Bodacious & Sundry #6: Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western, Act III

Is has been an incredibly busy week! It has included all the usual parts of my life: full time work as a copywriter, parenting, and working on my own fiction. My life became much busier with the following. Though written at length about these in the last few blog entries, here are the some updates.

Virtual FantasyCon (VFC)

This online convention was a lot of fun! Every day, I participated in discussions and contests and got to know a bunch of writers a little better. I had a booth on Epic Wednesday to talk about my first two novels, Tamshi’s Imp and Children of Rhatlan, but most of my guests were interested in knowing more about Bodacious Creed: a Steampunk Zombie Western. Though of course I want people to enjoy my first books, the Creedverse is going to be my fictional world of choice for the foreseeable future and I’m happy that people are into it.

On Fairytale Thursday, I won a book. The contests had random winners, and I’m glad the dice fell in my favor for one of them.

On Steampunk Saturday, I had a hopping booth with lots of guests and questions about the Creedverse. I shared links to my currently published books, posted my 3D modeling demo reel, the basis for Bodacious Creed, let everyone know that they could get the first Creedverse short story for free by signing up to my newsletter, and shared the video below. (Update for June 1, 2016: The video below is the updated show intro sequence.)

This is the intro I created for my podcast. Though I haven’t even done one episode yet, I just need to set up time with guests to talk about the steampunk genre and related news. I’ve met so many amazing people in this community and believe we can create a great show. Please click the YouTube link on the video to subscribe to my channel!

Today was the last day of VFC. With it behind us, my new goal is to have Bodacious Creed written, polished, and published before the event next year.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

Since the beginning of NaNoWriMo on November 1 (coincidentally the same day that VFC started, so now you can really understand why I’ve been so busy), I’ve written 14,147 more words of Bodcious Creed! The total word count now comes to 94,938. Here’s a tip: you can scroll down and check the word meter on this page. I’ve been updating it every evening. You can also watch my NaNoWriMo progress on my NaNo author page.

I realized something awesome today, that the scene I wrote last night wraps up the second act of the story. So, I sat down tonight and wrote down those things that need to happen in the third act to wrap everything up, but not too tightly. I do plan on writing a sequel.

The next step, which I will do after posting this blog, is to put those events in order, and then start coming up with individual scenes. I’m going to try to write at least 1,700 words of the book tonight so I can stay on track.

The Master Plan

When I was eighteen or nineteen, my friends and I had an ongoing joke about how I had a master plan for my life. Then “man with the master plan” became a saying. I’m not it spread because of us, but we came up with it first.

I at least have a master plan for Bodacious Creed. That is to finish the first draft during this NaNo month. I will then go over it strictly for content, making sure the story is consistent. Some things have changed since I started it, but instead of going back to edit what I’ve written, I’ve gone forward. The next will be a heavy rewrite. Then I’ll probably do a pass for description and foreshadowing, then another for dialog. Finally, I’ll go through and clean up the prose.

Did I say “finally?” My mistake. Next, I’ll ask around and find some first readers and let them go through it. This always helps catch mistakes I may have missed in the text, find out if the pacing works for others, and make sure everything makes sense to readers.

Then, I’ll assess all these suggestions and use them, modify them, or discard them depending on what makes the most sense, and probably read the book once more to catch anything I might have missed.

Rewriting is a long process, and that’s why I’m going to need months to do it!

Meanwhile, I plan on writing more Creedverse stories to share with my newsletter subscribers.

So, there you have it, why I’ve been insanely busy this past week and will continue to be until the end of the month.

If you have any questions or comments about VFC, NaNoWriMo, or anything Creedverse related, please share in the comment section below!