Blog – Page 10 – Kit Campbell Books

I Finally Finished Draft!

Hi, squiders! We lumped all the summer camps together in a three week time period because of Reasons and it is not our finest hour.

BUT

I finally finished my draft of Book 1!

Hold on, I’m going to scroll back through and see when I actually started. It looks like I “started” in Feb 2022, which is at least when I dug up the draft and re-read it. And then I didn’t touch it again until Nov 2022, when I re-read it and went over beta comments from the last time it went through the critique marathon, and then I spent Nov-Feb doing all the prep work for the revision (I try to do the majority of the work before I start the revision, so I have clear goals in mind and know exactly what to change).

And I started the actual revision in Feb 2023.

So. 15 months. A bit long, honestly, but I think I’ve talked before about the amount of emotional baggage this particular story always brings along with it. I’ve been working on it on and off for twenty years. It is my magnum opus. Or at least the story I care most about.

(I did take April 2023 off to write a novella, July 2023 off for a trip, and just last month for another trip, so I guess it’s really like a year. Ah well.)

This is the third or fourth time I’ve rewritten it, and I feel like, this time, we’re actually getting somewhere. Almost the whole book has been run through various critique marathons (we’re on Chapter 26 there) where in general the feedback has been positive, and my critique group has also liked it (they’re through Chapter 27. There’s 32 chapters total).

I mean, there’s still changes to be made. I will run the ending through the marathon and my in-person group and make changes as necessary. But I’m also going to put together submission materials and hope that, finally, the story is ready to go out into the world.

Scary! But exciting.

Part of me wants to jump right back in and move on to Book 2 (the oldest existent draft, and hence needing the most work), but logically that makes no sense. No reason to spend a ton of time on sequels until Book 1 goes somewhere.

(The trilogy timeline goes something like:
2004-2005: First draft of Book 1
2006: First draft of Book 2 (abandoned about 20K in, story was broken)
2009-2010: Second draft of Book 1
2011-2012: First full draft of Book 2
2014-2015: First draft of Book 3
2017-2018: Third draft of Book 1
2023-2024: Fourth draft of Book 1)

But yay! It is complete! Confetti and celebrations!

So, what now? Well, submission materials. I’d like to get those done while I’m still actively thinking about the story.

Then maybe a month or two off to work on other things (new short stories?) while I start submitting.

Next on the revision slate is Rings Among the Stars, which is a scifi horror novella.

With all the Nano drama I don’t think I will be participating this year (and unless they get their act together, probably never again) but I may do a new project around that time period.

Hope you’re having a productive week as well!

Oho! (Related to the Shannara Readthrough)

Evening, squiders. Why is summer so hot? Ugh.

I’ve been reading through Terry Brooks’s Sometimes the Magic Works, which is part writing how-to and part memoir, for the past two months. It was written in 2003, and is one of the many writing books I’ve inherited from my mother each time she moves.

(I’ve just finished it, actually.)

I discovered a very interesting chapter in my reading yesterday, however. In a chapter entitled “The Word and the Void” (which is the name of the first trilogy in the Shannara series, and the one I’m currently in) Mr. Brooks talks about the dangers of writing outside the series/genre you’re known for, and he uses the Word and the Void as an example, as a separate series from Shannara.

Yet here I am, twenty years later, and the Word and the Void is included in every list of Shannara books you can find on the Internet.

So I can only assume that sometime between 2003 (when he wrote this memoir/how-to) and the publication of Armageddon’s Children (2006, the first of the Genesis of Shannara trilogy), the decision was made to include the Word and the Void trilogy as part of the Shannara universe as opposed to its own, and that the Genesis of Shannara trilogy is the bridge between the Word and the Void and the later Shannara books.

(Also an interesting note, while the Word and the Void and a few related-ish short stories are included on the lists of Shannara books and reading orders, Mr. Brooks’s own reading orders for Shannara do not include them.)

All my questions are answered. The Word and the Void books don’t feel like Shannara, and have no obvious ties to the later Shannara books, and the magic is all weird, because they were not written as part of Shannara.

I wonder what happened. Did Mr. Brooks have an epiphany that tied everything together? Was it a marketing thing, where someone was like, well, you know, these books take place hundreds (thousands?) of years before these other books, so why not just kind of shoehorn them in? They’re close enough?

I guess I won’t know for sure until I get farther in the series.

Anyway, I just thought that was interesting. See you Thursday, squiders!

Shannara Readthrough: A Knight of the Word

Howdy, squiders. Hope you’re doing well.

I’ve finally finished the next book in my Shannara readthrough (I read the last book–technically the first book chronologically–in spring of 2022. Making excellent progress, she says sarcastically.) and thought we should probably talk about it.

To catch people up, because it’s been awhile, The Wishsong of Shannara was the gateway book that got me into adult fantasy, a genre that continues to be near and dear to my heart all these years later. In 2020 (?) my spouse and I watched the first season of the Shannara Chronicles, which loosely follows the events of The Elfstones of Shannara, and I had the thought that now that the series is complete, I should read through all the books in chronological order.

You see, the original Shannara series is pretty straight fantasy. But as time goes on and you read more books, you go on to realize the entire series is actually science fantasy, with this happening on a future Earth in a post-apocalyptic time period. I read the books in the order they were published so my understanding of how this came to be is spotty.

The Word and the Void trilogy (Running with the Demons, A Knight of the Word, and Angel Fire East) act as a prequel to the rest of the books, taking place in more or less modern day, before whatever apocalypse happens that creates the fantasy world in the later books.

They’ve been…not what I was expecting, to say the least. Magic exists pre-apocalypse, though in a completely different form, and it’s not clear how we get from Point A to Point B. (None of the magic that exists pre-apocalypse seems to exist afterwards, with different magic instead, though I’m hoping that as I go through the books things will make more sense.)

A Knight of the Word takes place five years after the events of Running with the Demons, following Nest Freemark and John Ross again. The entire book takes place over a couple of days, with a few flashbacks. John Ross has attempted to renounce his title as a Knight of the Word after a traumatic experience where he failed to save children, and Nest is sent to help him realize that he can’t give it up, and if he continues along this path, he’ll fall to being a servant of the Void. (In this world, the Word is “good” and the Void is “evil,” and there’s been more or less a shaky balance between the two for time immaterial.) And if he falls to the Void, the apocalypse that is coming will come faster and so forth.

Arguably not a lot “happens” in this book. It is very much an exploration of trauma and people’s responses to such and how we choose–or not–our own identities. Aside from the occasional demon battles and a handful of other supernatural creatures (sylvans, which were also in the first book, and tatterdemalions, which are a strange conglomeration of dead children’s memories), it could be contemporary fiction in many parts, dealing with issues of today. Not that that is a bad thing. The pacing is still good and it didn’t feel like it dragged in any parts.

As someone who read several of the “later” books (chronologically), it’s hard to look at this initial trilogy and see how we get to where we’re going. There’s not a lot of threads stretching between these books aside from the characters and this potential looming apocalypse (which must come to pass at some point). No overarcing plot for the trilogy or anything along those lines.

But we persevere. Next up will be Angel Fire East. I’m not going to commit to a time period on that, because we see how that goes.

Have you read the Shannara books, squiders? Read through these prequels? Does it make sense eventually?

Halfway through 2024

2024 still sounds like a science fiction year to me. Oh well.

Sorry for the delay in getting this posted, squiders! I got back from a long trip on Wednesday. I’d originally planned to pre-write and schedule a post, but the subject I was going to post about didn’t come to be (I’d hoped to finish my revision before we left, but alas–still a chapter and a half to go), and then I thought I’d just post when I got home (*laughs in jetlag*), and then I thought I’d post Thursday or yesterday, but oof, real life is taking some adjustment.

BUT HERE WE ARE

The end of June looms, so I thought I’d take a quick look at what how I’m doing for the year versus how I thought I’d be doing.

(Oh, as for SPFBO, as of RIGHT THIS SECOND, Hidden Worlds is still in the running. Fantasy Faction, which is the blog I was assigned to, hasn’t done any cuts yet, though some of the other blogs have.)

Oh, first, in celebration of SPFBO, Hidden Worlds is free at both Smashwords and as part of the Enchanted Escapes bundle at Prolific Works, if you want to pick a copy up!

So, goals and such. They look something like this:

Finish revision on Book 1, create submission materials, submit to agents
If that gets done, work on revising my scifi horror novella (and creating submission materials, and submitting)
And if THAT gets done, revise the first book of my cozy paranormal mystery series (Not So Bloody Murder) and so on and so forth (slightly complicated by the fact that I’ll be using a penname for mysteries and also that I don’t quite know what I’m doing yet)
In non-revision goals, Turn Deep and Blue into a novella and publish it
Go back to writing RaTs prompts (one a quarter)
Finish reposting SkillShare classes and make a new one over the summer
Spend a month writing short stories
Write a new novella project

So far, we’re here:

Book 1 revision is ALMOST done. A chapter and a half, as I said above. I’m hoping to finish out the book in the critique marathon happening during July/August, work on submission materials in July, and start querying in August (or maybe September depending how the marathon is going).
Since the other revisions rely on that being done, nothing on that front. Though I am thinking of switching Not So Bloody Murder out for a different revision project. BUT LATER
Deep and Blue was published in May! It’s a weird length though, which I think is hurting sales/reviews.
I’ve done two RaTs prompts thus far, so I’m right on track (doing side characters for the Book 1 revision, so it’s killing two birds with one stone)
All the SkillShare classes got reposted, and I picked a subject for a new class (though I’ve forgotten what it was, but this is why we keep notes), which I may work on around the critique marathon here
No new stories yet but sooooooon. August, I think. The small, mobile ones will be back in school.
See above about new novella projects too.

All in all, we’re doing pretty well!

I did spend some time pondering publication earlier today. With Turtleduck Press closing, I don’t have a market for my novellas that I have control of, unless I self-publish them, which is an option. But with TDP I got two rounds of editing that anything I do myself will be lacking.

Nothing to do about it right now, and we can see where we are when I have something new ready.

How are you doing, squiders? Having a nice summer? Hitting your goals?

WriYe and Distractions

Happy Wednesday, squiders. How are you?

This month WriYe’s prompt is: Define your biggest distraction and how you deal with it.

Ha. Haha.

I don’t necessarily have a specific distraction that draws me away from writing. What I have is a mindset issue, where I self-sabotage.

The self-sabotaging is frustrating on many levels, because it stops me from being as productive as I would like, and also the things I self-sabotage with are usually stupid things that aren’t worth my time.

(Some things that I do instead of what I am supposed to be doing: scroll memes, play repetitive flash games or Minesweeper, watch YouTube, read fanfiction, color on my phone app, troll tumblr and/or reddit and/or AO3, etc.)

(Each of these activities are fine if you want to do them and/or plan to do them, but when I do them they are almost always a procrastination technique.)

Now, arguably, some of the self-sabotage does stem from me over-taxing myself. I work and I have the small, mobile ones to raise, and often I am just tired, and sometimes despite the best intentions I simply do not have the energy to do whatever creative thing was on my list.

BUT I would argue that that is not the main problem.

Another part of the self-sabotage is avoidance. Let’s say I have to make a phone call I do not want to make. (I have no idea why phone calls are so anxiety-inducing. And I’m fine with them in general, but if it’s something weird or something that may have an unpleasant aspect to it, I have a really hard time working up to doing it.) So I need to make this call, but I don’t want to, and so I don’t, but I also can’t do anything else useful with my time because I feel guilty about not making the call, and so I procrastinate the hell out of everything (and then invariably by the time I work up to the call, the place has closed).

But some of it definitely stems from from…burnout? Self-doubt, like we talked about last week? Something where I am like “what is the point, no one cares, no one likes my stories and I am never going to get anywhere” which is frustrating on its own.

Sometimes I can just power through these moods, sometimes I can trick myself into it for a short time. Timers helps (work for so long, take so long of break), as do to-do lists. It helps if I just kind of stay in my own lane and don’t look at what sort of attention other people are getting. (What is the phrase? Comparison is the death of…? Hold on. Comparison is the thief of joy.)

But, man, if people have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

How about you, squider? What’s your distraction?

The Troll of Self-Doubt

Good morning, squiders! I meant to say last week (and didn’t) that I’m going to be moving to a once-a-week posting schedule for June (and maybe July, but definitely June). Now you are aware! Hooray.

I went to two sessions as part of my writing retreat a few weeks ago. The first was on beating self-doubt, because I have run into issues where I avoid opportunities because of fear or imposter syndrome or, to be completely honest, just being tired of not getting anywhere.

The other was on plotting because I just find people’s writing processes fascinating. (A couple of interesting bits there that I might give a go, but nothing mind-blowing. Also I did think we were going to go over different ways to plot instead of just hers, so I misread something somewhere.)

The self-doubt one I went to because it felt relevant, and also there was the promise of getting trolls. (I named mine Giuseppe. Why? Who knows.) It was run by Corinne O’Flynn who in addition to being a bestselling novel is also an entrepreneur coach.

picture of a troll doll with purple hair — Giuseppe

As part of the session, Corinne led us through a thought experiment. Basically, you pictured your goal(s) on the top of a hill, but when you head toward the goal, there’s a river in the way that’s too big and deep to cross. But a little ways down, there’s a bridge.

But when you try to cross the bridge, a troll appears and blocks your way.

Corinne’s point was that the troll is a defense mechanism. It’s there to stop you from getting hurt, because reaching for your goals will expose you to failure, and maybe other bad things like ridicule or depression. This troll echoes back all your doubts to convince you to not go on.

Now, as part of the thought experiment, you were supposed to be able to talk your troll into supporting you, to change its negative messages into something positive.

I couldn’t do this part. I still have nothing. Not encouraging, whoops. Everyone else in my group did not have a problem with this so I assume it’s something with how my brain individually works.

But I did find the exercise useful, and I did come out of the session with some thoughts on how to push through my own self-doubt, and some ideas on how to increase my confidence, and a pretty good idea why I find it harder now to be as productive as I was in my 20s (basically, it boils down to being more easily discouraged now, whereas when I was younger I hadn’t really faced any criticism or failure when it came to writing, and so thought I could do anything).

What do you think, squiders? Do thought experiments work for you? What would you name your troll?

Writing Retreat Aftermath

Hidey-ho, squiders! It’s been four days since I’ve been home from my retreat, and I gotta say, I miss the level of productivity I had going for me. I got through four chapters and about 15K words, which means I might actually finish the entire draft this week!

I have been working on this revision for over a year, so you have no idea how freeing that idea is.

So, my retreat went from Thursday to Sunday morning, and each day was basically divided up into three sections. Well, Friday and Saturday were, I guess. Thursday you could arrive between 1 and 6 pm and then there was a meet and greet after dinner, and Sunday we had breakfast and then needed to be out by 10:30 am (I had to leave a little early because the larger, mobile one’s Scout campout was getting back about an hour before I expected them to).

So basically, there was breakfast, then a session from 9 to 12 that could be used to go to one of the classes or write on your own, and then another from 1 to 6, and a third after dinner which in theory could go forever (though they looked the doors at 11 so you had to be in the correct building at that time). The classes were nice too, in that they averaged about an hour and a half, so you still had time outside them to write in that block.

But it went great. I met a lot of other authors and had some really good conversations, and outside of meals I didn’t especially have to (and didn’t) interact, which is good, because by Sunday morning I was feeling pretty peopled out even though I was having a great time and enjoying everyone’s company.

I was very productive and I feel good about what I got done, though I did end up just working on the revision. Once I got going it seemed silly to derail my momentum, and I can work on new story ideas in a few months between other projects, when it might be more logical.

And even though I was productive, I didn’t just work the whole time. I got up early Friday and Saturday to go to yoga, and I’d say I spent most of the morning sessions working and half the afternoon sessions. I also read a book, walked the labyrinth about eight times, went for an impromptu hike (and got rained on), explored everywhere I thought I was allowed to go, played some Minesweeper, and took a couple of naps. (The evening sessions were kind of hit or miss. I did work a bit during them, but in general my focus wasn’t great.)

I went to two of the classes, which we’ll talk more about next week, and the meet and greet, but otherwise I stuck to writing.

I guess my one complaint–two complaints–would be that there wasn’t a lot of great places to work outside my room. There was a desk in my room, kinda small and with a support bar to knock your shins against, that I mostly worked at, and I also worked in the conference room after a class once (when I was working on a new chapter and didn’t need my papers with me) and in the lobby once (paper editing, so just papers and pen). But while there were lots of chairs, there weren’t a lot of tables. There WERE tables outside, but they were those metal ones with the holes in them, and it kept raining. (Saturday afternoon I figured out the code to the other building and cruised through it, and the basement had some nice spots to work in, but at that point it seemed like a lot of work to drag all my stuff out of my building and across the way.)

The other complaint is that we kept running out of coffee, though, honestly, that’s probably for the best.

Anyway, I highly recommend this sort of thing. I’m already making plans to go to the one next year.

Ever done a retreat, squiders? What did you think?

Promo: Cressida’s Agents by Mikala Ash

Morning, squiders! My retreat was EXCELLENT, highly recommend.

Today I’ve got a steampunk novel for you! Steampunk is always so interesting to see in books, because so much of it is a visual medium.

Steampunk

Date to be Published: June 7, 2024

Publisher: Changeling Press

Replete with all the trappings of an alternate world — airships, steam powered aircraft, automatons, moon bases, and witches with psychic powers — Cressida’s Agents is a steamy thrill-a-minute ride in a universe of what could have been.

Cressida Troy, after being mesmerised into betraying humanity, is now the wife of Mon Ilson, the alien leader, and is crowned Empress of Space. While pretending to be the love of his long-life, Cressida is desperately seeking a way to redeem herself, and somehow save human civilization from destruction at his hands. Then her former fiancé, Jacob, is captured and brought to the moon. Can she earn back his love, or has her seeming betrayal hurt him too much?

Meanwhile on Earth, Marjorie, in the guise of brothel madam and casino owner is acting as an agent of Mon Ilson. Her goal is to learn from him the secret of immortality, and for now she must do his bidding. A violent assassination attempt on her airship Fortuna brings her into the strong arms of handsome Squadron Leader, Sir Christopher “Kit” Colby. Her attempt to uncover the mastermind behind the plot leads them both into deadly danger.

About the Author

Aussie Mikala Ash used to be a mild-mannered training & development consultant by day, and a wild sci-fi and paranormal adventure writer by night. Now she is a brazen full-time writer and nature photographer who is concentrating on having among other things, “… bags, and bags of fun!” Mikala can be found on Facebook and on Twitter.

Contact Links

Author on Facebook

Author on Twitter

Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress

Preorder Today

Retreat Tomorrow!

I’m very excited. Fingers crossed that this is an excellent experience! I’ve decided to go with the combo revision/outlining idea that I talked about last week. I kind of feel like this is the both of best worlds–I make progress on my revision, which is the smart project to work on, and I can work on creating some new stories to work on in a bit.

Do I feel a little bad about not writing at the writing retreat? No. It’s more I feel like I should feel bad, but in the end this retreat is for me, and I can do what I want.

Also, technically the revision IS writing, since I’m working on new parts and rearranging the old parts, and retyping/rewriting everything.

(Also, on the off chance that I get an amazing idea and get it to the point where I could start writing on it, I give myself permission to do so.)

Not quite ready, though. A lot of logistical things need to be done in the morning, and I’m beginning to wonder if I didn’t leave myself enough time.

Oops.

Anyway, wish me luck! (and remind me not to forget my yoga mat)