#cewri imperium

[irenewendywode]

The idea dawned on Okka like a stormy morning. Brutal, cold, but with a glimmer of hope that there would be better things to come.

Kinesis, by Irene Wendy Wode (because I wanted you all to know what an epic line I just wrote)

[qwanderer]

oh my goodness I wrote SIX GALLONS OF ANGST today I am the REIGNING MONARCH OF ANGST

can’t show it to anyone until the draft’s done, tho. And can’t add it to my word count until it’s typed up. Can’t type it up until tomorrow night if I’m lucky, Monday night more likely. Closed at work today, opening tomorrow, doing chores after, coming in Monday morning to help unload the truck. I only bring my paper printouts to work, never my laptop.

I’m torn, it would be a SPECTACULARLY BAD IDEA to stay up late enough tonight to get it typed up but I almost want to. I don’t want to bring my paper copy to work without copying over the new stuff and I don’t want to split it up and leave the pages I worked on at home. But if recent trends are any indication, work tomorrow would be SUPER BORING without it and I’d just end up stealing scrap paper from work and writing anyway, but without ANY of my draft to refer to.

Current plan is to snap a few quick photos of the pages I worked on today and then take the whole thing to work without typing any of it. It’s practical. Still sad, though. It’s such beautiful angst. I want it filled out and in place in my file.

[qwanderer]

Kinesis has accidentally continued the Midnight Mystery tradition of being set in New York but having characters talk about a food that’s really only a thing in Pennsylvania (where I’ve lived pretty much my whole life)

luckily both of them have Pennsylvanian characters I can blame it on

so the hoagies are totally Rhodey’s fault

but the shoofly pie is totally Dave’s fault

[irenewendywode]

Kinesis

okay so after waffling for ages between Mystery and The Last Shapeshifter and Mystery: The Last Shapeshifter and a number of other even worse ideas, I have decided to name the first book of the Cewri Imperium series Kinesis.

I like the boldness of the one-word title and I feel like it fits the themes of the book really well. Also it’s recognizably related to the word “kinetic” which I was playing with for a while as an element of the title, but it’s still unusual enough to be unique. It’s a biology term about the rate of movement in creatures varying with response to stimuli, and I have themes all circling around that - around movement and speed being more or less adaptive to the circumstances between different types of life.

Anyway I’m really excited about it which is a really great thing because I really need to get the first draft finished by the end of the month if I want to give it a rest and an edit before a submission deadline I’m aiming for at the end of November.

[qwanderer]

yaaaaayy I just barely wrote over 3k words yesterday (I’d recorded my count and then gone to bed and then gotten up to get a snack and then went “you know what I bet I could write a little more of THAT smut scene”)

that means I only have 2k to go to get to my word-count goal for the month and I have another free day tomorrow!

of course the word count goal was pretty much just a means to an end, that end being to finish the first draft, and it’s really hard to tell how close I am to that, the last quarter of the book is still kinda a mess

but all my words have been filling in holes I needed to fill at least, and I’ve cut what needed to be cut, too, so I’ve actually written more than my current count, so all of this really has gotten me a lot closer to my true goal

FOUR MORE DAYS

I have a printout of the most outline-y parts to take to work with me today and hopefully I’ll find a moment to work on it

send me creative vibes guys I need a little boost if I’m gonna get this done

[irenewendywode]

oh wow my push to double the length of Kinesis over the course of October is really paying off 

I’ve met my goals so far and the length has increased by more than 50%

today I got to the point where I could really see the shape of the story as a whole and where I needed to push and prod and adjust to make it even more powerful and engrossing

it’s also kind of intimidating because it means I can see how much I still need to do and how many of the parts I’ve already written I’m going to need to substantially rewrite (and I’m still going for the goal getting a second draft by that submission deadline at the end of November)

(ack)

but like

it’s really amazing to start to be able to see how WORTH IT it’s all going to be

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be my best book yet in a lot of ways

[irenewendywode]

Messing around and made this ambigram of “mystery” to go with the book I’m writing, Mystery: The Last Shapeshifter. Do you guys think it’s readable?

[qwanderer]

I’m totally catching up on my writing goals

I added 2300 words to my file today

omg guys Kinesis is getting so good

most of the emotional beats are in place now and most of my gaps are like “okay I have to put some words here to explain plot stuff I guess”

I mean I also have like three smut scenes I still wanna write in more depth but that takes a Particular Mood

also I am still struggling with the shape of a couple of the early flirting scenes

and yeah the battles could use some emotional structure

but the meat is there, all the glorious angst and the most important smut scene and the general curves of the plot are all present and accounted for

I am so excited

[irenewendywode]

one of the hardest things about switching from collaborative writing and fanfiction to doing my own original novels is that when I think of a really amazing idea I can’t tell anyone about it because nobody knows the book the way I do and nobody would understand

anyway yesterday I fixed the Horrible Plot Snarl in the partial draft of Mystery and created some extravagant technobabble which I love

and today I realized that there’s a real possibility I could move Kiss Me Laylie into the Sunflowers Blooming universe and make it into Book 3, and it would give me a new vector for the direction of Book 2 which has been somewhat lacking in terms of my vision for its direction thus far

literally earlier this week I placed an empty vase on a table in Laylie’s house as a kind of central metaphor for the story and my brain just came along today and went “You know what should go in that vase? Sunflowers!”

and I cannot explain to anyone how cool that is

I cannot

[irenewendywode]

I sat down yesterday and made a list of all the books I could think of that I wanted to write. Wow, there are fifteen of them! Most of the ones at the bottom of the list don’t have final titles yet. CIETC represents four books in the Cewri Imperium series.

I’ve been getting enough work done on The Movrekt Warmongers that I’m pretty sure I will be able to finish the first draft by the self-imposed deadline of the end of August. Just a few little holes to fill! Then I can send it out to my readers and depending on what they say, I should have it ready to release by the end of the year. 

it is HEARTWRENCHING oh my goodness guys just you wait. You will cry.

Mystery is still in the tricky phase where I’m not sure how the plot’s going to shake out but there’s already so much great sexy material there! When I’m finished with it it will definitely be even spicier than Tabitha (which takes some doing!) I’m trying to get through MWM quickly so I can focus on Mystery as my top priority while MWM is with my readers.

I thought my renewed interest in Kiss Me Laylie came out of nowhere - I was trying to focus on the three serieses I already had most material in - but then the idea for Bricks reared its head. I guess having plenty of ideas for stand-alone romance novels isn’t such a bad thing. And lots of inspiration and motivation to write them!

Anyway just wanted to give y’all a glimpse of what I think is to come in the worlds of my books.

[qwanderer]

Biggest disadvantage to writing original novels instead of fic:

I wrote THE BEST smut I have Ever written this evening and none of you will get to see it for months, maybe a year

[irenewendywode]

Hello! I’m an author with a book in the works with contemporary Irish characters whose lives have been intertwined with politics, and I’m looking for resources on 20th-21st century Irish history and politics, both overviews and first-person accounts. Does anyone have recommendations?

[irenewendywode]

working on two books right now, the first book in the Cewri Imperium series (titles still under construction) and the second book in the Half-Dragon series, The Movrekt Warmongers

the work on CI has been pretty visible, my word count is growing nicely

but this was me working on MWM this afternoon:

*opens notebook to fresh page*

*contemplates empty page for a moment*

*writes* Nash is a pile of lizard garbage.

*stares at sentence for ten minutes*

*goes to get food*

*stares at sentence for ten more minutes*

“Welp, that page is full” *turns to next page*

[qwanderer]

I’m doing the thing! I’m making a saleable book based on Midnight Mystery!

I made characters and an outline pretty different than the beginning of the MM series, and I’m planning on the two stories converging after the AO3 end of Midnight Mystery, so in some ways it’s just like writing a new book, but I’ve decided to go through and pick up little pieces of dialog and description where I can and fit them into the new plot 

it’s fun rereading and picking out little bits that stand out as worth saving 

it’s going to be a really interesting arc because the further on in the series I get the more I will have already usably written - the moonbase, Reginunn, Daire, Abie, Beatrix

and then suddenly I’ll hit the end of the published MM work and get to all the stuff I planned but never wrote - Rhea’s backstory, the births of Tycho and Mica, Abie and Tycho getting into trouble growing up, visiting other worlds

with just a few pockets of written stuff about Grace and Devon joining the family and Abie and Tycho going off on a pre-college road trip (which I wrote after I realized I wanted to go original fic with the future stories, but before I realized I had to write them some alternate parents first)

it’s such an interesting process, especially in terms of character

my Loki and Okka muses just had an argument in my head like:

Loki: Well. You’re not quite me, are you?

Okka: *raises eyebrows* Really?

Loki: You’re a little... sweeter than I am. *smirks*

Okka: Actually I am you. And more. In fact, I’m pretty much everyone. And underestimating me won’t go well for you.

*they glare at each other*

Loki: *sigh* Fine.

Meanwhile~

Waverly: Hey, it me!

Tony: Yeah, except you can actually cook, so that’s cool.

[qwanderer]

I’m using a soup of Irish, Arthurian and various UK myths to sort of blend in with the Norse stuff in this story and obscure it a bit

Hel’s shifting into a sort of Lady of the Lake figure

Loki/Okka is showing signs of Merlin-ness

meanwhile back on Earth the roles played by Steve and Pepper seem to be merging into one character?!

anyway it’s interesting

[qwanderer]

also the other day I realized I accidentally named the character I’m slotting into Darcy’s part of Midnight Mystery Kat

I would not do this on purpose, I usually try to eliminate any and all reminders that there are actors behind characters

but listen

Katerina Green is not at all based on Kat Dennings’ Darcy

she just happened to be an OC I had (way before I thought about adapting Midnight Mystery) who happens to fit into the Darcy slot

also I needed to include her because I’m giving my Tony Stark-ish character the Jackknife superhero identity which was originally hers

I’m gonna have him legacy it back to her b/c she is my baby and has been from the beginning