This one is a little lighter in tone. Well, I hope it is. I’ve only just started writing it and so I’m not aware if its yet to turn into something flippant or morose. It’s started flippant – lets see how it continues.
Draft 4 of The Ring that Echoes is nearing completion. I’ve shaved off roughly 3000 words so now down to 66,109 but that includes the table of contents and thanks and stuff like that so it’s probably less than 66,000 for the actual story. It’s felt a little scary to remove this much but the sentences fly so much more now. I had to remove two jokes that just became unnecessary, which is a little sad. There are still plenty of others (including my favourite ever kids joke that I’ve written) and I’ve managed to include poo, bum, willy, fart and wee so I have high expectations of this becoming a literary classic.
In reading it through again I’ve noticed my influences a little more. Both shades of The Golden Compass and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe appear (for the latter, this was more deliberate). Harry Potter looms large although I’ve tried my best to stealthily avoid direct comparisons and the language and tone are quite different. There is a smattering of Pamela Butchart (which dissipates rapidly after the first chapter) and the horror aspects of James Herbert and several ‘Classic’ Doctor Who stories pop up from time to time. All in all…it sounds like me so it must be me.
So now I’m at the point of wondering what to do with it next. In terms of my writing, I’ll be headlong into research for Book 2 (The Sceptre that Trembles) in a couple of weeks. I just need to polish this one a bit more and get it into a shape where I feel confident enough to let other people look. I’m getting the boy to provide further feedback, which he does so grudgingly. He doesn’t really want to hear it again until its published. I’ve told him that if he wants his name on the cover then he’ll need to do the work. In fairness, he’s ridiculously good at pointing out the flaws.
I had an incredible moment of serendipity today. I was trying to think of a logo for Everyday Occurrences (they’re an organisation in the book). My simple idea was to use e and o in conjunction but I wanted something more than that, so I looked online for symbols representing death. I found the Greek one of Theta Nigrum, which looks like this:
I mean…how strange is that? I got what I wanted and with some meaning behind it too.
I then spent quite a while trying to come up with a better name than ‘Necromer’ which hadn’t been used anywhere else. Quite a number seemed to have been dreamt up for World of Warcraft, but I got there in the end.
I’ve rambled a bit, sorry. Going back to my previous thought…what do I do with this book? Do I self-publish it? Do I try and find an agent? Do I just show it to a few people, get annoyed by the feedback and curl up into a foetal position for the rest of the summer?
I’ll have to do something. Will keep you posted…