Update time!

I can’t believe how long it’s been, and the only progress i can report for you guys is that i’ve just hit page 150.

It’s going much slower than it used to. I hope to get my act together soon, or else this will never lift off.

The good news is, i’m still completely in love with my characters and ideas, even though i seriously need to review some of my stylistic issues.  I also realized that there’s really no such thing as writer’s block, it’s just that thing we do where our brain is only really half-into what we’re writing… I guess, if you aren’t entirely in love with what you’re writing maybe it’s time for a change. It’s possible that that’s what stopped me, i did reach a point where i needed to turn back a few pages and completely do-over. It’s been harder since then.

Ah, well, kick in the nuts and away we go-o-o!

Regrets and Doubts

I don’t think i can do this. I’m pretty sure i can’t do this, my mind keeps slipping up and running off and i’m having doubts and second thoughts.

What if i finish it and nobody… no, that’s not it. What if i don’t finish it in spite of the fact that people like it? What’s with this half-assed attempt at being focused?

I don’t think i can do this.

Research central

I don’t know what it’s like for other writers, but i have to shamefully admit that my main source of research is google.

I abuse google translate whenever i need foreign words, and the dear old folks down there just provided me with what i hope (!!) is a good brand of true Russian Vodka, as well as its latin spelling: Putinka.

I dread the moment someone will read my book and decide to google things that are foreign to them, like i always do when i read, and realize that most of the stuff they’ll want to find is among the first few pages of either Google or Wikipedia.

Alas, there’s no helping it. Wish me luck, page 45 and counting.

Character Description: Hanabusa and Buck

Buck (Bucannon) Jones

Second neighbor of Adair, rowdy texan that died during the cold war and through some irony of fate (the author) happens to live right next to Piotr Lovushka, with which he has an ongoing feud. Skilled in properly cleaning a double-barreled shotgun, not so much in wielding it.

Hanabusa Kyofu

An ex member of Tokyo police, after being brutally murdered on a mission he found himself deemed too unstable to join the afterlife guards. This second shock in a short span of time unhinged him mentally and he now prowls the streets taking the guise of a vigilante, spying on any suspicious activity and recordin all of his actions in a third person dramatic interpretation, slowly filling his house with tapes of his past endeavors.

Character Description: Piotr

Piotr Lovushka

A muscular russian, died right after the Perestroika (help·info) (Russian: Перестройка) is the Russian term (now used in English) for the political and economic reforms introduced in June 1987[1] by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Its literal meaning is “restructuring”, referring to the restructuration of the Soviet political and economic system. Being well versed in russian folklore, he uses his collection of Matryoska (A matryoshka doll, also known as a Russian nested doll or a babushka doll, is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside the other. The word “matryoshka” (матрёшка) is derived from the Russian female first name “Matryona” (Матрёна). The word “babushka” is the Russian word for grandmother.) to trap souls. Kindly but strong and with a strict sense of justice.Closest neighbor of Adair. He has a pet beaver named Bobr.

Character description: Adair

Main character, Adair Fairfax. (Still considering changing last name, up for suggestions)

British, resident of Stratford-upon-Avon. Born 1990, died 2010.

Works as a supernatural photographer with little success for the even less-successful newspaper  ”Witch Weekly”

Has a red Beetle he, at one point, decided to paint hippie flowers on. Nobody knows why.

Extract: The truth is, he’d never been exactly well-to-do. His life had been spent entirely on breadline, occasionally breadline and less, ever since his parents had retired when he was very young and went to live off their pensions in Florida, leaving him to fend for himself. He’d never asked for help either, preffering to send them the occasional email about how well the newspaper was going and how happy he was with his life and promising constantly to bring them back home soon when he’d get married to a nice, simple imaginary girlfriend the description of which his parents entirely approved of. They never made any further inquiry, probably preffering to believe that simple reality.
He didn’t dwell much on the thought, they were happy and that was everything that really mattered. He could deal with the rest.

Lines i Like

A description of the first image of the main character in the underworld:

“The place looked alternatively like the Mojave and an underwater landscape, hard to define and defying rationality. There were birds that were fish and birds again with every wingbeat or finnstroke, and then again they looked more like specters and fishbones than anything else. Prickly algae fed little serpents who seemed to be walking on a million little legs which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be ribs and the serpents nothing more that vertebrae with skulls. It looked much like the museum of a messed up imagination, everything coming with a little brass nametag. He could make out a few of the closer ones, a tall prickly plant nearby swaying in no particular breeze was called “Calgae” and if he zoomed in in a surprising fashion he couldn’t exactly define, each grain of sand was called alternatively “Surly” “Burly” or “John.” The largest creature nearby was the perfectly still skeleton of a horse that had an alltogether empty nametag hung round its neck. Perfectly still was only a matter of putting it, as it indeed didn’t move but moved the landscape around itself to make it look like a slow rhythmic travel.”

Mingle

So, i’m writing a book. I have to spend all of my freaking mornings being creative, insightful and literate, don’t expect any miracles here.

Like i said, writers will do anything to avoid writing and this is what i’m going to be doing. I’m going to bitch to you people about how hard it is to write, and give you extracts that i actually like to waste time i should be using creating new ones. It’s an alternative to color-coding socks and re-arranging my music folder, what can i say.