One point Eight Million

First for Gratitude today we have the following

1. Tommy’s-Makers of a Los Angeles favorite, chili hamburger, the Original Tommy at Beverly and Rampart has been part of our culture for as long as I have been around.
2. Family Tree Maker–This software was invaluable in helping me create our family Tree which came out looking great with 185 people just on one side of the family where we only had a sketchy idea of 50 or so. We learned of six generations and had a reunion of 50 people just last sunday.
3. Paper Cutter–Scissors are really not fine. Even good scissors, but a paper cutter with a straight cut works out well.
4. Empire Total War–The price has recently come down and I can think of no better game this year.
5. YouTube–One of my favorite time wasters is subscribing to a few series on such things as Empire Total War and watching numerous gaming battles played out. I watch several of the younger generation conquer the world, while my videos on Time Commander and Rollercoaster Tycoon have been watched over 18,000 times.

So now where are we today in my writing…

First I crossed a threshold today and expect another tomorrow.
I am tracking 18 works that I either have completed or started in a significant state that I wrote enough to be worthwhile (Not just three pages, but at least 40.) I now have just 5 that remain in Work In Progress State, and today I completed between all 18 of these works, 1.8 million words.
I expect tomorrow to reach 650,000 words for the year.

My chart on this, one of them is:

Count	Book Name	Word Count	Srage
1	Born to Grace	210,968	2nd Draft
2	Chivalric Dreams	166,726	2nd Draft
3	KoTohLan *	144,672	Ist Draft
4	Mrs. Bertram’s Hazard *	129,462	Ist Draft
5	Caution’s Heir *	123,431	Ist Draft
6	Amnesiac Cowboy	118,089	2nd Draft
7	Graces of Brantley *	112,871	2nd Draft
8	Trevannion’s Legend	125,206	Ist Draft
9	NaNoWriMo 2009 *	101,376	Ist Draft
10	Colonel Fitzwilliam *	99,959	Ist Draft
11	Col. Pen *	98,362	Ist Draft
12	Space Mine *	97,915	Ist Draft
13	Tranquility Hilton	77,277	2nd Draft
14	Born to Grace II	39,387	WIP
15	Muskeeters *	37,873	WIP
16	Terra’s Birthright	35,339	WIP
17	Roses War	68,284	WIP
18	Steam and Thunder *	12,805	WIP
Total	1,800,002

So i think I have done quite well for the year in production. And it is not just verbal potpourri that comes from my fingers, but I think very good material now. The first few books twenty years ago would have extensive notes and paragraphs in the margins as I edited for I had left themes undeveloped, or I had construction problems, like POV. Now, these last couple years of intense writing, I see only a few notes as i go along. I added 2000 words or so between drafts of Graces of Brantley, for instance.

This week I also completed the edit draft by hand of Caution’s Heir, so I can start entering it into my computer file, and I have now started the edit draft of The End of the World. When finished with that, it will go to publication at Regency Assembly Press.

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Saturday May 30th, The Curious Collectors of Baker Street

I Started in the AM writing a couple hundred words for Space Mine, trying to obscure the last enemy that has to last the next 30,000 words, to the end of the book. That trail has to be tougher, has to be the thing that ends the book on.

In the middle of the day it was duty for the Curious Collectors of Baker Street, our local Los Angeles Sherlock Holmes Scion. Which means a group of people who started out loving the works of Conan Doyle and now socialize with Sherlockian themes. I came to them because they started to throw dances. I like dancing. Over the years they have all become great friends.

That really wore me out, I served and cleared and coordinated between the kitchen and the master of ceremonies. My feet are still sore.

Then coming home I wrote some more bringing yesterday to nearly 1200 words for a saturday.

In addition I worked on the first page of the Time Commanders site and recorded video for the Eighth Wonder of the World Park

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May the 28th

Space Mine got my attention some more today. I got through three scenes in chapter eight. About two more to go. Word count accomplished today of 2761. That was the most writing this week, and brings the week to 8254. I plan to finish the chapter tomorrow. Already this month we have exceeded the writing done last month. So this has been quite productive.

Other accomplishments today was editing all of chapter 1 in Graces. I went to the Coffee Bean to catch up with my friend Tom who likes to hang out there before going home. Took the manuscript down and finished the edit. Now I need to type the changes up.

Saw the Wonder Boys today. It was too contrived. Too much here is what an adult show should be about. Man having a lousy life, everything going wrong… All of a sudden it all becomes predictable. Way too predictable. The only good thing was the cast of so many notable actors.

Finished my audit of the first series of Time Commanders. I really like this in spite of some things that have gotten worse as the series progressed. The lead historian who teaches at Sandhurst has not got nice things to say about the teams when the win or lose. He is arrogant in the extreme as he has studied strategy and all the contestants are amateurs. Now on to series two. It is a shame as Creative Assembly has later period games, the producers were not able to carry the series on to use those games and restage more battles.

On the Rollercoaster Tycoon front, I posted my latest park online at the site

Now it is wait and see if there are people out there who want to enter the competition.

Gratitude Log

1. Cold Iced Coffee Drinks
2. Coffee Houses that are not Starbucks
3. Blue Azure Ink (So much more colorful then just regular blue)
4. Online Banking
5. Gilbert & Sullivan (How can you not be thankful for these guys)

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Memorial Day, May 25th, 2009

So what did I accomplish today. I had a list. I did some of it. Almost all that was on it. I read and finished the Forbes I had planned to for the three day weekend. I sent off the lists of all the slides I had been doing from my parents and started on the next box, this time from 1968.

I edit another video and uploaded it to the web. This was more of the Scotland Trip. I did another comic now that I have a great deal more family photos from doing my folks slides. We made a Borders run because we had a coupon. And I wrote in Space Mine. I added a new scene to chapter 4 and expanded it to the size it should have been. Another 1700+ words so I met the daily goal and then some. I also added to some of the other scenes of chapter four. I then edited some more pages in Graces.

A played with some more video of the Eighth Wonder of the World Park and will probably edit that tomorrow.

Gratitude Log

1. Apples
2. Borders
3. Band of Brothers (Benton showed a link to the theme music and it reminded how good this series is. I have watched it twice through)
4. Fajitas (Alton was doing skirt steak on Good Eats tonight)
5. Margaritas

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Saturday, Memorial Day Weekend, May 23rd 2009

My goal today was to get Space Mine to 42,000 words and start looking at some other things on my plate. Scanning another box of slides for my parents for instance. Working on updating the Rollercoaster website here by giving the 8th competition of Small Parks a page. I did so. I updated the scenario file. I placed all the work I have done and been showing here on the demo park there online. So now you can see the ride videos, you can download the coasters I designed for the park, you can download the completed park, you can download the file and make your own park, you can see pictures of the demo park which I call the Eighth Wonder of the World since it is the eighth competition. I also posted a video of the park in operation at YouTube.

As I’ve noted before several of the chapters in Space Mine were short, and thus the entire story at this point is too short for where we are. I identified several chapters that are light, and some subplots that needed to be fleshed out. I wrote 3000+ today and this is a weekend day so the goal was really 0. I revised that zero into wanting to add to my things to do today, including whacking away at the vine covering the back door entryway at the house. Wanted to finish a copy of Forbes thats been hanging around for a while. Wanted to watch a Time Commanders series. Take care of the videos of the Scotland trip so I can replace the page on my website that I had a holder at. You can see the page and video here.

In Space Mine what I have to expand is:
        Love Story
        More of the engineering complications that are slowing up the ability of such a project to go operational
        More plots of the enemies in trying to stop the successes of our heroes.

Things that happened today for me to be grateful for:

1. Forbes
2. Chocolate Chip Pancakes (I may already have been grateful for that)
3. Rome Total War and it’s use in educational TV
4. iMovie ‘09 which I used on the Scotland video.
5. McBooks Press because they make these great catalogs that give me items I want to put on a wish list (and maybe they should have a wish list like at Amazon, so when I have some cash–Like when I get a job again–I could just look at my McBooks List and try and pick what I want most.)

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Space Mine on May 22nd

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Finished building out the pa​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​r​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​k​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​a​​​​​​​​n​​​​​​​​​d​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​a​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​l​​​​​​​​​​​​​​s​​​​​​​​​​​​​​o​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​a​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​t​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​w​​​​​​​o​​​​​​​r​​​​​​​k ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​o​​​​​​​​​​​​​​n​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​i​​​​​​​​​​​​​​m​​​​​​​​p​​​​​​o​​​​​​​​r​​​​​​​​​​​​​t​​​​​​​i​​​​​​​n​g​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​e​​​​​​​v​​​​​​​​​​​​​e​r​​​​​​​y​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​s​​​​​​​​l​​​​​​i​​​​​​​d​​e​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​m​​​​​​​​​​​​​​y​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​f​​​​​​​​a​t​​​​​​h​​​​​​e​r​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​t​​​​​​​​​​​​​​o​​​​​​​o​​​​​​​k​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​f​​o​​​​​r​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​m​​​​​​​​​​​​​​y​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​p​arents. Found one of me at around 1 year of age. These are torture. Look at my big diaper butt. In the sixties we didn’t have slim huggies or pampers but diapers that made us look like we eat too much grits and come from the south where cholesterol is a way of life or something. Fortunately this picture cuts off just at the right spot. I wonder where my moms Sewing machine ended up? I think they finally got rid of that desk chair.

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So finished the park and ran it and it did quite well. First park of mine to break 1000 peeps in it. We are going out for dinner to celebrate friends, could be 32nd anniversary in a bit so today wrote 2200+ words, bringing the Space chapter to nears its conclusion. Then did some calculation. Where I am in my plotting of the story, and the other chapters I wanted to have, should be about 2/3rds done. So should have 60,000 words. But not even 40K. Must go and at some more of the subplots that I have put off. Like the love story. Should have some longing with the super seven and the head honchos.

Also the engineering of the task, the science in the science fiction besides the politics and the military activity. The suspense is there, but the other parameters are too light.

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May 21st editing begins

Work a little today on the edit of Graces of Belle Gretain. That is what the name of the Duchy became as I wrote the first draft so I like it better then Brantley which was the dream name I had when the story first came to me. Had some holes in the Prologue and have been reading Self-Editing for Fiction Writers which suggests that perhaps we should look at our stories in different lights. The Prologue chapter which I have placed on line here before is written with a great deal of Narrative Exposition to show the evolving of the beasts and how they venture ever further into the world, encounter men, and come to go cattle raiding during the years when they need to. A process of generations.

I believe that Self-Editing for Fiction Writers suggests that it should have more dialogue, more action that engages the reader rather then a sweeping tale of another time. I couple this with work from Dwight Swain, Techniques of the Selling Writer which I am also reading at the moment to help polish my skills.

Today was able to add 1600 more words to the Space Mine story, moving it forward. My output is not as great as I rushed along on Graces, but Space is definitely in the middle of the story. Though so much less has happened to get to the middle. It almost feels like half a story. Missing great chunks. Perhaps I have to add up the love interests or include more political bickering. More scenes of my terrorists and more scenes of agents of counter terrorism. Too little has happened at 37,000+ for us to be where we are.

Today another pic of the my small park, but by no means did I do any work on it today. After I do finish adding in the stalls and the scenery, I will tweak the park file and make it available to all who want to work on an entry during June. So that needs to be finished in just over a week.

Gratitude Log:

1. Fudgcicles
2. Youtube
3. Toothpaste
4. Tivo
5. Ripping Movies

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May 20th back to Space

A new day. Printed out my copy of Graces for editing. Started to do this yesterday but ran into problems with the printers, one of the ones I had from my work office. So I substituted this morning with my trusty Samsung, which also acted up. Once the paper got below a 1/4 inch in the hopper it would stop. I know that the rollers on these things that pick up the paper wear away over time.

But got it all finished. My Prologue, which I have now edited I wonder if it is weak. Since I use a lot of exposition there to convey the many years that pass as the beasts develop and venture south from the frozen north and then meet man. Should I build it up with more dialogue interaction. I am not leaning towards that and making it a bigger chapter.

But that was not the focus of today. Getting the edit copy was. But then my second monthly writing goal was to return to the novel I have been working on this last year about the first Space venture for profit. With my daily output goal of 1000 words, I wrote 1075. The idea of a daily word count is to keep me motivated to write each day and to get forward momentum.

Had been avoiding taking my dry cleaning in for months, a lot of months and then noticed on saturday that I have ring around the collar on my dress white shirts. So I did go today and the Dry Cleaner was locked up with no reason as to why. (There are easily three other Dry Cleaners within a half mile) so i went to a back up and the shirts are going to be cheaper and done faster. But while driving into the parking lot I saw a former associate from my life as a woodworker.

Atlas Saw and Paramount Saw are two companies here in LA that sharpen blades. If you use one, you don’t use the other. I have known Ted, the salesman for 10 years. And he was there stopping for lunch. When I bought Aspen, I found that Atlas was a block and half away. Walking close. Go figure why they were using Paramount? So we switched back (Ted allowed as how perhaps my former forman may have been getting some money as that might be a practice by some vendors that we had been using)

In any event Ted and I were able to talk about Aspen’s closing (Now just about a month) and the industry. It’s dead still. He even had been just at my previous employer before I bought Aspen and they are cut back in hours.

Come on Obama, stop taking care of Wall Street and take care of main street.

One of the other hobbies I involve myself with is Rollercoaster Tycoon, the game and have run the small park competition to allow creation of a park in the space of a few hours.

I have almost finished with another one of my samples. Here is the first one I did some years back, and the most recent one.

Lagos Park, lots of trees. I even put a river in the park and tried to balance the ride placement. The two coasters are reverse images of each other.

There are videos of it here
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This park needs its theming of trees, and benches, and trash cans and lights. More stalls for food and souvenirs.

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May 19th-Graces Finished

So finished the first draft today.

In the printout version it is 362 pages.

110,650 words long. Longer then I wanted. There might be a subplot or two I can get rid of. There are some sub plots that lay the groundwork for other stories with these characters if it were to sell. So far for the month I am way ahead of last month. 41,628 words. I still am determined to write a Chapter for my Space Mining story also this month which was my goal. But for the entire month I had planned 20,000 words and have doubled that so far. For this week alone have written 12,425. 5,651 just today.

When finished I formatted the story so I could have an edit copy. I make a two column to the page, no spacing, 11 point font copy. Then print it and bind it for easy access. I also was able to jump back into Rollercoaster Tycoon for a brief moment and have an update.
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Gratitude Log:

1. Chocolate Chip Pancakes
2. Color
3. Opera
4. Excel & Spreadsheets (Have been using them since Visicalc)
5. iPods

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May 15th, Friday

Last night we actually hit 3650 words. This morning booted up and did some chores with regards to Rat catching…

Also got in 1000 words before lunch and while doing my other errands. For the week we are at 11,492 at lunchtime. So double our goal of 5000 words for a week. Not quite as many as last month at the same point but that is because I did not write on the weekend.

The end is closer. The next book forming.

During the regency, second sons, the sacrificial lambs of the family, were sent off to the service of the country or god. Why not have a hero of this stature amongst the men that Wellington relied upon? Why not see the Peninsula through there eyes, rather than that of just the heroic Sharpe?

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I have some psychological torture going on between the hero and a nemesis and I just finished the scene. I thought it was good so I thought to share it:

        

“You know Mark, you could save us all a lot of trouble and get yourself killed. You really don’t think after all is done here that you could be a king, do you?” Mark couldn’t respond as he had been gagged. One arm tied to his saddle horn, the other free, but his lower torso tied into the saddle, he wasn’t going anywhere except where his horse led him. That horse was on a lead to two armsmen, loyal to de Jeffrey.
        “Hmm, I believe you would like to say something, but I have heard it all before. Do you know what I did when I lived in the Ghetto? I didn’t think so. I was an enforcer for the Packs. Now the Peacers, they think that I was a good citizen. A heart of gold and all that. But that was because I kept from them my true nature.” Jims was laying it on thick. He had learned, in his talks with Brant and Peter that the Bloods didn’t really understand the lower classes. They certainly had some romanticized view of the Ghetto. A view that made it sound much worse than it was. Things were harder in the Ghetto, that is, they were more honest. If a man threatened you, the threat was real. Jims had broken a great many arms, legs, fingers. He didn’t break hands, kneecaps, shoulders, elbows as some did, because then the mark took a lot longer to heal. A long healing mark didn’t pay you back as fast as a mark that remembered the pain vividly.
        Bloods used threats and thought that the power they could command was enough to back them up. They used assassins obviously. They thought that there lives were sacred. His prisoner squirmed. Jims nodded, Mark was indeed his prisoner. If Jims had been smarter, he would have dealt with this before the king had arrived at the river. Now things were going to be a bit messy, and his family would certainly take some political pain. But as they were already enemies of the Norans from the actions that had happened already, there was no closing that cookie jar as Rat would say. Jims looked over his shoulder and saw that the boy was in the midst of the riders. Duchess Keren had found the boy within minutes after Duchess Marree had left the fort. She had said that he could stay but he had to attend to studies every day. And she and the other Duchesses made it their special project to give the boy lessons.
        “You there are many Packs in the Ghetto and Cheapton and the other parts of Norbonne that Bloods never go? Of course you do. We have wars, just like the houses fight, except we actually use our steel and shed blood. I understand it has been nearly 200 years since the last house war. There was a Pack war two five days before we marched from Norbonne. We try to discourage them. You know. We do this by example. I sure you can appreciate that. Like the example of my dying by a lone attacker that you hired would make the other bloods think twice about challenging you for the kingship…”
        “Oh don’t shake your head. Even if this last attack wasn’t your doing, there were two others. Ah I don’t see any denial there. Too late to shake your head now. I told you, I have experience at this.” Jims was growing bored and it was getting time to move quietly so he had to wrap things up. “We make examples of our enemies by taking one leader from the Pack we are fighting with and torturing them. We don’t kill them, you understand. Remove an eye, take their parts. You know their parts… A hand, a few toes. You don’t take the whole foot you see, because of the balance. When you miss a few toes, your whole life is wobbly…” Jims laughed and then “Quiet now, we are getting close to the first hide.”

Word count in late afternoon has reached 2220 for the day, 12,664 for the week, 23,230 for the month, and 92252 for the book.

Gratitude Log:

1. Barbarian Kings (A wargame from my college days)
2. Empires of the Middle Ages (another one)
3. My chop saw (used to cut the wood to length to plug one of the rat holes.)
4. Bernard Cornwell and Sharpe (It’s a guide for how I don’t want to tell about the Peninsula campaign though the acting of Pete Postlethwaite in the TV series was excellent)
5. Bernadette, are german shepard

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