A Hodgepodge of Nonsensical Tomfoolery and a Plea

It has been well over a week since my last post. I encourage you to read it, and it is suitable for everyone, not just fantasy fiction authors, readers, and fans. This time, it has taken me longer than usual because, quite frankly, I didn’t have anything to write. This morning, I decided to update you on what I’ve been up to and what I hope to accomplish in July.

I found an influencer/author/editor on YouTube named John Matthew Fox, who is the brand BOOKFOX (https://thejohnfox.com/). His videos are instructional and excellent, and I enrolled and completed an online course he teaches on sentence writing. I’ll most likely try more of his courses. Using some of the things I learned, I crafted this sentence, which now resides in the Prologue of The Nights of the Purple Sky:

“Not like she had embraced it, but rather like all the power in the world exploded in the core of her soul—an icy fire, both freezing and burning her consciousness, spinning her awareness, enveloping her in dizziness—a force sucking at her being to emptiness, prising a flowing essence from her, while still another filling her with joy and also grief, love pushing on her, and hate pulling at her, and knowing flooded her body, knowing and a memory.”

In June, I started serious work on what I still think I’ll call The Nights of the Purple Sky. If you have been following, that was the name of the novel I just put in my proverbial author’s trunk. The reasons for that are explained in an earlier post. Read about it if you are curious. The prologue is now complete, though it might not make it into the book, and so are the first three chapters.

I am thrilled with how these are written. The bumpy process involved angst and frustration when I received my first feedback. Still, that feedback caused me to alter the direction of one of the character's personalities, and I couldn’t be more excited about how this change will work in the book. That online group will get the revision in a couple of weeks, and I hope they are excited about the new direction. My in-person group got a sample this past week and gushed over it. The two groups have very different personalities, so I hope to get some broad appeal.

I’ll be attending my first writers’ conference in the middle of July and have been preparing for that. I have two in-person appointments to pitch my novel. For the past three weeks, I’ve been writing my one-page pitch sheet, which includes this drafted Logline.

Percy Jackson meets Station 11 meets Romeo and Juliet when former NFL star Kanyin Robinson and a not-as-she-seems refugee woman, Melody Reuel, find themselves between opposing cosmological factions for control of what is left of humanity on the recently wiped-out Earth, while Kanyin and his friends attempt to jump-start civilization using Dunamis, the gift of magic.

At the end of July and the beginning of August, I’ll travel to do a mini-bike tour with my son and some friends in the Rocky Mountains. I’ll have a lot of “windshield” time on my drive from Michigan and hope to work some things out in my current work.

Finally, next week I’ll be submitting my final-final revision of The Immortal of the Saltless Sea to the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest. You lose every contest you never enter.

HELP WANTED

I would love to bounce my pitch sheet off a few who have been through the process. If you would be willing to read my one-pager and give me feedback, I’d gladly accept your gift.

I’m also searching for a writing buddy—someone who is around the same level of writing, committed to reviewing about a 150k manuscript once a year, and willing to be available for “brainstorming sessions” once in a while. In return, I would be committed to doing the same. I would be willing to share sample writing with any prospects and would hope you’d do the same before we commit.

If either of these sounds interesting, please email me at m.b.everett@mbeverett.com.