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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.

Hi, there it's episode 14, December the 18 2020. I'm back in the saddle, working my way through the manuscript for, Fool Me twice book two in the, In All Jest series. I talk about how much I've written this month, the issues I'm dealing with. And of course, I'll narrate, another chapter of A Fool's Errand.

Since Last Time

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Starting to get pretty happy with the way things are going. Since last time I've written 11,187 words over the last two weeks. Probably not quite where I'd like to be. I would have liked to have got over my daily total, which is a couple of thousand words a day. At the moment it's most likely around 1500 a day is what I'm working out as a net total.

And what I mean by that is. In truth, I've probably written closer to 20,000 words, but it's 11,000 nearly just over 11,000 words, net. And that's because I've deleted a large chunk of some of the pre-existing chapters, then rewritten them and manipulated a lot of the early work that I had already written over a year ago.

So I've written a lot, but the net gain to the manuscript, isn't quite at that level. Overall, the total is 80,545 words as of this morning. And I'd like that to be closer to a hundred thousand, we'll see where we get to in the next two weeks. It's good progress. I'm really happy with the writing I'm doing and just, you know, if I've got to make my deadline, which is January the 31st, 2021, that's the first deadline I have , to complete the first draft of this manuscript.

What have I been working through? I reshaped the first scenes of Lani, in Fool Me Twice. I needed to make sure that they were consistent with the completed ending from A Fool's Errand. And they are, there was a little bit of work that needed to happen. And the reality of how I ended up writing, Lani at the end of A Fool's Errand meant that the early writing of her needed to change a little bit. Some of her character or characteristics had changed a little or were more detailed and had more depth to them. They're definitely more consistent with the story as it ended. I had to work through,  each of the characters that are carrying through, into Fool Me Twice in a significant way, and looking at their initial scenes, some of which were written some weren't and then making sure that I was resolving or continuing the plot threads, that they were entwined within - what their storyline was and what that meant for them. And so some of these early scenes, as I've already mentioned, were written some time ago.

For example, Goran who's one of the characters, the definition of his character, and some of the challenges that he faces in A Fool's Errand were enhanced late in the editing process and polishing of that story. They certainly didn't exist in the early draft of these chapters for Fool Me Twice. So I needed to, rework how he communicated himself, how he thinks what's happening in his world at that moment.

Just making sure that everything matches up with the continuation from all the scenes prior, some of those might've been six, 10 or 12 chapters before the end of A Fool's Errand, but whatever those elements were need to make sure that they just continued through. I have been debating the opening scenes in the book, and it's not something that I need to resolve right now, , but I need to think about what the opening of this book will be, who will take the lead. So those of you that have read A Fool's Errand will know that each chapter in the book is a different point of view character. Or should I say that, a character is the point of view character for that chapter.

So there might be four consecutive chapters that have the same point of view character, but not every chapter is written from the same point of view.  The start of Fool Me Twice, I have several options I can, pick up where he left off. I can deal with some other key characters and have them start this book, or there's a character and a very important character coming into Fool Me Twice, on the other side of the equation, one of our antagonists who we haven't been exposed to yet in A Fool's Errand. And my early thinking is that that character might be where Fool Me Twice starts . But of course, I'm, I'm a long way from finishing that. How that works is that I write everything from the sequences they need to occur and the timelines and get that manuscript out.

And so I understand the scenes that Lonnie's in, Goran's in, the different people, what they're in and then allow those to evolve. And then when I'm editing and reviewing, I shuffle those into consecutive positions, make sure that they all line up correctly, the state and that day, how do they work?

As it is, I actually put the day of the story into the title of the chapters in the software that I use Scrivener. The chapter titles in there don't match the chapter titles that you see in the published manuscript. The first chapter in Fool Me Twice is day one, and then I moved forward from there so that I can align the chapters properly. And even though early on, I might write chunks of characters, say, for example, I'm writing about Tillandra. Then I might write, you know, day, three day, five day 12, et cetera, but they all might be stacked together. And once I get to the editing portion  of the work, I'll align them up better and then review them in sequence.

If there's three different chapters all on day three, I'll make sure that they're all working in sequence together. So that's that, but the debate about how the book will start is already started in my head. Albeit I know I won't resolve it till much later. I have a number of newer characters, in Fool Me Twice, not a massive number, but there are a few, and I've been reviewing some of their motivations and their backstories to just look at how they align with where the story is sitting right now.

In the early writing. I had backstory, I had history. I had plot motivations and threads and things. And as those have been enhanced and tweaked and adjusted, of course, I just need to make sure that they all still line up now that I'm revisiting them and making sure that I'm getting into those characters in the right way.

And that means even with my antagonists, is making sure that when I'm feeding them, when I'm writing them, that I love being them, that I'm part of who they are. And I understand clearly what they're trying to achieve and how they feel so I can bring that out. Really cool event that happened , this week I treated myself to a custom signet ring, which is an exact replica of the ring on the cover of a fool's errand.

So it's a silver signet ring, which has the,  in all jest logo the Jester's head raised off it. And if you check my social media, you can see photos of that ring- it is quite special to be wearing that and to be living that part of the story. So I guess I am one of the court at this particular point in my life and one of the fools.

And at some times when I'm writing all these words and driving myself to despair, I do feel like a fool for doing it, but that's all part of it, but it does feel very real having that on my finger and it looks really great. And I'm very happy that I decided to treat myself to an early Christmas present.

What comes next? Well, I need to raise the ante. I need to get up to doing around 2,500 words, five days a week. And so I'm hoping that the summer shutdown that we have in Australia being Christmas, new year and summer holidays will allow me to catch up on that. Just not having a complete time deadline to say, I really need to be in the office at this time.

No, I only got 1800 words done. I can chip away at it on the days I'm writing and do multiple sessions. If I feel like it was said there for a good chunk of time. I do write fairly quickly. And the new methods that I've got, having, the more of an outline and understanding what's happening in book two already is making it much easier to write, particularly if I'm writing fresh, scenes and not having to rework ones that already exist.

Continued plotting reviews and checking my outline. That'll continue. As I go through, I do have some additional research that I want to look into. There's some books and materials I've had for some time that I really want to dig into and get some more insight into those circumstances, which will help enhance, Fool Me Twice. There is a, a creature that will surface in Fool Me Twice and be part of the rest of the series that I debated in A Fool's Errand, whether they needed to be introduced or not.

And for those dragon lovers is not a dragon. But I want to make sure that it appears and the storyline works . I'm going to look to record more narration in between episodes. I actually enjoyed the narration in the last episode, the chapter I did. So what my plan here is in 2021, is that  every two weeks I'll do a podcast episode like this, where I'm talking about my progress. I don't think I have enough material at this point to make it interesting on a weekly basis, which is why I'm spacing it out two weeks. I'd like to have something interesting to talk about and how I'm going. But I am going to do though, is in the in-between week, I'm going to record one or two chapters and keep that, going.

So if you get into the narration and you're enjoying it, you don't have to wait for two weeks just to get a single chapter. I'm also mindful of the number of chapters there is, and this could go on for a very long time. So I think it would be a great opportunity. All I need to do for the podcast is now open up the manuscript, go to the chapter that I'm at and I can immediately start narrating it and record that. So that's what I am going to do in that episode.

I'd like to say finally, a big, thanks to Pamela Lund, a friend and colleague, whose voice you hear as the voice talent for the segment introductions. So since last time and also now a one bite at a time, those are recorded by Pam.

Pam has been,  very helpful doing those for me. I didn't want them in my own voice and she has a great voice to do those. Pam has her own podcast called not bad advice. It's just been launched just a couple of episodes out. I think you should check it out if you just search for not bad advice on your normal podcast platform.

And on that note, it's time for one bite at a time.

One Bite at a Time [00:11:51]

Outro