Tag Archives: new release

State of the Mind: June, 2014.

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… *sharp whistle*. It’s been a stupidly long time since we did a State of the Mind address, hasn’t it? Well, let’s crack some knuckles and get on with the show.

~

So, what has been happening? Well, I got out of my self-induced lull and have been busting keyboard keys trying to get new works out there. Enough so that it’s actually beginning to drive me insane with the workload.

Back on May 18th, I began work on the new version of Under a Falling Sky. I set a deadline of having (at the very least) the first 60,000 words of a first draft done by July 1st. To help track it, I wound up making spreadsheets and everything to help it along.

I’ve been, for the most part, keeping steady with the estimated requirement (1,364 words-per-day). There have been scenes that have slowed me down to a crawl, or nights where other things wound up interfering with the time I set aside for writing. At the same time, there have been weekends and days where I can make up the difference. Thus, I am still on-track to have that first 60,000 done on time.

Why 60,000 words though? A novel is classified as starting at 50,000 words, with average sci-fi novels running an average of 80,000-100,000 words. I figured that if I could get above the minimum done by July 1st, I would be on solid ground.

At the same time, while writing it, I’ve been making notes about scenes and characters to add, dialogue and interactions to better show off, or even marking where existing scenes will need severe re-writes.

–

Words I am living by.

Words I am living by.

–

Now, why July 1st? Well, that actually leads into some news that I am excited to talk about. In the next couple of months, a flash-fiction story of mine that was accepted by Fireside Fiction Company will be published in an upcoming issue. I’m still working on the exact date (I had originally heard the July issue), but I will let you all know when it comes time for release or as it becomes available.

I wanted to make sure I had something well on the way to being roughly completed by the time that story releases. Try to capitalize on any hype and all of that, show that there was something on the way and that I wasn’t entirely sitting around on my ass.

What this schedule has done is obliterate any and all free time I had. Days are spent at the day job, I squeeze in about an hour of R&R, and then I move straight on to writing through the night. It’s tiring, and it’s made me appreciate weekends all that much more (cut out the day job part for a couple days, more time for R&R), but I can’t deny the progress that has been made.

I’m slightly behind where I should be at the moment, sitting at 25,000 words when I should be at 26,000. Over the span of (roughly) 2.5 weeks, I’ve managed to pen half of the bare-minimum for a novel draft, which is good progress in my mind.

However, the progress doesn’t stop there. I am also currently working on a piece of flash fiction for another magazine submission. I have the story mapped out in my head, though I will likely have to cut parts off like it’s going out of style to condense it to fit (1,000 word-cap). I am looking forward to seeing how that goes, but if nothing else, I want it out of my head and onto paper.

What this all has done, outside of create a mountain of work, is limit my time for entertainment. Lone Survivor, which I saw in theaters and loved, came out and I haven’t had a chance to see either it or RoboCop yet. I’d normally watch it this weekend, but I am reserving that time for gaming and watching Edge of Tomorrow.

As far as gaming goes, I have a back-log of games consisting of A) more WildStar, B) more Watch_Dogs, C) Murdered: Soul Suspect, D) more Transistor, and E) wanting to go back and play the Freespace games. Yeah, not like I’m keeping track or anything.

Now, you might have noticed WildStar on that list. I have been playing since the head-start (though only level 17 due to time limitations), and have been enjoying the hell out of it. It has its own comical, action-y charm to it that soaks me in. Well, that and the (awesome!) player housing.

If anyone reading this is playing the game, you can go ahead and add me. I am currently playing on “Orias [NA]” as Exiles. My main character is “Ashayl”, though you can add my account nickname of “Darrow”.

What can I say, I tried to keep it simple.

So yes, that’s where we’re at for the moment. I’ll keep on working on Under a Falling Sky, along with work on the other project. I’ll also try and keep my sanity with some R&R, though I really can’t promise that. Until I see you guys online (or on Nexus in WildStar), see you around.

~ James.

In the aftermath…

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It’s been just over a week since Blood in the Machine launched. I think now is a good time to sit back for a second and look at how things have cracked up.

It’s been borderline chaos, what with having to set things up and reorganize things in the wake of it all. Having to get in touch with Goodreads and get my account enrolled in the author program, contact M.S. Fowle (who did the cover work) and request an Author’s Spotlight (of which I am quite thankful for and can be found here), learning the Kindle portals and tools, etc. There’s been a lot of figuring things out.

At the same time, this website has also undergone a bit of a change. The Veil‘s release announcements are gone, a section of the article pages have been trimmed down, things a bit more organized on the menu to the left, and other changes.

It’s almost like cleaning up your house, which is normally a pig-pen, when you learn your distant family is coming over. Everything’s awkward, nobody really knows each other, and the host is trying to impress everyone he can while shoving old trash under the rug.

So, how has the launch gone? Outside of being chaotic, it’s been rather interesting.

The number of copies that have been sold has been above expectations. Then again, when you set you expectations for your debut solo piece to be 2 (one for each living parent), it’s easy to be pleasantly surprised.

We aren’t breaking big numbers here, but when you factor in how I’ve joined this race (an almost non-existent following, a completely unknown name, not much knowledge to draw from, etc), it’s quite surprising. There’s even our first review on GoodReads, something that made me smile both when I saw the sign that it was there, and also when I read it.

I think, however, what I’ve learned will definitely help expedite the process in the future. I know more about how and who to approach for artwork, edits, and so forth. The only thing that should be holding me back should be my own pace.

This doesn’t mean that I will suddenly break out and start shoveling half-baked stories out into the Kindle marketplace, don’t worry. I’m someone who gets incredibly paranoid about whether a story is good enough to stand on its own.

As for what’s next on the writing list, we’ve got the continued chapters with The Veil, and I am making headway on Beyond the Rift, though I hold some doubts on it.

With The Veil, we’re getting closer to the end, something for which I am thankful for. It’s not that I hate the story as a whole, it’s more that I see an insane amount of ways that it should have been designed differently. This version of it will definitely not be the final form of it, a re-write will be on the list of things to do.

Given how broken and fractured it feels, hiding it on the website for some time after it ends is a tempting prospect. I’m not entirely sure if I will or not, so if you want to voice your thoughts on it, go ahead.

As for Beyond the Rift, it’s definitely a first draft. There’s some fluff that needs to be cut out from what I’ve written, of that I’m sure. However, I think the foundation for a decent story is there, so it’s just a matter of trying to pry a good story out of it. It’s definitely not in nearly as bad of shape as The Veil is in.

For other stuff besides those two, I am actually looking at Salvaging Life, my former submission to Clarkesworld. Since it’s free of any word limit, I have some ideas of what I want to do to it. I’m going to start jotting down some notes to remind me, but I’m curious to see what I could do with it.

Firs thing I could do would be finding a better name. After that, expanding it drastically so I could make the plot grow and feel more natural. Maybe it’s just me coming down from the release last week, but it feels like the kind of story that Blood in the Machine started out as. That in mind, it makes me wonder if I can grow it into something more, something akin to how BotM came out.

Before that, however, a friend of mine has pointed out a couple continuity errors with Blood in the Machine that I will see about getting rectified with his help. After they are dealt with, I’ll upload the new version of the story as a soft-update on Amazon.

Once that is all said and done with, it will be back to the grind. I had let my writing schedule slack just a bit due to the release week and relaxing from it, but I’ve gotten back on track. 500 words a night at a minimum is a fairly easy goal to hit, yet it keeps me productive with time on my hands.

We’ll see how it all shapes out, but I’ve definitely got my hands full for a while. Then again, given how my mind spins things and how I work, I’ll have my hands full for another twenty years. Until the next time, however, enjoy the show.

~ James.

Releasing the machine, and the days to come.

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It’s finally happened. You all knew it was coming, that you all should have run in fear, but you didn’t. For some reason, you crazy people actually stuck around.

I’ve gone insane Blood in the Machine is now available on the Kindle store.

Yup, that’s right, I spent all weekend (Literally all of it. Where did the fun go?) working on the post-production for this piece. Now it’s ready and available for everyone to take a look at, so my stressing can begin.

Want a look at the overview and cover, yet don’t want to click the store link? Fine, I’ll oblige.

“The year is 2022. Poverty has run rampant in the aftermath of war. First-world nations now receive support from various aid groups. In the middle of the chaos, cybernetic augmentation has become a reality.

In trying to find a way to help support his wife, NYPD officer Alex Rowan signs onto the police security detail for the head of the world’s largest cybernetics corporation. Over the course of his week-long escort detail, his simple assignment becomes a challenge that will test how far he will go for his wife.

The first solo piece published by James Darrow, Blood in the Machine is a novella of 18,500 words in length.”

Cover art for "Blood in the Machine".

Cover art for “Blood in the Machine”.

There we have it – my first solo, commercial release. Sure, we’ve had the odd short story or two before, but this is entirely different. This marks the first time I’ve ever went off on my own and done something this massive as an actual release, both in size and in behind-the-scenes work.

At the same time, I thought it best to limit myself to something smaller than a full-blown novel. It helped focus all of the back-end work and limit costs, yet will hopefully have given me something solid to build a foundation upon.

With this release will also come some changes to how this website will flow and operate. Release announcements for chapters of The Veil will be taken down and no longer uploaded. If there is a delay in chapter postings, it will be over social media.

In short, as much as this place could be described as a blog to most people, I still want to keep it relatively well organized and clean. That means cutting some of the fat and being better about structuring the articles.

What will I be working on next, you ask? I am still working on Beyond the Rift, a scifi novel that I began in November and have made good headway on. It seems like as good of a place as any to focus on, and given the amount already done, it makes the most sense.

At the same time, I’m going to have to try and spread the word that Blood in the Machine is now a real thing that people can sink their teeth into. You know, without becoming a walking, talking billboard.

So there we have it, folks. Please, feel free to check out Blood in the Machine and help spread the word. Since this is entirely new territory to me and I’m an unknown element, I would appreciate all the help and support I can get.

I’ll be keeping busy, don’t worry about that, so the next piece shouldn’t be overly far out. Plus, given the things I’ve learned and setup with this piece, it should be smoother sailings from here. Until next time, however, I hope you enjoy the story.

~ James.

My thoughts on: R.I.P.D. (Film)

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This weekend, after having an absolutely spectacular writing streak, I went and saw R.I.P.D. Now, I have some thoughts on it that I wanted to share for those that either have or have not seen it.

I won’t include any spoilers in here that can’t be gleamed from the trailers, so don’t fret.

I saw the trailers awhile ago. I’ve been seeing them for what feels like forever. Every movie, radio-station, and occasional TV ad has been hawking this thing for eternity. I also wanted to see it. To me, it seemed like MiB meets Hellboy or Constantine. It looked bad, but in that fun way that makes me feel entertained enough to have enjoyed myself and considered it “worth it.”

So, come Sunday, I went and saw it. Overall, if I had to make a vocalized expression to surmise my feelings on it, it’d be “Eh.”

The concept isn’t a bad one: Talented, skilled cops are, after death, given the option of serving in the Rest In Peace Department to capture the souls of the dead on Earth that hide and refuse to face judgment. As part of their work, they’re made to not look or sound like themselves back on Earth so that friends and family don’t recognize them and to prevent them from, essentially, breaking the universal rules.

Not bad, right? Not a terrible concept, some room to work with, plenty of options for stories, ect.

The problem is that I just didn’t get that much enjoyment from the film. I split from the norm is that I actually like Ryan Reynolds as an actor and he plays the newly dead cop that signs up with the R.I.P.D. Even still, I didn’t really feel much attachment with the character. It wasn’t a fault of his performance, but more of where he seemed to be told to focus his efforts.

Jeff Bridges also brings out a performance as an old-school lawman, adding a nice “timeless” feel to the R.I.P.D., but it sometimes felt like he went a bit over-the-top with the character. Grant it, the setting is over-the-top in concept, but the character kinda went further.

If you also watch the trailers, you’d imagine that there’s a hefty amount of humor, similar to MiB and such. The problem is, outside of Jeff Bridges’s character and a couple passive-aggressive lines from Reynolds, the attempts at humor felt dry and forced.

It also felt like they spent too much time lingering on the topic of Reynolds adjusting to losing everything he had by dying. Yes, I know, that’s actually something that should be there, but it felt like they focused on it a bit too hard. In MiB, for example, the focus was more on “J” being the rookie who was adjusting to the agency and all of the strange things there-in. Kind of a situation where one film dealt more with the past, while the other lived in the now.

The effects and visuals were nice, though some of the Deado’s (escaped souls) were so obviously CG that the quality reminded me of watching Van Helsing (I actually like that movie, so don’t flip me that much crap) in style and effect.

I have mixed feelings on R.I.P.D. I want to like it, even having gone in expecting it to not be winning any awards anytime soon, but it felt like it spent its time focusing on the wrong points. It felt like if they’d re-assessed the story and changed it up a little, it could have been something that was much more memorable than it was.

As it is, I am left with another piece of media that had a pretty slick concept, and even a great cast, but it just let the pieces fall in the wrong pattern. It makes me feel like the parts are greater than the whole, and that actually disappoints me with it.

Who knows, maybe a second watching will give me a more favorable opinion of it when it comes out.

~ James.

Announcing: The Veil.

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Time for some fun. Well, for you guys anyway. For me, it’s fun, stress, anxiety, urgency, obsessiveness, ect. Hell, I’m even still wondering how I managed to think I could pull this off, but we’ll see.

I’m here, today, to reveal my latest project, one that you guys will be able to experience a bit more frequently than most of my pieces.

TheVeil

(That cover artwork is temporary, I assure you.)

Today I am announcing The Veil, an episodic piece of urban fantasy content that will be available for anyone and everyone to read *for free.*

So what is The Veil about?

~*~

Alec Rho is a normal guy who went camping for the weekend but woke up in the hospital after a strange series of events took place that altered parts of his body. Upon waking, his definition of reality starts to warp as he not only sees but is also hunted by demons.

Breaking ties to his former life, Alec strikes out on his own so that he can come to grips with the changes he has to endure. In doing so, he winds up becoming the prey in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse pitting him against a manipulative demon who wants him dead and a pair of FBI agents who want the truth.

With only the help of a guardian angel who treats this more as a training exercise than anything, Alec must survive the hunt long enough to try and stop it. With foes both of the Human world and from beyond, the odds are stacked against him as he tries to understand what lies beyond the veil.

~*~

I know you lot probably have some questions, so let’s bop straight into the (anticipated) Q&A then, just to get the details hammered out in a slightly stylish manner. It also lets me throw out lots of details and plans without looking like I’m giving some scripted speech from a podium.

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Question: What does the title mean? How does a veil play into this story?

Answer: The Veil, in terms of in-story narrative, is the barrier that shields Mankind from the creatures (Demons and Seraph) on the other side. That said, it’s more akin to something that blocks one from noticing them, rather than stopping them from interfering with us. As such, it’s similar to a veil, and thus the title.

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Q: I’ve been a longtime reader of yours and am familiar with this story. Why the balls should I care about you re-doing it?

A: If you’ve been with me for that long, you know just how bad this story was the first time around. Horribly (and I do mean horribly) constructed, long sequences with nothing happening or things happening for little to no good reason, ect. The very first version of this story, written about three years ago now, was a damn train-wreck.

This time around, that won’t happen (as badly). Between the time that’s passed by, the works I’ve published, and the feedback I’ve gotten, The Veil will be something to be proud of. The pace will be fixed, the characters will have more meaning and personality, and Alec will be less passive and at the whim of everything around him.

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Q: You could have just made a new story, rather than recycle your old idea. Why are you bothering us with this?

A: Plain and simple, this is a story that I’ve never been able to let go of. Even over a year after I mothballed the story concept, it’s still something that constantly nags at my thoughts and demands for me to tell it. At the same time, hardly anybody ever saw it back in its original form, so it’ll still be fresh and new content for many members of the audience here and now.

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Q: Okay, fine, but what makes this a serial project rather than just another novel?

A: It was brought up as an idea that I introduce some new free content on this site in order to give a taste of my style, along with try and draw in new readers. I figured what better way than try and release a piece of content that readers both old and new can look forward to at set times.

To that end, I’m aiming at 12 to 15 chapters which will be written every week, examined and given a read over on my end, then posted online every Wednesday (starting on 6/19). Think of it as an extended, more polished version of NaNoWriMo that you all get to see the results of on a weekly basis.

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Q: Dude, you don’t have the best track record for an attention span or releasing material on time. Why should we be anticipating that you’ll actually stick to this time schedule?

A: This type of rigid timeline should hopefully allow me to focus myself better. If I am analyzing myself correctly, I’ll likely have the first draft of a chapter written in the first few days. That should allow me to spend a couple days on edits and revisions, then to continue my work on other projects as well.

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Q: So, wait, what’s getting stuck on hold for this? You’ve obviously gotta be sticking something on the back-burner so you can do this project.

A: Nope, everything remains on track. This is entirely in addition to the other projects and work I currently have, so you’ll miss nothing and gain something new.

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Q: You said before that you’ll release this as a paid thing after you finish. That mean you’re gonna just post up a chapter and yank the previous one down so nobody can access them later on?

A: That’s not how this will work. You’ll always be able to read The Veil on this website for free, no chapters excluded. Hell, once the story is completed and it’s edited by a third party, I’ll go back and post up the newer versions of chapters for free as well. I want you lot to be able to see and experience this story, in full, for free at any time.

The paid option you’re thinking about is a premium option for this story. It’ll be up to you to decide to read it on your kindle or phone using the app, get the bonus material, or just decide to contribute. What it’ll be is the story in a completed and edited form, as on this website, complete with cover art, some material that takes place directly after the story but doesn’t affect it, and other things as I imagine them.

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Q: So how do we read it? WordPress has pretty shitty formatting for actual story content, and I don’t want to be arsed with a dozen individual file downloads.

A: Right now, I’m looking at using Google’s Drive system to host the chapters individually. That way, you can just read them straight off the web without too much hassle, yet it still retains proper formatting.

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Q: Let me guess, you’re gonna charge $10 for the premium version because you can.

A: Nope, I’m gonna charge the lowest possible amount (99 cents) because I can.

Q: Bullshit.

A: Cry moar.

Q: You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?

A: Quite a lot.

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Q: This sounds like you’re gonna get a bit preachy with your story, can I take this to my Sunday Service and recommend it?

A: You’ll probably get a few strange glances if you do. Make no mistake about it, this is straight-up fiction, not the, “God saves All,” kind. We’re talking about violent deaths, the ruining of lives, the effects of violent zealotry, ect. Hell, even the Seraph (think Angels) aren’t exactly lining up for their photo with Hallmark. The Veil takes some concepts used in modern day religions, but it’s more of my spin on those elements in my style of story.

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So there you have it, folks. The Veil is a reality and it’ll be coming your way sooner than you might have thought. The versions that get posted online, along with that cover art I posted earlier, are not final versions. If you want to contribute to this project in one way or another, feel free to send me an email at james@jamesdarrow.com.

Until next time, it’s best I get cracking. Just when I thought I could have my week-nights back…