Writing Goal

Earlier this year I started a novel set in a fantasy/steampunk world. It had a touch of humor, adventure, magic, steampunk goodness, and even a smidgen of romance. The working title of my story is Clockwork Dwarf, and who knows, it might wind up being the finished title too. I’ve had a lot of alternates jump into my noggin, but the Clockwork Dwarf one has stuck.

Above is a page from my notebook. While writing this story I doodled images, jotted down notes, made a list of characters as they presented themselves in my story, and made this map. I put the Pepperbox revolver on it, and “sepiad” the image because I was experimenting with a possible cover. I doubt what you see above will be it. Anyway, getting back to my notebook. I’m extremely visual, and doodling scenes from my story sparks new ideas, and adds fuel for the old story engine.

The reason I’m bringing all this up is that it looks like I’m gonna have the first draft done by the new year, slightly ahead of schedule. I’m right at the 90K word count now, and it looks like there will be another 10K to finish the first draft. As I wrote, new ideas came to me, so I’ve got notes on top of notes that are going to really flesh this story out. It’s also going to raise the word count a bit, so I’m expecting this one to top the 100K count pretty easily. At the moment it’s about 2k longer than Plague, and I feel like Sam Gamgee when he told Frodo that if he takes one more step he will be further from the Shire than he’s ever been. Yeah, that’s how I feel.

My novel, Plague, is now available as a paperback novel. Yep, paperback. Also with the paperback version you get some fantastic pen and ink artwork by Alex McVey, Tom Moran, Brandon Layng, and myself. So if you get a chance stop by Amazon and have a look.

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~ by bretjordan on December 29, 2011.