First Draft of While We Bleed Finished
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, because there hasn’t been much to post about. And also I’m lazy. Sales of The Artificer’s Knot have been predictably nil, as with all my books, and it currently has a paltry nine ratings on Scamazon. I set the Ebook to free and got some downloads during the Narratess Indie Sale, but no new reviews. If you’d care to help increase that tally, dear reader, please do so. I’ve been putting a lot of time into my Dishonored lore videos on my YouTube channel, and the one on the Whales seems to have done alright, nearing 100K views so far. The others less so, but I’ve built up 4000 subscribers anyway. It hasn’t resulted in many more sales of my books, but it’s something I guess.
I’ve kind of neglected work on my latest story, While We Bleed, but I’ve gotten back into it a bit. This story started with an idea that worked well as a novella, but I’m too insecure to try publishing something only 35K words, and I don’t know how to market that any more than a full-length novel, so I’ve been fleshing it out as much as I can. I finished a rough draft a few months ago, and now also what I’m calling the first draft, though these are largely arbitrary distinctions. It now stands at almost 70K words, with more to go as I add another POV character and expand on scenes. I suppose the premise of a bad guy who loses his memory, then becomes a good guy, then regains his memory and has to deal with his bloody past is well-trodden at this point. But as time goes by it gets harder and harder to come up with novel ideas, so I’m doing the best I can. Or the best I’m willing to do for a hobby that costs me money rather than makes it for me.
This story concerns an infamous mercenary, Ardana Sul, who will do any dirty job for the right price. When his latest job obtaining plague dust for the Baroness of Tramontio goes bad, he escapes with his life but not his memory. Rescued from the river by a kind fisherman and his son, he has no recollection of his past or deeds, and in living with them gains something all his ill-gotten fortune could never buy- a measure of peace. But when the Baroness’ goons come to finish the job, his hands remember how to use a sword even if he doesn’t. Finally remembering his dark past, he resolves to stop the Baroness from unleashing the weapon he brought her on an unsuspecting city. The only question is how much of his old self he’ll have to resurrect in order to do it.
I had intended this book to be my return to more grimdark fantasy, but I find it just isn’t as brutal or bloody as what I’ve written in the past. It takes place in a different country in the same world as The Heron Kings, sometime between books 2 and 3 in an Italian Renaissance-like setting with rapiers and flintlocks. It was also my intent to try and write a character-driven story, as opposed to the more conventional plot-driven, so I’m dealing a lot more with the character’s conflict over who he is and how much of his old self he has to revive in order to stop the villain. This leaves less room for wallowing in gore, so who knows what the final result will be. Labels are just for marketing purposes anyway, and it’s clear I’m not good at that! But I am enjoying the crafting of the story, so there’s that.
In other, slightly amusing news, Assemble Media has renewed the option on my sci-fi short story “First Ship.” This has been a continuing source of amazement to me. I submitted this story in 2022 to their ezine/audiozine Assemble Artifacts, which looks for “high-concept” SFF, whatever that means. The story, about the captain of the first ship to reach another star system who sees her legacy threatened by another contender, took me a couple weeks to write, and another couple to edit and polish. It’s under 6000 words. They accepted it, bought the rights “in perpetuity throughout the universe” (actual words of the contract) and paid me something like 500 bucks. Nice. And, if that weren’t enough, they freakin’ optioned it for development for two years for an additional 750! Then, just a few months ago, they renewed the option for another two years and paid me ANOTHER 750! So this short story that took me almost no time to bang out has earned me more money than anything else I’ve ever written. Very few things that get optioned ever actually get developed and I’m sure this won’t either, but it just amazes me how much money is involved in doing nothing in actual industries, while I’m over here banging my head against the wall just trying to get someone to read my books FOR FREE and leave a goddam review. Crazy.
Finally, I sent one of my old sword blades in to a bladesmith for a custom rehilt. Jesse Belsky does mainly rapiers for stage combat, fencing and weddings, and I commissioned a new hilt for my sidesword. I recently received the first progress pic for the central section of the guard, and it looks pretty awesome! So excited for that, though it will still be a few more months until it’s done…
Anyway, check out my lore videos:
