Dusting Off The Cobwebs

I’m always a little melancholy to visit this blog and see how much time has passed since my last post. Every time I think about writing something here, I tell myself there’s no point until I have something to announce. And sadly, I haven’t had anything worth announcing in quite some time.

Finally–Finally!–that is no longer the case.

After all this time, I am proud to announce that AfterLife is done!…ish.

That is to say, I’ve achieved the goal of making it through the first draft and writing The End. Of course, that’s just the beginning of the process. I can already think of two chapters I need to rework from the ground up. But one nice thing I can say about this book having taken so long for me to write is that I’ve gone over the first half of it quite a few times. I’ll still go through those early chapters again, of course, but I don’t think the editing will take quite so much work and time as it would have otherwise.

Another thing about the extended period of time this has taken me is that a lot has changed, both in my life and the world at large. I first started scribbling ideas about this story on a napkin the month before my daughter was born. She just turned twenty (that sound you hear is me sighing and gasping for air at the same time). People who read my first book when they were young are now old enough to attend college. Technology has changed. Six-seven has become a thing.

Point is, it’s been a long journey to get here, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t leaving any accidental loose ends. So I went back and started re-reading The Four-Year-Old Guardian and made notes. What I discovered is that, while I’m proud of the story I put out back then, there are still little things that bugged me. Phrasing I think I could have handled better. Some ideas that could have been fleshed out a bit more. And as I thought about it, I realized there were some things I had wanted to include, but hadn’t gotten around to them.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized this would be the perfect time for me to implement some of these ideas and bring the series up to date. So my plan is to release the first four books as Special Editions, newly edited and with additional scenes and new covers. None of the changes will impact the plot, so if you’re a purist at heart, you should be able to read the old versions and move straight into AfterLife once it’s released without missing anything.

For those of you whose hearts aren’t quite so pure, I plan to update the Kindle/e-Reader versions so it will be a free upgrade to the Special Editions. Upgrading printed copies isn’t quite the same, and I’m still working on how to proceed in that regard without putting myself completely in the red (if I’m being completely honest, I already sell my books at about as low of a margin as I can without outright becoming a charity). If anyone has any suggests on how to best handle all this, I welcome any and all feedback.

I don’t want to announce a release schedule until I have it better buttoned down. I’ve definitely set myself up to fail in the past and that’s part of the reason I’ve felt so reluctant to post here. Hopefully this project will be embraced by everyone who is interested. For me, it’s been awhile since I’ve felt this excited to write.

Thanks for reading,

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Update Day 30

I know it’s been awhile since I updated the word count on the contest between my mother and I. That’s because I haven’t really had much of anything to report. Unfortunately, due to some unforeseen circumstances, my writing has fallen off over the last several days. I already knew I wasn’t on track to hit the 50K, but now I can say with certainty I won’t be finishing AfterLife by the end of tomorrow.

While I’m bummed I failed to hit my goal, I am happy with the progress I made. I still have roughly a chapter and a half left to go, but the process of writing has made some previously dry and brittle parts of my brain juicy once again. As a result, the ideas are flowing and I have a clearer picture than ever of what comes next.

Despite failing, I remain dedicated to getting this rough draft done by the end of the year at the absolute latest. I have no doubt that is possible and if I don’t manage to do that, I’ll consider that by biggest failure.

So, unless I manage to get more done today or tomorrow, I’m posting the following as our final word count for the month:

Steve 17,189

Mickee 2454

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Update Day 17

Apologies I fell off for a few days. My weekend was more hectic than I imagined and I’ve been hurting since. Just as I started to feel kind of like myself after this surgery, I think I overdid it and backslid a bit on the recovery. Nothing major, but sitting at the laptop writing isn’t high on my list of ways to feel better. That being said, I’ve managed to get a bit more written, as has my mom, Mickee Madden (who’s recovering from her own bout of not feeling 100%).

To be honest, at this rate I doubt either of will get to 50K, but I’ve sure written a lot more than I usually would. In fact, I currently have 1.5 chapters left to write, and a short epilogue. I do believe I’ll at least be able to finish those by the end of the month.

Steve: 14,735 words

Mickee: 3839 words

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Update Day 10

Greetings, fellow travellers!

First, I apologize for missing a few days of updates. At least it wasn’t because I hadn’t written anything this time.

Second, I’m changing the format up a bit for this post. Instead of putting down our totals for yesterday, I’m going to list them for today. This is because I have the current numbers for both my mom and I, and I don’t believe either of us are going to write anymore today.

We’re both behind in our total word count from where we should be, but we are making progress! I just finished another chapter (one more after this, then the epilogue!) and my mom wrote her prologue this morning. We’re just getting started!

Steve: 13118

Mickee: 2780

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Day 7 Update

Greetings, fellow travellers! As you may have noticed, I skipped a few days worth of updates. That’s because there was nothing to update. That’s because there was nothing of note to update. The weekend proved to be a busy one, despite the fact I’m still very much in the recovery phase after my surgery. So I thought it best to not do an update until there was something to actually report.

Most importantly, my mother, Mickee Madden, is now officially on the board. Let the competition begin, for real!

Steve: 8761

Mickee: 625

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Day 4 Update

Day four of my competition with my mom has come and gone. Fortunately, I had another good day, because there’s a decent chance I won’t have an opportunity to write today. I can pretend I’m doing it altruistically since my mom won’t be able to start until Monday, but really, it’s just a busy day. If I can, I definitely will. Otherwise, I’m glad I’m a little ahead of my goals.

Most importantly, I finished the chapter I’ve been stuck on for awhile. I had written several pages, restarted, written several more, restarted again. When I started this on October 1, I scrapped what I had written and started over from the beginning. So the fact I’m only a few days in and I’ve finished a chapter has me excited. At this point, I have three chapters and an epilogue and it’ll finally be finished!

And then it’s onto rewrites.

Current standing is:

Steve: 7871 (wrote 1877 yesterday)

Mickee: 7 (wrote 0 yesterday)

Thanks for reading,

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Day 3 Update

Yesterday was a good day for me, at so far as word count goes. I managed to get ahead of my required daily count of 1613, which is good because I feel like this is going to be a relatively busy weekend. Of course, I’m still very much in the recovery phase since my surgery, so I won’t be too active, but I’ll try to help around the house as much as I’m able.

Again, this is a reminder that my mom (who some of you may know as author Mickee Madden), went into this knowing she wouldn’t really be able to get started until Monday. I mean, I’m not really competitive or anything, but I’m totally owning her right now! Who gave birth to whom?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit much. Anyway, current numbers are as follows:

Steve 5994 (wrote 2465 day three)

Mickee 7 words (wrote 0 day three)

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Day 2 Update

Day two of the NaNo competition between my mother and I was a bit more fruitful for me than the first. Not by terribly much, but I still beat my goal for the day. I’m sure as the competition goes on, I’ll have much better days and much worse. At this point, I’m happy to be making the minimum 1613 words per day to reach the 50K goal at the end of the month.

A reminder, my mom hasn’t had much chance to start and doesn’t think she’ll have any time to write until Monday, October 7th, when she promises she’ll kick my butt. Personally, I believe her and hope she does. I’m looking forward to reading her new book.

So as of day two, the standings are thus:

Steve: 3529 (wrote 1916 day two)

Mickee: 7 (wrote 0 day two)

Thanks for reading!

S.L. Madden

NaNoMo Day 1 Update

It’s October and as promised, I’m here to provide an update on the word count for my mother and myself, as we’re hosting our own personal NaNo this month. As a reminder, the goal is for us to reach 50K words by the end of the month. This works out to roughly 1613 words per day.

I barely managed to hit the word count for day one. In my defense, I’m still recovering from the surgery I had a few weeks ago, and I’m stuck writing on a laptop that insists on jumping all over the page (I’m making sure I’m not hitting the touchpad, but it’s still doing some funky things). My mom barely got started and told me she was going to be unavailable to start writing until this upcoming Monday, when she promises she’s going to start kicking my butt in word count.

Excuses aside, the results for day one are:

Steve: 1613

Mickee: 7

NaNoWriNoMoFoSho

NaNoWriMo is a subject I’ve brought up often over the years. For those who don’t know, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and is an annual exercise to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I’ve participated many times but have only succeeded once. However, even those years I failed resulted in a lot of extra writing.

This year, I’ve decided to do my own version of it, with a few changes. Instead of November, I picked October. It has one extra day and no major holiday during it (though I would argue Halloween should be a national holiday celebrated for a week). Also, instead of working on a new book during this time, I’m going to use this opportunity to finally, finally finish AfterLife.

As of this writing, I have far less than 50k words left, even if I include rewriting some chapters that desperately need it. Once I finish AfterLife, I believe I’ll have enough time and word count left to put the finishing touches on the third Unseen Things book. It’s been mostly complete for quite awhile now, and if I push myself, I believe it’s not unreasonable to finish both of these books so I can finally move onto new material.

To keep myself honest and make it more interesting, I challenged my mom, author Mickee Madden, to participate with me. She has a new novel she’s been looking forward to working on so we figured this would be an opportune time to support and challenge one another. We plan to send each other our progress nightly and I’ll keep it updated here.

One potential bane or boon is that I’m scheduled for surgery later today. It was rather unexpected and came about after I made this agreement with my mom. It could work to my advantage since I’ll be home for a few weeks recovering. However, I don’t know how easy it’ll be for me to sit at a computer for any length of time. I had the same idea after my surgery last year and found it uncomfortable. This year, I’m going to have to figure a system out. I’m determined to let nothing stop me.

Thanks for reading,

S.L. Madden