Bradbury, and I'm Excited!

In Today's Journal

* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* I'm Excited!
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting

The whole point of the Challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer.

There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story per week.

During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:

• Vanessa V. Kilmer "Fool of Love" 3981 Farce

• Harvey Stanbrough "No Call for Clocks" 5516 Western

• Dave Taylor "Escape to the Old Mall" 2,715 Horror/suspense

• Dave Taylor "What Comes After the End?” 2,333 Thriller/Conspiracy

Note: Our friend Adam Kozak was overwhelmed with illness this week. He writes, "I'll be back on the horse soon." We wish him a speedy recovery.

Coming in January, "The Bradbury Challenge on Steroids"! Stay tuned!

I'm Excited!

In fact, I haven't been this excited about a character since I met and got to know Wes Crowley ten years ago when I wandered into the 1880's Texas Panhandle.

Ever since then, I've kept an eye out for a new 'series character,' by which I mean a character who's interesting enough and strong enough to carry his or her own series.

The last time I stumbled across a character like Wes it was Soleada Garcia, and in that case I wasn't really looking. I just kept writing Blackwell Ops books until she popped up one day. Before I knew it I'd witnessed and recorded a 'subseries' of Blackwell Ops stories all about Soleada.

That was kind'a neat, but it still wasn't a 'new' series. It was only a subseries of one that already existed.

This one is different. The new novel I started two days ago will actually serve two different series: It will be the first novel in The Intermittent Ghost series. But it will also be written in the Blackwell Ops world.

The Intermittent Ghost will be a series of reports from Operative Jack Temple, whom I first met in Blackwell Ops 31.

Once the publisher has certified this first report as a true installment from Jack (as told to the author), he will publish it and mark the cover Certified BO-31A. He will certify subsequent reports as B, C, D, etc.

Wow. Seems like I wrote the first Blackwell Ops novel only yesterday, and I'm sure I'll write more with other characters in the future. Yet without the ensuing novels in that series, I never would have met Jack Temple.

Like Soleada Garcia, Jack is a very strong character. His favorite bit of self-deception is, ""Hey, I don’t pick which nails to hit. I’m only the hammer."

But since Jack's first appearance in the self-titled Blackwell Ops 31, Jack's life has changed. Drastically. Traumatically.

As a result, Jack is considering taking his life in a different direction, albeit a direction still particularly suited to his unique skill set.

So will he seek out a new carpenter to wield the hammer?

At the moment, on the outside as the recorder waiting in the wings, I have two burning questions and no answers:

• Will Jack, now or in the future, spin completely away from TJ Blackwell and his company? I don't know. That's up to him and TJ.

• Or will he remain loyal to TJ and continue as a Blackwell Ops operative in the long run, albeit doing his own thing? Again, I don't have a clue.

What I'd really like to do is sit down in a face-to-face and ask both Jack Temple and TJ Blackwell those questions, but I already know their answer. They'd only shrug and say, "How should I know? That's in the future. We'll have to wait and see."

But I do know one thing, and that's what has me over-the-moon excited: Whatever happens, Jack Temple's a different kind of guy and his stories will reflect that. I can hardly wait to hear his reports, experience them vicariously, and record them for him.

How very cool!

I like the idea for this new series SO much I took an hour or so off from writing the first novel yesterday to design a new "The Intermittent Ghost" book cover. This is one of those efforts (probably more tweaks to come):

I also ricocheted over here (did I say I was excited?) to write this edition of TNDJ before I returned to the novel. (grin)

I'm also developing a promo doc 'boilerplate' that will repeat some information yet apply to the specific book in the series too.

I even already have titles picked out for the first several novels. I've never done that before! If you can't tell, I'm having a ball with this new idea.

Looks like it's gonna be a great run. I'm even thinking about finally learning to do paper covers and take all of these to paper before I take anything else to paper (that I haven't already).

I'm wishing you the same excitement with your writing.

Talk with you tomorrow.

Of Interest

Want to Sell Paperbacks Using WooCommerce? Beware.

Talking About Advanced Craft

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 840

Writing of The Intermittent Ghost: Temple's Way (BO-31A)

Day 1…… 4202 words. To date…… 4202
Day 2…… 3055 words. To date…… 7257

Fiction for December………………… 79354
Fiction for 2024………………………. 825454
Nonfiction for December…………….. 23950
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 386520
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,211,974

Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 3607

2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 103
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 269
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.

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