During my research I came across this documentary on the History of the Renaissance with Peter Weller – this was kind of a fun circular thing as I am researching history for my scifi series and discover that Robocop is an Art Historian! Or rather the actor that played the original RoboCop went and got a PhD in Art History and now does programs for the History Channel 🙂
Actually July does tend to involve camping for us as a family as I work at a lot of music festivals etc… but I am actually talking about my camp nanowrimo writing challenge!
So far I have split the Punk in Pink – my first nano novel from 2009 into two – the futuristic part now being The Punk in Pink (PIP) and the historic Tudor setting part is now The Punk in Brocade.
I’ve also written a prologue which is also the bridge in time between Punku’s role in 15th Century France to her role in 16th Century England.
Obviously I am re-writing a bit as well – part of this is to fill in the fore and back shadowing of the story and part is also corrections and making things more vivid for the time period as I have spent a lot of time now reading around and researching the various time periods and the people that Punku becomes and how.
I have not yet managed to do anymore work on this years Nano project Tides but that will come 🙂
Yep, I’m at it again – Camp NaNoWriMo is a month long writing drive that is a spin off of the main National Novel Writing Month. With camp you tend to choose your own word goals and things.
I did the April one where I started working on Tides – which is my main focus of all the nano stuff this year. As always it is based in the Punks Universe and this particular one actually does contain Punku who is the main character. However, I always have a second project and this month that happens to be sorting out my first ever Nano novel – The Punk In Pink.
The Punk In Pink was the reason this blog was actually set up and I have tried to document the creation process, initially I was pouring out the naked as I write stuff on here but it became apparent that the universe was so big and complex that storyline shifts might have to be made. I have still tried to add notes and creative how too, and things like biogs of characters.
Anyway – what I am actually up to is revisiting that first novel and trying to make it ready for the 2019 roll out!
First thing this involves is splitting the story – it had been one chapter in the future and one in the past but it is just too long for that to work and I think it is a good structure to write the series in as it helps concrete the time line. It is not however a good way to read the story so I’ve extracted the Tudor period chapters. And it is those that I am going to publish first as a) it is the most complete of my story arcs that actually contain Punku and b) it is were I started this adventure.
This does leave me with a title issue – the pink bit of the title refers to Punku’s environment suit that she wears in the future – so it is no good for the Tudor stuff. All of the stories with Punku as the focus of the story are Punk In Something and the Tudor era is renowned for it’s brocade so I have gone for The Punk in Brocade rather than a colour.
Also there is some reworking needed as without the futuristic chapters I need to lay some more ground work to show that she is long lived and obviously from a high technology background. I’ve also need to write a second prologue as again the prologue really belongs to the chapters set in the future – these will remain as The Punk In Pink.
Having said all of this I’d better get going with that actual writing marlarky had I not!
This is some of the music that I am writing to at the moment 🙂
This is one of the Youtube music mixes that I am using to write to at the moment 🙂
June contains National Flash Fiction Day here in the Uk and so I am kind of writing flash fiction this month – kind of… well actually no what I am doing is taking the story starters booklet I made of the first 100 story starters I posted on Magenta Monster and writing from them. I plan to write at least a page from each starter but making each story be based in the Punk’s Universe. Some of the stories will naturally come out as Flash Fictions (under 1000 words) and some will be short stories, other novel extracts from pieces that are already in progress and yet others may well be ideas for new novels.
This is part of how I world build and pin down the timelines and who’s doing what and when. It helps me work out how the technologies and biologies all work and the internals of the societies etc…
Feel free to use the story starters yourself! They are great for getting you writing again if you’ve been struggling and sometimes I find doing little short bits like this helps sort my brain out ready for the bigger projects 🙂
Tides is a series set in the near future where disease, war and global warming have driven people to the waves. Living in floating communities – often with scarce resources they are in perilous balance.
The series covers the hardships that shape these communities as they form the seasted nations, including the pirates and mega conglomerations such as The Corp, including the satellites, hangers on and the various over lapping combinations of all these factions groups roaming the global oceans.
Structure so far is 3 books at about 300, 000 words each. Themselves broken down into 100, 000 slim novels that I will probably release as 10, 000 word novelettes if they can stand alone.
It is set in my Punk Universe and crosses over heavily with The Punk In Pink, and The Zombie Quintette as well as the short story A Wanting For Grass and Sea Farm.
The Janus Chronicles document the stories of Jonathan, a programming and technology geek who becomes a powerful business man thanks to buying bitcoins as a bit of a joke as a young man. Unlucky in love, he non-the-less has a big heart and always tries to the best he can.
Having a rocky childhood he finds himself entangled with the “elders”, a strange race of long lived other humans, that not only pre-date but made our version of humanity. Jonathan himself finds that he is not ageing normally but is highly depressive in nature and has a bit of a jesus complex, this leads to multiple adoptions and other acts that complicate things, though he is actually a nice, caring person.
Janus is his internet and gaming handle and is named after the good of doorways or new beginnings.
The Janus Chronicles follow his life through the medium of graphic novels or comic books.
Taking us through his childhood and initiation, into The White Tower and Promethius series and beyond into his virtual worlds.
As April approaches it is time for me to start planning my CampNano project. April used to be reserved for Screnzy which was a script writing frenzy along the lines of National Novel Writing Month but they have since just merged it all into the main site and then split it off as a camp. The Nano Camps are extra writing challenges where you can set your own writing goals and belong to small little closed groups on the forum known as cabins.
So what am I planning?
Well I am still recovering from a head injury I sustained about 2 yrs ago so can’t binge write in the way I used to but there are still ways!
The plan… poetry, graphic novel and then a new Punk Universe epic which will be the series I’ll do for the other writing challenges during the year too 🙂
So first off… poetry.
April is a month that I traditionally do a Poem A Day challenge. What I actually aim to do is spend 30 hours through out the month working on my poetry! The results and efforts can be found on Turquoise Monster.
Secondly there is Screnzy… now this I use to produce the story board/scripts for my graphic novels. The aim is 100 pages of script – again what I am actually doing is spending 30 hrs on my graphics stuff. This is mainly the graphic novels set in the Punk’s Universe but also includes the visuals for a roll playing game book and my other zines and illustration works. The priority is the initial 100 pages though. I have not yet decided exactly what the graphic novel will be this year but I have a few ideas!
Third there is novel writing time!
And I have picked the apocalyptic part of the future where the Earth is in chaos from zombies/plague, global warming, financial greed and nuclear war. It is as always a series and is known as Tides.
It is primarily about how the early seasteds survive and how they come to be established as major powers by the time The Punk in Pink is set.
I have started preparing for it by reading and researching, it weaves in the doomsday predictions etc… and actual potential consequences of global warming.
I like setting a mood when I am writing – finding this collection good for writing too 🙂