Jaime Conrad invited me to participate in the “My Writing Process” blog tour. I regularly reTweet her and her Lake Caerwych, time travel in Wales/adventure book. You can find her blog at http://jconradfantasy.com/
The blog tour requires those on it to answer four questions about their writing processes. The first asks what I am working on at the moment.
I am finishing up Attack on Thera, the third in the Theran Chronicles trilogy. I am going to add a little bit more third person POV because I am not quite happy with it yet. I am also going to write the last 1,000 words of Sid And Arthur’s Steampunk Adventure this week sometime.
Question two is how does my work differ from others of the genre?
My work differs from others in that it is very sparse, description of action and speech. My comedy is also similar with lots of witty banter. However this is not to everyone’s liking.
Why do you write what you do?
I started to write the funny stuff about 17 years ago when I began going to a writer’s circle. It was published on an esite a couple of years later. I had started the first chapter of book two but left the characters in a meteor field, (which they have always held against me.) A lot of the humour is the breaking of the 4th wall, which I found out they do in Mel Brooks films. The first film I took my wife to was Spaceballs, and there is a lot of 4th wall breaking in it.
Kendra is a Nephilim, I had a dream about him 10 years ago and always wanted to write some stories about him. Kendra and The 24 are complete and published. I have written 1 page of book 3 in the series.
The Theran Chronicles came about because of a comment on another author’s Facebook thread. Danny Kemp mentioned something about the sun disappearing and I thought The Sun Thief would make a good title for a book. I had created the role playing game ‘Victorian Adventure’ thirty years ago. When I started playing it again with my children 12 years ago the children created many characters for it. One of my favourites was Lizzie McBean, a middle class photographer. I decided to use her as the main protagonist. This means some of Lizzie’s traits mirror my daughter’s.
How does your writing process work?
I try to write 500 words a day (as long as I am not drawing or sculpting.) I usually ask myself ‘What comes next?’ I like to sit with a coffee somewhere, Starbucks, Morrisons etc, and write. I usually write in a pad or a notebook and then type it up at some future time. When I was writing a piece of flash fiction a day then I either typed it straight into the PC or on my iPad and sent it to myself as an email.
With the funny stuff I try to say something funny every 100 words. With some of the earlier books I would go back over the story and add puns etc. Now I just try to let it flow more. I have something in common with Sid the dwarf, I think I am going to lose my funniness one day!
Now I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog.
On July 14 you can continue with the blog tour and read about Cyndi Hanson and her writing processes. http://iwassociation.com/?p=2138
Cyndi says:
Variety is the spice of life. Maybe, that is why I’ve written over twenty, unique books to date; by the way, I started writing in 1991. Honestly, I prefer to write nonfiction sagas about the ‘inspiration of’ and ‘miracles in’ life but I won’t fabricate testimonies just to write another book. Plus, sometimes, my goal is to touch on a societal ill in order to provoke compassionate thought; that is why I write novels, too. While storytelling, when I’m being one-hundred percent honest, I write my nonfiction sagas as Cynthia Meyers-Hanson. If I’m telling a children’s tale, I create those books with that same name. My pen name- Sydney S. Song- is my alter ego; that part of me writes books full of half-truths.