Category Archives: Miscellaneous

A category to use as little as possible, but sometimes it can’t be avoided.

The Long-Overdue Update

Posted on by

Last August, my grandfather passed away. He had been ill with cancer for some months, but had not told anyone about it, and so by the time it became bad enough that he had to go to the hospital, he had very little time left. He was not in too much pain, and did not suffer for long, which I am very grateful for. He was my last remaining grandparent, and the one that I had been closest to; I was fortunate enough to live with him for six months following my undergrad graduation, doing an internship in the town where he lived. His loss has been very difficult for me, and even now I still struggle with it at times. For a few months immediately afterwards, I did not really feel much like writing or even editing, which is partly why it took me so long to get back to work on TWoS.

On a more positive front, I had more hours at work during the second half of last year, and as of the beginning of 2016, am full-time and even got a small raise. Since I really love my job, this is very exciting! It also allowed me to finally get my own place again (I had been staying with family since the beginning of 2014), but the moving/unpacking process then took up much of November and December, and some time in January. In addition to my full 40-hour week, this hasn’t always left me with a lot of time to write.

So, I have not been nearly as active with my writing over the past several months as I would have liked. I have at least been working on the latest edit of TWoS for the past couple months, which will be the last one before I send it to my editor. Once I have a final draft that I am satisfied with, I’ll be looking more into the self-publishing process (which I’ve put off because I didn’t want to let that research distract me from actually getting the story written!). Depending on how that process goes, and my time/money situation, I would like to have TWoS officially published sometime before the end of 2016.

I do have one more short story in my im/mortal series written, and another in the works. Some other snippets may be forthcoming as well, and I am going to start some planning and drafting of my next larger project once I’m a bit more settled on the TWoS draft.

Thank you again to anyone who has given me support or enjoyed my writing thus far, and know that more is coming. Hopefully soon!

~Ethelinda

Happy New Year!

Posted on by

(Very slightly belated.)

Here’s to 2015: I hope that it will be a year full of writing and reading!

Thanks once again to everyone who is following The Wizard of Suomen. Look for both a completed first draft and hopefully a completed final version of that this year, as well as some other projects with a bit more variety once the draft of TWoS is done and posted. 🙂

~Ethelinda

Backstory

Posted on by

I have for some time been writing a more extensive backstory for one of the characters in The Wizard of Suomen, partly because I like the character and partly because it helps to flesh out some things about several characters and the world itself that I’m not sure will fit well into the main story. Snippets of this backstory will be in the main story at a certain point as flashbacks, but there will definitely be a lot more than that, and I am planning on posting the whole thing at some point after the main story is finished. Working on part of it tonight, I wrote almost 2000 words in just an hour, none of which will show up in the main story at all, so it seems that my muses are definitely interested. 🙂 (I’m using this backstory as a way to make sure I have a really good grasp of the character in question, since in the main story I’m working on a section where this character’s motivations and actions are central, and I want to be sure they fit and make sense. Hence, I’m writing some things that won’t be posted until I put up this backstory as a whole after the main story.)

This is definitely another balancing area for a writer (something I have noticed as a reader of fiction), the issue of what to include to make a new world intelligible and interesting for readers, without overwhelming them with facts that they won’t remember and don’t need to care about. I hope I’m striking that balance so far, introducing new information as it’s needed, but not so much at a time that it’s overwhelming or hard to remember. This is another reason that I wanted to have a website, actually; in addition to posting and getting feedback on the story itself, this website will give me a place to eventually post this backstory, plus other notes and background information that I have made as I do world-building, but that might not fit neatly into the story itself. Hopefully some readers will enjoy those things as well!

~Ethelinda