For me, Christmas Day is nearing its end, but there are other parts of the world where it’s still quite early in the day, so I thought I’d just send out some well-wishing for a Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year!
I think I’ve already mentioned my main New Year’s resolution, but just to reconfirm:
By the end of next year, I will have Ice Warriors: Key of Midgard ready and at least starting to submit to publishers.
So far, I’ve really only had two novels (or novella in the first case) that I’ve attempted to submit to publishers. I’ve got a whole host of them on my laptop that have been just started, or have a beginning and a middle but no ending. The first book of Ice Warriors nearly fell into one of those two categories, but I do now have the first draft saved on my laptop. Unfortunately, I’ve realised I need to rework almost the whole thing, which is an almost depressing amount of work given how long the first draft took me to work on.
One of the many problems I realised I had was that I had no idea of the settings of the stories. Or how the characters were connected. I didn’t really think about how I was going to figure it all out… and then I went to a convention in October and discovered this:
Now… there’s a whole host of little notebooks that the owner of this page sells. All different sizes, but if you look through the pictures, you can see just how pretty they all are. And they’re all themed, too!
While I was at the convention, I realised that the little A7 sized notebooks (or journals) were actually really good for character and world building, if I limited myself to one page maximum for each profile/heading. Best of all? Ice Warriors is heavily steeped in Norse mythology and my first two notebooks were Thor and Loki themed. (Yes, Marvel… but… Thor. And Loki).
If you get a chance, check out the page and see what she has for sale. There are all sorts of things and my personal opinion is that they’re really pretty. Maybe expensive… but it’s all well-made and definitely good value for money.
In the meantime… wish me luck with Ice Warriors. What New Years resolutions do you have?
Ink of Blood 