[00:00:00]

Welcome to the In All Jest podcast.

I'm Darryl, your host, and each week I take you on a hero's journey.

I leave my safe, normal world and face many obstacles on my quest to publish not just one but six epic fantasy novels. .

I hope you'll come along for the ride.

You can find out more information at kingdarryl.com/podcast.

Hey, it's episode 13, December the 4th, 2020. In this episode, I'm going to talk about the last two weeks writing progress and I'm introducing a new segment, which you'll have to listen to, to find out about.

Since Last Time

[00:00:44]

Well in the last two weeks, the book A Fool's Errand has continued to sell. I'm happy with the progress it's making, without large promotions or advertising going on. A number of reviews have been coming in. I've been happy about the reviews that people have sent to me. I've had some come in unusual ways, people reaching out a lot of people that don't know that I've found the story, or it's been shared with them, and they've reviewed it and enjoyed the story. Most of all, that makes me feel good about what I did producing the book and gives me the inspiration to keep going with the next stories.  My new phone cover arrived, which is the only printed displayed public version of the cover of, Fool Me Twice, really, really happy with it.

And next year, I'll love to share it with everyone that's in my readers group and follow me in the different channels. It's a great continuation of the theme of the first book cover with its own little twists. I do love it. Most importantly, writing commenced on Fool Me Twice. Book two of the In All Jest  series is underway.

So what did I do? Well, the first thing I did was I documented all of the key plot threads and elements that I need to consider for this book. A number of those came from my work with the Wiki. I had been creating lists while I did it, and I pulled out all of the ones that I felt need to be considered to address in book two that I may not already have thought about or already have in the existing copy that I've written.

Just a reminder, if you haven't been through all of the episodes of the podcast, I am about 40 to 45% through the first draft of Fool Me Twice. Many of the scenes and chapters that are there came from when I originally wrote my first draft of A Fool's Errand. When I got there, I actually pulled a chunk of the story out, moved it to book two and then edited and reworked book one.

While A Fool's Errand was being edited, I worked some more on book two, introducing some new characters and adding to the story and that all sat there for a while as the publishing cycle continued. So going back to it all, I needed to just make sure I had all of those plot threads ready.

You know, are they all going to be in this book? I don't think so. Otherwise it's going to be a huge manuscript. And I don't want that to happen. Some of them are going to go through to book three.  There will be some underlying ones that might continue on past book three into the second trilogy. That said, though, a lot of them need to be addressed, answered and weaved through book two.

So I need them all laid out really clear. I can effectively check them off, in the story as I go. So then I created a question map based around the characters, particularly, or some events. Where I looked at some of these plot threads and I asked myself questions, you know, what really needs to happen there?

What could happen there? What might happen there? What would get in the way of that? You know, what does this character really want from this? Who might be in the way, what might happen? What might go well for them, who might help them? And I try to just scribble down. Answers to these questions and really probe around it, so I create little, maps of content around particular characters and, or very key things that I think need to happen. And, before the last part, I then reviewed all of the existing chapters that I had written for Fool Me Twice. Some from way, way back, first draft chapters. Some of which I don't really like so much anymore, particularly the writing style, and others that have been done, as I mentioned just before, along the way.

I went through all of those and that took a fair chunk, about a week. The last two weeks was to go through them all, have my editing pen out. I did them printed and read through them, crossed out things that don't exist. There's a character in there, who was in there in A Fool's Errand. It's no longer there.

So I have to pull that out, highlight things that were inconsistent now with book one. Just little things I needed to go through and mark up, make some notes and add to this sort of overview of what I need to address. Once I'd done all of that, then I sat down and drew out the shell of the outline for Fool Me Twice.

And the outline is something that's, really to be considered new for me from when I wrote my first book to how I'm writing now. When I wrote the first book, it was  very much a pantsing operation. I did it by the seat of my pants. There were moments where I couldn't continue to do that. And I had to really think about it.

But most of the planning and plotting and thinking happened in the editing cycle for me, which is why it took a lot longer to do that. This time around one, I have the world, I have large components of it that will carry on through this book. Some new introduced areas. I have a lot of the characters. I know what's going on in the story.

And I actually know the start and the end of book two, because I literally wrote to the end of that storyline originally. And while there is some adjustment to  the minor detail of it, the main story is intact and it's really the middle of the story and the meat and the characters and their evolution through the story which need to change and some density or depth to the story. when I did this section of the story, originally, I hurried through it because of the feeling I had at the time that the book was just getting too unwieldy and too big and deep down when I was writing it, there were things I wanted to do with it, which I didn't do. Now as a standalone book or book two in its own right, those things can be explored further and there's a need to direct things that have to happen in this book to get to book three, which I need to cover.

So outlining it was okay, these are all things that are going to have to happen, shuffling them around so , where they sit in the sequences,  really getting clear on that, filling in some of the meat of that outline. So I can check it off my other lists and set that all up.

And then I started writing. Okay. Given that there was a fair bit of work over those two weeks. I didn't get a lot of fresh words down on paper. I think I got about 300 words. Not a lot for two weeks. Yes. You don't need to remind me about that. I definitely know about that. Not a lot. Definitely not on target.

But it was really the last day of the week or the fortnight writing it. I needed to put some words on paper. I needed to start off on something positively. I've done that. And that leads to well what's next then? And what's next is quite simple. I have a deadline of January the 31st, 2021 to do the first draft.

That's the timeframe I'd like to have the first draft done so I can then swing into editing. To have that happen, I need to write just over 2000 words a day, five days a week for the next two months effectively. So what comes next is me in front of the computer, with my notes with the keyboard, hammering out the story for the next, slightly under 60 days.

That's what comes next.

That's my recap of what's been going on, not a lot of detail about the story.  I'm going to try and make this podcast a little bit more interesting than potentially it has been. A little less worried about perfection in my speaking, and hopefully a lot more of my passion for the story and the things that interest me.

I'm going to focus on that. Now I mentioned in the intro that there is a new segment that I'm going to introduce. And I'll talk about that now. The new segment is going to be called One Bite At a Time, and I've always liked it, that little phrase. And it comes from a dear old friend of mine from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Papa T, who always used to say, you know, how do you eat an elephant?

It was one bite at a time. I carry that phrase around with me a lot. Even writing the novel, like you do it, one word at a time, one line at a time, one beat at a time, one scene at a time, one chapter at a time, one book at a time. It's one bite at a time. Well, how does this relate to the new segment?

Quite a number of people have asked me, when is the audio book coming out? And sadly, I don't have a timeline for that at the moment. Audio book narrators charge per spoken minute, as they should. They are a creative talent that deserves to be paid well for what they do. Unfortunately there's 202,000 words in A Fool's Errand.

And at this point in time and the sales cycle and the business, I'm not willing to invest the large amount of capital for the book until the series has a much bigger audience. So that's disappointing for people, and I understand that there are plenty of people that like listening to audio books. So what's the answer.

The answer is at the back end of each episode, I am going to read one chapter from A Fool's Errand in my own voice as the narrator. And that will be here in the podcast for people to listen to as they see fit. I am not a narrator by trade or skill. I'm not pretending to be. I hope that my love of the story will carry through the lack of my technical capabilities, the weaknesses in my voice or sound production.

And for those of you that want to listen to this story and want to hear me tell the story, I hope you enjoy it, but that's what I'm going to do. It will be a lengthy journey I might, because of it do more episodes rather than every two weeks. I might bring it through to weekly and depending on demand, it might even stretch out to two chapters in an episode.

But given that I'm not strong in that area. I don't want to overdo it. I want to record one store it, have it up here for you to listen to. And that's what one bite at a time is going to be. I am hopefully going to get a new little soundbite to put into the podcast. This episode won't have that. We'll go straight onto it in the next segment.

And I will read chapter one. A little note about the book. The chapters are all named by the point of view character. So chapter one will be called Lani. So when I start these segments, I will start with the point of view character name, which is the chapter name, and then I'll start reading it. You can follow along.

The first one will be clearly chapter one, there are 112 chapters, I believe, that we need to get through. So a bit of a journey, listen up, follow along. Hope you enjoy it. Love to hear your feedback and that's it for this round.

One Bite at a Time [00:22:47]

Outro