Updates to Web Site

I have just spent some quality time updating my personal website.

http://jefferyedoherty.googlepages.com/





The site is a place where I can showcase some of my work. It is split into two sections, WORDS and PICTURES.

WORDS is where my children's writer persona lives and PICTURES is where I keep my art gallery pages.

It is easy to display my art on the internet but much harder to do so with my writing. Posting stories on the net is technically self-publishing in an electronic format. This could cause major problems when trying to negotiate sales of those stories to publishers. I have however added some short excerpts from several of my writing projects.

I have also added some new paintings to my galleries.

Drop by and take a look.
.

NaNoWriMo - Winner

50,349 words!


I was actually doubtful that I was going to make the challenge this year. I kept up there with the daily word quota but I was hoping for a couple of 3000 or even 4000 word days to get me over the family holiday and 21st Wedding Anniversary that also fell in November. I had to take the laptop on holidays with us but I did scrape home with a win.
.
The most surprising thing this year, I was planning to work on three junior novels in a series, planning for about 24,000 words each. I was hoping there was enough story in each book to reach that length. After 50,000 words, I found I still have about 5000-6000 words more to do to complete the storyline for the first book. (It will be shorter than that once edited).
.
The other cool thing is that I came up with a surprise ending, much better than the one I planned. The characters just led me there. Now, it's time to put the story away for a month or two and finish editing my Chapter Book - 'Paper Magic'
.
Next year, I'm booking our holiday in some other month. November is not for lounging by the pool. It's for writing. 9Actually, every month is for writing but November especially.

.
.

NaNoWriMo - Week One

NaNoWriMo Week One

Ok. Week one of (NaNoWriMo) National Novel Writing Month is over and I am sitting at this moment on a respectable 12699 words. This is despite the fact I have just come back from a wonderful 21st wedding anniversary weekend away with my wife.

Now it’s time to get back to writing. In 2007 and 2008, by this time into the challenge, my stories were starting to take strange, unplanned turns.

I found out about NaNoWriMo toward the end of October, 2007 and entered the challenge with the simple image of the main character returning home from the cemetery where he had put flowers on his dead girlfriends grave. She had been killed a month earlier when a drunk classmate ran her down in a car. On the way home, he meets his girlfriend who begs him to help her save the boy who killed her. I had no other ideas about the story and basically explored what happened next to explain her appearance. The seat-of-the-pants method was quite fun but the final product, though it had some interesting concepts, was a complete confused mess.

I planned a little more in 2008 and did much better. Thanks a lot to the book cover art I created as an inspiration to keep writing. I still use it as my desktop graphic. It’s also the main reason I want to try and break into the book cover design industry. 2008’s effort was much more cohesive, but still ran off on several tangents that took me away from the story I envisioned.

This year, not only am I on track with my word count, I am on track with the story too, without the problem of losing the freshness of the story by over planning. There have been a couple of surprises for my with the story, some interesting new characters who have turned up out-of-the-blue and two of my bit part characters seems to have pushed their way to the front of the stage. But the main storyline is still true to the plan.

The above picture is of Clang, one of the bit part characters. He was an AI computer program placed inside a robot cat. Clang decides he likes being a cat a little too much and conveniently loses his vocal programming and now only obeys the commands he wants to obey.

This year I didn’t set out every scene in the outline, I picked the major plot points of the story and made signposts to use as a guide. I know I have to get the main character from where he is to the next signpost and I work out what events would believable get him to that point. It seems to be working and I have come up with some interesting events I couldn’t really have planned in advance.

Interesting times, but enough of this for now, I’m going back to my writing. I’ll post another update next week.

NaNoWriMo Preparations

.
I like to have a good image in my head of the characters I'm developing for my stories and books. This years NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) effort is a young adult Science Fiction / Mystery / Adventure titled 'Strangeway's Mind Ship'. I decided to introduce two Alien races to the story. This is an integral part of the novel because the main character, Horatio Hornblower Strangeway (a human) is a part of the first Space Service Academy class to accept alien and modified human cadets to the Officer Corp. The growing Purity Faction is opposed to this decision.
.
So in a round-a-bout way, the novel will deal with issues of prejudice, intolerance and fear, but the main theme is about the choices we make and the consequences of those choices.

.
I’ve never designed an alien before but I thought it would be cool to have a race, evolved from a creature similar to Earth foxes. I wanted the Vorpal to be bi-pedal and more humanoid than vulpine but still have a distinct Fox-like appearance.
.
I thought the best way to get the image in my head was to draw a picture of Vix Sorrell, one of my main characters, and a Vorpal character to boot. They do say, ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’. I had a heap of fun painting her. She is not at all like I first imagined her but I think I like her better now.
.
These aren’t my only preparations for this years NaNoWriMo. I have been plotting out the major events in the story. This is my Sign Post Method of plotting. In the past, I’ve tried winging it and writing the story to see what happens – NOT really a success for me. I end up getting sidetracked and lost and giving up on the idea. And I’ve also tried doing detailed outlines of every scene but found the story lost it’s freshness as I tried to colour between the lines.
.
For this novel, I’m trying something in the middle of those two extremes. I have started to map out the major plot points along the way. These will be my Sign Posts to keep me on track – or at least help me find my way back to the path – but I will still have the creative freedom to tag along behind my characters and write about the things they get up to along the way.

.

.

Great Books Week - Friday

.
Friday:

When I want to give someone a special gift, I give them [name of book] because…
So here goes…

OK. This is another one of those difficult questions to answer.

It really depends on the person.

My wife is three quarters of the way to becoming the Mad Cat Lady so if I buy her a book, she gets a CAT book. In fact, the last three books I bought her were; 'Dewey - The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World' by Vici Myron, 'What My Cat Has Taught Me About Life' by Niki Anderson, and 'Cats' by Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

.

My oldest son is a mad Star Wars Fan, so when I buy books for him, they are the latest titles in the many Star Wars sagas.

.

But, I think this question is about, if you had to pick just one book to give as a gift - what would it be.

.

So if I have to choose, it has to be Jay Asher's 'Thirteen Reasons Why'

.

I blogged about this book earlier in the year. About why I think it is such an important book and why I believe it should be mandatory for all high school students to read.

I would hate to be in Jay Asher's shoes. For a debut novel, it is definitely going to be hard to top.

.

The novel deals with teen suicide and taking responsibility for your actions. Clay Jensen, a high school student receives a mysterious package containing seven audio tapes from Hannah Baker. Only Hannah committed suicide two weeks earlier. The tapes contain her recorded message to the thirteen people responsible for the thirteen reasons why she killed herself. Clay is devastated to discover he is one of those reasons.

.

The book is a transcript of those tapes and Clay's reactions to them but it is written as a mystery for the reader to work out along side Clay.
.

.

.

Great Books Week - Thursday

.

Thursday:

I hated … when I had to read it in high school, but when I read it on my own later, I loved it because….



Sorry, but this is not a question I can answer. There were plenty of books we were forced to ... read ... while in high school that certainly fit the category. However, I have never even contemplated revisiting any of them to check if I still hate them.



It might be an interesting experiment though. If I had to choose one book, the one I hated the most, it would have to be Wuthering Heights.



Usually, I liked books that had movies based on them. Armed with a little skimming and the video fresh in my mind, I found I could cobble together a more than passable book report - as long as was careful not to mention any of the actors names in the report. Once bitten...



Wuthering Heights was the exception to the method. I loathed the movie even more than the book. I made it fifteen minutes in before I turned it off.


Visit the original Great Books Blog Tour blog post located on the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors (NAIWE) web site.


http://news.naiwe.com/2009/10/03/great-books-week-blog-tour-october-4-10-2009/
.
.

Great Books Week - Wednesday

.
Wednesday:
.
I’d write my autobiography, but I don’t need to, because my story has already been told in…

.

The only book I could come up with that resembled my story is Peter Maas's, Serpico.
.


Not because I worked Vice or Homicide in my cop days and not because I discovered rife corruption in the force or had fellow cops wanting me dead...
.
I do however feel a strong affinity with Frank Serpico - morally and ethically. My integrity ended up being my downfall in the Force.
.
I joined the police to help people and it was a career I thought I would spend my entire working life. I strongly believe I did help people along the way and there were many positive things to come out of my 21 years as a Police Officer.
.
But there were bad things too. Lots of bad things.
.
I don't sleep well most nights. There are things inside my head I don't want to see again but when they are on the inside, you can't close your eyes.
.
In the end, my bosses - through their petty minded interference and politics - made my life so miserable when I refused to compromise my integrity and tow their version of the line. A line, that did not include helping the people that needed help the most.
.
However, on a brighter note, I'm doing much better now. Those little angel figurines with no faces don't freak me anymore - well not completely. And I have nights now when I don't dream...
.
.