Kenn Ghannon: Blog

A reader pointed out my use of 'Word' chapter headers ("One", "Two", etc.) was causing issues with downloading the story. I want to sincerely apologize; I never meant for it to be a problem and I've changed it accordingly.

The reason I prefer to use worded chapter headers is because, to be honest, I don't really believe I should call any of my stories 'books' and I don't really think I should call the parts of any of these stories as 'chapters'. Using those terms implies, at least to me, I am an 'author'. I'm not. I'm a storyteller. An author is someone who is good enough to make a living telling stories (whether they actually do it or not). A storyteller is someone who tries - and tries hard - to spin a compelling yarn.

There are a few people on SOL I consider 'authors' because I think they are good enough to actually sell their work (and some of them do, I think). These are the likes of Jay Cantrell, G. Younger and so on. I'm certainly not there yet, though I aspire to such lofty goals some day.

Finally, I've received some e-mails which have been critical of some or all of Runesward. As always, THANK YOU. Criticism hurts but is necessary to be a better storyteller (if not author). Some of the criticisms, I absolutely agree with - and I'd change things, if I could figure out a better way of presenting them; hopefully, I can find a way to avoid my pitfalls in future works.

The thing is - every e-mail I receive (even those that tell me my work is shit) are RIGHT. It's a perspective thing - this is how they see my story/stories so, to them, it is absolutely accurate. It's like the old axiom 'the customer is always right' - the customer IS always right because what they say to you is what they see and feel, no matter if you see things or feel things differently. Its only through the feedback or conversation that we can become better.

I can be a bit of an attention whore. When I post stories, I like receiving the feedback (good and bad, actually). I often peek here every few hours (if not more often) to see if I have any mail or anyone has commented on the story. It's a failing and one I'm not proud of.

So, this weekend was a bit of an experiment. In the past, I've always preferred to post on a weekly basis; this is my first time trying it on a (more-or-less) daily schedule. I grew a bit addicted to it - but I decided to try breaking a bit this weekend.

I liked it. So, for now, I'm going to continue posting daily (with caveats - I might have to take a break now and again) on weekdays and breaking on weekends. I hope this isn't inconvenient for anyone.

...from my point of view.

Yesterday was the first day in about three weeks where I didn't write a single word. I had intended to - but my 'honey, do' list had become a bit long and my wife (rightfully) gets a bit perturbed when she has to ask me to do something multiple times.

It came at a good time, though. I'd literally pasted our hero into a corner in Chapter 23 and I had to step back and figure out how I'm going to get him out - he has to be in the open for the next part of the story and getting him there had me perplexed. I think I've solved it so I'll probably write a bit in there this afternoon. It's also become uncommonly long, so I'm probably going to have to split it into two chapters - with, I think, another two or three chapters after it. It should be enough to get this finished posting by the end of January or early February.

Crowd-source editing seems to be working okay; I'm getting some feedback from readers who are catching many (most? all?) of my myriad mistakes. I seem to have a problem with homonyms and 'lay' vs. 'lie' which has me heading back to the internet to re-read the rules...

Anyway, for those of you following 'Runesward', there will be no posts this weekend. Chapter 4 is queued up and awaiting approval and I'll post chapter 5 on Monday.

Thank you for your time and understanding,
KG

For whatever reason - native wishy-washiness or ADHD - I go hot and cold when writing. One of my New Year Resolutions is to stay dedicated to it; to force myself to write. It's what I've been doing for the past few weeks and I mostly finished Runesward thanks to it.

To that end, I'm going to try to list out my plans - subject to change - for the rest of this year in terms of story productivity I hope to achieve.

After part 1 of Runesward, I hope to complete 'Fairly CAPable', the follow-up to 'Pretty CAPable'. Once I complete 'Fairly CAPable', I'm going to go back and re-visit 'Ring of Command'. I still have my notes about future plot points (which included a sequel I'm not sure I still care enough about to write) and I think it's only fair I finish that off. Once I get there, I'll likely head to part 2 of Runesward, which I was planning to make a trilogy but I won't promise it. There's also the normal, inherent caveats about real life taking precedence and a few other commitments which have to come first (I try to be a man of my word).

As I said, I've been forcing myself to write the past three weeks, even when I didn't want to. It's generated a lot of trash - but much/most of it actually cleaned up pretty nicely and fit the Runesward story well. I did have a few problems with plot points - but the 'trash' actually took me in a new direction in some ways and cleaned up inconsistencies with the plot in others.

As some of you have been kind enough to point out, it's been quite some time since I've posted anything new here. I assure you, it isn't because I haven't been writing. I've been writing a ton. It's more or less because I haven't really finished anything. I have so many stories started but not finished, I sometimes have to go through my story vault to re-read what I've written just to remember what the story was about.

I'm fickle - or my muse is fickle...or maybe one or both of us suffer from Adult ADHD (I've often thought of how much I could accomplish if I just could find someone to prescribe me some Adder-all {sp?}). Sometimes I sit down to write one story and feel so bored with it, I write something else (or read SOL...or play a game...or watch television...you get the idea).

For the past month, I've been finishing the initial book/part/whatever of a story I started at least three years ago (I know, because that is how old the oldest file in the folder containing the story is from March of 2015). I still have not completed this initial book/part/whatever - but I'm close. I've actually been pushing myself to finish it for the past three weeks because I wanted to 'gift' it to all of you on January 1 of the New Year. Unfortunately for the story, my in-laws made their annual visit (again, unfortunately for the story but not for me; I genuinely like my in-laws and wish we didn't live so far from them) and I've been side-tracked a lot so it isn't complete...but I decided, against my better judgement, to post it anyway because it's so close and I've got the final couple of chapters to this part finished in my head.

So, I hope you like Runesward, part 1. Currently, I have twenty-one chapters finished and most of chapter twenty-two. I think I have two more Chapters to go but it could stretch to three, depending.

Oh...and I don't have an editor for this so I'm going to try 'crowd sourcing' it; this means if you read it and catch an error, email it to me and I'll try to be diligent about correcting it. I will even, if you wish, add your name to the tail end of the chapter you've corrected (first come, first served - so the first one to point out an error get their name in!) - just tell me how you'd like to be known.

Finally, I don't have a posting schedule for this. I was thinking about putting it out daily - but I can't commit to it. Sometimes, real life bites me in the butt and I just don't have time to do something as simple as uploading a chapter. Sorry.