Yellow Ocher

I finished my book for NaNoWriMo yesterday morning. And by yesterday morning I mean like 2 AM.

Granted I'm typically awake at that hour and I made myself useful. It's a little disjointed, and there was some laziness in regards to continuity, but I'll have to go back over it with some notes. I'm kinda disappointed that Johnny goes out like a punk, but I made an executive decision that Johnny's absence is a disappointment in general and the closing of his arc should reflect it. I managed to salvage it and make it a little bittersweet. It still sucks, but he gets his reward in the end. I really didn't need 50,000 words to tell the story, and I was tossing in shit tons of fluff just to hit the goal, but I can take it out in the next draft. Regardless of length, I'm really proud of what I made, and think it has some great bits. I just need to cut it, clean it and cook it into its final shape.

I always pictured Some Call Me... as being part of another novella bundle anyway.

Speaking of bundles, I'm working on a new set of short stories. Trying to flesh out a little more of the history of the future. Working on the rise of Pharrel Inc. on the west coast and introducing a major player/villain across a majority of the pre-futuristic Lilim Chronicles. It's all in prep for wave 2 which will begin after To Slice The Sky is released. Some Call Me... will be the kick off for it. What sucks is the more I write the more directions I want to run in and the more stories I want to tell. But I still have so much history and projected tales to write, I wonder if I'll get to them all. I'm still sitting on research books to read as well before I tackle some projects.

Granted, I've been going through all sorts of feelings of self doubt lately. I've had a busy first year of publishing work on my own, but I feel out of touch with the people that consume art out there. It feels like everyone's too scared to step outside of their well defined boundaries of what they think they're supposed to consume or enjoy. Genre lines feel so hard and defined in a world of infinite subgenres. The slightest variation from the norm becomes too odd while adherence to the code is too vanilla.

I was thinking about this today, and my best guess is everyone has a varying level of imagination. It's a shitty answer, but it's probably closest to the right one.