C. S. Thurman

Life is a blur. One moment I’m writing the January blog post and the next we’re already half way through the month of April. Holy cow!

A lot has happened since I last wrote. Like a lot.

Magical Birthdays

Right after I posted the January update, my wife and I took our son to Universal Florida for his 11 birthday. My son is obsessed with Harry Potter, and even though he hasn’t read through all the books yet (he’s only gotten through The Prisoner of Azkaban, so we’re taking it a little slow) we thought it would be a good idea to take him anyway.

We made him his own Hogwarts letter and Hogwarts Express ticket that were both delivered to him on Christmas morning (no not by owl, though I wish that we could’ve thought of a way to do it). He was so excited that it was all he could talk about for days. We were at Universal for 3 days and it was more magical than I was expecting it to be. My wife thought that she would only need to go once to be satisfied, but after just that 1 trip, she’s determined to go again. Time to start saving! Below are the images I was able to capture while at the park and of course I couldn’t leave without visiting at least one Jurassic World ride.

Submissions

Back in February I was able to attend (very shortly since my family wasn’t feeling well) LTUE, also known as Life, The Universe and Everything writing symposium held every year in Downtown Provo here in Utah. While there I was able to pitch my story, March of the Necromancer, to the Chief Editor at Immortal Works Press (a local small press company here in Utah). They seemed very excited for my story and asked to see more of it. I am still waiting for a reply but hopefully I will hear back soon.

If this one is another no, then I may go into seeing how I can better improve the manuscript, or leave it and keep sending it around to others who might be interested.

Current Works In Progress

I am still working on my Aether Force Chronicles. I reached up to 63,000 words and then couldn’t make myself keep going. This happened to me once before and there was some good writing advice that I received that has stuck with me over the years that I got while listening to the Writing Excuses Podcast. To put into my own words I gathered that there is no such things as writers block, there is only a break where your mind needs to sort out the information that is already there before you can proceed, whether that’s with figuring out the next scene, or even what is wrong with the overall story of the book.

Now keep in mind, I am not saying that you still can’t burn yourself out if you don’t pace yourself, but that is different than saying, “I don’t know what comes next.”

The last time that I got stuck happened when I was writing March of the Necromancer. I wrote it during my first NaNoWriMo event and I reached the 50,000 word mark!

It was amazing as I had never made it that far that quickly before. But as I let other people read the first few chapters and I listened to more writing advice, I realized that I needed to scrap nearly everything past chapter 1. After that it took me about 3 years to finish writing and rewriting sections of the book before completing it.

That was then.

Now, with my current story, I’m realizing that there are parts that don’t work with the story and either need to be dropped, or introduced sooner. By going through and editing the book now, I’m hoping to keep up the pace that I set for writing, but instead of scraping most of what I wrote I’m hoping to just edit most of the chapters I’ve written instead of rewriting it completely.

I feel good about this and I’ve already gone through about 14,500 words thus far. For those not sure how much that is, it’s only the first 4 chapters, but its a start. I hope to be back up to 63,000 words or more in another 3 months since that’s about how long it took me to get that far in 3-4 months when I first started writing this book.

Now, because of my success gifting my oldest with a book about him in his own fantasy adventure, I seem to have somehow been volunteered/told to write one for my twin girls. While there can be a lot of fun when writing about twins, I wasn’t quiet ready for another story yet, and I find myself thinking of different ideas that they would enjoy. The book I wrote for my son was no longer than a Magic Treehouse book, so I don’t have to make this one super long, but I am just thinking of different ideas for a story that would fit my girls.

The other side to this coin is that my wife is asking that they each get a separate story/book. She pointed out that just because they are twins shouldn’t mean that they have to share everything and that they should be able to enjoy their own story alone instead of together. I think I know what I am going to do for their story, it’s just a matter of flushing it out.

My Store

Speaking of my son’s book, I am still working through finding time to look over the formatting of my son’s book, and thinking about how I want to do audio since he has expressed an interest in hearing it read to him. Once I have those finished I will either upload those to this website or I will publish it through amazon so people can get copies if they wish.

In all the excitement I have forgotten to get pictures ready to post for sale.

Sorry.

Hopefully I can get those up before next time so you can see my own art and purchase some if you know someone who is as big a dragon fan as I am. Here’s a sneak peek at what I’m working on currently.

Like I said, it’s still a work in progress but hopefully I can have a black and white page that you can get if you’d like.

Last section…I promise

Another cool thing I did in January (told you I had a lot going on) was that I got to finally meet Christopher Paolini!

It wasn’t anything too special, but I was able to have him sign my new copy of Murtagh and Eragon, and I was fortunate enough that he picked me in a crowded auditorium to ask him a question. He even gave me a partial answer… no comment. Which may seem lame, but when an author gives you a “no comment” it means that question may have some bearing on one of his future books. So, in a way, it’s more of a non-committal way of saying you’re on the write track but I’m not going to say more.

That’s it for now folks! See you again in another 3 months.