This is only a second ship that AJ has wished for that won’t happen. We love Jaime and Claire in The Outlander, but this is just an epic relationship. And this song and cut are awesome together. This is an AU story that should exist in our humble opinions.
-
-
AJs PDF has a whole day outta order. It’s a good thing it was easy to recognize. Dates make things so much easier to determine at a glance. Hopefully none of the chapters are outta order.
So there are now pages added to an outline that aughta help with finding the chapter we have to jump around now. Good Notes on the iPad is working out real well for both AJ’s notes and the editing process.
This is our new background song while we edit. It’s very Alex and me.
-
I mentioned AJ was done with the rewriting of book 1. We are reading through it and making notes on it. You’d think we had a deadline with the urgency in which we have been handling this read through.
Though to be fair AJ says it’s an easy read. Not like say the Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time. We are on page 83 of 303 (at last check).
We’ve only found one major glaring mistake we didn’t carry through the book so far. And we had one section that we had to rearrange the paragraphs to actually make any logical sense of the timeline. We probably wrote that while distracted by something.
After this AJ’s considering running it through Auto Crit. Though it’s shity formatting and and doesn’t play well with Dabble. It will likely be a display the problems on screen and then make the changes in Dabble by hand as we move through it. AJ might have to take a day off work or use her day off work to do a good job of continued editing like that.
Maybe we’ll have a book to publish soon. That’s kinda a cool prospect. Beta readers will be wanted soon. If you are interested let me know.
-
Last night AJ wrote the last bits of The Call of the Dragon. On to full edits. With red ink too.
The book is shorter than the original by almost 90K words. The biggest reason being we took one chuck out completely as it didn’t lend to the story at all. And because of the nature of the changes my brother’s didn’t show up.
So as practitioner of the arts we say job well done — we cut our darlings.
Anyway on to the hard work. Really hitting the edit. But it’s a read through edit and not one in Dabble that we will correct as we go. Now if only Dabble would read to us.
-
Not to be confused with Malec.
I decided to do a small series of Ships AJ and I share. The tag we’ll be using is Sunday Ships on the blog. They will all most likely be music backed clips. Might offer some Fanfics at some point too.
-
Only 4 more scenes to go. Or so. Only 4 left in the outlined bits. There might be a few more or a few less no one can know for sure. Until it’s done. OMG… it’s almost done.
I’m not even going to fake the words for The Daily Spur or or FOWC I’ll just give you a link to the sites. You can check them out at your leisure.
I’m so excited. AJ had to keep herself from writing and finishing. We are almost done!!!!!
-
AJ’s got some foreshadowing going on right now. I love the response this invokes in me. Important information was just alluded to. Information I’ll learn in a scene or two but also so much more I won’t know. So love it.
And what’s more is that it’s staring me in the face. And I won’t even know it till later. Much later. Sadly I’ll also forget this moment tis the nature of the magic at play. Never to be known, the magic renounces the target’s existence. Horrible horrible magic.
I know spoilers but vague ones.
-
We will be at the end of The Call of a the Dragon in a snap. The titular scene is coming up with in the next scene or two. I don’t know what I’m going to be able to share in the next phase of things, as AJ will need to do a read through of what we wrote and there will be notes to be made.
I think AJ’s gonna make a PDF of the book and use her nice new pen tool to mark it all up while we are reading and then we can do the editing. That should be fun.
-
So AJ shared the prologue with you. Yesterday she decided to get a better grip on the story and start off with Chapter 1 instead. But we didn’t want to lose those bits and bobs of information that help a reader understand that there is MORE at stake than just my life here. That it’s a much bigger story.
If you’ve read the past versions you know how it ends. I won’t spoil it for those of you who have yet to read it. So we moved those to the end of it, calling it an Epilogue though it’s not really an epilogue in my opinion. Is there another literary term for that exposition that is story but not in the order. Epilogues usually wrap up a story… Not add more mystery.
AJ has also added one new scene and will be adding in another after I make my blog post.
-
AJ forgot to post for Sunday. We went looking and got side tracked. So sorry.
AJ had a bad night so I’m not going to blow my horn for too long. (sad I know)
Let’s just say anxiety kept her up despite knowing that there was nothing more she could do at the hour. Anxiety is a bitch! But it’s all worked out this morning or near to it that anxiety is hardly a thing right now. Now it’s just lack of sleep and Monday morning.
I however am going to toot AJ’s horn a little. AJ has a very bare bones author site up and running. AJ has a few plans to add in some status type information to the page. But she’s gotta work out the method she wants to use. Since it’s all work from home now, we have less need for always online stuff. Maybe the first desktop app (to phone app) might be in the works. We’ll see. Not that any of you care about that side.
On another note. AJ made a decision and we don’t regret it — though it will be a bit rough for a while. We are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and we MIGHT even actually hit our deadline of finish the rewrite at the end of the month. I THINK we are a bit late on https://aj-hunter.com. I think AJ said that was end of Jan. Seven days late. But still better than not having it.
There is a newsletter on her site. And AJ’s going to work on something to do to get subscribers. Maybe some sort of freebie but AJ doesn’t want to claim any real insight into writing. That’s what most people do to get subscribers. So we’ll see.
-
I promised to have some of Abbie Emmon’s Misconception today. And we have the single sentences for the overall arc of the first 4 books and the truth and lie of book 1. We don’t want to work on book 2 until we hit book two so we’ll make this a series as we go into that editing phase. Book 2 looks like it’s getting a pretty big rerwrite.
Over all Arching Truth:
I am the Chosen One.
Over all Arching Lie:
I am a Monster.
Book 1 Truth:
I do things Differently than my peers and I get the job done. Right!
Book 1 Lie:
I am Worthless.
Next up is writing the see that made me see these lies. AJ will write them both
-
I broke my streak! I didn’t post yesterday. I’m such a bad little worker bee.
AJ’s busy writing, and working on releasing aj-hunter.com (it just says coming soon)
AJ’s alpha reader made a perfect suggestion and we are running with it. It’s absolutely perfect for Alex’s character. Perfect!
We are hunting a hacker and AJ has to decide in a very quick minute on whether or not we do something drastic! Like really drastic but totally satisfying.
AJ’s got the question out to her alpha reader and they’ll talk about it. I have a feeling though that AJ’s gonna do it. We just have to come up with a plausible mechanism for it to happen cause in all prior happenstances I was able to fix what is about to go wrong.
I know. I know. But I don’t want to give you spoilers.
-
It’s a scary mother fucker sometimes — doubt is. (just like the plant from today’s photo prompt and used as our featured image). It has little teeth that grab hold and worry it’s way into the recesses of our mind causing undo anxiety and pain and a billion other things.
That was AJ last night. Doubting life’s choices, her skills, just being a fucking adult is hard.
AJ’s doing a bit better this morning after a good nights sleep. It’s not a terminal case of the blues or anxiety. And really only worth mentioning to solidify that AJ is doing alright.
The darkness of night is always the worst time for AJ. Thoughts pound at her mind and try to derail her sleep. Thankfully she had me to remind her she was supposed to be focusing on me and my life and my story. The problem would take root and the anxiety would rise and I had to calmly say “AJ stop. Alex was talking with Dorian about XYZ” and she’d refocus on those conversations. Conversations that will never be written or rather that you won’t see in a book. But they exist none-the-less. AJ might write them. And honestly I think she will write at least one of them coming up.
It’s not insignificant this talk with Dorian. He’s had similar ones in the past. All those moments of damn he looks so happy with you. Whatever you are doing don’t stop type of conversations. Yeah, he relapsed two days ago but that wasn’t your fault. That was years of conditioning. Dorian would say. And Dorian would tell Alex about how I converted him into loving me like a son. How I was special and that I needed someone special to take care of me. All things Alex knows of course, but things Dorian would share. And all those embarrassing stories too. Ya know the mishaps and turbulence of being a kid.
All things I wish I could watch as Alex listens and learns and Dorian explains the inner workings of my chaotic mind. The mind he’s studied since I was five. Because that’s what I was to Dorian for so many years — just another research project.
But yeah, AJ and I get through our shit and we move on. Nothing more to do than just keep swimming! (And I hope the song gets stuck in your head too)
-
We’ve been posting for two months straight! That’s a nice start to keep up appearances. It’s not a chore when I know what I’m going to be writing. Or rather how I get the topic. Right now you are getting a lot of editing an my comments. Next month you might get something else.
AJ hasn’t taken a wack at the thing we said we would. Today there is a long anxiety ridden drive she has to make so that will quell a lot but AJ might sit down while in the waiting room and take a stab at it. Or she’ll draw lol. Either way it’ll be something.
We’d like to provide something new and unique to the blog on Saturday. But we aren’t sure what. Topics are still rare. But maybe we’ll do a those little scenes AJ’s gonna write in drabble format.
Who knows.
As always if you have a story you want to hear let us know.
-
So I was going to fake a post today and drop in words like I usually do. And while I’m still going to do that I wanted to share with you what you will get this Saturday.
AJ follows quite a few people on writing and today we saw Abbie Emmon’s process on creating your main character’s misbelief. And we feel that’s a good thing to show you all as AJ can work on it all week, and you will have something on Saturday. It’s not new. It’s pretty much something we’ve discussed, but we are going to follow the process and we are going use this to plot out a few of the book outlines going forward.
We are going to probe into my history and show you the deep dark past. It might be a series of Saturday’s as one of the steps is to write the begining of the lie I tell myself and then other scenes that solidified that lie in my brain. You’ve all seen the scenes before but it’s a process so we’ll go through it.
I linked the video above but here it is too:
-
If you know what they are you know they are very cool. AJ’s girls used them in middle school music class, it’s pretty cool. Harvard has their won ‘band’!
-
My long time readers will know what I mean when I say I see patterns. (And just to reiterate this is a magical ability and thus fictional — as I am the figment of AJ’s imagination given voice through words on the screen.) But I kinda want to explain what that means.
I struggle everyday with the things I see. Think Neo when he first saw the matrix and then again when he was blinded and saw the machine city — except what I see is on top of what everyone normally sees and it’s all different colors. And it’s not just objects, the air is full of it as well. So there are lights and patterns everywhere in my vision.
My father is a clairvoyant in the sense that he can see the future. But it’s not the whole future. It’s like in the Nick Cage movie Next where he can see the next two minutes of time and can see them all at the same time like Dr. Strange does in Infinity Wars. And our powers as a Venatori are unique to us, but they are handed down generation by generation and everyone gets something similar. Which gets muddled when you start mixing in various Venatori families and abilities. Hunter sees the future in his dreams. And Cass is a telepath like her mother. But I’m sure they both have a little of my the other powers to a minor degree creating a unique blend of things.
My power is seeing patterns. I can predict the future in those patterns. I know when things are out of place. Imagine the TV show Psyche. It’s about observation, but when an thing has a home, it bends the patterns around it. I have an advantage. It takes a while for things that don’t move often to release from their patterns. It strains things in the world around us. It disrupts nature.
I wish AJ could make a rendition of what I saw. And maybe one day we’ll figure that out. For now you’ll have to understand through words.
-
I a bit annoyed at my creator atm. She’s drawing instead of writing. I mean really come on woman I’m the world here, not that dump pencil and iPad!
While I can insist that AJ write me, she’s really doing the drawing because of me. For lots of reasons of which one is she wants to draw well. But because she’d love to illustrate the characters in my story. And she’d love to have a sketchbook that came from me. My doodles and Journaling throughout the years. We could start out now, and have the kids journal, and then as she gets better we’ll have better ones as I’d have done, and might be doing now.
Right now AJ’s drawing shoes. Simple sketches with a blue pencil on the iPad and then going back and inking the lines with a stabilized enhanced inking pen. They are turning out pretty good. AJ is 4 shoes into the 100 she intends to draw. Maybe we’ll pick up ten different ad type shoes, and then hit those same 10 again and add shading to them? Maybe. We’ll see. Right now AJ kinda likes just the line art. And honestly she’d be more of an illustrator and not necessarily a painter. At least that’s our general consensus right now.
Drawing is a good night time thing since it doesn’t require words to come out and watching TV is very doable while drawing. Though AJ will have to figure out a way to get the source item on another screen that doesn’t timeout quickly. Her phone is set to 2 mins and she has no intention of changing that.
And The Call of the Dragon is almost past the epic fight scene between Alex and me — it’s not gonna happen. This version just doesn’t work that way. There is a lot less anger on both of our parts towards each other and what happened those five years prior between us. So yay — no fight. But that means the relationship is a bit different going forward for the rest of the story too. But that’s okay too.
-
We have one day left to write in The Call of the Dragon. And by day I mean there are two days of timeline stuff we are writing. This go around AJ is doing things a bit differently in order to keep the timeline straight. So we don’t miss days or such. AJ has used the Days as Chapters, and each scene has it’s own title. AJ will likely have to change how this works in Dabble or hack around with the export scripts to get it to spit out scene names
That means the big battle is nigh. The fight between the Dragon and me. A scene that inspired the cover of the book. We still can’t wait to reveal it to you — but marketing tool and all that.
So only a day and a meeting left. Granted it’s one full day full of plot and romance but still one day. When we get near the end AJ’s gonna give it a read through fix any major issues and send it out for an alpha read to anyone here who wants to give it a go. We will work on setting up a means for anyone interested to read and let us know what they think.
-
So me and Alex won’t be fighting much it seems. In the rewrite of what was the Last Phoenix and is now called the Call of the Dragon (cause AJ wants to actually use that title for a later book — it makes more sense really). Anyway, we are rewriting because the book was romance top heavy and plot bottom heavy. So AJ rearranged the flow of the scenes and we added in a different reason for Alex being in the City before he enters my story. And all of this has turned our conflict into more of a oooh lets make love and be in love story.
We say it’s not a romance. And it’s not we have romantic elements in it and that’s what it should be. It’s not about our romance. It’s about me goddamnit! It’s always about me. I digress. But anyway, AJ’s alpha reader has a Nox and Alex AU and I must say we are all glowing from the amount of sex we are having. (When I say we in this case I mean me and Alex…just to clarify the context).
So much sex it might send us to the hospital. Well maybe not. I doubt we could have that much sex even if I have great stamina being supernatural and all. (Yes a cheap way to use the word I know but deal!)
But now it’s on to the real world and AJ has to make me leave my domestic bliss to go hunt down bad guys and be the hero — can’t I ever just take a break? What? I’m tired of this. Aren’t you? I mean come on, it’s oh there’s a bad guy. Let me try to save him, oh wait he doesn’t want to be saved and attacks me and dies with a flick of my finger. It’s like really haven’t read the book dude! (sorry, I’m getting carried away. I hope that my newer subscribers aren’t scared away with the things they don’t know about and might be spoilers to you…. sorry. But you can read them all here on the blog. Maybe AJ will straighten out the Collections and we’ll post a few more links if anyone is interested).
-
Sorry. AJ had to get something off her chest. It’s been one of those mornings, pre 6am and getting chewed out by a customer for poorly chosen words.
It’s like come on AJ you are a writer, you should know better than to say the same thing back to the person requesting help. *le sigh*
Anyway… That was a scream of frustration on AJ’s behalf that fit well with today’s prompt lol. But it did prompt a bit of a question so there is a wall of text for others to read when they get up in the morning lol.
AJ needs to write now. We have an hour left, and it’s time to delve into the saccharine moments Alex and I have going on just to calm that adrenaline that flows when shit happens. Writing truly is AJ’s coping mechanism. She doesn’t write for you (or me) she writes for herself. And when she doesn’t you can tell — or she can anyway. (Not written proper words in a few days lol)
So we are done with the yelling. And AJ is done with the morning of support. So on to writing and then to coding — the fun part of the day.
The Mind of Nox 