At lunch, my co-workers and I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition. It’s been a great experience thinking about fantasy worlds again. Rather than play “The Lost Mines of Phandelvor” we branched off into a different direction.
This short story is their eight-part adventure, and now it’s part of the Village of Erb canon 🙂
So, this iBooks thing was finally approved!
On Monday I was a guest speaker at a book club for C:\anada. It was a really interesting experience to talk about the book with people I didn’t really know.
I’ll just put this here.
The covers make them look professional.
This is the first piece of concept art Ibrahim created for my Canadian techy-mystery-thriller that I’m still calling /Canada (although I’m not crazy about that title).
Spoiler: I’m not very good with last names.
Last spring, as I sat down at my desk, I found a tiny pin propped up on my keyboard. It was a small token from a team building course that my boss found tucked away in her drawer and she thought I’d like it. I didn’t know that at the time. I just stared at it, confused. Had I been secretly initiated into a special group of excelleron-ness?
Obviously the first thing I did was google the pin – followed by a quick sense of disappointment because my imagination had come up with a better, yet less-plausible, version that involved awards of awesomeness.
BUT, I liked the idea of finding something that led to a grand adventure. It sounded pretty exciting in my head. So I wrote another book. After finishing the first draft, I’ve been making adjustments, tweaks, and changes. I kinda like where it is now (almost a year since I started it).
This book follows Mckenzie Noble, an app developer in Toronto, who happens to uncover a Canadian conspiracy of somewhere-between-moderate-and-epic proportions. It starts by finding a tiny pin at her desk.
The working title so far is /Canada
So, yeah, I should probably write more about it on this blog. You know, before I get carried away and start working on something else because I’m suddenly struck by a crazy idea.
What better way to celebrate Family Day than by spending it alone reading a free book.
(200 pages later I still don’t have a title)
Back in May I started writing another book. I described it as a techy-noir-mystery novel set in Canada. I worked on it through most of the summer and in the fall took a break as I did life-things like move into my house, decorate, and cook. I’m domesticated.
Anyway, picking up where I left off in the winter, I finished the first draft tonight! Just now! These are the first few words I’ve written since completing the last page. I still don’t have a title though. That part is kind of annoying. I want to call it /Canada but I feel like that doesn’t mean anything. And for an ebook it’s a bit of a URL nightmare.
Once I figure out the title I’ll let you know…
Now that the first draft is done I can edit, edit, edit. Any interest in reading it to let me know if it’s good?
(Bonus! The US version contains words with a significantly higher concentration of the letter U)
Or you can always read Chapter 1 and make up the end.
OH! And send some love to Ibrahim who did a fantastic job on the front cover!
So this is a thing I did just now: Harper Voyager Submissions
Harper Voyager is holding a two-week send-us-things-you-wrote open submission. Even though they said it was just for UK, Australia, and the US, this is one of the few times I’ll think of Canada-land as America-Junior and cross my fingers that my combination of words ending in “our” is UK enough and my location is US enough to be included in the process.
It took two hours to write the synopsis and the query letter. Never have I felt more like an amateur since I needed to look up both of them. And after spending HOURS on them, I am immediately paranoid that I put in an incorrect email address.
Send me a confirmation email damn it!
It always bothered me that I have so much trouble condensing The Village of Erb into a short synopsis. I’m never sure if that’s because it’s a story with too many ideas, or I just love it so much I can’t objectively look at the whole picture without feeling like I’m skipping page 3 in chapter 7.
I expect the open submission will get 9 billion submissions so I still plan to e-release once Ibrahim has a front cover for me (which I’ve been told will be soon-ish)
Shiver me timbers indeed – why is it so cold today?
I haven’t done any writing since my holidays in August. Mainly because I’ve been so busy with house-stuff. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a nice couch? It’s almost impossible. Anyway, on Monday I signed the final papers for the purchase and now I’m just waiting by my phone for someone to call me to pick up the keys. I haven’t really slept since signing. I’m exhausted, cold (September, what’s your deal?), and anxious. How many times can I keep checking my phone to make sure I didn’t miss their call?
Current count is 34.
On top of all that, I don’t have anything to keep me busy. I have to wait to install iOS6 because I just know people will try to call me while I’m in the middle of an update. Everything I own is pretty much in a box. Including warm sweaters (Seriously, September, what the hell?). I feel like I should go look for a couch or kitchen utensils I probably don’t need just to keep myself busy.
Somewhat related side note: where can I get a reasonably priced lemon zestor?
Call my phone house-people!
I’ll have pictures to post when I have furniture inside. Although without a couch I think empty-concept is the new open-concept. Think about it. Furniture just gets in the way. You really want space? I’ll give you echo!
happy talk-like-a-pirate day!
Andrew Vecchiarelli 