Update on Curse of a Dark God

ByJohn Brown

I just turned in a 35 page chapter outline of Curse of a Dark God to my editor. This is the third iteration of the outline since December. Hopefully, at last, we have a story we can all agree on. Keep your fingers crossed.

Of course, since this back and forth has been a process of write like mad then wait a few weeks then write like mad and wait again, I’ve been working on another project during the waits. It’s a straight-up thriller.

Leon is ex-Special Forces (or an Army Ranger, but I’m leaning SF). He left the service when a colonel decided it was his job to make Leon’s life hell. He did security and a number of other things. Tried to be a plumber, but fell into bad company and then crime. And then was send to the big house and learned about a whole new theater of war. During his stay, he saw the light. Changed. He shaped up, and despite the swastika tatoos on his feet, flew straight when he got out. He had his odd jobs, but figured it was easiest to avoid all the questions and fuss that arise when you tell a prospective employer that you’re a felon. So he got himself a laundromat. Then another. Then he invested in a car wash. There’s good money in cleaning. And with the proceeds he bought himself a little ranch.

Leon’s a big man. Knows a lot about guns (although he can’t possess one), security, and crime. He lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming. On occassion, the sheriff is known to ask for his services. On more frequent occassions, the sheriff’s wife keeps trying to set him up with an unending line of women. But he doesn’t know if he’s ready for women. He doesn’t know if he’s ready for his nephew that his sister wants him to reform.

Then two old buddies from prison show up one night. They’ve got a girl with them. They need a place to stay. But it’s clear the girl isn’t there of her own accord. He figures they’re either holding her for ransom or blackmail. He’s not sure which. He knows these boys are connected to some bad men. Then his nephew breaks her free. The excons get in their car and chase after her. Leon gets in his car and chases after them. And soon he finds himself in the middle of something bigger than he could imagine.

Or something like that. I should have the chapter outline ready to go as soon as I finish Curse. I can’t wait to write it.

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  • Writing Update: Awful Intent

    ByJohn Brown

    Folks, I just finished the first draft of my working outline for AWFUL INTENT. I’m stoked. Lots of research and lots fun and sometimes maddening work to get to this point. Here’s the current version of the summary, which will change.

    Southeastern Utah. 30,000 square miles of red-rock desert and wilderness.  One of the least populated places in the United States. The perfect place to hide just about anything.

    Frank Shaw is just passing through. He was once an elite soldier, trained to see what others want to hide. Then he made some terrible mistakes and fell from grace. Except the old skills never went away: they were only heightened during his time behind bars. Which is why Frank notices the fearful woman in the McDonalds and the killer watching her. 

    Frank could move on. He’s got a life to put together and a sandwich to buy. But some things are more important than a Big Mac. Frank follows the man who follows the woman, and that one decision leads Frank to a ranch that isn’t a ranch and into a plot of awful proportions.

    When Frank and the strong female Sheriff from the small town a number of miles away discover the truth, they try to get back and call for help, but the rancher is on to them and sends a private army out to hunt them down in the wilderness. Frank and the Sheriff will need to use all their combined skills to survive. Because time is running out, and thousands of lives are at stake.

    My agent got back to me on BAD PENNY. I will be focusing on some tweaks over the next two or three weeks. Then we need to get that moving forward.

    Finally, I know some of you are wondering about the DARK GOD series. And why wouldn’t you be with my earlier post? Things haven’t been finalized. Soon, Grasshopper. Soon.

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  • Passed the 75% mark on the final draft of BAD PENNY

    ByJohn Brown

    Working on the copy edits of BAD PENNY today and passed the 75% mark to general rejoicing.

    You normal folks may now go back to work. For you passionate grammarians, my fab copy editor marked a hundred uses of “then” in my manuscript.

    No, I wasn’t having issues with the then/than confusion.  

    I was having issues when using “then” when tying two clauses together. The question: did I always have to use “and” with “then”?

    EXAMPLE 1: “Frank backed out of the parking stall then rumbled out onto Dewar Drive.”

    Was “then” naked without an accompanying “and”? Should I make it read as “Frank backed out of the parking stall and then rumbled onto Dewar Drive”?

    And if it doesn’t need the full “and,” does it need at least a comma for a miniskirt so it reads “parking stall, then rumbled out onto . . .”?

    EXAMPLE 2: “The tension ratcheted up, then Senor Zombie’s eyes slid to the side.”

    Can you use “then” as a coordinating conjunction? Or must it always be used with “and,” as in “the tension ratcheted up, and then Senor Zombie’s slid to the side.”

    I looked in the Chicago Manual of Style. I looked in Garner’s Modern American Usage. I could not find the answer. So I emailed Annette Lyon, author of There, Their, and They’re: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar From The Word Nerd.

    Saint Annette’s response:

    Your first example is correct as is, with no AND: “Frank backed out of the parking stall then rumbled out onto Dewar Drive.”

    The only time you grammatically need AND before THEN is if we’re connecting two independent clauses, because THEN isn’t one of the conjunctions that can do that. You’ll find those in a text box in the book, and they include AND, OR, FOR, NOR, YET, BUT, SO.

    The only issue in the above sentence is whether to use a comma before THEN. The current stylistic trend is to leave out the comma, so you can leave it just like you have it above. Some people balk at that and want the comma for the pause it provides. Depending on the house style guide, that may be something you can argue, or maybe it won’t be. Neither is really grammatically more correct; the comma before THEN is more of a style issue. 

    In the next example, we do need AND or some other conjunction from the list, because both sides of the sentence are independent clauses. So this would be wrong: “The tension ratcheted up, then Senor Zombie’s eyes slid to the side.”

    But this would work: “The tension ratcheted up, and then Senor Zombie’s eyes slid to the side.”

    To avoid the issue altogether, we can rephrase it. A couple of variations:

    -The tension ratcheted up when Senor Zombie’s eyes slid to the side.

    -Senor Zombie’s eyes slid to the side; the tension ratcheted up. (Semicolons replace conjunction + comma)

    Rules of thumb:

    -If you’ve got 2 independent clauses, don’t use THEN as the conjunction. Add AND or another one.

    -It the sentence has just 1 independent clause, THEN is enough by itself.

    Thank you, Annette.

    And wouldn’t you know, I opened A Wanted Man by Lee Child, and what did I see? A bunch of then’s illustrating exactly what Ms. Lyon suggested.

    “Reacher heard the roar of the shot, quieter than some, but still deafening in a closed room, and simultaneously he heard the wallboard explode above and behind his head, and then he hit the floor, knees first, then his hip, then his side, sprawling, down low behind the counter, out of sight.” (159)

    I think all I’m going to see while reading for the next while are the then’s.

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  • “From the Clay of His Heart” to be included in Year’s Best Fantasy #9

    ByJohn Brown

    More good news! I just found out that my novelette, “From the Clay of His Heart,” will be included in this year’s annual Year’s Best Fantasy anthology edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The anthology will be released in the summer of 2009.

     

     

     

     

     

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  • Update on CURSE OF A DARK GOD – just finished numba 40

    ByJohn Brown

    For those who haven’t noticed, I just finished chapter 40 of 60 on this draft of Curse of a Dark God. My original target was September 5th to finish the draft. I’m closer in my projections than I have been in the past, but I’m clearly not going to make that date. However, I’m going to see what I can do these next three weeks and hopefully pull it off by the end of September. 

    This is possible.  Author James Maxey just finished a novel of almost 60,000 words in one week. Yes, you heard that right. ONE WEEK! Here are his tips for doing this and here was his master plan when he started. I got to read his updates a few times each day. It was simply amazing.

    Of course, there’s no way I can write 60,000 words in one week. Not because I think it’s impossible. But because it takes time. James had a week off and spent like 10 hours a day at it.  I can’t take a week off.  But even if I could, I don’t write as fast as James. But hopefully I can structure things to get more time and finish it in three weeks. We’ll see. I’ve been working on this draft for the last four months and have put in about 240 hours on it, roughly 12.5 per week.  My slow 500 words per hour that I can’t seem to budge (yes, some is writing and some is revising as I go along).  I wanted to get a solid 20 hours in each week–that’s really the key–and am disappointed I haven’t managed to do this.  Of course, it’s hard with a full-time job and family and a daughter going off to college and life.  Waa, waa, waa. But I’m going to see what I can do to boost that to 25 hours per week for the next few weeks.  The good thing is that I’m really enjoying the story on the page.

    As for manuscript size, the issue with the last draft, right now the manuscript is 123,000 words. The target is around 170,000. I’m roughly on track to hit that. I’m trying to keep my chapters around 2,500 words.  We’ll see how close I get.

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  • Faithful Readers, Nominate Awful Intent for the Whitneys before Dec 31st!

    ByJohn Brown

    Awful-Intent-originalSend Frank, Sheriff Hood, and the Knitters of Death club to kick some award patootie!

    Here’s how: go to: http://whitneyawards.com/ and click “Nominate” at the top.

    Enter a bit of info and boom! But this needs to happen before December 31st.

    The Whitney Awards are open for the public to nominate books they think are great and which are written by LDS authors (this is where your voice is heard, Faithful Reader). Those books that get at least 5 nominations are read and rated by a panel of judges. The judges then send on the finalists in each category to the Academy for voting.

    Servant won an award in 2009. Awful Intent is doing well, and if the reviews piling up are any indication, it could win another.

    Please take a few moments to send Frank to kick some award patootie.

    It’s time for Frank to bring home a trophy.

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  • First draft done!!!

    ByJohn Brown

    Holy schmoly, has this been a ride. I projected the CURSE OF A DARK GOD to be 140,000 words. When I blew by that, I projected it would be 170,000. Today I just typed the last word of the first draft. It’s 230,000 words. For reference SERVANT OF A DARK GOD is 170,000 words.

    The bad news is that while I’m really happy with this draft, it IS a first draft and needs some editing. I’m also behind schedule. I hit 140k words just a few weeks after my original deadline (in March), so I pride myself on knowing how fast I can write, but at that point I had, unknowingly, about a normal novel’s worth of material left to write. Obviously, I haven’t quite figured out yet how to estimate the size of these bigger works. The problem is that instead of getting a month or even two to revise, I’ve got two days. Then I have to turn it in to my editors.

    The good news is that my editors haven’t canned me, yet. 🙂 And that they have great insight into story. And that I should have plenty of time to fix and polish this thing to make it shine. I just don’t like turning in first drafts. My goal with book three is to get back on schedule.

    Having told you my scheduling woes, I am very excited about the characters and storylines and expect readers to enjoy this as much or more than the first in the series. However, I do wish I could get this process down so that I was 99% of the way there in one draft. There are some authors who can do that. Perhaps that will come with more experience. Until then, I get to enjoy revision.

    Here are my stats:

    • 550 hours to write, from pre-draft to the end, not including thinking thinking on walks and drives and discussion time with my wife who saved me thrice.
    • The bulk of the writing was done in a 24 week period. I averaged 17 hours per week during that time. This is on top of my day job.

     For those who don’t know, an average young adult book as from 40,000 to 80,000 words. An average adult novel is from 70,000 – 120,000 words. I’m very pleased I was able to finish this monster. I might not be the fastest writer, but what this tells me is that I should be able to finish two big novels a year if I should ever be so lucky as to go full time.

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11 Comments

  1. So, John, what do you think? Are you going to shop this one around New York or are you going to put it out digitally? It sounds like it’d be a good fast read, which make it a perfect fit for indie publishing.

  2. I think my strategy will be to do both. My job as a business man is to maximize my profits and grow an excited customer base. Indie and traditional publishing offer two different methods for doing that. Both have their pros and cons. Neither comes with guarantees. But I don’t see them as mutually exclusive. I can be selling it online while it’s being shopped. If I don’t get a publisher deal that’s attractive, I stay indie. If I do, I’m happy to use that method. I really don’t care which method I use as long as I maximize and grow.

  3. Crossing my fingers for Curse! This other sounds like a great read. I’m always a sucker for bad boys in books. As always I wish you the best of luck. I finally got my boyfriend to read Servant. He doesn’t have a lot of reading time, which is why I say “finally”. He enjoyed it as much as I did!
    I hope you come back to Scottsdale to sign for us again when Curse comes out. We had fun.

  4. I should say even bad boys who are reformed. I think those hold even higher appeal because you know you won’t be caught up in something bad but there still might be something a little dangeous about them. Hey, every gal loves a bad boy. The smart ladies stick with the nice guys, but they still love a bad boy. 😉

  5. John,

    I think that’s a wise strategy! I love your thriller’s setup and premise–it seems like it would be a fine candidate for indie publishing. Also, you won’t be forgoing any present income from the novel. J.A. Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith both stress the monetary opportunity cost of not having a novel for sale while it is going through the traditional publishing submission route. This way it will be earning some money from the day you complete it.

    Another indie advantage is you aren’t bound by publisher expectation–as I understand it, traditional publishing still tends to place authors into what they consider marketable boxes (e.g. once a fantasy author, always a fantasy author). As an indie you are free to write a thriller, and let that book connect with thriller readers.

    I look forward to seeing it up at Amazon (I own a Kindle 😉

  6. John, this sounds like the plot worked up at LTUE two years ago at yours and Larry’s seminar.
    Now I just have to know, when do we find out about the pies?

  7. Dale, this one will go out under a pen name. Thrillers are just a different product and so I think it’s wise to use a different brand. As for the name, I’m still narrowing down the possibilities. I’ll probably post a list here and get feedback. Of course, going out under a penname allows me to keep the fantasy side dark, so I don’t know that thrillers would limit me with traditional publishers. Regardless, I think you’re right. No sense letting a product sit on a shelf when it can be making money.

  8. Suuuuure, you want the reformed ones, Valerie 🙂 I’m glad to hear your boyfriend liked it. And I plan on coming back to Poisoned Pen. We’ll see if it works out.

    Jon, actually it’s not. Although I am using the bit about pies. I just loved that. But there are a lot of similarities, aren’t there.

  9. This sounds awesome! A guy who knows all this stuff about guns but can’t use them–love it. Sold it to me at least.

    Also I second the motion about Scottsdale.

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