All posts by mgraphman

2016 Christmas and Holiday Gift Fair at the Monroe County Fairgrounds

Today marks the halfway point of the NaNoWriMo competition.  At the close of my writing session, I have managed to hit 25,230 words which puts me back on target.  This after falling behind over this past weekend due to circumstances beyond my or anyone’s control.

I can’t express how much I’ve been blessed by all of the support I’ve received on social media and from my family and friends.  This challenge would not be possible without the sacrifices of many.

Going into the second half, I have some opportunities to make some big gains in the process since I am currently planning on taking ten days off around the Thanksgiving holiday.  Now before you get any brilliant ideas, I have lots of other things to accomplish besides just writing.  I have some special order Christmas presents that I must work on in my wood shop.  I want to spend some quality time with my family and maybe, just maybe, re. . . .lax.  I’m pretty sure that’s a French word.  I’ll have to look it up one of these days.  I hear its quite enjoyable.

I’ve also committed to one more Holiday event up at Life Church’s Indoor Christmas Festival.

This should be a great event.  The vendor fees and a portion of my book sales will go to help purchase a bus for the organization.  So, I hope you’ll come out and support this worthwhile cause.  If you have all of my books, that’s okay, I’m trying to work out a deal where I can have prints of some Silverwood Artwork made available and possibly a signed Chel & Riley cover art from my good friend Jingo.

Until next time, blessings!

I just wanted to take just a brief moment and give everyone an update.  Today marks day seven of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  If you have been following me, you know that I have signed up for the challenge to write 50,000 words or more during the course of November.  I have chosen as my project to continue work on the Silverwood Chronicles of which I recently completed the second draft of book three this weekend.

Book Four, entitled “Friends from Mountain Forge” is well underway.  Two full chapters have been completed and a prologue of sorts.  I will begin chapter three tomorrow with a current word count of 12,505 words so far.

So far, this adventure in writing has been challenging as it has been fun.  Chapter three will be interesting as it is the last chapter that I currently have any kind of outline created for.  After that, we’ll have to see what happens.  I may continue to write using my unfettered imagination, or I may have to take a day and focus on building out more of a structure before continuing on.  At this point, I’m not sure.  I have about three or four days to decide before I’m forced into a decision.

Speaking of five days — see how I did that — don’t forget that Christmas at the Fair Grounds is this Saturday from 8am – 3pm.   Please share this with your reading friends.  I will be promoting both the Silverwood Chronicles and the children’s series, Chel & Riley Adventures while I’m there.  I will also be demoing the Chel & Riley Board game that you see advertised on my website.  Any of these items would make a great gift for someone in your circle of family and friends.

My Creative Consultant will be there and she will be showcasing some custom sketches that will most likely be included in book three.  We may also have some alternate covers for you to peruse and give us feedback on.

Please share this with your Facebook friends.  Encourage anyone in the Monroe County area to come out and say “Hi!”  I would love to catch up and see what new adventures have been happening in your life.

Until next time, Blessing to you, and happy reading!

Friends and fans, tomorrow begins the biggest challenge of my writing career. If you have been following my blog you’ll know that tomorrow is not only the first day of November, but also the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Starting tomorrow, I will be committing myself to write for approximately two hours everyday with the goal of writing nearly 1700 words every day for thirty days. While I am accustomed to writing almost daily, I’ve never actually committed to writing every day for this long a time. I am both excited at the challenge and scared at the same time which seems absurd given that I have no one except myself driving me to do this.

I have many friends that have trained and worked hard to be able to run marathons, and I cannot begin to understand the amount of commitment that it takes to do something like that on a physical level. Maybe, I will have some level of understanding on December 1st, we will see. I have no doubt that this will be one of the hardest things I have ever tried to accomplish.

I am therefore asking that any encouragement you can offer throughout the month would be welcomed and appreciated. I know I can do this and I want to do this. The only thing that stands in my way is myself.

Thank you in advance. Here’s to book four in the Silverwood Chronicles series, working title “Friends from Mountain Forge.”

Happy day.   I have completed the first draft of book three, officially titled, Prophet to the Outerlands.  I have already started doing the first revision which I may or may not get done before I decide just to hand it off to my army of editors.

Speaking of my army of editors, if you haven’t reached out to me yet and you’d like to help proofread/edit the manuscript, please reach out to me.  There is never enough editors on a book, in my current humble opinion.  I have a pretty tight deadline for the edits to be returned, end of November, so I may even divvy up the responsibilities so that I can get better coverage.

Also coming up is the November Holiday Fair at the Monroe County Fairgrounds on November 12th.  I will be there along with my creative consultant signing books.  This is a great opportunity to get that special reader in your family a unique gift for Christmas at an awsome price.

One last thing, next week begins NaNoWriMo which is National Novel Writing Month.  I am planning on starting book four right away.  The goal for NaNoWriMo is to write 50K words by the end of November.  This means that I could have two-thirds of book four complete by the end of November.  This also means my updates may be interrupted more than usual and shorter.   Any encouragement during this marathon is appreciated as I expect the first week to be pretty exciting and then the last three weeks to be grueling and painful.

I’m hoping to start dropping cover idea’s out as well over the next several weeks for book three.  I’m considering including chapter heading artwork in this book to dress things up a bit, but I don’t know if I have enough to make it work.  We will just have to wait and see.

Thanks again. Blessings to you and happy reading.

This will most likely be my last update before the big event at the Greenwood Public Library, this Saturday, October 15th at 1pm.  I really hope you can come by and see how book three is coming along.  I’ll have a draft copy of the manuscript and a couple of the prototype covers that I and my creative consultant are working on for it.  There will also be a little challenge for those of you who like to consider yourself an editor.

Chapter thirteen is complete and fourteen is over halfway there.  I can not tell you how excited I am with the way the last half of this book has progressed.  Thirteen and Fourteen are shaping up to be, in my honest assessment, some of the funnest and most exciting storytelling I’ve ever done.  I just pray I can keep the pace up and have fifteen end on as high a note.  Tonight’s goal is to finish fourteen and hopefully start on fifteen.

By and large, I should be done with the manuscript in the next week or so, but ending it by Saturday will probably not happen.  My normal weekly writing schedule has been interrupted during the day as I try to encourage some new team members at work during my lunch breaks.  I feel this important as things have been rocky over the last several months in our organization and with new people coming on board, I feel like it is important that they not only feel welcome and excited to be here, but comfortable with the people they work with.

So far, I’ve lined up a couple of proof readers for book three.  If you are interested in being one of my army of proof readers, please let me know.  In the past I’ve been fairly slack on when I get the manuscript back, but I’m really pushing to get the book into production before the end of the year, so as quick as you can turn it around it would be greatly appreciated.  Again, the first completed draft should be available in the next week to ten days.

Until next time.  Blessings to you and happy reading!

Well I did something today I didn’t think I could do.  I made my creative consultant cry.  Now before you go jumping to conclusions, it was appropriate that she did so.  To describe as she did, the pacing of the book for the last few chapters has been bang, bang, bang.  But here we come to chapter thirteen and you pause for just a brief minute to add some insight into Firebane’s persona and raw emotion into the story.

Here is a snippet from some words that fell out of my brain onto the computer this afternoon regarding the scene in question between Firebane and Speedsting, the dragon.

“Speedsting,” Firebane declared turning suddenly to see the dragon.   “You move quite silently when you want to,” Firebane commented.  “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Obviously,” Speedsting replied.  “It was not stealth that hid my presence from you, but rather your compassion for this one that blinded you to all distractions.” 

I don’t know why, but Speedsting’s reply in this scene is one of my favorite lines in this book so far.

It was fun building up to this scene, and what happens next is like the wandering friend that interrupts a couples kiss.  KABOOM.  We are now off to the races.  The climax of the book is upon us and we have two and half more chapters to go.  If I keep on pace, we should hit somewhere in the mid to upper seventy thousand words.

DON’T FORGET!  Two weeks from Saturday is the Greenwood Public Library Author Fair.  I will be there signing books and chatting with everyone and hopefully sharing a completed manuscript — it will still be a first draft, of course — but it will be there.  You can pick it up, hold it in your hands, point out all of the glaring type-o’s.  But that’s the point, I get free proof reading #BigSmile.

Until next time, blessing to you all, and happy reading!

I regret that it has been a while since my last post, but I think the progress that has been made in the last two weeks will give me a good justification.  That’s a fancy way of saying, I’ve been writing furiously on the book and haven’t had time!

The Greenwood Public Library Local Author Fair is quickly approaching on October 15th.  Please be sure to tell all of your reader friends about this event and opportunity to meet me and pick up some fun reading either for themselves or as a head start on Christmas.

Chapters 10, 11 and 12 are now in the can, as they say.  I will hopefully get to work on Chapter 13 this weekend.  I’ve broken the 61K word mark at this point, and I’m on pace to hit somewhere in the mid 70’s.  As you would expect, the pacing of the story has picked up a bit as we’re nearing the climax of this book.  I’ve been able to develop a lot of over arching themes in these chapters that will carry through in some cases till the end of book five.

With my goal now to complete the rough draft of book three by the end of October, I plan on rolling right on into book four for NanoWriMo which is National Novel Writing Month.  I have so far gotten concessions from my family to take the NanoWriMo challenge in November, which will give me a great head start on book four.  I still need to work on the detailed outline for book four, which means I will need to arrange a date with my creative consultant at some point in the next few weeks.

I believe I’ve settled on the title for book three, “Prophet to the Outerlands.”  This theme of titling books with their character focus and region of plot setting will continue throughout the rest of the chronicles.  I’ve had it discussed that chapter illustrations would be an interesting add-in to the book.  I’m open to any volunteers that would like to provide their gifts/talents in exchange for cover credits and billings on the title page.

Until next time, blessing and happy reading!

The last week has been a great week for writing. I might even go so far as to say its been the best day for this project as a whole. Labor Day weekend gave me some much needed downtime from my normal professional activities. This included some much needed rest. Saturday, I had an opportunity and the intention to spend several hours writing. It didn’t happen. Fatigue and the opportunity to sleep kept me from it. However on Monday, I managed to pull off a good solid three hour writing session. The results were completion of chapter nine, the dungeon crawl chapter.

I’m very pleased with the results of chapter nine more so than I thought I would be at first. I am a little worried; however, as it is the longest chapter I’ve ever produced. I’ve discussed it with my creative consultant and she feels that it moves along nicely. I mentioned maybe breaking it up into two chapters just to keep the flow of the book moving, and she did not feel like it was necessary. So, for now, I will keep it all together, all 9,500 words of it. Yes, you read that correctly.

Tuesday and today, I’ve been pouring myself into chapter ten trying desperately to keep the momentum going. Just five and a half more chapters to go. Chapter ten has our cast encountering a dragon from the Outerlands. This one, as Arnethia so aptly puts it in the book, is not trying to eat them. Firebane is being placed in some tough leadership situations right now. Given his reliance on Guntharr’s commanding persona over the years, this has him a little uncomfortable, to say the least.

Its about time that I start thinking about cover designs. Here is a simple one I threw together this evening. I love the background. It is very much a setting from the book.

I do have an exciting announcement. I will be signing books at the Greenwood Public Library Author Fair on Saturday, October 15. I’ll be posting more information on the Facebook page in the next few weeks.

Until next time, Blessings to you and happy reading!

Chapter nine is progressing nicely.  While I have to admit I’m not flying through it quite like I did with chapter eight, it is progressing nicely.  Especially considering our adventurers are traveling down a seemingly dried up lava tube turned treasure vault.  Now I know what you must be saying, “What in the world are they doing in a lava tube, and what is a lava tube anyway?”

We’ll take the second part of your question first.  A lava tube is essentially a cascading tunnel in the ground that was originally forged by flowing lava.   Our adventurers currently find themselves in the Outerlands.  Part of this region of Taradandra is littered covered with lava pits.  Some of these lava pits have been dormant for sometime and therefore the pit and its source has since been emptied.  What causes this?  I’m a writer not a geologist.  Quick for 1,000 points, what famous Sci-Fi character does that sound like.

Now to the first part of your two part question.  Our cast has a need for an audience with a very important dragon.  Currently, this dragon has a desire for a treasure that has been out of his reach.  Meaning, he’s to big to fit in one of these lava tubes and he hasn’t found anybody willing or desperate enough to go find this treasure up until now.  Thus starts a pseudo-classic dungeon crawl.   While trying to include all of the essential elements of a dungeon crawl, I’ve really gotten an opportunity to explore a couple of the new characters that are currently working with our cast.  Throw in some foreshadowing for a future story and chapter nine should be complete in another 2 – 3k words.

Today I broke the 42k word mark and over 100 MS Word pages.  If I can stay focused and minimize distractions chapter nine should be complete later this week, which means I’m almost through what I consider the most difficult part of any book — for me anyways.  The first third of a book is usually pretty easy for me as is the last third, but that middle third is tough.  Just a minute, front, back middle, okay I got it all.  I was worried I had missed a third.

I’m still working on a couple of events that I might be attending later this fall, but my contacts have not returned my inquiries.  Maybe they’re on vacation.

Last week, Chel & Riley made a return visit to the place where it all began a little over fifteen years ago.  After almost a five year absence, my good friend Chel invited me — Riley — to tell our adventure in the haunted house.  We covered just the highlights of the adventure during our three night event and left the kids with a bit of a cliffhanger.  Any child that comes back to the start of AWANA will received an autographed copy of Chel & Riley’s Haunted House Adventure compliments of Morgantown Baptist Church.

I must say I was very nervous on the first night.  It had been what seemed like forever since we’d last performed.  But once we got on stage and in character, the old chemistry came roaring back — at least that’s what I felt, you’ll have to ask the children if they felt the magic.  I forgot how much energy it takes to perform even a short sketch such as these.  At the end of each evening, I was very encouraged, but I was also very tired.

A special thanks goes out to my friends Brian and Ben for putting together a nifty set.  Chel & Riley usually don’t get to work with a real, honest-to-goodness set.  Thanks also to Scott for stepping in as Chel & Riley’s pal Sagon and for the spooking the children with the sound effects.  And finally, a warm, humble thanks goes out to my good friend Julie aka Chel for putting together this reunion.

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