So, here's a few funny things.

I write a lot. I don't post ANY of it up on here though! The problem? I spend a lot of time planning for my job (primary school teachers write a lot more than you'd think); I spend time making resources; and, the main place my writing goes, I plan, write and resource a weekly Dungeons and Dragons episode. I can't think of a better way of describing it; something punchy, hopefully ending on a cliffhanger or twist of some sort, and something that doesn't keep my players up until all hours.

I've got a partial answer to this; I'm spending a lot of time updating the Wikia for my D&D campaign. It's kind of a sleeper project. I'm hoping that I'll be able to use it to write the sequel to Poisonroot, as a resource document for the world the characters live in. Zar is proving to be far more interesting than Lyria as a country, mainly due to its capital, and I want to make sure that Trip and Victor spend some time there. Probably Lauren and Anila as well.

The Wikia is at The One Tree Wiki and that's where a lot of my writing lies right now.

As for today? It's half term. I've got a 'week off' (not really a week off, just a week when I save up all my work until the Thursday and Friday and then do it all in one big chunk). Accordingly, I've written things. The piece after the jump is totally based off an image randomly seen for about ten seconds on the deviantArt front page of a diver finding a mermaid; the prompt for the piece was a competition by the Scribblists called 'It Broke'. My immediate thought was condoms; interestingly, my wife's first thought was a slew of emo words about broken hearts and dreams etc. Anyway, the brief was entertainingly short, only 800-1000 words. I clocked in at 998. Like a boss.

Enjoy.

"It broke."

I stared at Jenick for a moment, marvelling at his calmness. Then I really looked; his eyes were a little too focused, as if willing me to accept the lie.

"What do you mean, 'It broke'? You were eight hundred feet down, oxygen leaking out; that line didn't just break." I turned the smooth air-hose over in my hands.

"What I said. It just broke. And then I swam back up to the surface." He shrugged and turned away. "No biggie."

Dungeons and Dragons

I go through phases of writing and not writing. I like to call these 'terms'. I have yet to find a way to properly integrate my work life (primary school teacher) with that of being a writer, and it bugs me. I need to make more effort.

What DOES keep me going week to week is writing D&D adventures for the party to tackle. Last time (about three weeks ago unfortunately) was a real doozy for them; someone in their party, an NPC, turned out to be in the employ of a bad guy and also lying to them the whole time; the actual bad guy is in jail; then, zombies. Lots of zombies. It was like 'zoooooooooooombiiiiiiiiiies' for a while.

We left them lying on a bridge after a tide of zombies left them. What delights will I have in store for them this Sunday?

Well, it involves a pair of miniatures I've purchased specially. That's all I'm saying.

In a way it's one of the most frustrating things; I can write D&D but I can't talk about it to any of the people involved. It would give them meta-game knowledge. So that's my wife, my flatmate and four of my best friends out of the equation. Even though one of those friends doesn't play, she's going out with (and living with) one of the players.

It's just something I have to put up with, and, so far at least, the work has not been in vain; things are continuing apace and everyone is enjoying themselves. Well, let's see if that's still the case after Sunday!

Writing and Editing

Things have been quite interesting here at home, which is primarily why I haven't been posting.

For those of you not in the know I am a primary school teacher. We had the school inspectors in last week, and this is normally a stressful event for any school worker. I'm not pretending that my stress levels were more than anyone else's, but there's a little bit of background to this one.

In the last five years of teaching, I have missed Ofsted three times. The first time I was on a week-long residential trip with my class. The second time I left the school about a week before they were visited. The third time I was essentially pigeonholed away from Ofsted for reasons not worth going in to.

This time, however, I got both barrels full in the face. We'd been 'expecting them this week' since November and they finally chose last Tuesday to make the call. They were in Wednesday and Thursday.

Now I'm not allowed to say how we did as a school until the report is published. However, that doesn't stop me from saying that, personally, I did really well. That's a kind of self-serving thing to say, but I'm speaking as someone who has never had better than a 'Satisfactory' observation before. I got a 'Good' and an 'Outstanding' from Ofsted; I floated home on Friday night on Cloud 9.

In other news, the sixth Manga Jiman competition, run by the Japanese Embassy here in London, had its awards ceremony a couple of weeks ago. Sue and I entered, and... we came second! If you look about halfway down the page, you can see my grinning mug in a dashing blue waistcoat. We were pretty pleased, and we'll definitely be entering again this year. The short story on which our entry was based can be found here. I just re-read the story and it's not as bad as I remember.

This week is Half Term; I've got a week where I don't have to teach. It's not a holiday; there's plenty to do. But I no longer have to do it under the yoke of 'are they coming next week?' It's a remarkably freeing experience.

So, today? I've come in to Central London to meet my mother and sister, and while I'm waiting I've been editing some of the trickier chapters in Poisonroot. The fight scene in the room under the root is, to my mind, a candidate for complete removal, but I'm genuinely not sure what I'd replace it with. Nevertheless, it's still there and now trimmed down and improved. I really want to get this novel published.

Trip and Victor are on their way to Fennica, and the story is on its way to completion.

Map of Zar

Bit quiet on the writing front; I'm editing Poisonroot when I can, but there's not been a lot going on.

Except...

I moved house. Again!

Anyway, the cat woke me up at 7.30 this morning (Sunday) and I decided to use the time wisely. My D&D group are journeying into Zar, and Trip's next story will take him there as well.

Some notes on Zar:

The heart of the Science and Industry College, Zar is a kingdom ruled by brothers, Iknis and Aknis Thunderheart; High King Iknis rules in Fjornik while Low King Aknis rules in Loknir. The SIC is based in Fjornik, although there are research centres all through the country.

The smallest of the five countries of Ehrian, its people tend to be short and hardy, fighting the snow and ice with the fire in their hearts. The further north you go the less inhabitable everything becomes; Fjornik, almost the most northerly settlement, is a bastion against the cold, heated by arcane technology developed by the SIC.

There will be lots of other notes about Zar as I continue to build it.

The font used is Colwell. I used Photoshop to make this.

2012 NaNoWriMo Winner

It feels pretty good to have crossed that winning-line, even if the last 2000 words were entirely world-building in nature.

I found myself left with a situation where I'd completed Poisonroot and certainly didn't want to ADD anything. I couldn't count words I edited out, so I decided to add some world-building ideas that will find their way onto this blog in good time.

However, my laptop is announcing that my time is short battery-wise, so I will simply post my stats and my winner stamp and be done with it!

I love the acceleration. I'm fairly sure I didn't write a massive chunk on Day 10, but instead failed to update it in time before midnight rolled around.

From the beginning I had flu, so that explains how far behind I was to begin with.

Towards the end: Acceleration! I was a few dozen words over the par every day from about 17 onwards, but it didn't really show until day 25.

Here's my winner's stamp!

And with that, good night!

Poisonroot - Epilogue

A text completely without swearing or sex. One with a solid story arc, a couple of slightly smaller ones, a secondary character with a viewpoint that we see occasionally and a solid set of characters.

I am fairly pleased with this. I hope you've enjoyed it. Please let me know either way! I value my readers beyond all else.

Update: Changed the names on the brothers grim. Seemed a bit awkward. Originally they were Prime, Second, Tertes, Quad and Quinary. Now they're Prime, Secundus, Tertius (still not sure on that one, but Tertes sounds too awkward and Tertia sounds like a girl's name), the recently-deceased Quadra and Quinary. Let me know what you think.

Poisonroot - Chapter 29

Oh my goodness.

It's finished. It's finally finished. Now, a corollary to that; NaNoWriMo is very much NOT finished yet. I am ahead of par, to the extent where I could, in fact, take a day off. I won't, of course; that would be stupid. But I'll be writing something completely different for the last couple of days of NaNo because Poisonroot is DONE.

The last chapter... I'm proud of it. I'm not often pleased with my writing, but Victor's character has started to change in so many subtle little ways. I think he's still a bit of a bastard under the surface, but it's more that he's starved of contact with other people, or he's deliberately starved himself. Forced to communicate daily with Trip and Lauren, things have changed for him.

Anyway. A sequel is definitely coming.

Enjoy! I know I have.

By the bye; ALL of Poisonroot is in First Draft status. The editing needs to start soon, and then it will be time to think about trying to publish this. At that point, unfortunately, all the posts will need to come down, or at least be denuded of their Poisonroot content.

So, enjoy it while it lasts. The edit won't be coming up on here to save me time, though I plan to still post on here.