Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Back To Pelgraff (Book #8 of The Yrden Chronicles)

 Hello Friends:


So, at long last, Book 8 of the Yrden Chronicles is live on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Back-Pelgraff-Yrden-Chronicles-Book-ebook/dp/B0DNGCXXMY

I've put it into Kindle Unlimited for the time being and it will stay there until Feb 16th, 2025.

2025? Where have the years gone? Nonetheless, Back To Pelgraff is now ready to be read.


After years on the defensive, Colleen Yrden struggles to create an alliance of human worlds and Families from the Family Trading League, and with their support to retake Pelgraff, push the Damargs out of human space, and force the Damargs to the negotiating table.

But that's easier said than done, for the Damarg Korsh and his allies still see the human worlds and commercial enterprises as easy targets. And now the Damarg Empire's navy may take a hand upping the ante from mere protection of resources to an existential crisis with what the Family Trading League spent centuries trying to avoid: War.


Fear not, you will not have so long a wait for Book 9, Trading Allegiances, for I am already editing the first draft and hope to have it up for you before the end of the year. And Book 10, A Dangerous Species, the final book in the series, will follow that shortly as the first draft of it is already complete. I'm aiming for the end of February for it.

I thank all who have waited -- patiently or impatiently -- for the finishing up of the series. I began the first chapter of book 10, which was supposed to be a stand-alone novel, over 20 years ago. But nothing ever goes as I expect it, and all sorts of other novels and expansions of what would become a series happened in between during the last 14 years since I first published Pelgraff (which was, at the time, supposed to be the prequel to A Dangerous Species -- a two-book series).

For any interested, I'm now about 1/2 way through the first draft of a new book in the same world as "The Steadfasting" and "A Throne at Stake". So, I've not given up writing yet.

Again, thank you to all who have stuck around, and if this is your first exposure to me or to the "Yrden Family", I hope you enjoy.

Live well, my friends, 


D.A. Boulter

Saturday, 14 September 2024

The Yrden Chronicles Series

 Hello, Friends.

I have continued writing, hoping to finish the series, and I have -- in first draft at least. That means I have three novels to edit, proof, format, find covers for, and publish.

Right now I'm working on proofing #8 Back to Pelgraff. #9 Trading Allegiances and #10 A Dangerous Species, the final novel in the series, are waiting.

Editing, proofing, formatting, getting the covers for, and publishing often takes just as much time as writing the novel in the first place, but I'm hoping to have all of them out before spring 2025. With luck, I will publish Back To Pelgraff in October of this year.

It has been a long ride, I know, and I am thankful of those of you who have stayed with it. I will continue to keep you informed of my progress.

D.A.


Sunday, 25 August 2024

Trading Allegiances -- First Draft Complete

 Hi All:

Just a note to let you know that instead of stopping writing to edit "Back to Pelgraff", I kept on with the next novel in the series, #9, "Trading Allegiances", and have now jumped to #10, "A Dangerous Species".

I know from bitter experience that I cannot edit one book while writing another. And, as I've gone months without writing after editing a book, I decided that I want to finish this series as quickly as possible and have thus continued to write.

Book #10, "A Dangerous Species" should be the last book in the "Yrden Chronicles" series. It was actually supposed to be a stand-alone novel when I started it. It became a testament in HOW NOT TO WRITE A SERIES

Book 10 was supposed to be a stand-alone novel, just like all the other ones I'd written to that point. I had this "wonderful" what-if that came to me. It had it's origin in our history, but to do the "what-if" without having to do a hell of a lot of research, I decided to take the major circumstances and shift them into Space and the distant future.

So, I started writing Book 10, which, as I said, was supposed to be a stand-alone novel. Early in chapter 1, it occurred to me that I needed a civil war -- like the Spanish Civil War -- to occur as a precursor. That "shiny object" took hold, and I wrote what was to become Book 5, "Pelgraff" -- then went back to work on Book 10. BUT, in Pelgraff, a certain throw-away line, just something to add a bit of depth to my universe attracted me, demanded to be written. So I wrote that book -- about the founding of a trading league (which figured in book 5) and a scientist that was instrumental in it -- which occurred 450 years before Book 5. That was "Courtesan"

Then, that finished, I went back to Book 10, but the story of the leader of the League in book 5 needed an origin, so I abandoned Book 10 and wrote Book 1 -- the origin story "Trading for the Stars". Then, again from Book 5, I knew I needed a story on how she acquired her bodyguard. So, Book 2 "Trading for a Dream". Then I had her inciting incident (mentioned in book 5), so I wrote Book 3 "One Trade to Many". Then I needed a leadup to Book 5, so I wrote Book 4 "Trading in War". Book 6, "Trading in Secrets" partially came from another "shiny object" that I wanted to put into a book, and decided to incorporate it into my series instead of a stand-alone. Book 7, "Partisan of Pelgraff" came from another "shiny object", but one which could be in the series. Then I buckled down to work my way to Book 10 -- which I had worked on from time to time, building it up to about 85,000 words.

In the middle of all that, fans of "Courtesan" began asking for a sequel, and the 4 novels of "Not with a Whimper" came about.

Now I'm finally working on finishing "A Dangerous Species". However, that may delay the publishing of books 8 and 9, but it's probably the fastest way to get the final 3 books out.

Anyway, that's my story ... and I'm sticking to it.

For those who have followed me this far, I thank you and I'll get these books out as soon as I can.

Sunday, 14 July 2024

Back To Pelgraff -- first draft complete

 Been a while since I've made any posts here. I am going to try to be more conscientious about that, but if you're following this blog, I'm sure you won't believe me. Heck, I'm not sure that I believe myself.

In any event, latest news has me completing the first draft of Book 8 of the Yrden Chronicles, "Back to Pelgraff". Unfortunately, I think it needs more work than other first drafts I've written, so I can't give a real solid publication date, but I hope to have it out some time in the fall.

While I'm doing the old editing thing, I'm also working on Book 9, which will be titled something like "Trading Allegiances". I'm already about 15,000 words into it (about 50 pages) and it seems to be going a bit faster than "Back to Pelgraff", so there's a possibility that it will get published late this year as well -- but don't rely on that.

There may possibly be two more books in the series, but I'm hoping that Book 10 will finish it. Originally, when I thought this would be a simple, single, standalone novel and not a 10-book series, Book 10 was supposed to be that book. It will be a long one, and I've already written well over 200 pages in it. Once I finish "Trading Allegiances", I'll try to power through that one and have it out by the late summer of next year. After that ... who knows?

For those of you who have stayed with me thus far, thank you. I'll try to keep you better informed in the future.

D.A. Boulter.

 

Monday, 15 January 2024

Retribution's Last Stand (New)

 Hello, all.

It has been quite a while, but my newest book hit amazon a little earlier this month. It is called, "Retribution's Last Stand".

Wednesday, 5 October 2022

Ghost in the Game ... Live

 Well, it took several years from the first time I thought of this book back in 2017 until I finished it. But, it's complete and for sale on Amazon -- and in Kindle Unlimited until the end of the year (2022 if you're counting).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BH5B4VQM

It takes place in the not too distant (but dystopian) future, where "The Game" is a virtual reality role-playing game that places the players into what seem like very real worlds where they can do anything they can in real life and more. Those who play it say,

"Everything is better in The Game."

PI Gault McGirr doesn't believe that, but has no intention of finding out for himself ... until his ex-girlfriend, Connie, shows up and hires him to find a missing person: John, the man who took her away from Gault in the first place.

In order to redeem the ill-conceived promise he made her, Gault needs to enter the MMORPG virtual reality game that brags that it is "Better than Real Life" in every way. He hopes to find the man quickly either in game or out, preferably both, and then get Connie and John -- or just John -- out of his life for good.

However, the deeper he digs, the more it looks like John has become involved in something far greater than what Gault first suspected, something that has others looking for him as well, and without good intentions. Gault needs to find John fast, and may the Gaming Gods help any orc or goblin that gets in his way. But finding John will require a team, something Gault feels ambivalent about.

Unravel the mystery with Gault and his new associates as his investigations lead him into Fantasy World, where a fantasy knife in the back can bring the same excuciating pain that an actual one can in real life, but where the pain doesn't end with death, and where betrayal is rife.


This is the longest book I've ever written and I'm happy to have finished it. Amazon says it has a "print length" of 883 pages -- but no print book is available. Get it while it's hot!


As is typical for me, I'm suffering a kind of "postpartum depression" that many writers suffer from when they finish a book. While labouring away on the book, I had something to look forward to -- the ending -- but now that I've written "The End", a sense of purposelessness has come over me. Yes, I have other books to write, one of which is at the 3/4 mark, but there is a definite crash at the end of each book.

Cheer me up. Read a few pages of "Ghost in the Game". I've spent at least 500 hrs on it, so it would be nice if someone other than myself and two beta readers read it.

Anyway, it's October now, so with winter coming on, I should return to one of the other books and hopefully finish another one before year's end.

Thank you for your time, and drop a note if you wish.


D.A. Boulter

Thursday, 29 September 2022

Plotter Wars V: End game

 


 

Everybody writes differently. Everyone who sticks at it finds a process with which they are comfortable or become comfortable. And once they have that process, they generally keep to it. Why? Because it works for them. If something works for you, you tend to believe it is the best way to go. And, most humans tend generalize from the specific: "If it's the best way for me, it must be the best way for everyone." Thus, anyone who takes a different tack is marginalized and ridiculed. Why ridiculed? Because if they use a different method and come up with something as good as or better than what "we" do, then that invalidates our belief in our superiority or the superiority of our process. Facing the prospect that one has taken an inferior course for what might have been years or an entire lifetime is something that most of us find hard to countenance. And we won't admit to it.

 Beginning writers don't have such a process and they look to more experienced writers or teachers to give them something that will help them on their way, help them to get to the finish line (The End) without making a complete muddle of their work while they get there.

 "Plotting" or "outlining" represents a formula that anyone can use in order to avoid some of the mistakes that beginning writers make. They hear: "These are the rules. Follow the rules and you will get where you are going." So, believing that the teachers know what they are talking about, they learn the rules and follow them as best they can, eventually coming to a successful "The End" (if they remain diligent).

 Plotters talk of pantsers going off on tangents. That is not a pantser failing. It is a beginning writer's failing. A beginning plotter is just as likely to go off on a tangent as a beginning pantser. The plotter will have to do just as much "pruning" as the pantser in terms of plot. The pantser, however, will have written more words and the loss of time and effort will be greater.

 Once these beginning writers get a good feeling for STORY, neither of them (pantser or plotter) will make that mistake again. However (there's always a however, isn't there), we learn from our mistakes -- often more than we learn from our successes. Having to prune a tangent we've gone off on isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 If I want to go from Point A to Point B, you might give me a map and outline the route that I can take to get there. Why did you give me that particular route? There could be various reasons: it could be the only possible route that will have me arrive at my destination; it could be the fastest way for me to arrive at my destination; it could be the most scenic way for me to arrive at my destination; it could be your favourite way because it has a bakery that you like to stop at.

 In any event, you've given me the directions, and I follow them arriving safely where I wanted to arrive at. The next time I wish to make the same trip, how likely do you think it is that I'll experiment with a different route? I know how to get from A to B -- 'cause you showed me and I did it -- so why should I go off that course? No, I'll take the same route again and again, and I'll probably believe that you mapped out that course because you found it to be the best course. And, for you, it probably is -- or it might be the simplest course for a newcomer to your area to take, with the fewest turns.

 However (there's that word again), you may have a different purpose in going from Point A to Point B than I do. Time may hold great importance to you, and getting there as fast as possible might be your highest priority. The course you take -- and the one you've given me -- reflects that priority. Getting there in the least amount of time may hold no priority at all for me. I enjoy the journey and I want to partake of the scenery. My best course would be one that might end up taking longer distance-wise and time-wise but will put me in locations where I can observe the beauty of nature, while yours would have me on the freeway observing concrete and not being able to relax, to pull over and stop, just to enjoy what the route has to offer.

 If I'm an explorer at heart, I may later try other paths to get me from A to B, but if I'm not, I'll keep using the pathway that you taught me, because I trust you, and your directions work. But following those directions may cause me to miss out on what I value more.

 Plotters/outliners figure they have the best course, and following their directions will take the novice writer easily (relatively) and quickly (relatively) to his or her destination. I say that this stifles creativity; plotters say that they leave room for creativity. Although that latter contains a certain germ of truth, so does the former.

 If I, as a pantser, take off on a tangent and write five or ten thousand words that I will eventually need to cut out entirely, I will have learned something both about storytelling and what I find interesting. It will take me to many different places -- none of which might work with this particular story -- and I'll remember it in the future, not just as something to avoid, but perhaps something to pursue in my next story. It could open up possibilities that I would never have come across if I had stuck to a rigid outline and/or it might serve as a vivid reminder to NOT do this again, showing me the WHY of directions I ignored with respect to this particular story, though not necessarily of all stories.

 However (another however) I, as a pantser, will find myself freer to follow that tangent to an entirely different ending, one which may be far better than that which I had seen in the beginning. Remember, when we are writing, we always look ahead, same as when we read, figuring out possibilities. If I stay between the rails of my outline, I'll likely never come close to that, because those new ideas come as I write. They come as an outliner outlines, too, but to a much lesser extent, because s/he doesn't go into the same depth.

 The beginning outliner may make the exact same "wrong turn", but s/he will be looking at the map and suddenly discover that "you can't get there from here". So he'll backtrack to the main path once more and head onwards towards the destination. The beginning pantser will take the wrong turn and pick up a hitchhiker who will tell of the wonders of whatever/wherever and a whole new world will open up, perhaps a better and brighter world than the one of the original destination. The outliner will never get to the point of picking up the hitchhiker.

 My pathway to writing came, perhaps, a little later than most. By the time I started writing novels, I had read literally thousands of books, starting with series like the Thornton W Burgess children's books, going on to The Wizard of Oz books,  The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Corbett (Space Cadet), and Chip Hilton, and all these before I was a teenager. Then authors like Alistair McLean, Hammond Innis, Louis L'Amour (and writers of hundreds of other westerns), Frank Herbert, Robert A Heinlein, history books in their dozens if not hundreds, before I reached the age of 20. When I was 15, in Grade 10, I was reading 6 books a week, including massive tomes like Winston Churchill's series on World War II.

 Then I took jobs in isolated workplaces and read more. Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Mystery, and others, again often at a book every day or two. Nothing much else to do with time off, and I read very fast back then, so got forced out of my usual genres as I ran out of unread books in them at my place of work. Horror, though, I tended to stay away from, though I read one or two by Stephen King.

 So, by the time I started writing prose in my mid 30s -- I had begun writing poetry in Grade 9 -- I had absorbed a great deal about storytelling by osmosis, if you wish. Having done so, in writing prose, I've never gone off on tangents that I later had to cut and I've never made outlines that I've followed for any distance at all (and few of them in total -- and never for an entire book). I know how to tell the sort of story that I like to read. In fact, I re-read my own novels from time to time, just to relive the stories, to enjoy them again as a reader, not a writer.

 Pantsing (to me) is a hell of a lot more fun, more rewarding, and a more creative process. I find plotting tedious, unrewarding, and (when I've done it) resulting in my either not writing the story at all or departing from the outline completely within a couple of chapters and never looking back.

 So, when I got that email (see Part I) telling me that pantsers should try outlining/plotting because it would make their work better, I just naturally got a tad riled up. Not because I feel that plotting is a waste of time (though it is for me, mostly), but because of the unwarranted prejudice shown against those who write like I do.

 Nonetheless, if plotting is what gets it done for you, then go ahead and plot your heart out. If you want to outline your book in detail and that gets it done for you, go ahead and write 20,000 words of outline. As I said, everyone writes differently and no one process is inherently superior to any other one; it depends on the person using that process.

 My one piece of advice: try the other process. If you are a plotter, try pantsing and see where it takes you. You'll likely learn a lot that you can use to good effect elsewhere -- if you take it seriously and don't look for excuses to maintain your prejudice. Likewise, if you like pantsing, look at plotting for what it may have to offer you. You may find something of worth within that process, too.

 But don't tell me that because I'm a discovery writer, that my process is inferior to yours.

 And, to beginning writers: remember that "the rules" are just one set of directions which will get you to "The End". But, just because you reach "The End" using that set of rules, doesn't mean you can't get there using another path. That other path may be more exciting, more scenic ... or it may just result in you getting yourself lost in a tangent. But you will learn things of value. Be willing to experiment. Writing isn't just a formula, a science; it is also an art.

 Write well, my friends, and enjoy.

D.A. Boulter

News: Proofing on "Ghost in the Game", is going slightly more slowly than I had hoped. But it should be done in early October and I now hope to publish it by the 15th of October.