Delayed but not Dismissed

Sorry for the lack of updates.  The weekend was difficult with additional classes added to my schedule and a sick cat at home.  I haven't been able to work on the novel as much as I would have liked but I've made some progress.  I've put in another 1628 words today, and near that many towards that pulp submission I'm doing on the side.  That still puts me behind but I hope to be able to catch up over the rest of the week.

I rarely a story from beginning to end.  It's more like a puzzle for me, taking pieces and fitting them in where they belong.  Today I wrote a conflict scene from later in the book where two of the antagonist's henchmen assault our lawyer and her potential romantic interest.  Bloody stuff, but it definitely comes through on the promise of fists and bullets.  I like these henchmen enough that I've decided to open the novel with them.  Perhaps I will use the next post to detail them a bit.

Total Words: Novel - 3098, Pulp Short - 1500

Day 1 - Slow but Steady

Well, I am now 1,470 words down on the novel.  That is a prologue plus a bit of chapter one and, while I tend to go pretty bare bones on first drafts, it seems to hold the info I wanted to get across.  Two of the primary villain's henchmen are introduced, as is our heroine, and it feels appropriately western.

I'd hoped to do some additional work on a pulp short story about aliens but I've been down with a migraine for most of the day so that didn't happen.  I'm also tossing around an idea for a story/novel set in the Caribbean but I probably won't do much beyond outlining that until early May, when my current work is well on its way to completion.

Total Words: 1,470

Onwards to a Grand Beginning

Well, I leave tomorrow morning for St John to get wedded and such.  My updates will likely be sporadic until the 15th, but I will try to keep in the habit of putting things up here.

Catch you all soon.

What You Can Expect

My first attempt at a full-scale novel will be of the weird west genre.  You may be familiar with it through playing Deadlands or seeing movies like Cowboys and Aliens or Jonah Hex.  There are better examples out there but they're neither as modern nor as popular as those.

Rather than focusing on a gunslinger or an outlaw, I'm opting to focus my story around a lawyer.  One of the nations early female lawyers.  As such, I'm using Wyoming as the setting since it was the first state to allow females to practice law in 1869 which dovetails nicely with my desire to use 1875 for my tale.  As an aside, Wyoming was pretty forward thinking toward women as they were also the first state to allow women the vote, also 1869.

That said, the story will open with my lawyer's arrival in a frontier town called Mary's Rest and her attempt to take over running a law office there.  It will get weird pretty fast since I've never been a fan of slow-paced stories.  Expect all manner of unnatural phenomena and high-stakes adventure.  I've been in something of a pulp mood recently, likely due to my working on a side story of a pulp anthology (fingers crossed and all that) so this will probably be reflected in the novel as well.

Here is a short list of things you can expect me to dangle in front of your noses in the coming weeks.

A title for the novel.
Information on the protagonist and the townsfolk.
Strange events of a dark and unholy nature.
Fists a-flyin' and bullets...a-flyin'.  Hmm, should have thought that one out more.