Michael Parkes's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

Editing and revising my horror manuscript is going well. It’s kind of taking a while, but since I changed the story a couple times, it’s good to have everything flow properly again and to take out any inconsistencies. The story focuses on a child named Elijah living on an isolated farm with a very religious family. I find I especially enjoy writing the priest character.

Editing my horror manuscript has mainly become writing again. Specifically, since I’m writing Elijah’s (the protagonist) father to be a tyrannical monster, I’ve added a lot of subtle things to highlight that. He gives his wife “the look” when she’s invited to visit a church lady’s house, and she nervously darts her eyes from the church lady to her husband, hoping he won’t react badly. He blows up at his son when he shoots a deer and gives nonsense reasons, but really it’s because he’s jealous his son gets the “glory” for it. I even write the mask slipping sometimes and people glaring at the father for his actions that slip out in public. Going to be a bit more intricate to capture the feeling I’m going for, but overall, writing’s going well!

Some updates:

-I am still hosting author interviews on my blog! I’m currently booked into mid-April. Anyone is welcome to participate but all inquiries must be through email. They go up every Monday/Friday.

-Writing my third book continues to go well; I’m close to 50k words now and the storyline has been reworked to no longer be fragmented. It’s really starting to take shape!

-I will be interviewed by Matt's Random Ramblings in December and appear on S.S. Fitzgerald’s podcast in January. Posting dates are currently unknown for both, but I’ll post the links once I have them.

-Christmastime leads to a lot of Gnomes and Knights sales as paperbacks for me so some Facebook ads (USA) and Instagram ads (UK) have been set up in my best Gnomes and Knights markets to hopefully get some extra sales. I also got some free ads going out with Best Book Monkey on Friday and Monday.

-And finally, the sale of the From Here To Infinity Gallery and Bookstore’s collection is going well. A large collector and a university library are both interested and I’m still sending out inquiries and calling collectors to get it sold.

So overall, things are going great right now!

An excerpt from the rough draft of my cosmic horror novel. I like how it conveys the extent of the isolation the protagonists feel on their secluded farm out in the middle of nowhere:

“Their mother didn’t seem to notice them as they slipped into the house. Her back was to them, her small body standing tiredly in front of the suds-filled kitchen sink. A couple stray bubbles floated listlessly through the washed-out yellowness of the room, courtesy of the dim overhead lights, a pleasant touch of whimsy against the otherwise spartan interior. The view outside the windows was utter darkness, as if all of existence was confined within this one small, stuffy room, with nothing but void enveloping it. Like its own tiny pocket dimension completely isolated from the rest of the world. It felt like that a lot, actually.”

I started a new draft of a new book on Tuesday and already got 3350 words in. It’s nice to have the story flow out of me, or have random thoughts about it, or have an “aha” moment about something to add. It’s great to have writing be going so smoothly again; I hadn’t really gotten much of it done for quite some time, so shelving that cosimic horror novel was the right thing to do.

The new story is about a gnomish arch-mage who has to take an ethics lesson because he tried to steal a god’s divinity. There’s magic, fantasy, and a more mature theme than Gnomes and Knights

I was just sent the list of prompts for an anthology I was invited to participate in! I’m aiming for at least 3 or 4 short stories to have included. Should be fun!

Writing has been going well. My current WIP is about a bunch of powerful people sent to an ethics class for wronging the gods. The big bad will be an ancient crone called “The Virago” because I thought a fae villain would be fun. The story is not fully formed yet though