I Need My Girl by The Nationals is today’s blog song. Amazing bit of music, especially the underlying guitar riff running through it, it affects me in a way only good tunes can.
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Current chain of writing days: 23
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My writing boot camp is over. All campers (me) had a wonderful time. To give a quick summary it went like this: TV and books were consumed, food and coffee were devoured, and words were written and written and written. I didn’t achieve all the lofty goals that the naive, optimistic, me of a week and a half ago set out to do but I made some headway into a couple of projects, enough that they’re now ticking around my head where I can slowly add to what I already have. They’ll get done, in time. In the meantime I very much enjoyed wearing pyjamas for the majority of a week.
I’m now 2.6 days into my new job and so far so good. People are nice, mostly just learning the ropes so far, and best of all I’m already past the hump as it’s now a four day week for as far as the eye can see.
Good, right?
Well, for me at least.
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I thought I’d give a little rundown on what I’m currently working on, as much to get my head around them as for any other reason.
Firstly, Change: A fantasy novel depicting the life of a changeling.
Changelings are a subsection of the community who experience random extreme physicals mutations throughout their life, known as changes. I’ve always read fantasy novels (a blog about why and what they mean to me can be found here) and so it was only a matter of time before I would try to write one of my own. Saying that, I’m not planning for this one to be the medieval England setting most people might typical associate with fantasy, but rather a mix of various settings while still incorporating some of the usual fantasy tropes.
I’m currently five thousand words into this story, so still very much early days as a typical novel might sit somewhere around ninety thousand, but I’m enjoying it so far and will hopefully get a first draft complete by the end of the year.
Sherlock Radio play: In addition to our usual weekly podcast, Movie Maintenance, the guys and girls who make up our crew have now started releasing monthly radio plays and audio stories under the moniker Movie Maintenance Presents. As the fans of the first podcast are likely to listen to the second, and because the episode I did on Sherlock went pretty well, it seemed an obvious idea for me to write a Sherlock radio play. As the pitch I used in the MM episode was based off the current TV show I couldn’t, for legal reasons, just adapt that into the radio play, so instead I’m writing a new Sherlock story set in the original 1800’s. I’m still in the planning stages of this one, although because it’s a mystery the initial outlining will be lot more thorough than my usual process, so by the time I start writing I expect it’ll come out pretty quickly.
The Hive: A horror novella about a cantankerous reporter assigned to complete an article on an annual farmers market out in the country.
I’m not really a fan of horror, actually, that’s not entirely true, horror movies make me run and hide little the little boy I internally am, but horror literature I’m surprisingly okay with. Either way, it’s always good to push your boundaries and try something new. Good friend, Nice Guy Sean, came up with the idea that he, Gabe, Tom, and I each write a horror novella, which we’ll then combine into an anthology book that we’ll then make available for fans to buy. It’ll be called The Seasons of Horror Anthology, as each of us will set our stories within a different season; I’m spring.
This is the project I spent most of last week writing and it’s coming along pretty well. I’m probably a third through and am enjoying writing my grump of a character and trying to embed the story with as many creepy vibes as I can before getting to the truly scary stuff. Should finish this one in a month or so, which will give me plenty of time to do additional drafts as I think we’re going for a halloween release.
Two Stories: A play about a relationship told simultaneously in two parts. That probably sounds confusing but the basic idea is that a girl and guy swap the narrator role of the story of their relationship whilst also acting it out. That’s still confusing isn’t it? You’ll just have to wait for it to come out. I’ve done very little for this one other than jot down a few early ideas, but I have the tone very firmly in my mind, and am planning to discovery write most of it and just see how it comes out. If I can put aside a few days to it I think it should come out okay.
And that’s it!
Fun, right? Well it was helpful for me at any rate.
Alright, back to work.
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Wait, one more thing. I’m going to be recording a short story I wrote last year for a possible future Movie Maintenance Presents and will be releasing a free eBook version at the same time it comes out and so decided to make a cover for it:
Pretty, right?
Okay, feel free to continue with your day.
Talk soon
Damian
Damian Robb 
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