Just finished the first draft of Alex.  As I told my wife, I started crying when I wrote the last sentence, so either I’m doing something right, or I’m just way too invested in the story to separate the actual quality of the work from the story in my head. 

Either way, the first draft is done.  It feels really good.  The first draft of my second book took 10 months.  The final word count was 66,840 – a little short for a typical suspense novel, but perfectly acceptable in Kindle world.  Besides, there is a good chance the word count will go up during revision.  One of the things I want my beta readers to give me feedback on is which plot threads they found most compelling (and could thus, hopefully, use some expansion) and which need to be trimmed or culled entirely. 

In case you’re wondering (and I know some of you are), 66,840 words is 156 pages in single-spaced 12-point Word font, or probably roughly 300 manuscript pages.

Wow.  I’m just sort of stunned.  I’ve now written two books. 

Count ’em.

1.  I started writing again.  I’ve shot up to 60,500 words, or 75% of the goal word count.  I feel like I’ve really got momentum.  Now the trick is to keep it.  I want to finish.  I want to say, “I’ve got a book on Kindle,” instead of, “I’ll be Kindle-publishing a book this year.” 
2.  I started a biking/lifting routine in May.  So far I’ve lost 15 pounds and actually learned how to eat without ordering pizza.  Did you know if you eat a banana and an apple, you’ll actually get full?  It’s amazing, but true.  You don’t need to stuff your face with bismarcks and fried cheese in order to stop being hungry. 
3.  My wife and I had our 14th anniversary yesterday.  Don’t tell anyone, but I have a little surprise for her tomorrow night.  Sadly, doing something celebratory on a Wednesday night, when everyone doesn’t get done with their workouts until nearly 8pm and the kids have school the next morning, is pretty much impossible.
4.  We’re playing D&D; again on Saturday, after almost two months off.  I’m going to celebrate by killing a PC.  Mwa haha.

So – why the hell has it been so long since my last post?  Tons of reasons, most of them family-related, which I can’t go into on a public blog.  I don’t think I had written a word on Alex – prior to this week – since my last post in May.  That’s changing, finally – but man, what I wouldn’t give for more hours in the day.

I finished up the second act of Alex tonight.  It seems like I’ve been slacking a lot lately on working on this book, and it still feels like it’s coming along at break-neck speed.  I’ve got about 70 pages left to write.  I’m thinking 50 or so for Act 3, and 20 or so for the denouement.  That’s just my early estimate.

I do enjoy crunching numbers.  It makes me feel like I’m getting somewhere.  So to put it another way, I’ve got about 52,000 words now, and only about 28,000 to go.  My guess is the first draft will be finished before summer is over.

Here’s hoping Star Wars: The Old Republic doesn’t come out before that.  It could probably do quite a bit of damage to my schedule. 

As it is, I got next to nothing done last week because of Portal 2.  I finished the single-player game this week, and my wife and I started on the cooperative 2-player game.  I’ve been really, really impressed with the game for the most part.  The only thing I disliked about it is that – spoilers ahead – you never really get out of the compound.  I was hoping from the previews and early trailers that it would be a little more “open” than the last game.  I was looking forward to using my portal gun in wacky ways, in the great outdoors.  Instead, if anything, it felt even more enclosed than the first game did.  That was disappointing, but everything else about the game was fantastic, and ultimately that nitpick isn’t enough to keep me from recommending it.

I also got a copy of Kirby’s Epic Yarn as a belated birthday present on Easter.  It is incredibly cutesy.  But that’s neither here nor there.

I wanted to try it because of all the things I’d read about it on Penny Arcade and elsewhere.  It sounded neat.  The basic premise is that you are in a world made of string, and you need to peel back patches to get power-ups and unravel enemies, and such.  The graphics do a good job of capturing this feeling – you do feel like you’re in a world made of string.  But I was expecting the game to make more use of the Wiimote (like pointing at string and “pulling” on it, for example) and that doesn’t really happen – you actually spend most of the gameplay with the Wiimote held sideways, ala New Super Mario Bros.  That’s all right with me.  I’m finding more and more lately that using the Wiimote in its intended way is actually really annoying.  It wasn’t designed with big TVs in mind.

Other than that, I’ve been playing a lot of Dokens lately.  I made B rank again with Ryu, after having been downranked back to C+ twice now.  This time I seem to be holding my rank a bit better.  You hit B rank at 5000 battle points, and I’ve dipped below that again, but my slide down to the 2500 mark (where I would be downranked yet again) has been arrested and reversed several times.  I’ve realized the trick, for me at least, is to really try and get the points out of my head and focus on the match.  If I go into a match thinking, “Oh god, if I lose this match I’ll dip below 4700,” I will definitely lose it.  But if I go in thinking, “Okay, this is Akuma, dash under air fireballs and pop a Tetsu on standup because he’ll try to teleport,” then I do much better.  I’ve also resolved to quit making the same mistakes over and over in a single match, and to change strategy mid-stream if something is not working.  Yeah, that sounds obvious, but so far, a conscious focus on it has been making a big difference.  It’s a long road to B+, but I’m hoping to finally traverse it.

Anyway.   Yeah, Act 2 is done.  Further bulletins as events warrant.

Forgive me in advance for the rambling nature of this post.  Or, you know, don’t.  I’ll find the strength to survive. 

So awhile back I started a blog on Livejournal.  After having two updates in a row devoured alive by LJ’s ravenous hatred of successful posts, I opted to look for another host, and here I am.

So far, when I hit enter, the cursor doesn’t actually move to the new line.  Everything else seems good, though.  Maybe that’s just a visual thing. 

Okay, so – about me.  Or more appropriately, about this blog.  I’m expanding my horizons.  I originally set out to create a writing blog, dedicated solely to logging my startling revelations regarding the craft.  I’m still having those, though I do think most of them have been had before, by millions of other people over the years.  Nothing wrong with that; I’m an author – albeit an unpublished one – so it’s still important for me to get my thoughts down.  But I was also sort of tippy-toeing around doing anything too opinionated since the blog might end up being my “professional face”, perused by agents, publishers, or any number of other influential people who might decide they hate me without reading my material.

I’ve decided, fuck that.  I’ve pretty much settled on Kindle publishing my first book, which I’m discovering makes me a lot less nervous about coming off “wrong” to any prospective agent who might look at my blog (for whatever bizarre reason).  In that vein, I figure there are two other topics – in addition to writing – that I’m likely to want to mouth off about: politics, and games.

I’m a life-long game lover.  I’ve loved games of most stripes since I was old enough to watch them played.  The notable exceptions are traditional card games, including gambling, and sports – but everything else – collectible card games, video games, role-playing games, board games – I love.  I think there is something sacred about the act of playing a great game.  I want to explore that idea a bit more.  I may use this space to do it.  I may also just use this space to bitch about getting my ass nailed to the wall in Super Street Fighter 4.  No one said I had to be eloquent. 

I’m also a practical progressive (to steal a term from my wife).  Like many, I find my political outlook skewing slightly right as I get older, but it would be wrong to say I have much in common with the Republican party’s platform.  In fact, they infuriate me on a daily basis.  Sometimes, I need to bitch about it.  Sometimes, I need to bitch about the democrats.  I may use this space for both of those things, too.

Oh yeah, and I’m writing my second book.  I’m a little over halfway done with it.  The working title is Alex.  I’ll be posting updates on my progress on that here, too.  Along with whatever comes afterwards.

In any case, it’s writing night.  So I’m switching over to work on Alex now, but if I manage to hit “PUBLISH POST” and actually see this post appear without it getting devoured, I’ll most likely be back to post again.