Today marked the start of Draft 2 of The Sceptre that Trembles. Draft 2 is basically just typing the thing up and cutting out a few chunks here and there where my readthrough last week had uncovered places that needed some instant correction.
The readthrough told me that the book isn’t awful and that’s a good place to start. I mean, other people will probably find it awful but usually the writer is the worst critic. I don’t know. I’ve not met many critics and I think I’d be scared to. It does need to be funnier and quite a bit tighter, but it is a lot more action packed and twist infused than the first one so I’m hoping people think its twice as good. That’s what I’m going for…but if I have to keep doubling the extent of thrills each time then the fifth book will just be one massive explosion.
The Ring that Echoes suffered its third agent rejection last week. I’ve got three to go before I try the next round of submissions. I’m sad that people don’t want to take it on, but I’ve got to be realistic. I sent it off to places with the expectation that they’d all reject it and that’s exactly what has happened, so at least I’m not disappointed.
What will I do after that? Well, I plan to finish this draft before the end of March and then take a well deserved holiday where I hope I can at least leave the country because lets face it, its not really a very nice country to be in at the moment and certainly not one you want to be locked down in due to a mutated flu virus.
After that break I’ll be back to do Draft 3…then break again in May before doing Draft 4 and I’ll re-evaluate the whole thing again from there. Then, its into planning stages for The Dagger that Devours, and the wheels will turn again.
I hold out no hope that these books will be picked up by an agent, let alone a publisher. I just have to write them or not at all. I have also now toyed with the idea of creating an RPG based on Everyday Occurrences from the books which my son is really keen to get stuck into. I’ve DMd three sessions of D&D for him and he seems to really like it, so that’s another geek in the making. Hooray for me!
For the rest of the time I’ve been mainly watching Campaign 2 of Critical Role, which you can track down as a podcast or on Youtube if you have the time and patience for a bunch of goofs mucking about for around 384 hours and counting. I’m up to speed now and looking forward to healthily just catching up with one episode a week now.
I’m also quite hooked on The Expanse, which is the best bit of sci-fi this side of Battlestar Galactica. Its full of twists, alien viruses and political machinations and although it’s a bit tatty at the edges I really love it.
In other ‘TV that I am watching and enjoying’ news: Inside Number 9, The Outsider, Picard and The Witcher.
‘TV that I am watching for the sake of it’: Doctor Who.
‘Best album so far this year’: Caribou - Suddenly
My D&D sessions are continuing haphazardly, and I’ve amassed a wealth of rules and adventures to work through in order to scratch my itch of doing some more DMing. Sadly, while the boy is keen the wife is less so and we need to try and find a more intrepid band of adventurers to get something up and running properly. I’ll see how that pans out….bye for now!