Allan Joyal: Blog

I seem to have days where I don't think I'm getting any writing done and then suddenly I have written a full chapter of a story. And that happened today. Of course, this means like so many other chapters I've posted over the years this is completely unedited so there may be mistakes. I go back and fix them if I can.

Hopefully this tale continues to be one you all enjoy. Its definitely been an interesting ride to write.

As for future tales about Ishtar and/or continuing the CAP-based tales. I do have ideas and do want to keep entertaining everyone by writing tales for SOL. But I also do want to publish more books on Amazon and enjoy the fruits of my labors, so I'm probably going to keep the current pattern of 1-2 chapters per week and once I finish A Woman Warrior, I'll see what other Sa'arm tales I want to work on.

Another chapter of a Woman Warrior has been just uploaded for your amusement and laughter. It turned out quite different than my original vision for the chapter, but then again very little of this story is something I had planned out. I tend to allow the characters to lead me around and I discover the story just a short time before you do.

Which is very true right now with this story. I'm posting the chapters pretty much immediately after finishing them, which means no editing or proof-reading. If you catch things and let me know, I'll try to remember to fix them, but when I'm working as hard as I am on my stories, that can take a bit of time to go back and fix things.

Well, chapter 15 of A Woman Warrior is now available. The scary thing is how quickly this chapter came together. I honestly did not realize how many words I had written until I checked it at the end and found that I had exceeded my daily goal with just the one chapter. And to make it even more surprising, this was after achieving my usual daily goal writing one of the stories that I'm preparing for posting via Kindle Direct Publishing.

So my muse appears to be happily dancing in my head for the moment. May she remain for a while so that you all can receive more wonderful stories.

I'm always nervous about posting that I have resumed writing because my muse can be extremely fickle. She might be around for today, but tomorrow she could decide that its time to once again take the left turn at Albuquerque and leave me feeling completely drained whenever I open up one of my stories thinking to add a few more words.

But until that happens, I'm writing. I am concentrating a bit more on stories that meet Amazon's publishing rules which means that stories in the Swarm Cycle universe don't work. But I want to reward my fans so I have been trying to give A Woman Warrior a few hours every couple of days. Don't expect a huge explosion of posting, but I should get a chapter every 4-8 days for right now.

And I actually have a semi-companion piece that I may work on. It is for a different person, but takes place on the Princess Victoria on the same journey that Tanya and her companions are currently on. It just involves citizens who are destined for Kelor and the Patrician flotilla being set up there, so Tanya and her companions don't interact with them directly. It has some fun characters though. at least I liked them when I worked on it long, long, long, long ago. (Yes, I've got stories I started work on too many years ago. My muse has really been absent for too long.)

I get the occasional message asking if I'm still writing. The answer to that is a bit complex, so I decided to try to write about it here.

First, yes, I am still writing, but its been slow. I do have a full time job outside writing, so most of my writing is on evenings and weekends when I can convince myself to take a few hours to sit and type, and that doesn't always happen.

Then there is the question of what am I working on. I'll be honest, the Swarm Cycle tales have not been at the front of the queue. I do plan on finishing them. I enjoy writing about the world and it can be fun. Unfortunately, while I know my fans here enjoy those tales, they aren't ones that can be published on Amazon (at least not without some major adjustments.) So while I will try to remember to add chapters to A Woman Warrior and other stories in the universe, I'm not going to promise to put those first.

I do have one book ready for editing, if I can find an editor I can work with. Its a sci-fi tale in a new universe that I came up with a few years ago.

Beyond that I'm mostly switching between 2 different tales that also are in new universes. (the train of thought derailed a few years ago, jumped onto a new track and seems to have kidnapped my muse in the process.) I've been working on one the past week or so, but its just 16K words in so its a long, long way from completion.

But that's what's up. I do appreciate the messages even if I've been abnormally slow at responding. Life definitely threw me a number of curve balls in the last 3 years and I'm still trying to get back to an equilibrium I can be comfortable in.