Dead Man’s Fugue is officially live and available on Amazon for purchase. Get your copy now!

Wow, does time go fast!

So, after my post that you could expect to see a dramatic increase in writing output, there was actually…no writing output at all. At least, there was no writing output save a single post here on the website.

So, here’s the part where I make my excuses! After quitting my job, my old employer asked me to work part-time for several months to help ease the transition period for my successor–he needed training, to be shown the ropes, and to have time to find and hire his replacement. That period of part-time work will be coming to an end this Friday, and I’ll officially be footloose and fancy-free.

Also of note is that I’ve continued to work on writing The Epimetheus Project, albeit under a new, easier-to-remember and easier-to-pronounce working title of Dead Man Walking. So, while I’ve continued to write, it just hasn’t been publicly, where it could be read by the public. On the plus side, I’ve crossed the halfway mark on Dead Man Walking, and progress continues (even if I continually miss my self-imposed deadlines).

So, on the plus side, I’m going to be posting here more–I’m actually putting myself on a schedule for at least twice a week beginning next week. And these scheduled posts will be story posts, not just random musings and thoughts on either life or writing.

The first few weeks will be early chapters from Dead Man Walking, until I’ve got the details hammered out for a new story that will be exclusive to Writing Under Duress. I’m hoping to wrap up Dead Man Walking within a few weeks and push it out as an ebook, so I don’t want to give up too much of the story here. Up to the first third of the story will be posted here, but everything after that will be saved for the final, e-published version.

So what’s coming for the WUD exclusive story?

You’ll have to keep visiting to find out.

I realized yesterday that I haven’t written anything on here in a while. There are plenty of things I need to write about.

First, and most importantly, I have quit my full-time job.

I’ve had a number of reasons for taking this step. I wasn’t happy working in an office, for one. While I write and play video games and work on computers, I don’t like being restricted to four walls. There’s a bit too much Neumiller in me to be content there–after all, neither my brother nor my father was content with a regular office job, either.

I also wasn’t happy with the life I have with my wife. Don’t get me wrong, I love her dearly, but we’ve found that, with both of us working full-time jobs, and my own job particularly high-stress, there was so much in our lives that we were sacrificing. We’ve struggled with the basics of housekeeping, proper eating, and spending time together. With this step, I’m able to get so many projects done we just couldn’t manage before.

And finally, I want to pursue writing full-time. I wrote Destiny’s Heir over a span of about six months, but it shouldn’t have taken me nearly that long. Quite simply, I didn’t have the time to write during the day, and when I had the time, I didn’t have the energy. I did manage an hour a day of writing most days, but it wasn’t every day and often it wasn’t even a full hour. With this change, I’ll finally have the time to dedicate to writing.

My wife, bless her soul, has been entirely supportive of me, which is great, because there’s no way I could do this without her. While finances will likely be tight for a while, she’s still bringing in a  steady paycheck, which is what makes this possible.

Second, I’m going to be focusing on writing some shorter stories while I wait to hear back on Destiny’s Heir. My mentor, Joe Nassise, and I have been discussing this at length, and he has strongly suggested I focus on self-publishing some e-books for the near future. There’s a fair amount of money to be made in that part of the market right now, and I’ve decided to take his advice and focus there for now.

My writing output should be dramatically increasing in the near future. Right now, I’m still working part-time for my old job–they asked me to work from home, half-days, to help ease the transition as they try to fill my job and add staff to cover the work I was doing. By the end of May, however, I should be working full-time for me, myself, and I.

So, what’s on my plate?

Destiny’s Mantle is moving to the back burner to simmer for a while. I need to get some of the logistics of the story worked out before I start setting pen to paper. The story’s not really on hold so much as it needs some further thought and exploration before I commit it to text.

Thirteen Swords is on my short list for stories to write, but it’s also not finished cooking in my mind. I’m still intending to write it on this site, and then convert it to e-book format when I’m complete. The story probably need to be retitled, too; originally, Thirteen Swords was going to be a single story, but lately I’ve been thinking it needs to be thirteen stories–one about each of the sword-bearers. Mostly, I’ve been tinkering with three different ideas for Thirteen Swords, and only recently (yes, I’m this slow) did it occur to me that I could write all three!

I got my start in writing long works with a fanfiction. X-Wing: The Nallera Conflict, which was a story about an ex-pirate on an undercover mission for the Rebel Alliance to purchase high-grade ore from a group of miners, to support the development of the A-wing project. Of course, much of the story is spent shooting at stuff and it isn’t at all as boring as it sounds. One of my projects is to rewrite it and set it appropriately in its own science fiction universe–e.g. make it salable.

Fourthly, I have the tentatively titled The West Point Project, which will most likely not be the final name of the story. It’s another science fiction story, most likely set in a different universe than my Nallera Conflict rewrite. I originally conceived it as a novelization for the social game Artemis, but I couldn’t come to a proper agreement  (read: that I was happy with) with the game’s owner to properly set it in his universe.

Side note: if you’re interested in social gaming–and by that, I mean gaming in a social setting, not some stupid Facebook flash game–you should really check out Artemis. You won’t be disappointed.

And finally, I have the also-tentatively titled The Unknown Enemy. The title, and the concept of the book, are loosely inspired by X-COM: UFO Defense, one of the best PC games of all time. The story focuses on an ex-Marine sniper discharged from the service after having a “mental breakdown”–claiming he and his partner (KIA) were ambushed by aliens, whom they had seen meeting with Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq.

So, what first?

Nallera Conflict rewrite is at the top of my list, as the story is already cooked and just needs “translation”. It’s also the appropriate length for an e-book already. I’ve wanted to do something with it anyway, so I’ll be able to turn it over in pretty short order to get it ready for publication.

What follows that? I’m not sure yet. There’s a better-than-decent chance that, should the rewritten Nallera Conflict sell, I’ll rewrite Arms Race to follow, and then finally sit down and write The Talus Crucible, which was planned and outlined but never written.

Any way about it, you can expect to see my name on some writing very soon.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the past week just enjoying life. How so, you ask? I’ve handed out a few copies of Destiny’s Heir to people for feedback, and what’s coming back has all been positive. (Scarily so, in some cases!) My wife, who in addition to her primary and most important job as my editor and cook, does some silly English teaching thing for high schoolers and is talking to a few of them about reading it as well to get feedback from the group I’m really trying to target.

What I haven’t been doing is writing heavily. Not that I’m not motivated to write, mind you; I’ve found sometimes it’s better to take a break so I don’t burn myself out.

Naturally, that doesn’t mean I’ve been unable to stop myself from thinking about the sequel to Destiny’s Heir.

This may sound odd, but until I have a proper title for a story–even if it’s a title that may wind up changed partway through the process–the story doesn’t gel in my head. I need a convenient way to “label” a collection of ideas and tales for it to really start coming together.

I tried to short-circuit that usual problem by nicknaming the new story Destiny’s Sequel, but my mind wouldn’t let me get away with that. “It’s not a real title!” that stupid little voice keeps hissing in my ear. “You need a real title!”

On Saturday night, as I was running through storylines in my head and figuring out just how much I can adequately cover in one book, it finally clicked: Destiny’s Mantle.

In common parlance, a “mantle” is usually clothing worn as the outer layer. Biblically (and I was raised in a strong Christian home, so quite often that’s the perspective that I’ll take first), the mantle was the clothing of choice for a prophet. It was the sign of a man who had a destiny and authority under God.

Without spoiling too much of Destiny’s Heir, there are two characters who must take up their mantles–one a mantle of royalty, the other a mantle of guardianship. But are the characters both worthy and ready to wear these mantles? It’s a running question in Destiny’s Mantle, and as such, it’s not easily answered.

Of course, for those of you looking forward to Thirteen Swords, this post is probably a bad omen. Destiny’s Mantle is starting to gel so fast I may delay Thirteen Swords again to pursue the sequel…even though I haven’t sold Destiny’s Heir yet.

As my wife would say, emphasis on “yet.”

If you’ve been checking in here regularly, you’ve probably noticed two things.

1.) I haven’t been posting chapters of Thirteen Swords.

2.) I still haven’t been posting chapters of Thirteen Swords.

Largely, this is due to Destiny’s Heir.

I’ve been participating in a writing mentorship with Joe Nassise for the past two months. It has been an excellent experience and has given me more confidence in my writing than I’ve ever had before, in a professional sense. He has been reading Destiny’s Heir in sections, and we’ve been spending a fair amount of time dissecting and polishing my work.

The fact that a professional author said he enjoys my work has been great for confidence.

The downside to all this has been, quite simply, I’ve been focusing all my writing energies on Destiny’s Heir. Given that I work 40 hours a week and spend another 10 hours commuting, and I like to spend some time with my wonderful wife, and I always have plenty to do during a given week (last two weeks included sausage-making and tearing down my furnace to fix it), I have definite limits on the time I can spend hunched over a keyboard typing like a madman.

However, I finished writing Destiny’s Heir on Saturday.

That’s right, it’s finished!

My wonderful wife then devoted ten hours or so of her life to reading and critiquing Destiny’s Heir, resulting in a manuscript with lots of marks on each page. It’s great being married to an English teacher–she edited for grammar, for spelling, for style, and for story consistency. Have I mentioned I love my wife?

All that said, I now have a 1 1/2″ binder sitting on the table with corrections I need to apply to Destiny’s Heir. It’s probably a couple nights of work, and shouldn’t be too painful. And after that, I’m free to start writing again.

As I’m sitting here writing on my lunch break, I’m sketching out story ideas in my head. Some of them revolve around the as-of-yet-unnamed sequel to Destiny’s Heir. Others revolve around Thirteen Swords, which I’ve already outlined once but didn’t like the result.

After finishing Siege, I felt a bit burned out. Frankly, I was emotionally drained from saying goodbye to a large number of characters and friends. I was physically tired from the time I’d put in to wrap the story up the way I wanted. I literally lost sleep thinking about that damned story while I was working on it.

After finishing Destiny’s Heir, however, I’m not feeling that burnout. I’m taking a few days away from serious writing to relax and recuperate, but I’m very much on a writer’s high–satisfaction, pride, and hope are all intermixed.

Even though I missed the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest (as they closed due to hitting the maximum number of submissions), I’m feeling great about writing.

So, what’s next? (Besides extensive editing)

I’m leaning towards Thirteen Swords right now, just for the change in pace. While Destiny’s Heir was written with the idea of a book series, Thirteen Swords is intended to be wholly stand-alone. Unusual for me, I don’t even have a spark in the mind’s eye about what a sequel would look like.

And yes, if Thirteen Swords is my next project, it will still be posted here on WritingUnderDuress. After all, I need to have some way to drive traffic, don’t I?

I hope I haven’t lost the few visitors I regularly had. I know my absences have been rather long, with very little posted here.

So, quick update on projects. Destiny’s Heir is sitting over 50% completion, but I hit a nasty case of writer’s block that I’ve been struggling with for weeks. I finally did come up with a solution to get past my dilemma, but I got ambushed by Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords on sale for $2.49 on Steam. Naturally, it blindsided me when I was doing so well resisting the urge to play X-Com: Enemy Unknown. On top of that, I’ve spent my waking hours in the last three weekends hunting deer with my father.

I really dislike having a day job. It’s really in the way of getting things done.

Fortunately (or not), daylight hours are pretty much not available anymore. I drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark, with all my daylight expended while I’m in my cell–er, office. The upside is an abundance of hours I can spend in the house when I get home in the evening–hours that I’ve been waiting on KotOR, but which I’m re-devoting to writing.

So here’s the plus side.

I’ve been working on an outline for another story, a tale I’m tentatively calling Thirteen Swords. Don’t worry–the title has virtually nothing to do with the book.

The title is way more interesting.

My current plan is to continue working on Destiny’s Heir. I’ve set a hard deadline for myself of December 31st, so I need to average over a thousand words per day to finish it up, which is virtually nothing. On the side, I need something else to write when I’m struggling with a particular scene or idea, which is what Thirteen Swords should provide for me–an outlet from my outlet.

Thirteen Swords will be posted here on WritingUnderDuress.com. Not just in part, either–I intend to write and post the whole thing right here. Free novel for all!

I don’t have a timeline on when chapters can be expected. I intend to write at least a chapter a week (the average chapter ranging from 2.5-4k words), but I need to get a bit of a buffer built up so my proofreaders can correct all my problems. Believe me, there’s plenty that will need to be fixed.

So, keep checking in, and you should soon be pleasantly (or unpleasantly, depending on which side of the sword you’re on) surprised!

I read an article here, and it got me to thinking on the subject.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/aircraft_carriers_in_space?page=0,0

Even someone who doesn’t know me will, after thirty seconds on this site, have a good idea that I’m a huge Star Wars fan. Less immediately obvious is my affection for Battlestar Galactica (the new series). You’d have to know me very well to know that my senior project in college for my English degree was the creation of my own science-fiction universe, a complete 100-page universe bible of sorts.

I do find articles like this a bit amusing–science fiction combat is derided as “unrealistic”, while at the same time, the article’s author admits he has no idea what futuristic combat will look like.

It’s definitely worth reading.

I haven’t been writing much on here because of just how busy my life has been lately.

I was promoted at work several months ago (about the time I was trying to finish writing Siege) to a manager position, which has added quite a bit of stress at work, as well as taking away from my writing time. It was a large raise in pay and has given myself and my wife a degree of financial security we didn’t previously have–security we needed to proceed with some of our plans for life.

Speaking of plans for life, we broke ground on an addition to our house. Me being me, that translates to a whole bunch of manual labor because I dislike hiring someone to do something for me. As of the time I’m writing this, we’ve excavated our front yard, poured new cement walls for the addition, and have been working crazy-busy on getting things in place to ensure we’ll have our new addition closed up by the time winter strikes us. It’s a fast-paced project, and it means most nights I leave work, drive home, and then work on the house until dark.

Needless to say, that hasn’t left a lot of extra time for writing.

After spending some time off the project, I’ve kicked back into gear on Destiny’s Heir. As of right now, the outline I’m working from calls for 20 chapters to the story, four of which have been completed and another four are in varying states of completion. I’ve committed myself back to the writing schedule I used for the first half of Siege, trying to advance the story a thousand words per day. Will I stick to that? I’m trying, but we’ll see what happens as the house project transitions from the cement stage to the framing stage.

Nope, I haven’t forgotten about writing, and I haven’t forgotten about this site. I still need to finish editing The Nalera Conflict so I can post it here and feed the angry villagers…

I’m not sure how to express my feelings about finishing Siege.

There’s definitely the sensation of the shackle being loosed, the prisoner going free. Don’t misunderstand–I love writing–but Siege sometimes felt like a ball and chain, holding me in place until I finished my sentence. Part of that was due to my angry villagers and their pitchforks, of course; missing a regularly-scheduled post was dangerous for my health! Another large part of it was merely the length–nearly double what I had originally planned for the story.

Another feeling is pride. It’s not the first novel-length piece I’ve written, but the third. However, this time I had committed myself to a writing schedule and saw it through to the end (even if it took longer than I expected). There’s some satisfaction to be found in completing a story this long–after all, not many would commit to such a foolhardy endeavor.

And there’s always some melancholy. Siege represents, in many ways, the years I spent playing Star Wars Galaxies and a handful of the friendships I developed during that time. I may have been the one hammering the keys, but this story is as much theirs as it is mine. I didn’t solely develop the relationships that were written here. I didn’t come up with each character and develop their quirks, strengths, and flaws. Well, for many of them I did, but for some I did not.

With Siege finally complete, the question then becomes:

What next?

Well, there’s several projects currently cooking that I want to proceed with.

First, and arguably most importantly, I’m working on a new, stand-alone story entitled Destiny’s Heir. It’s in many ways a traditional fantasy novel (with my own twists on it, of course) that I plan to pursue publication with. As a story, it’s more tightly plotted and controlled than my Star Wars stories have been, including a more careful outline and better-developed characters. It has all the classic elements of fantasy: swords, magic, intrigues, mystery, romance, and mystery. (*gag*) No, really, it’s not nearly as boring as I’m making it out to be. At least, I hope not! Anyway, it’s currently about one-quarter written.

And it will not be posted here.

I’m currently in the process of editing two other stories about Halyn: X-Wing: The Nallera Conflict and X-Wing: Arms Race. Combined, they’re about 150k words long and were written during my years in college. When I’m finished editing, they’ll be posted here as well; I hope to start posting chapters of The Nallera Conflict within a week or two.

After that?

I’ve got several other old half-completed stories that need some completion, including X-Wing: Cadet, which stars Allanna Saret as a new recruit in the Rebel Alliance training to become a fighter pilot. These, too, are on my short-list of one-off writing projects that I would like to complete and post. There’s at least two more X-Wing stories I also need to write; X-Wing: The Talus Crucible which was outlined and briefly started but never followed up on, detailing Halyn’s captivity at the hands of an Imperial inquisitor during the Galactic Civil War, and X-Wing: Rara Avis, which would revolve around Halyn’s time as the head of the flight academy on Rori–which was when Kelta Rose first entered the picture.

You know, for someone who claims he’s done writing about Star Wars, I’ve definitely got a certain theme going with the stories I need to finish. I may be just a tad self-delusional.

Keep checking in–I promise more stories will be posted.