because I am not writing but nevertheless. I have been drawing, or more precisely, designing. I wanted some way of representing spaceships as they are featuring heavily in my writing at the moment and I have discovered Google Sketchup. It's excellent and my days have been filled with pushing and puling. I am still writing, I don't use the computer outside, but not as much as I should have been.

I apologise.

DR

A second picture

Harlequin Mayabadaw.

Harlequin - Mark 1 - Mayabadaw Class

Engines & Person

Today I should have been writing but after a bad nights sleep and a large number of words written, I decided I needed something else. Something completely different. As some of you may have guessed, I am writing about the Harlequins at the moment. They are very militaristic and can be a little heavy to read. Whilst the style of my writing overall is quite light I think that different ideas of peoples should be adjusted slightly. Thus the Harlequins are formal and structured. However, as the Harlequins are militaristic and as I am writing about them, (don't harass me, I finished another chapter today) I decided to design a piece of Harlequin hardware.

I have only done the engines, but it was still fun.

DR