The writing conditions for this chapter was about as sub-optimal as could be. The day had been one of remortgaging phone calls and negotiations, culminating in a one and half hour session online which ended in the bank’s website crashing and losing all the data. (more…)
There’s a lot going on here. This is the tension-building chapter prior to the action finale, and there’s a fair amount of world building thrown in for good measure. Exploring a future-Hong Kong has been great fun.
However, what I want to talk about is a large mistake I made when first publishing this chapter. (more…)
I’ve wanted to write this one for a long, long time. Ever since Cal got his ability this has been on the cards – there was a tiny version of it back in arc 2 when he gives Kay a guided tour of the void, but it was restrained. Interlude #6 takes the brakes off and hints at the potential of a many more stories in the A Day of Faces universe. (more…)
I’ve been testing the pomodoro technique for the last 24 hours. I’m using it right now while writing this blog post. It’s already made me more productive and efficient – I think.
I first read about the technique last year sometime over on the Buffer blog. It sounded intriguing but I wasn’t really in a position to actually try it out – at work in particular I was in the middle of several intense projects and it really wasn’t the time to start experimenting with alternative productivity approaches.
So here’s how it works: (more…)
Here we finally get Kay and Simons in a room together when they’re not attacking each other, and it becomes clear that they’re natural allies. Simons is a man in the wrong place, having forgotten what he grew up wanting to do. Kay is barely an adult, but has been forced to confront unpleasant truths and figure out what she’s going to do with them. Together, they’ve got a chance to find proper purpose. (more…)
The Wattpad Block Party (2nd Winter Edition) is upon us. All through February the event will be rolling, with prize giveaways and a ton of featured authors posting brand new work. Here’s how the organiser, Kelly Ann Blount, describe it:
The Wattpad Block Party – Winter Edition II is an epic online event featuring some of your all time favorite Wattpad Super Stars, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling authors, and up and coming Wattpad writers!
Reginald Koettlitz was born in 1860 and died in 1916, making this month the centenary of his death. In his life he travelled on the Discovery to the Antarctic with Captain Scott, journeyed up the Amazon and explored half of Africa. He was a medical pioneer, identifying many techniques for surviving Read more…
Pacing in Arc 3 is proving to be a fiddly thing. In the first two arcs pacing was definitely flexible, but on the whole I stuck to the initial chapter breakdowns. With Arc 3 I’m constantly restructuring the story, adding and removing chapters and adjusting the overall pace. (more…)
Now we’re talking. All the build-up of the journey east leads to this chapter. Hopefully it was worth the wait.
I should probably talk about that opening scene. That wasn’t planned. The first line I wrote for this chapter was Kay moaning about the freighter journey, and how uneventful it had been. That then made me think it could be fun to have her wistfully imagine what might have been. I liked the idea, but decided to switch it around so that the chapter opened with the dream, presented with a straight face before the reveal. (more…)
Here we get some pretty blatant clues about where the story has been set on Earth, and the route of the freighter. In researching this I stumbled across a fascinating blog by Maya Jasanoff, who spent a month on a cargo ship from China to the UK. It’s a great read and was a big help in visualising the freighter journey in the story. (more…)