C.P. Cabaniss's Blog

After completing NaNoWriMo in 2019, I decided to take advantage of the 50% off of scrivener that was being offered, having heard so many good things about the program. And honestly, I’m so glad I did.

You can make any word processing program work for you, I truly believe this, but certain easily accessible features are nice to have. I’m no expert on scrivener, very far from it, but I love having everything saved in one place.

I can easily split the screen to have some of my research or world building notes displayed alongside the portion I’m currently writing. The scenes are easily separated and easy to move around or navigate between. It’s not perfect, because nothing is, but it’s been a big help in my current project.

What word processing program do you use? What are the things you like or dislike about it?

This is a collection of the three novellas in the Stephen Leeds series – Legion, Skin Deep, and Lies of the Beholder. The story follows Stephen Leeds, a man with a version of schizophrenia where each of his “aspects” embodies a different portion of his genius. He, along with these aspects, solves crimes that others are unable to handle.

These have a great mystery and detective element to them. Stephen and his aspects are fun and the cases interesting. The story follows his changing mental state as it begins to deteriorate and the aspects act erratically.

The third story, Lies of the Beholder, was somewhat of a letdown for me. There wasn’t the same mystery detective feel to this one and although the ending was quite brilliant, the rest of the story was rather lackluster.

Overall a good collection of stories with a fascinating concept, but I think Sanderson could have done better if his focus were not on other projects. Being a fan of his fantasy, I can’t fault him for putting the focus there, but do think this story suffered because of that.

Have you read any of the Legion novellas?

thoughts become sluggish

eyelids are drooping

i look, but i don’t see

heart is racing

brain won’t slow down

as i think and think and think

about every little thing

C. P. Cabaniss 2020

It’s the last day of the month and one of my goals for the year is to update this blog twice a month, so I’m squeaking in at the last minute.

Although my writing is never as productive as I wish it to be, I am quite pleased with my progress this month. I have continued work on the project I am zero drafting and begun a read through of a fantasy novel that I need to revise. I’m quite excited about that one.

In 2017-2018, I wrote around 86k of a fantasy novel and then abandoned it, for who knows what reason. Now that I’m delving back into it, I’m loving a lot of the characters and ideas, the world building is fun, and although there are many, many flaws, I can see a story in there. This is doable.

Do you abandon projects you love because you’re afraid of failure or rejection? I think that’s a big problem for me. But in abandoning it, I’m really rejecting it myself. And failing because I’m not finishing. So it’s a lose lose situation. Which is why I have to rewire my brain.

This is a jumbled update to say that I’m writing and revising and that one day I hope to have a novel to share with you all.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my reading here, I think. So today I’m going to share my current reads and my thoughts so far.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: I love reading classics and I’m trying to delve into more of them and a wider range. This story is very popular through its adaptations, as well as the novel itself, but I know very little about it, so I’m going in with little previous knowledge. I’m about 11% of the way into the book and enjoying it a lot. It’s almost made me cry a couple of times, so I can only imagine what the rest of the book will do to me.

The Brothers Karamzov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Another classic and a buddy read with another friend of mine. I read Crime and Punishment last year and enjoyed it a lot. Though I do have to admit, I often feel disoriented while reading Dostoyevsky. They are books I think I will have to revisit to truly grasp.

The Light of All That Falls by James Islington: This is the conclusion to the Licanius trilogy and is very good so far. I wish that I remembered more of the details from the previous books in the trilogy, but even without them fresh in my mind, I’m having a lot of fun with this one.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater: If you know me outside of this blog, this will come as no surprise to you. I adore this book. Not reading it super quickly, as I’m focusing on my previously mentioned reads, but still loving being back in the story.

Sous le Signe du Scorpion by Maggie Stiefvater: Yes, I’m reading this book in French. Very, very slowly. Usually a couple of paragraphs per day. I’m not wonderful with French, but I know enough, and know the story so well, that I can usually figure out what’s going on without referencing the English copy, which I keep beside me as I read. And it’s getting easier!

What are you currently reading? I would love to hear about it!

The world has changed a lot in the last few weeks. With the rise of COVID-19, things are at a standstill in some parts of the world. Due to the pandemic, my job at the college I work for has moved online. It’s been an interesting shift and I’m sure for the students it’s even more of an adjustment.

Although I am very introverted and like my alone time, it’s also difficult to never leave my house. And never is a bit of a stretch, since I go outside to walk and take care of my horses, but I’m used to a bit more exploration of the world.

I always try to look on the bright side, so the two things that I am most grateful for right now are one: that I still have a job. So many people don’t and if you are one of them, I really hope this doesn’t last long for you! I don’t know that my job will remain consistent as it has in the past, but for right now, I’m glad to still be working. And two: I’m learning a lot about technology and online tools and how I can use them. These were things I needed to be exploring more, so being forced to use them is beneficial.

Aside from work working at home, life is mostly normal for me and I hope it stays that way. I hope and pray that this virus is eradicated and those affected can be comforted.

Please be safe, be careful, and try to stay healthy.

Hello!

I hope you are all safe and healthy as COVID-19 sweeps around the world. With more and more things shut down, there are many people affected by this virus, in a variety of ways. In an effort to do something, no matter how small, to help alleviate stress or anxiety, I’m running a five day promo on Amazon for both Worlds with Ruby and Falling Worlds.

The promo will run from March 17, 2020 at 12 AM PST through March 21, 2020.

These are short, novella length stories that will hopefully help you escape the stresses of life for half an hour or so. So please, download them during the promotion and enjoy the read.

Find Worlds with Ruby in the US store here. And Falling Worlds here. You can find them in the other Amazon stores by searching either title with C P Cabaniss. If you need help finding one, comment and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Please share the information with your friends and be kind to each other. Stay safe, friends.

Here were are the end of another month. How did that happen? Once again, I’m left floundering, wondering where the time has gone. But! It’s been a good month, overall. I did a lot of reading and started on a new writing project, finally.

My writing has not been as consistent this year as I had hoped to make it, but I have been writing, which is the important part. And I think I’ve decided to try something new this time around. Which seems like something I’ve said a dozen other times, so who knows how this will go, but experiments are always required to find what works.

My memory, at least when it comes to the stories I’m writing, is often a sieve. Aside from big aspects, everything is easily forgotten. I don’t know why this is, but it’s been the case for a long time. So writing an entire draft and then reading it again hasn’t always worked out well for me, since I have often forgotten things while I’ve written that then changed what came next. I know, it’s a problem.

So that leads me to this new experiment – editing as I go. Not sentence by sentence or anything crazy, but every few weeks. Instead of writing an entire draft I’ll write for a couple of weeks, spend some time revising what I’ve written the previous weeks, and then back to writing. It’ll be a cycle.

Have you tried this in your writing? Has it worked out well for you? What’s your process? I would love to hear your thoughts!

A week ago today, my family had to say goodbye to another of our horses. Last year I talked about losing two of our horses unexpected and tragically. This one was a much more peaceful experience, but there is still grieving to be done.

Caramel was roughly thirty-seven years old. I say roughly because it’s hard to know these things. When we got her, we were told twenty-four, but once a horse reaches its twenties, it’s difficult to tell their age from the markings on their teeth. So she could have been older.

She was part of our family for the thirteen years that we had her and there will be a void now that she’s gone. Her passing was peaceful and she didn’t suffer, we were with her until the end.

It’s always difficult for me when I lose someone, because my thoughts are telling me that I should just keep on with life as usual, but my brain has its own ideas and realizes that life is no longer what it was before, so there can be no life as usual anymore. There has to be a grieving process and along the way you’ll find your new normal. At least, that’s how it works for me.

I’m not going to say that this is going to become a regular feature on the blog, but it might. I think it would be fun to reflect on my writing each month. We shall see what happens.

January 2020 Writing Reflections

One of my main goals this month, writing wise, was to finish the draft of a novella I was working on. I accomplished that and now plan to move into phase two, which will be polishing and revising. Hopefully that doesn’t take too long.

Now that I have scrivener (which I’ve been loving, by the way), I have been moving over some of my files to start working on other stories. I have the rough draft of a fantasy novel that I wrote from 2017-2018 and have just finished transferring it all over and now I can begin revising. It’s going to be hard, but I’m excited to try my hand at this and see what happens.

I’ve done some minor planning for the stories that I plan to draft this year, as well as written a few short stories.

Overall it wasn’t as productive as I might have liked, but I did accomplish a lot, so I’m calling it a win.