Month: December 2020

Really Lax

Sorry everyone I’ve let my blog get away from me. My goddess has been doing the holiday brain fry thing. We’ve done very little the past week. She’s working, while the rest of the family is at home. The joy — but it is quiet.

But with all the holiday shuffle, AJ is also working on new stuff for the blog. We are going to start off every week with a Weekly Writing Prompt, that ya’ll can participate in. And AJ will write up something for me on the fly for a Saturday posting. If we get anyone sharing their own stories, I will try to get a post in where I have read and oohed and ahhed over them here. But that’s up in the air as we don’t know if anyone will participate.

This year is ending, and boy has it been a year. AJ finished round 1 of edits of the Call of the Dragon! We plan on publishing a short story in ebook form end of the first quarter, and the Call of the Dragon by years end. At least that is the goal! AJ’s also hoping to start up a newsletter, and maybe get that rolling out once a month end of Q1. And maybe even start up the pod cast I’ve been poking her about. I don’t expect it to be out by end of Q1 but hey it’d be nice, there are a few more technical aspects to that that AJ has to do some research on since she doesn’t want me to sound like her!

I expect this next week to be just as lax as the last one. AJ’s trying her best to stay on task. And we are almost ready for beta readers on the short story. If any of ya want to read it first and make comments shoot me a comment, or email me at nox.durante@gmail.com and I’ll pass ya along to AJ. Though she will be looking for some very specific people — particularly ones who’ve never read about me. As this is the first introduction some people might see AJ wants to make sure that what she wants to come across does without prejudice and knowledge.

But you are welcome to read it if you’d like to.

I belated Merry Christmas to everyone and I wish you all the very best in the following year.

Dragon Hunting

So AJ is going to publish a short story from the First Hunt that she’s going to tie into The Call of the Dragon. But since the snipet is from a Novelization of the story, it’s missing a good beginning. AJ’s wondering how best to handle that.

We could go the traditional route and get an ordinary world summary type of what I’m doing in the Rocky Mountains in telling fashion. Or we could go with some introductory scene between me and someone else in the story to set the scene. Or (which is currently my favorite) I break the fourth wall. ‘Hi, my name is Nox Sétanta, and I’m a fucking mess.’ type beginning.

AJ likes the idea of using a Forward/Prologue esque type introduction to the story as a whole like I’d tell you all here. It’s not part of the story but if you don’t read it you don’t get the personality behind it all as well. And maybe a wrap up the same way. Deadpool is the only movie I know that has done it so well. It’s great and humourous and if done well as it is in the movie can be highly entertaining. And since AJ wants to share me, more so than my story, I think that it fits well with AJ’s goals. (AJ does too).

But does it put people off? Would the Prologue/Forward entrance set the tone and people expect it for the rest of the novel? That’s a huge rewrite. But then again it’s not. As I do a lot of thinking and telling my side of things regularly.

Anyway, it’s something AJ has to think about. AJ is finally working up the nerve to publish and the short story is a good way to get all the nitty-gritty out of the way in a fast manner to see how much time things might need. She’s also thinking about how much to charge for a short story versus a novel. So much work, and so little time.

Below you will find the Dragon Hunting short story novelized portion of The First Hunt. This is unedited and already been posted here. It is not what AJ will post there are some fundamental changes that will happen along with the intro and outro changes. Sadly my love affair has been removed for continuity sake. Mik and me won’t really be mentioned. And me and Alex really won’t come up much. Both do have a few mentions as they are important, but most of it has been removed.

From the First Hunt: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII

Baby Yoda…. NO!

So Facebook has been full of Christmas cheer.

The first I’d like to share needs no explanation.

(from https://www.facebook.com/groups/therpf/permalink/3588285254594367/)

The second is a story of epic payback. This is the first picture in the series if you click the page itself you’ll have to scroll to the bottom to follow the stroy.:

But it’s pretty epic either way. I love Frank and his friends.

Not My Usual Music

AJ has kinda shown me some cool music. I don’t know where she first saw it. But it’s not my typical music. It’s not dance, but it’s pretty awesome.

And since it’s almost Christmas, some of AJ’s more favorite songs Pentatonix preforms. It’s so much more than singing.

O come all ye, Faithful is first.

Mr. Grinch is pretty cool. So love this guys deep deep voice!

And Hallelujah, which I’m pretty sure is one of the very first song AJ heard from them. The shivers up my spine — omg!

Happy Friday!

It’s Friday. AJ has 2 chapters left to edit, which is about 12 scenes left. And Then she’s going to work on Dragon Hunting edits, before diving into the deep edit of The Call of the Dragon, as if she needed extra work.

AJ joined a book cover critique from Reedsy I think. It should be very interesting to see what someone professional says about AJs designs. In a book cover profession. AJ has the ability to get a Graphic Designers opinion easily as she works closely with one.

The most fustrating thing about it all is that its such a slow process. This editing thing. It’s not that AJ doesn’t want to do the work. It’s just time consuming. We have all the big holes fixed I think. Though AJ has a few bits and bobs to add to the front in order to allow for the ordinary world to show through. It’s a bit thing. So one or two new scenes and some edits afterwards.

AJ’s looking at work counts and where the important peices should fall to see if we have an evenly paced book. We think we have a front end heavy book, We might need to push the romance into other parts of the story so that’s going to be part of what AJ takes into consideration, how we might spread out the story a little bit so it’s not All Alex up front and none at the end.

AJ is going to enjoy using the Plot Grid in Dabble. Once we get all the scenes and sequels fleshed out it’ll be real easy to push them around a little and then make them flow into one pieces. Dabble is such a great tool. And it’s only getting better.

Patreon Page

AJ is shy. That’s why she created me. I’m not shy. I’m very vocal and it’s easy to pretend to be me than it is to be her. Not that there is anything wrong with her, she’s just highly self conscious.

But before Patreon changed to its current model AJ created a creator’s page. We’d like to use it. But sorta stumped on what we could offer that was worth money being given monthly. AJ’s okay with giving free copies of the ebooks for the monthly subscription and even the whole revised book chapter by chapter when we are at the end of the polishing stage. And behind the scene footage.

But honestly the story has already been shared here. We aren’t adding much new, and when we do it’s usually because AJ trashed an info dump scene but needed a few bits and pieces from it to make the story make sense. I don’t know if AJ plans on releasing short stories before each book is released. It might be something to do since there are some back story bits we could use to explain the story before you get to the story.

Do you have a patreon page? If so what do you offer?